Chapter 52 - Break and Enter - WordExcerpt

“This place feels strangely lonely. Maybe the room takes after the owner,” he mumbled to himself before he snapped back to his senses and walked over to the desk. He was hopeful that he could salvage something related to the source of the dangerous information. Although there was no way Sehun would leave anything truly important in his office, perhaps Yoonshin could find some small hint at least.

However, the desk was clean, and the drawers were all designed so that they couldn’t be opened without a password. Yoonshin was astonished. “I guess I had too high hopes for Sehun Kang.”

Feeling defeated, Yoonshin was about to leave before it was too late when he discovered a desk calendar. He temporarily set aside his original goal as his curiosity about Sehun that crowded his mind resurfaced. He sat in the other’s chair and flipped through the calendar. But as expected, everything was about work.

Just as he was disappointed that he didn’t find anything of merit, he saw an X the size of a speck on the last page of the calendar. It was the last day of December.

What was this? Was this a birthday?

“I need to find some sort of weakness so I can beg him to please help me.” Yoonshin tilted his head then put down the calendar. He was about to turn the flashlight off, but he then realized that his desk was visible from Sehun’s room—since he could see Sehun’s desk from his desk, he should have known the inverse was true. Yet Yoonshin had never considered this because the other man’s room was covered in blinds more days than not.

He wondered if Sehun watched him occasionally.

He extended his hand into the light and cast a shadow, pretending Sehun was patting Yoonshin’s head. Then, realizing that he was imagining something ridiculous, he bolted up from the seat.

“Really, what am I doing?” His ears turned pink. He decided to end his adventure and leave the office for real when he spotted a thick object between a gap in the documents next to Sehun’s laptop. It was the only thing that stood out, so his eyes naturally fell on it. He pushed his index finger in and something smooth touched his fingertips. As he carefully pulled it out with the traction of his fingers, he discovered that it was a file folder. Its contents were familiar.

‘Why is this…?’ They were copies of some of the documents that he asked Secretary Tak to retain the originals of earlier the other morning. He saw the main points which he underlined with a pen after reading the documents thoroughly.

Yoonshin couldn’t be sure since this case was something that Sehun gave him to begin with, but since before, Sehun seemed to know a lot more details about the case than Yoonshin expected. This was Sehun Kang he was talking about, the ace of Doguk who didn’t do any pro bono work. Yoonshin found it a bit suspicious that Sehun had already read the documents that just another associate prepared on the day of.

“What do you think Soohan would want from me if I touched you? I’m not interested.”

‘But I think you’re interested in me…’ He cooled his warm cheeks with the back of his hand. Glancing at the volume of Great Expectations, he put the file folder back in its place.

Following that, he quickly closed the door to the office and left.

The door closed with a click.

At that moment, the motion sensor above the door blinked with a red light then vanished.

Act 08

Upon coming back to work after the weekend, the first thing Sehun did was turn on his laptop. After that, he asked Secretary Tak for a cup of coffee.  As he was pulling out files from his briefcase, he was met with a screen that was different from usual.

Sehun’s office had a motion sensor over his door. If someone entered his room while he was away from his office, the camera would activate and start recording. Doguk was a place where any of the employees could enter his room at any time should they put their mind to it, so setting up cameras was the firm’s solution to mitigate the risk of leaking sensitive information that the partners held.

Sehun wasn’t so careless as to leave very important information in his office, but one in a million chances still existed. They still had to keep the office clean, and he couldn’t control everyone, so he agreed to install the system as a formality in the unlikely case of an intruder. This was a fact that most people at the firm knew because the other partners also consented to installing this system.

‘Three in the morning?’ There were two alarms on the bottom right corner of the screen. Normally, there was exactly one alarm around six a.m. when the custodians came to clean his room. But today was different. When his card key wasn’t in the room, another person visited this office.

This was the first time after it happened once last year when a custodian came back to retrieve the cleaning materials that they accidentally left behind. He quickly accessed the security program and replayed the video from three in the morning.

He saw a fuzzy figure in the darkness.

It was Yoonshin.

Sehun scoffed in disbelief.

“Look at the gall of this b*stard.”

Resolutely, Yoonshin entered Sehun’s office and turned on his flashlight. Then, he looked around the office here and there. It looked like he was looking for something. Sehun turned up the volume just in case, and then he could hear footsteps and Yoonshin talking out loud to himself.