Mr. No || NCT || Completed

26 - Where Renjun suspects everyone

Renjun eyed Chaewon over the small mirror he was holding out for her.
"What?" she mumbled while fixing her lip makeup without taking her eyes off of her reflection. "Have you never seen a lipstick?"

He scoffed and turned his head from side to side, trying to get his point across, but since she didn't have time for his mime act, he had to complain aloud, "I don't understand why you have to do that right now right here."

They had visited their last target of the day (a confused middle-aged woman who hadn't been very cooperative nor useful) and arrived in front of the sushi restaurant where they were supposed to meet with Yun Liying. The street was packed with people, faint scent of smoke and grilled meat drifted from restaurants and snack stands, and Renjun could feel the tremble of bass from a club somewhere nearby.

"Yun Liying sounded like a fancy person", Chaewon was putting her lipstick away. "And first impressions are super important. I watched a documentary about human psychology and one dude spoke about perception distortion and halo effect and stuff. It sounded important."

"You spend too much time watching documentaries."
"Stop moving the mirror."

Renjun stood still. "You could also just leave. You don't need to meet her."
Chaewon pretended not to hear his suggestion, and instead focused on searching for a hairbrush from her handbag.
Her behaviour was nothing new to Renjun. After all, she was friends with Haechan who was a certified idiot, and that must've been contagious. He tried again, "I don't know how much Korean she can speak so it's possible that you won't understand the conversation."

"I'm not here for the conversation. I'm here for protection", Chaewon claimed calmly while brushing her hair.
Renjun glared at her. "I don't need protection."
She shrugged. "If you don't need my services, I can also protect her from your prickly attitude."

As Chaewon was packing her mirror and brush back into her bag, a sleek, black car slid into halt on the street in front of them. A tall brick wall-of-a-guy exited from the passenger's seat and hurried to open the door on the other side.
Out stepped Yun Liying.

She looked like a CEO on her way to a business meeting in her blazer, perfectly curled hair and heels. Even the tranquil expression on her face was professional.
The tall man beside her, on the other hand, was build like an oak tree. An oak tree capable of violence. His sharp eyes searched the area continuously and Renjun was sure that if anyone as much as looked at Yun Liying in a wrong way, the oak man would snap their spine in half.

"Look at the size of that man", Chaewon whispered in amazement, "he's magnificent."
Renjun rolled his eyes. "Are you going to blackmail me into telling him good things about you?" he gave her a look before turning to Yun Liying and the guy who was clearly her bodyguard.
Chaewon huffed and didn't stop staring.

"Huang Renjun", Yun Liying mused when she reached them. She was speaking in Mandarin. "It's been a while, hasn't it?"

She hesitated for a moment before offering her hand, and Renjun hesitated just as long before accepting the handshake. "It has."
The oak man judged him.

What followed the handshake was silence – a long and uncomfortable one.

Renjun was supposed to ask about her flight, to tell her that she had become prettier, to escort her to the restaurant and be a well-behaved gentleman.
The problem was that he didn't want to.

Despite the expertly applied makeup, he could see the dark circles around his 'fiancée's' eyes, and the slight tightness around her mouth. He saw how she glanced at her bodyguard out of the corner of her eye.
It seemed that she didn't want to be a well-behaved lady either.