Clear and Present Danger

Battles

'Close your eyes, yeobo,' I said as I drove our way to where I would be taking her for the weekend. She seemed excited, but then I wanted to surprise her.

It's been a long while since we had this getaway. The last time we were on it was about a few years ago, and they were all short. The last real vacation we had was, sadly, our honeymoon. And that was four years ago.

'Why?' she said impatiently. She looked like a schoolgirl scorned. Eyebrows scrunched, she looked like Oscar the Grouch, girl version.

'Just because,' I replied, smiling at her as I showed her my deep dimples. 'Please?'

She sighed, exasperated. Yeonssi has this habit of sighing especially when I ask her the most mundane of things. I find it cute, but there are times when I find it annoying too. But then again, the annoyance will never overpower the love I feel for her. I don't know why, but maybe it's because there were a lot of things that we had been through and her being like that, who she really is, could not even reach the tip of what I truly feel for her.

Four years have passed since we married, a lot of things have happened. Still, it feels like it was yesterday when our lives intertwined, knowingly. What we didn't know is that we were chasing each other for the wrong reasons. Fate must have been so good to the both of us that it allowed us to be each other's strength, even through the impending danger that we were both in. At that time.

'Alright,' she replied, as she closed her eyes. Her nostrils flared up, and I found it too cute. I then handed her an eye mask with cute eyesmiles and asked her to wear them. When she looked at it, she couldn't help but smile.

'You really know how to get your way through me, right?' she stated. I could only smile at her.

I held her hand with my free one and told her. 'You'll see later when we get to our destination. You'll be glad you slept.'

She looked at me and through my peripheral vision I saw her squint her eyes. 'Slept?'

I tried hard not to stifle a laugh. 'I know you, yeobo. In five minutes, you'll doze off to dreamland.' She then wore the mask, annoyed at me. True enough, five minutes later, I could hear her soft snores.

Yeonssi. You always melt my heart everytime I see you in a state where you bare everything about you.

It has been four years since we married, and became agents of NIS. We had been through a lot, happiness and sadness, smiles and tears, victories and losses, including losing someone because of a mission gone wrong.

It was one of the first assignments we had and being on the same team, we were advised to be each other's buddies. Since we knew our footwork, we became confident that we could do it properly. It was an intelligence mission on a defector from North Korea, and we were advised to be on standby to catch him. The defector, Park Sang Yoon, was on surveillance for smuggling bingsu, and we already had an idea what it was. We were tailing him, and he went into one of the illegal gambling houses in Itaewon, where Yeonssi posed as a waitress, while I posed as a dealer. We saw Park enter the premises while we were on a rush, along with other agents posed in the area likewise for back-up. When I called for standby, Park noticed us all of a sudden and caused a commotion by pushing someone my way and fired at him. The man pushed died as he was shot through the heart, and Park was able to get away through the fire exit. But little did I know, Yeonssi was already on the move and followed him to the exit, climbing her way down to the ground. As soon as I saw her, I followed immediately but she landed on the ground first. What I saw next made me cringe as Park shot her through the abdominal area, and tried to run away. Soon as he climbed onto his car, a loud explosion was heard, and I saw his car lit up in flames, frying him from the inside.