Echo || NCTau ||

14 - About gremlins

One-one-two.

The intensity of her anger swayed the heavy punching bag back and forth.

One-one-two.

One-one-two.

The chains holding the punching bag up rattled.

One-one-two.

One-one-two.

Yeoreum was drenched in sweat and it trickled into her eyes, making them sting. Her hair stuck to her neck and she could taste the iron of her own blood.

One-one-two.

She had no idea how long she had been going at it. Maybe an hour. Maybe more. She didn't care.

One-one-two.

One-one-two.

She couldn't see anything other than the shiny, black cover of the punching bag, and the only noise in her ears besides her erratic heartbeat was the sharp sound of her hastily wrapped knuckles striking the bag.

One-one-two.

One-one-two.

She had failed. She had failed again.

Her shallow breathing hitched in her throat and she changed the set. Double jab cross shifted to cross uppercut cross and the intensity of her punches increased despite the burn in her lungs.

Two-five-two.

Two-five-two.

Before she'd had the chance to recover from the revelation that Haechan was connected to her target, Sungchan had called her that the security company watching over the office she had broken into had been alerted of their security cameras being offline. She'd had to escape with the sniper rifle before the guards saw her and, once again, Park Jisung had survived.

Two-five-two.

Two-five-two.

She had failed. And Haechan – the weird guy who had forced his way into her life out of nowhere knew her target.

Bile mixed with the faint taste of blood in her mouth. It wasn't possible that he knew what she was doing, right? He had been oddly persistent about wanting her to teach his friend but if he knew who she was – what she was – he would've called the police instead of talking to her, right?

Two-five-two.

Two-five-two.

He wanted her to teach his friend who needed to learn to protect himself.

Two-five-

Yeoreum froze, her wrapped up hand barely grazing the surface of the punching bag when the realization hit her.

No way in hell.

Did Haechan want her to teach self-defense to Park Jisung?

It made no sense. It made no – why would he want that? Why was he so adamant on forcing her to become his teacher?

Yeoreum thought back on all the times she had met Haechan. He was odd, for sure, but hadn't seemed like a threat. When she tackled him in the hotel, he hadn't been able to put up a fight at all. He didn't move like a fighter. He had said that he danced and that was what he looked like – an artist.

But then why...

"I was just about to tell you to leave the poor punching bag alone", couch Lee's voice interrupted Yeoreum's confusion. She lowered her hands and relaxed her posture. Her shoulders were almost cramping following her intense match with herself, and her arms trembled slightly.