It was past two in the afternoon when Aki got her short shut-eye. The couch was wide enough for her to fit in and the little pillows were too soft that she fell asleep in just a blink of an eye. Kyungsoo had promised her that he would wake her up when five p.m. strikes. The journalist had left her in the living room while he did his job inside his bedroom. 

After she asked Kyungsoo the billion dollar question of the day, the talk went on for two hours. They discussed the main objective, three plans to sneak inside the house and successfully get out, and an emergency plan just in case everything goes wrong. From A to Z, everything was schemed. The basic rule was this: don’t up.

Less than three hours later, Aki wakes with a constant tap on her arm. She immediately gets up, feeling fueled again, thanks to the cup of coffee she had before sleeping. A small black box is tossed to her, and she opens it to see devices that she has never seen before together with a couple of small syringes that are too familiar to her.

“The earbud and the wrist thing is for communication. It has a long range of connection, so I can sit in my car at the fifth street and I still can talk to you. That red bug is a disabler. You stick it into the ceiling and the security cameras are disabled for five minutes. That’s your golden time.”

Aki gets them out and puts them in their designated areas. The communication devices on her ear and wrist and the bug in her pocket. These little things remind her of her father. He used to bring home some technology stuff from work, and he would explain it to her like she can understand them all. Now, she barely remembers them.

“Where’d you get these? This bug looks illegal.”

“It is. They’re from the black market. I didn’t buy it, though. A friend gave it to me.”

She chuckles, “For what?”

Kyungsoo shrugs, “They give for free, to anyone. It’s exposure. Marketing. They want to get it out there.”

“So this thing’s new?”

“You can say that. I’m not even sure it works.”

Aki casts him a deadpan look. Kyungsoo stops from adjusting leather gloves when he notices the silence and looks up. He rolls his eyes. 

“I was joking. I gave the other bugs to some Bronzer and he said they worked.”

“It better. I have my disguise but I don’t really trust the tech here in Gold.”

“Just don’t take your gloves off. You’ll be fine.”

They leave the unit and head for Kyungsoo’s car. It’s a different car this time, a black one. The windows are heavily tinted and it looks rundown on the outside. They pull out of the parking lot and drive along the busy streets of Seoul.

The orange skies are distracting her, and for a second, she thinks she’s here for a vacation and right now, they’re having a road trip while waiting for the sun to completely set. The presence of the journalist keeps her intact in reality. 

She keeps her eyes ahead, and she can see the towering Skyscraper. The silence is broken when she speaks.

“I really don’t want to ask this, but how did you know all of that? Specially the big catch. It must be the family’s dirty little secret.”

Kyungsoo releases a chuckle, and taps his fingers on the steering wheel. “Why is it that you don’t want to ask it?”

Aki shrugs, “There’s a consequence for wanting to know everything and actually knowing too much.”

“Good point. But the answer would be because of the very nature of my job. That’s only the partial reason, the rest are left with your... imagination, maybe?” He smiles. “And no, what I told you is just the tip of the iceberg. Every big and influential family here has some nasty secrets. They bury it with their money, fame and power.”

“Well, if they’re trying so hard to contain a secret, then shouldn’t they stop creating something that they will have to bury afterwards?”

“Smart thinking and innocent perspective, but that’s not how it works, Bronzer. Corruption is a disease. No one is immune, some only learn how to control it.”

“I’m assuming you’ve been corrupted too?”

“We all have been. We all are. Look at us.”

That puts her in the silence that she decided to break. It is easy to look up to Goldens and call them corrupt, but here she is, about to rob a house with a journalist who’s spreading private information. 

“How are you not in jail?”

“Very, very few pick up my Gold sector tips. No one sells me to the police because we all know that it would not work best for both sides. I go to prison, you lose an informant and several opportunities. Easy.”

She lets out a quiet sigh. She had asked the same question to Taeyong regarding other guys like Jinyoung. It was the same answer, yet she still can’t help but to wonder. Some people are lucky, or desperate, or just basically thinking things thoroughly. 

They drive for a few more minutes, until she hears the creak of the handbreak being pulled. They had stopped at the Fifth Street, the farthest range the communication device can cover. Aki checks if her tools are intact. The daggers hang comfortable through holsters in her thighs. Her ropes are organized around her waist. The bug sits inside her jeans’ pocket. 

She adjusts her gloves and pulling it tightly despite the building sweat on her palms. “They arrive at 7, right? What time is it now?”

Kyungsoo looks at his right wrist, “5:48. 5 minutes is your golden time, remember that.” He glances outside, “Your stealth skills put you in a very risky position right now. They left three hours ago and you could’ve done the job already, but then, that would’ve been difficult to execute because of the time.”

“No one robs a house in broad daylight. We work in shadows.”

He lets out a low laugh,”What are you, some assassin?”

Aki heavily exhales, feeling jittery all of a sudden. 

“Why are you doing this, Do Kyungsoo?”

There it is again, the silence.

If she deeply thinks about it, there is nothing too alarming about Do Kyungsoo. He is a journalist. He has built a repuation around himself where people can freely trust him and feel comfortable. She got along with him today even though it’s their first time meeting each other. Maybe it’s the way he acts? Maybe it’s his charm? Or maybe she just unconsciously looked for something normal and legal out of all this? She has too much inside her head, and she feels like everything is needed to be decoded, hence all the questions asked today. 

Kyungsoo stares at her for a few seconds with a look that she cannot decipher, while his left hand stays on the wheel. Her knees buckle, because she just realizes how handsome yet dangerous this man is. And those two words go beyond their meanin