YOU WERE BEAUTIFUL ── hyunlix

.20°

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"Don't fucking talk about her like that!" A woman yelled, her voice gruff- like she had spent the last hour eating nothing but sand and rock. "None of you knew what she was like! She would never drop everything to run away with a fucking miscreant! Do your fucking jobs and help me find my child!"

Hyunjin peered out of the office that he was standing in, The woman was short- her hair cut into a messy bob. She was wearing casual business attire, but Hyunjin could tell that she was stressed- her clothes popped open just enough to let her body breathe.

"Ma'am, we can't just-"

"I don't care!"

The other agents fell silent.

Hyunjin watched as the woman leaned forward against one of the desks, her head hanging low. "You don't understand. They took her. She would never run off with someone for no reason. She was a good kid," her voice was soft, but Hyunjin could tell that it was on the brink of breaking, "straight A student, never missed a day of school for the last four years. Always told me where she was going before she left. She wouldn't just leave."

It felt as though a boulder made a place on his chest it's home- weighing it down and crushing it. He felt heavy, so much heavier than before.

"Ma'am, we have protocols we need to follow- we can't just take on a missing persons report when it hasn't been forty-eight-"

"Do you're goddamn fucking jobs!"

Hyunjin winced, taking a few steps forward. "I'll take this," he announced, nodding his chin towards the poor officer that the lady was yelling at. Lightly tapping her upper arm with his fingers, he offered her a light smile. "If you could follow me, I'll try my best to help you out."

He didn't know just what he was thinking, though. He knew that he was supposed to enforce waiting twenty four hours for a missing persons report to be properly filed. But there was a feeling in his stomach that lingered so heavily that he didn't want to just brush it off. One that he couldn't brush off.

The woman- Kimberly Greene, Hyunjin learned -was distressed. For obvious reasons. Hyunjin sat and listened to her ramble on and on about how her daughter was a straight A student and was on the honor roll in class- how she would never just up and leave without reason. He listened when she explained how someone just came in and seemingly plucked her right off the face of the earth.

She had brought in a note, Hyunjin had learned. The note caused his heart to drop into his stomach and churn like old milk.

Tell my mom I'm fine and to not look for me or to stop looking for me. I'm fine, I'm happy- just leave me alone. Let me do this. Or I swear to God, there will be consequences.

He pressed his lips together, his eyebrows furrowed as he stared at the letters. Folding the note, he slipped it beneath his keyboard- just so that he didn't risk misplacing it just so that he could look at it a little later.

"Can I ask if she was acting abnormally before she left?" Hyunjin asked, shifting his keyboard closer to himself so that he could type up just what she was saying.

The woman shook her head. "She was fine. The only thing that was different was the fact that she was hanging out with that- that person. Nothing was different at all."

Nodding his head, Hyunjin sucked his bottom lip between his teeth and looked up at his computer screen briefly, before he turned and looked at her again. "We will try and do everything that we can in order to get your daughter back, Mrs. Greene," he rested his elbows up on the desk, folding his hands together slightly. "Though, you did come to the wrong department. Your local police station should have been able to take just as much care of this as I did."

Mrs. Greene's eye twitched, and for a moment Hyunjin was scared she was going to go off on him. She inhaled, closing her eyes, before offering Hyunjin a sad smile and opening her eyes again. "I tried. They refused and kept saying that they had to wait at least twenty-four hours."

He nodded his head again, this time slower as he looked down at his keyboard, staring at the little note that he had tucked underneath it. He licked his lips for a moment, curling his bottom lip in between his teeth as he pressed his keyboard away from him.

"I'll do what I can in order to bring your daughter home, okay? I just need you to be patient with me while I try and work through it all," he offered her a small smile, turning to look at the missing persons file that he had just filled in.

There was something off, but Hyunjin couldn't place what it was. Hailey Greene looked like every other high schooler- brown hair, brown eyes, happy smile- she certainly didn't look like she was the kind of person to get up and leave out of nowhere.

But he couldn't help but feel like there was way more to that story than what he was being told. He tightly pressed his lips together, nodding his head to himself slightly as he drew in another deep breath. His eyes lifted to the distraught woman still seated at the chair in front of him, staring at him as if he held all the answers to the universe.

Oh, how he wished he did.

"Thank you so much, Agent Hwang, for offering to help me find my daughter and the man that took off with her," Mrs. Greene thanked- just about for the millionth time. "It really means a lot to me that you're taking time out of your probably really busy day in order to help me with this."

Hyunjin's gaze flicked from the screen and to her face, his head not moving otherwise. His lips curled into a slight smile, though it was full of confusion and concern as he shrugged his shoulders. "It's not at all a big deal," he muttered nonchalantly, as though this was something that he did on the daily. "It's just what I was hired to do. Assist the community whenever they happen to need it the most."

They both fell silent again, and Hyunjin went back to reading over the text that was displayed on the screen. He still couldn't place just what was making him so itchy with this. He didn't know if it was how fake yet how real the picture had looked- most of it appeared to be almost digital. Nothing else aside from that profile picture made any sort of sense to him at that moment.

He opened his mouth to speak, to ask her a question, but nothing came out. Then, seconds later- after snapping his jaw closed -Hyunjin froze in his spot on the chair as a few people rushed past.

"Threat made to 22 Woodmen Rd. Make sure you send backup and don't let anyone in nor out of that house," one of the other agents flew by his desk quickly, throwing his blazer over his shoulders as he hurried.

Eric set the cup of coffee down on his desk. "Isn't that your house, Hyunjin?"

He froze, his hand extended towards the coffee that had been set down. His heart skidded around in his chest, and for a moment he felt like he was going to throw up. Without much of a second thought, Hyunjin threw himself out of the chair, leaving his own blazer draped over the back of it as he began to run through the maze of desks.

Hyunjin's blood roared in his ears as he ran for his car- adrenaline pumping through it as he weaved his way to his car.

The woman's face then flashed in his mind- nothing more than a brief glimpse was what he caught from her on the way out, but enough to tell that her lips were holding a lingering smirk.

Hyunjin's stomach dropped again, and for the first time in three years, Hyunjin sped home ten miles over the speed limit- his own sirens blaring.

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a/n || i was falling asleep the entire time i wrote this hello. definitely not proofread and is probably never gonna be

goodnight