Jisoo was lounging on her couch as she waited for Rosé who was showering in her bathroom.
They had walked straight back to Jisoo's home from soccer practice, preferring a shower in the comfort of her luxurious penthouse to one in a locker room on campus. They had received intel earlier that day that could shed more light on their toughest case on hand. It also happened to offer the handsomest reward to date.
Ever since she could remember, Jisoo only had her dad, Seunghyun, as family. He raised her single-handedly while being a freelance private investigator, and through the years he had closed several big cases that made him considerably wealthy now, enough to have several properties under his name. He kept his firm lean, expanding to only two trusted geeks on the intel team, and two agents on the outfield team - Jisoo and her best friend Rosé, who were both recruited while in school.
Juggling studies as undergraduates, Jisoo and Rosé started as outfield agents at age 21, and quickly displayed seamless teamwork on smaller cases such as stalking unfaithful husbands, subtly dropping tracking devices into businessmen's coat pockets, and even snipping women's hair for DNA tests for blood relations. After hundreds of cases with increasing difficulty were successfully closed by Jisoo and Rosé, Seunghyun had decided that no one would make better inheritors of his business than this pair.
Two years later, the property magnate Jiyong paid a visit to their firm.
He was a chaebol whose neglected first wife Eunjoo had left him 23 years ago and then died in a hospital fire about 10 months later. After bumping into Dr. Park, Jiyong found out that Dr. Park was actually the gynaecologist for Eunjoo at that time and Eunjoo had actually passed away in labour an hour before the fire, but since all hospital records were burnt off and the time of death was close to the time of fire, the local newspapers had published her death as one of the casualties.
With her dying breath, Eunjoo had begged Dr. Park to keep the pregnancy a secret from Jiyong, hence she did not correct the local papers about Eunjoo's real cause of death. She wanted to raise the child for Eunjoo but lost track of the baby in the frenzied evacuation from the fire, however she remembered thanking the heavens that night after checking that the baby's name was not on the casualty list. Dr. Park also remembered something special about the baby girl - her unique star-shaped birthmark below her chest.
Dr. Park felt that bumping into Jiyong was a sign from above that it was time to spill the beans.
With this little piece of information, Jiyong had sought out their firm in hopes to find his daughter, with the promise of a handsome reward of $10 million. Seunghyun agreed to take the case...
"Where did you space off to?" Rosé's question shook Jisoo out of her reverie.
Rosé had finally finished her bath and was toweling dry her hair as she plopped down beside Jisoo on the plush leather couch.
"Nah, just looking back on our rookie days, and wondering how long it'll take to close out Miss J." Jisoo stretched mindlessly with a satisfying sigh.
"Aww someone's being nostalgic all of a sudden?" Rosé teased before continuing, "Seriously though, I can't wait for Miss J to be found so we can close this case and claim our reward."
Jisoo chuckled, "Yeah, it's been a while since we went on a vacation. We definitely could use one."
"Gosh, tell me about it. The last time was...," Rosé tapped her index finger on her chin, while Jisoo rose to her feet and shuffled to the bar, which held a full stock of alcoholic drinks on display.
Rose leant her head backwards and spoke to the ceiling, "That road trip in the summer of final year, but that technically should not even be counted because how much fun could it be to drive out of state just to knock on strangers' doors and ask them about a missing baby from decades ago?"
"Definitely not a vacation, but hey, it's our job." Jisoo returned to the couch with two cans of soju in hand, placing one on the glass coffee table in front of Rosé and opening the other.
Rosé picked up the remote control and turned on the television. "Oh, but I have to say, that road trip was fruitful. One of the old nurses actually remembered that the mother had left a letter to the baby, something about hoping her baby will grow up to be the best lawyer in town."
Jisoo chuckled as she recalled, "We studied our asses off after that to make sure we got into law school, god the nightmare. If not for this job, never in my wildest dreams would I have thought of attending graduate school."
"Me neither! But Seunghyun had clear instructions for us to get into these two schools - highest chances of Miss J's enrolment apparently, considering they're her mother's alma maters." Rosé was flipping channels restlessly and decided to swap the remote for her soju.
"And fortunately, she's of the same age as us, 24 years old, which should mean we're all in second year now. It would be a lot trickier to chase after a senior instead," Jisoo raised her eyebrows and her can of soju.
Rosé laughed out loud and bumped cans with her friend, "Jistar, seriously, nobody ever gets past your charms, senior or not. Last year was a crazy year, wasn't it?"
The pair took a long swig from their cans and let out a loud husky breath together. Jisoo was really enjoying this walk down memory lane with her best friend.
She smiled and shook her head in slight disbelief, "Yeah, it sure was. We only had, what, a few computer-generated photos of what Miss J could possibly look like now based on her parents' photos, you know like mix and match? With just those photos, I went around befriending girls on campus who was possibly Miss J, hoping to see the legendary star-shaped birthmark somewhere on their boobs."
"Befriending? You mean more like hooking up, right?" Rosé scoffed and dodged a cushion thrown her way.
"C'mon, I don't have to hook up with every single one of them! I can always... you know, strike them out once their clothes are off without that birthmark."
"As if you can resist fucking a shirtless girl in front of you."
Jisoo rolled her eyes and smirked, "I can't if they're hot."
"I knew it, you perv," Rosé laughed and nudged Jisoo's arm with her shoulder. "Speaking of hot girls, what do you think of Jennie?"
With her can raised halfway to her lips, Jisoo lowered it back down without drinking. Her cheeks felt warm and she could not be sure that it was solely because of the soju and not the question. Or the name in the question.
She cleared her throat subconsciously, "Hmm... I am quite excited about her, actually - I think she stands a good chance to be our Miss J."
"Yes! Precisely! That's totally my sentiment when I first saw her!" Rosé clapped her hands together ecstatically. "When intel confirmed a few months back that UCLA was the right place and not Stanford, I couldn't wait for you to transfer here and meet her! Oh, and now that we know she is a J, I'm even more stoked about her!"
Furrowing her brows slightly, Jisoo tilted her head and questioned, "Then... why haven't you made a move on Jennie after all this time?"
"Firstly, I don't exactly follow your hooking-up-to-see-stars-on-boobies strategy, remember? I take the real-befriending-then-ask-about-background route, Kim. And secondly, that explains why I'm with Lisa, the one who knows the most people and gets the latest news the quickest, who also happens to be Jennie's best friend. This, my friend, is me 'making my moves' already, yeah?"
"Ohhkay... So, tell me, my friend," Jisoo loved to mimic Rosé just to annoy her. "What have you learnt from your moves? Besides Lisa having a heart of gold to be your girlfriend." Jisoo grabbed the remote control and turned off the television, kicking up her outstretched legs on to Rosé's lap.
"Very funny," Rosé threw her towel at her friend's face and took a gulp from her drink. "Okay so right now, the two most possible Miss J's are Jennie and Joohee, by the looks of it. Or them."
She giggled at her own pun before continuing, "But I haven't had the chance to befriend Joohee or ask Lisa about her yet, while both Jennie and Lisa are really tight-lipped about Jennie's personal life. So damn, I'm kinda stuck."
Taking a mouthful from her can, Jisoo scoffed, "So much for your real befriending strategy eh, Park?"
Rosé laughed and slung her arm over Jisoo's shoulder, "Fine, fine, given the current circumstances, I admit I need you and your wicked charm to work your magic on Jennie, okay? I'll start with info on Joohee."
"Sure, already on it," Jisoo winked and the best friends tapped their cans together with a "May one of them be Miss J!" before downing it all in one shot. And just like besties always do, they exhaled noisily with the burning sensation down their throats.
There was a comfortable silence between the two, each lost in their own thoughts for a few moments, before Rosé withdrew her arm from Jisoo's shoulder. She crossed her legs on the couch and turned to face Jisoo, who knowingly shifted to mirror Rosé's posture.
"Yes, Little Rosie?" Jisoo recognized this sitting habit that her friend always had whenever she wanted to say something important.
There was a pause, as Rosé fidgeted with the empty can in her hands. Her cheeks were flushed from the alcohol, and the mood had become tentative.
"Do you think we're, you know, liars?" Rosé's doe eyes were downturned at the corners as she looked at Jisoo. It was a look of vulnerability that somehow still carried hope, which Jisoo could never bear to dash.
So instead, Jisoo scooted closer to the girl, wrapped her arms tightly around her, and let the girl's head rest on her shoulder. They stayed like that until Rosé sighed, and Jisoo could feel her friend's body relax in her arms.
"I don't want to hurt her." Her voice was barely a whisper.
Jisoo only hummed in response, not needing to ask to know whom she was referring to.
"I know it's very unprofessional of me to even think like this, but Unnie," Rosé tucked her head closer into the crook of Jisoo's neck. "I can't seem to stop my feelings."
Whenever Rosé called her Unnie like that, she was not discussing as an agent, or sharing with a friend, but confiding in her sister, because Jisoo Unnie was the closest thing she ever had to one.
Jisoo remained silent, stroking Rosé's hair as gently as she could, over and over. She sighed inwardly, knowing fully well that every mission would end and every case would close, solved or unsolved.
And when that time comes, they would have to leave, disconnect from everyone here and let all these relationships inevitably fade into nothing but a distant memory. This was standard protocol that should be followed to keep the case a secret and protect the confidential identities of the agents as well as the clients.
"No, we're not liars," Jisoo's voice was soft and soothing when she finally spoke. "We're storytellers, Chaeng, and... every story has an end."
She had used Rosé's pet name in hopes to ease the impact, but when her right shoulder started to wet, she knew it was of no use.
Jisoo could only hold her sweet little Chaeng close, as the girl in her arms tried so very hard to bite back her tears and swallow the painful feelings she had for someone she could not have.
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A/N: The Great Reveal... let me know what you think about it? I love to hear what you have to say~