Miho the Killer

Broken Miho lying in the corner of her room was pacified easily with a tranquilizer that a doctor and nurses came rushing in with. She was moved to a different room with security bars on the window. It irked me that she had to stay in a room reminiscent of a prison, but after the commotion she caused today it was hard to stand up for and defend the poor girl.

Once Miho was laid on a new bed fully restrained, I went to a break room with Shin.

"Coffee?"

The old man asked as if nothing happened, putting a coin into a vending machine.

I was angry. 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝚠𝚎𝚋𝗻𝗼𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝚘𝐦

I was angry with how he had handled the situation.

Nevertheless, he bought another can of coffee for me after getting one for himself and handed it over. I grudgingly accepted it.

"How you treated Miho there wasn’t right."

I finally spoke up as he took his seat.

"Oh please, you can’t treat her so gently all the time."

"At this moment she’s just a young and vulnerable girl. You were being extremely insensitive."

"She’s anything but young and vulnerable. You should know that."

Shin opened his can and took a big gulp. I did the same. The cold, milky, and sweet coffee traveled down my throat but it didn’t really soothe me.

"I’m talking about her current state. YOU should know the situation we are in."

"Young ones sometimes need to be screamed at. This is not the first time I screamed at her and it won’t be the last time. ’Vulnerable’ or not."

"That wasn’t very much like you, Mr. Shin. Losing temper like that."

"I didn’t lose my temper. I did what would work to pacify her in that situation. And it worked."

"She dropped out of the window!" Now it was my turn to lose my temper.

"And I caught her. A happy ending. Isn’t it?" The calmness in his voice annoyed me even more.

"Look what you’ve done to her. She’s now in even more unstable condition now."

"She will come around. Now that she’s got Juho in her head it’s just a matter of time."

"Did you ever think about how much of a burden it could be to her? This is too much for her to take right now."

"Look, Ms. Han."

Shin placed both his arms on the table and slightly leaned forward toward me, with his voice suddenly changing to a comforting tone.

"Miho has a job to do."

What he said was anything but comforting.

"NO WAY! She can’t!!!"

The old man didn’t flinch even at my shouting.

"Would YOU do the job for her then?"

"...what?"

"If you don’t want Miho to do it, would YOU do it for her?"

"I... how can I..."

"You can’t. That’s a fact. Even if you WANTED TO, you simply CAN’T."

He was speaking the truth and I wasn’t quite sure how I could counter this. But something didn’t quite seem right.

"...how... how did you end up coming back to the hospital just now? I thought you said you had work to do."

"I wasn’t far from here."

"Still, that was way too quick."

"It’s none of your business."

"Something’s off. You are not telling me the whole truth."

"The truth that will get you killed."

Whenever he pulled up this card, he erected a wall that I could never push through. It reminded me that I was in a fundamentally different world from him and Miho. On my side of the wall was the sheltered life of an office lady. His side was filled with deaths and horror. Sometimes we leaned against the same wall, with our backs turned against each other, but we were never going to cross our boundaries completely.

Perhaps it was better that way.

Except I didn’t want Miho to live on that side of the wall anymore.

"Why do you need Miho for the job?"

"Because it’s a mess she created."

"What mess?"

Shin sighed, took another gulp of his canned coffee, and spoke.

"Well, this is something you already have a gist of, so I will tell you. Miho took a job back then - you know? When we first met - that was tied to ’organizations’. It was a sort of job that people like us shouldn’t take."

"And she did it for Juho." I just wanted to re-frame it in a way that put Miho’s choice into context.

"Nobody cares about that, except us."

"Do YOU really care?"

"Why do you think I’m doing all this? I could be enjoying my retirement if I wanted to."

There was probably some truth in that, but something just felt a little off to me.

"So how is Miho actually going to solve this ’mess’ that you are talking about?"

"She can’t play ’both sides’ in a conflict like this. It’s the consequence of her own actions, but she needs to pick a side now."

"Meaning?"

"She needs to clean up the remaining."

"Wait-, what?"

"It’s a simple concept. There are two rival companies. She may be a freelancer, but there are rules. She can’t take a job from one company and take another job from a rival company that has a conflict of interests."

"This is getting out of hand."

"It has already gotten out of hand the moment Miho got involved."

"So what you are saying is... she needs to ’clear out’ the rival company? In WHOLE?"

"More or less."

"IMPOSSIBLE! You know her condition!"

"That’s why we need Miho back."

I couldn’t even fathom the scope of this ’job’ that Miho needed to do now. A ’company’ or ’organization’ as Shin called them, I had no idea how big they were. How many people? ’Clear’ them all, as in bury them all? How is that even possible for a single individual no matter how ’good’ Miho might be?

"Don’t worry. She won’t be doing it alone. This is something that we need to build a team for."

Shin read my mind.

"How much time have we got?" I asked him.

"Two months."

I don’t know what kind of preparation this kind of job entails, but at least it gave me a faint hope that Miho might ’recover’ in this time frame.

"So, let me ask you this now." Shin put his elbows on the table, his fingers interlocked.

"What is it?"

"Are you in?"

This was the kind of question that I never thought I would be asked.

And expected to answer.