Operatives || Park Sunghoon

08 | switching places

Sunghoon's POV

"More six hours to go." Thea announced, keeping down her phone on her seat and trying to sit in a relaxed position on the seat. I hummed in response, as I continued to drive on the expressway in full speed.

Most of the journey till now was done in silence, with some small conversations restricted only about the mission. Even Heeseung was bored upon not hearing any interesting from us, so the latter had gone offline and told us to call him if anything came up.

"I noticed you wear a military dog tag- did you serve in army before?" I asked, breaking the comfortable silence in the car. I noticed that her hands automatically went up to the said object, touching the cold metal and then falling back down on her lap.

"No. It's my friend's— he had given it to me for safe-keeping but I forgot to give him back." She said, her voice not as lively as it usually is.

I glanced at Thea and noticed her looking outside the window, completely shutting off the topic. The curious part of me wanted to ask her more about it, but my other self said it was wrong to ask her if she didn't want to talk about it. I nodded, glancing at her one more time and then looking ahead, my eyes on the road.

━━━━━(🍂)━━━━━

I yawned for the sixth time, rubbing off the traces of sleep in my eyes. My eyelids were starting to become heavier since I hadn't slept properly last night.

"You want to take a nap?" Thea asked while munching on the new piece of gum she had popped inside her mouth half an hour back. I shook my head, tightening my grip on the steering wheel. "You look like you need some though." She added and blew up her chewing-gum, the newly formed bubble bursting with a pop sound.

"It's just that couldn't sleep well last night. I kept worrying about the mission." I said, half lying. The truth was that since I was used to be on my own before, I never cared about being reckless and almost dying but with Thea on my side, I had to make sure no harm was caused to my fellow partner because of my own recklessness, or my mistakes for that matter.

"You shouldn't worry much, you know. Don't forget I'm a professional too." She said, winking at me. I chuckled at her statement, nodding. "There's a gas station coming up in a few minutes. We can stop there for sometime and swap places."

Thea's POV

I was waiting in the car after stretching my body, while Sunghoon was paying for the gasoline he filled in the car. He turned around and tripped on a rock in front of the car, his clumsy self falling over the windshield. I laughed so hard that even though the windows were rolled up and the doors were closed, my laughter was probably clearly audible outside.

And to put cherry on top, I switched on the wiper.

"What the f—" He started cursing, before getting sprayed with water on his face. I almost fell off the driver's seat laughing, while he tried to get up without being hit by the wiper for the seventh time.

"Sorry!" I yelled, switching off the wipers. He stood straight in the side, his face dripping with soap water, some parts of his clothes wet with his hair looking like a rat's nest. After sometime, he opened the door and sat beside me, literally fuming.

"Thea, that was not at all funny." He snapped, glaring at me while I still busted my lungs, my ribs aching with all that laughing.

"It was, come on!" I protested, switching on the engine, chuckles still pouring out of my mouth. After spending five minutes fighting among ourselves, the atmosphere became silent, only the sound of the car zooming at high speed audible.

I was humming a song under my breath, my fingers tapping away on the steering wheel while I drove. Wondering how much more distance we had to cover, I turned my head around slightly to glance at Sunghoon and to my surprise, he was fast asleep, his head leaning on the car door while soft snores escaped his mouth. I let out a small sigh, knowing that he won't wake up very soon.

After an hour or so, I noticed that the white car which was behind us since we had made a stop was still behind us and had not taken any of the exits on the highway. Thinking that it just might be a co-incidence, I reduced the speed of the car, letting it overtake me but to my surprise, it reduced it's speed too, keeping behind us.

"Shit." I muttered, switching on my ear piece. "Heeseung?" I spoke, my eyes time to time going to the rear-view mirror to keep a watch on the car behind us.

"Yeah?" Heeseung asked, confused.

"I think we are being followed."