The girls were sent on to their various tasks. Lastly, before sending her off, Seulgi gave Yeji an extra task; get in touch with her cousin. Then get in touch with her, or have him call her.

  Having discussed what sort of script that they should follow to aly the kidnappers, Seulgi and her new associate went back into her office. They went over the note, and the content of the box, and very intentionally failed to mention the bugs.

  They discussed everything almost ad nauseam. This was to both show the kidnapper that they were paying excessive attention and trying to get them to drop their guard.

  Yeji came by, giving a light knock. She opened the door as quietly as possible and entered. She ignored the other man and handed Seulgi a handwritten note. It was from her boss. He requested frequent updates. He also requested that she make two updates, one for him, and one for his legal department – unless they could they could use the same information. The boss knew that sometimes you had to lie to your foes by lying to your friends. He would share with the legal head everything, but he could be trusted with that information. He was aware that she was speaking privately with the police to keep a low profile. There were other odds and ends to the note.

  Seulgi looked up into the worried eyes of her subordinate. She smiled at her, nodded her thanks, and Yeji left the office.

  Nayeon was at the door waiting for Yeji. Nayeon was feeling put out because she had been banished from the sanctum sanctorum. They all knew that she was forbidden because she was absolutely terrible at acting and would ruin their efforts.

  But there was no candy as sweet as the forbidden, so she still wanted in the office was what she wanted the most. But, she was grown up and professional. Despite the nearly overwhelming desire to go in, she would not give in to her petty desires. After all, how could she live with herself if she caused harm to Jackson just because she wanted to sit in Seulgi’s office?

  Besides, Gillian would do Very Bad Things to her if she found out. If she was weak enough to give in to that particur temptation, she knew that she would deserve anything that Gillian dished out.

  That didn’t stop her from wanting to chew through the door frame, though.

  Yeji held up her hand and flicked Nayeon on the forehead as she walked past. Fortunately, the door closed before Nayeon yelped in pain. Yeji managed to fast-walk away with as much decorum as she could muster. After all, it would not do her austere image any good to be scrambling past the office like an errant schoolgirl with Nayeon chasing her. Even if it was basically true.

  Unfortunately, Nayeon was under no such compunction. She quickly caught up to the slowly fleeing Yeji and swatted her firmly on the glutes. Then ran past, ughing like a maniac.

  The rest of the floor, who were observing this interaction, felt the temperature drop nearly a dozen degrees and everyone would have felt pity for Nayeon if they had not known that she deserved it.

  Everyone knew that Nayeon was going to find herself at the bottom of an elevator shaft eventually. It was just that no one knew when. There was a betting pool for this, too. What would surprise everyone, especially Nayeon, was that Yeji was the one who made that particur betting pool.

  Yeji may love Nayeon as much as any sibling has ever had, but that didn’t stop her from finding the other incredibly annoying at times. Again, just like a proper sibling.

  What Yeji didn’t know was that the main better in the betting pool was Nayeon, who was making sure to be just annoying enough to keep her focus without making Yeji mad enough to actually push her down an elevator shaft.

  It was intrigues like this that kept life interesting, after all.

  If Taeyeon knew about this, she’d be taking copious notes for future references and jobs.

  While all of these intrigues were going on outside Seulgi’s office, there was a vastly different set happening within. The detective was still doing his job, just deliberately with vastly reduced capabilities. Reduced, but not completely gone. There was no way he could be a detective if he was stupid, after all.

  He made some deliberate mistakes that had been discussed beforehand as well. He spoke about some logical falcies as well. There were some things that they actually spoke about the case in the present tense as well – again, the kidnapper knew for certain that both Seulgi and the detective were smart. If they pyed too dumb or incompetent, they would be figured out fairly quickly.

  After about two hours, they discussed everything that they had previously talked about. There were no new ideas, natural or prevaricated. After all, they really did not know who the kidnapper was. If they did, there would be no need for this charade.

  Seulgi did walk the man down to the entry of the office building. They discussed several strategies as to how to proceed with any new information or discoveries. She put his contact information into her secondary phone as well. She sent him a quick text so he would have her information as well.

  Going back upstairs, she took a detour to the supply closet. She spent a moment finding what she was looking for, then headed back to her office. When she got to her office, she looked at her wooden door and knew that this was not a pce to put semi-permanent attachments. So, she took the backing off of the adhesives on her newly acquired whiteboard and pced it on the wall next to the door, about chest height.

  She took the sticky notes from the door and put them around the whiteboard so she didn’t have to re-write everything. Then on the whiteboard itself, she wrote with the accompanying pen, that lunch would be in the break room, not her office today.

  With a nod of satisfaction, she went back into her office and got back to work. She put on some light music and got busy. She knew that she was given a vastly wide titude in her work because, no matter what, her work got done. She could not betray that trust. She ignored the bugs and she got busy.

  The subsequent couple hours flew by almost in a frenetic haze. She was not so far gone as to stop singing along with whatever song was pying on her computer. It would be safe to assume that if the kidnapper was listening, he would be enjoying the mini-serenade.

  Elsewhere: “Well, this sucks,” thought Jackson as he lightly shook the chain.