Without a Heart; chapter 6
C H A P T E R 06
If Donghae and Kyuhyun had actually decided to spend some time outside, they'd have realized it was a very beautiful day. That fresh Korean spring fragrance was grazing through the air with flower petals and dandelion seeds, in the warm and dry light where the sky was completely cloudless and motionless that it almost seemed as if it was one solid piece of blue.
Yes, in Seoul, it was a beautiful day, but hundreds of miles away in the busy central of Shanghai, it was a very different story.
The city was loud and chaotic, cars and motorcycles zooming by so quickly that it left a humming sound in the air a whole 10 seconds after they passed. The dust on the ground wasn't given any time to settle, coming up in a huge cloud to lift up and spread the bitter taste of dirt to anyone who opened their mouths for a brief second along with the fumes of petroleum and lead. However, the civilians of Shanghai didn't mind, as they were used to the ever-changing toxicity levels in the atmosphere that foreigners made such a big deal of.
In the middle of the town was a tiny, tiny bus stop that had around a dozen people struggling to squeeze under away from the sun, which had its ways even on a cool day. There was only a small bench that usually fitted around 4 people, but in this case there were 6 sitting side by side in such a tightly-spaced area that none of them could either move or breathe, but even so they seemed more than thankful to be able to sit down at all, to have some comfort at all in that moment. Most of them were tired-faced waiting for the ride home from work, the clothes that set out a brand new day now worn and faded from the exhaustion and fatigue of the afternoon.
In the crowd of tired, weary Chinese people were two reporters. Just from seeing their posture and clothes, it was obvious they weren't familiar with the area. A male and female reporter, their equipment at hand, who hadn't even been given a chance to catch their breath yet after just coming back from the port after a tedious week of recording footage about the oil spill, now ready to take back to Seoul.
Park Gyuri was known as one of South Korean's finest news reporters, renowned for her beauty and sympathetic methods while still providing a clear overview in her stories without bias. Though still in the prime of her youthful age, she had maturity level of an experienced veteran, having worked in the business for several years and a sixth sense that kept her alert in any situation even when she was worn out. She was specifically chosen to cover the oil spill due to her precise and fast ability to collect information by ear, and immediately send the information back to MBC News station before accurate details were needed.
Despite her fame in South Korea and the Asian journalism industry, she was expected to be relatively unknown in everyday downtown China. Today, her normally made-up face was clear and fresh, the absence of eyeliner and foundation causing the faint dark circles from the fatigue to be visible under her sharp, brown eyes, but she hid them well under her black-rimmed glasses. Her long straight black hair was wavier than usual, having been clamped back hastily without the convenience of a stylist like back in Seoul, but surprisingly it still managed to look good just brushed over her shoulder.
Gyuri fanned herself with her hand, feeling a little hot and cranky from standing out in the sun for so long for the bus to arrive. A heavy bag hung from her right shoulder, the weight only lightened because she pressed her own body weight against the wall behind her. Despite it being the same sky over Seoul, the sun sizzled down much more harshly, bouncing onto Gyuri's hair and burning the side of her head. She sighed to herself and cringed at the aches in her forearms, having taken turns carrying an outrageously heavy bag as well as that godforsaken microphone set all day, because she had told her boss that it would be easier if just cameraman came along with her instead of an entire crew.
This, however, was the very aspect that differed Gyuri from other tough-as-nails reporters of her status; her sense of humility and kindness. She was about to faint on her feet, but still offered her seat to the elderly woman next to her. She spoke with the limited Chinese she knew to the other people around her who seemed uncomfortable standing in the sun, telling them to step further into the available shaded area under the bus stop. They responded with nonchalant nods and grunts or a few words she couldn't distinguish, but Gyuri was glad seeing the grumpy faces soften ever so slightly once settled in the cool shade, relieving the somewhat tense atmosphere.
Gyuri sighed to herself and leaned her back against a lamp post, staring out at the street with a dazed expression while trying to ignore the buzzing sounds of the motorcycles ringing in her ears. A small group of the local children, still dressed in their school uniforms, had approached the bus stand hoping to sell a few lottery tickets, but they were shooed away by the adults. Gyuri glanced over at them, feeling a little sorry since the youngest looked around 5 years old despite being so focused trying to explain to the customers about the tickets. One of the older ones spotted Gyuri watching them and immediately saw that she was foreign, a bright grin spreading across her face. She signalled her younger siblings and they gathered around the young reporter. Even though tired, Gyuri managed a smile at them.
"Do you want me to buy some?" she asked, her broken Chinese no doubt making it even more obvious that she was a foreigner. One of the younger boys grinned and nodded his head, holding up the tickets to her; he was very adorable. Gyuri let out a sheepish laugh and patted around at her pockets, wanting to just give them some money instead of buying the tickets, but they were all empty.
"Just a minute," she told them with a smile. "I have some."
Gyuri heaved down the heavy bag hanging from her shoulder, the weight of it having been entirely unnoticeable until she actually moved her arm and realized it was numb. She set it on the ground and kneeled down over it, pulling down the zipper to see inside. The children kneeled down as well next to her, watching curiously with bright eyes as Gyuri fumbled through the bag for some spare coins. She let out a sigh of relief when her hands found her wallet, putting on a grin as she saw the children become excited. She emptied all the coins into their hands, enjoying as they excited stuffed as much as they could into their pockets quickly so their hands were bare for a second helping. Gyuri was offered the tickets, all of them in fact, but she just smiled and shook her head. They didn't complain.
A hissing noise distracted Gyuri's attention, and she gazed up from the children to see a bus arriving through the cloud of dust a few feet away. Instinctively, Gyuri clutched onto the strap of her bag and rose to her feet, hurling the heavy thing back over her shoulder. She glanced frantically around for her companion as people began to get up to approach as the bus slowly pulled in. Gyuri struggled to keep out of the way when everyone started huddling to the door, catching sight of a man in distinctly different clothes from the rest a few feet away pacing back and forth with a phone against his ear, apparently unaware of what was happening.
"Mi oppa!" she called out. The man didn't hear her. "Zhoumi oppa, the bus is here!!" This time, it was obvious her heard her, even though his back was turned to her and he still looked like he was talking into the phone, he took a few steps backwards towards the bus, but he didn't seem all that worried about missing it. Gyuri struggled to push her way towards him.
Although of pure Chinese descent, Zhoumi wasn't a native to the city of Shanghai and after spending over 4 years in Korea working with Korean people through Korean procedures, like Gyuri, he now stuck out like a sore thumb with ‘tourist' labelled across his forehead. Despite being her junior in the business, Zhoumi was teamed up with Gyuri for this special newscast of the oil spill in China, a double-kill with Zhoumi being able to film the footage and the ability to speak the language fluently. As of now, they had spent 5 days completely on their own and had managed to find their way into the heart of Shanghai, their last flight out of the country taking off in less than 3 hours.
Zhoumi was tall, handsome (of course having the face of a news reporter) with a friendly, easy-going appearance, but also possessing a very no-nonsense personality in his work, usually having the sense of calm needed for obtaining small details in a story, as well as handling Kyuhyun and Donghae back home. However, since he and Gyuri had only just gotten back from filming and had spent the past several hours rushing back and forth in order to catch their plane to Thailand, Zhoumi was so focused on getting the job over and done in Seoul that he didn't seem to be giving a thought as to what would happen in Shanghai. He had a huge camera kit on his back full of the recording materials and the camera stand that was too long to cramp inside, and consequently was sticking out through the front over Zhoumi's head. He kept a cool appearance, steady on his feet even with the weight on his shoulder, ignoring the ache in his back and neck until everything was taken care of. His concentration on the phone conversation stopped him from noticing that he was an inch from stepping onto the busy road. Gyuri finally managed to get through the mob of people, grabbing Zhoumi by his sleeve and reeling him in a split second before a motorcycle zoomed past, yet he was still occupied with his phone call to their colleague Han Seungyeon back home.
"...my last phone card's going to burn out any second now," Zhoumi said in a calm voice as Gyuri dragged him backwards towards the bus. "I sent the photos I took today and put them in the A file and the photos I took yesterday I put in the B file..." He paused, frowning as the person on the other line replied. "What do you mean Siwon didn't get it? Okay, but did you and Hyuna get the emails? You're checking it now? You got it?" He smiled dryly. "Good. Don't get the files mixed up, and tell Siwon we're sorry but the connection's really bad out here."
"Oppa, you've burned out the card," Gyuri huffed at him. "Let's move it!!" Zhoumi almost tripped backwards on the step up into the bus, but so many people were climbing at the same time that he didn't even touch the ground as Gyuri continued to pull him to safety via his left shirt sleeve.
"Okay, so you'll write it up?" he shouted over the loud crowd. "Good! Okay! Seungyeon, I'm hanging up now! Get it ready before we come back!"
Just as he shuts his phone, Gyuri set him down with a thump on a miraculously vacant seat, but realizing too late that she was unable to move as the other passengers cramped around her as the bus door closed. Zhoumi was also taken aback by how many people seemed to have popped out of nowhere, forcing him to have to press himself against the corner. He threw a helpless look at Gyuri, the air becoming so thick that there wasn't even enough to breathe. Gyuri grabbed onto the pole for dear life as the bus jolted violently before moving, causing everyone inside to jump in the air. They landed down with a crash, but for some strange reason it was more spacious than before. Zhoumi was able to sit up, catching his breath.
"We've got bad news," he told her. "Siwon didn't get the email on time." Gyuri's already sullen face turned sour.
"What happens now?" she asked in a monotone. Zhoumi exhaled and leaned his head onto the back of his seat. The sun cast a golden streak across his face as the bus came across an opening from the buildings, illuminating the circles under his eyes as the stressful situation sank in.
"We'll just have to finish the story on the updates we sent Seungyeon," he said meekly, mindlessly fiddling with his wristwatch band. "And Jiyoung nuna is going to give us that lecture again about not following the deadline." He smiled faintly at his colleague. "Well, it's not like we haven't heard it before, right?" Gyuri's expression saddened, feeling bad at how worried he was.
This was nothing, but Zhoumi had spent the entire day retaking as many shots of the wreckage as he could before the sun went down due to what he insisted to be bad lighting. He wasn't as stiff as he usually was today because of only catching 2 hours of sleep before attempting to wake up in time for the light of the sunrise for that favour Kyuhyun asked; even a cup of extra strong coffee and a ginseng drink didn't seem to help. Naturally because he had the instinct of being the oldest with the most responsibility, he was uneasy with now relying solely on Seungyeon, the youngest member of their team, to take care of things. Gyuri replaced the sad look on her face with an encouraging one, playfully touching the top of his head.
"Don't worry about it, oppa," she said coaxingly. "We'll deal with it as a team. Just relax and think of Bangkok."
Zhoumi sighed and nodded, staring down at his feet as he rested back on his seat. Because he was so overworked at the moment, his mind didn't settle with Gyuri's calm statement, while his body did. Normally, he knew that her words were more than reliable for these situations.
"Just think about something else," Gyuri suggested. "Take your mind off the story." She pointed at his backpack. "Surf a little, we're going to be on this bus for a while and you're in a comfortable spot." Zhoumi looked up with a surprised look, remembering something.
"Oh no..." he breathed. The bus jolted again, almost hurling Gyuri out the window if she wasn't cramped between about 5 people and holding onto the pole. She tucked a hair behind her ear as she watched Zhoumi duck down to his backpack and pull out his mini-laptop. He opened it up and turned it on.
"What's wrong now?" she asked. She carefully took a step over to his corner away from the wall of people. "What are you looking at?"
"Ahhh, this kid..." he muttered under his breath. He moved his finger on the touchpad and clicked a few times before letting out a sigh of frustration. He glanced up at Gyuri, who stared at the laptop dubiously.
"You know how I said I wanted to take a few photos of the port as a favour for my friends?"
"How could I not?" Gyuri said dryly. "You woke up at 4 in the morning to go down there."
"I was supposed to send it to them today but I forgot, so they went in and got it themselves." Gyuri bit her lip to hide a smile as she rounded over behind his seat, staring down over his left shoulder. She leaned down so she could see without having the sunlight hitting the screen and traced her finger along the touchpad.
"How do you know you're being hacked?" she said, circling around the desktop before closing all the windows.
"They sign off every time they go in," he said drearily. Gyuri let out a muffled laugh, earning a glare from her colleague. It was probably much funnier hearing it than telling, but Gyuri couldn't help herself. She cleared her throat loudly and covered her mouth with her hand.
"You know, you can solve all this by simply changing the password," she teased. Zhoumi looked round at her in petulance.
"It's not the password," he retorted, closing the lid down stormily. "Even if I change it, he always guesses what it is."
"Maybe you should change it to something less obvious," Gyuri said in a small voice. She laughed as Zhoumi remained silent and hugged the laptop to his chest. This was a pretty touchy topic to him; it wasn't enough that Gyuri knew about this, she had fun teasing him about it because it hit his pride right where it hurt, and he couldn't say anything back to defend himself. She smirked and leaned over the back of his seat.
"Oppa," she cooed, poking her head down at him again. "You want me to help? I can fix it for you." Zhoumi turned around and looked at her, confused.
"Fix it?" he repeated. He glanced at the other people on the bus nervously. "You can do it here?" Gyuri smiled smugly and raised an eyebrow; Zhoumi didn't even know why he needed to ask in the first place.
Feeling assured by her confidence, Zhoumi obediently got up, tittering with the laptop wrapped tightly in his arms as the bus moved along shakily, allowing Gyuri to duck down under his arm onto his seat. He stood up and his hand grabbed the same pole Gyuri had been holding before stepping over to his little corner, but not after first carefully placing the laptop into Gyuri's hands, and then only after he knew it was safe that he swung around to face her direction.
Gyuri immediately got to work, pushing up the glasses on the bridge of her nose and cracked her knuckled over her head. She hunched over the laptop on her knees and started typing up something at top speed. Zhoumi, not quite realizing till now at how uncomfortable it must've been for Gyuri to stand with so many people cramped against her, could only tilt his head to see, and he got a glimpse of a blue screen and a wall of text. Gyuri's eyes darted from side to side in pure concentration, reading through each and every code until something seemingly horrifying caught her eye, and she suddenly stopped typing. She turned back over at Zhoumi with a look of outrage and dramatically whisked her glasses off.
"You seriously didn't change your password?!" she exclaimed in disbelief. "I thought you were joking!" Zhoumi's charmingly calm demeanor shattering once again, and he flushed a deep shade of red, scratching the back of his neck.
"I told you it's useless to change it," he grumbled, shrugging. "So I stopped changing it." Gyuri could only laugh at seeing him this embarrassed.
"Oppa," she said endearingly. "You're so romantic, but you can't live like this. At least ask her ou-"
"Just get them to stop hacking!" Zhoumi burst out in a high-pitched voice. "Do it quickly!"
Gyuri laughed; he was reaching his limit in a matter of minutes, she usually didn't get away with doing this to her colleagues, it was one of those rare thrills Gyuri got away from the seriousness of her job. Satisfied with how uncomfortable he was, she smirked.
"I'm just having a little fun," she said good-naturedly. Zhoumi could only scoff to unsuccessfully regain his cool, crossing his arms with a sullen expression. Gyuri chuckled again and pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose, turning back around to get back on the job.
This, of course, had happened before, and Gyuri had been there through the whole process of the toning down of.
Gyuri and her colleagues in the office often came across Zhoumi discovering some kind of vandalism and invasion of privacy in his email accounts. It could've been something as childishly harmless as random swear words scattered in his notes, to more serious matters as a false government letter stating that Zhoumi's Korean visa was about to expire and he had to leave the country in 3 days. It was obvious that Zhoumi had a word with them about these pranks, since Gyuri noticed the shouting incidents stopped in the past few months, but every now and then she could hear Zhoumi curse out in Chinese through his office door. She never met these mischievous kids, but she was sure they were among his good friends to have it done repeatedly, repeatedly, repeatedly to him, and get away with it. She pushed up her glasses again and set the laptop steadily on the top of her knees so she could type properly. There was about a minute or two of silence between the two colleagues as Gyuri hardened into her reporter-like state.
"Alright," she said after a while, her voice changing. "In all seriousness, I think your friend used a phishing program to get a hold of your password, so he didn't just guess the first time around." Gyuri turned her head and gave Zhoumi a glare, which he gladly returned. "After that, it's your fault." She started typing up something, her glasses sliding down a bit before she pushed them back up. "What's his IP address?"
Zhoumi blinked, flustered at suddenly being asked a question in the midst of her code breaking.
"I-IP address?" he stammered. "Well, I..."
"Never mind," Gyuri went on, not hearing him at all. "I'll check through your email." She sank back into focus mode, the rattling of the keys under her fingers as well as the simultaneous clicking of the touchpad with thumbs audible in Zhoumi's ears even with all the noise around them. She clicked a few more times and let out a triumphant cry. "I've got it! Now... let's see what program he's using to phish into your laptop... ah, he probably downloaded this somewhere illegally..."
Gyuri trailed off again. Zhoumi watched silently as walls and walls of text popped up, with the background desktop changing colour several times. He honestly had no idea what she was doing.
The bus eased up as it came onto the main highway, cradling all the passengers inside, most of who were too tired at this point to notice, especially since they were speaking Korean. Zhoumi soon found himself bored, his attention drifted to a man sitting in the seat in front of them reading a newspaper. Zhoumi peered down at the page to read it, when Gyuri let out a satisfied sigh. She looked up at him and beamed, dusting her hands together.
"It's done," she said proudly. Zhoumi didn't really what to say at all, not even sure what it was she was done with. Gyuri held the laptop up for him. "You don't have to worry about your friends hacking in anymore."
"What did you do?" he blurted out without thinking. It sounded more like an accusation than what he intended, but Gyuri didn't seem offended and went on to explain as she placed it in his hand.
"I've blocked out your friend's IP address," she told him. "And if he tries to log into your account on another computer, it won't let him in either because I've made a match-up with his typing patterns in case he tries it again."
The bus did a mini-summersault after hitting a speed bump, causing many passengers to cry out in their distress. Zhoumi was unmoved though, still in a daze as Gyuri's words failed to register. She grabbed his arm and yanked him down so both of them were in level with the laptop.
"Every person types in a unique way that's different from one another," she explained matter-of-factly, tapping the laptop screen lightly with her finger. "Your friend has his own typing pattern. Like if he has longer fingers, he'll punch in the words differently than people with shorter fingers for like, a fraction of a second. It's like dental records or fingerprints, just based on data."
"You did that in 10 minutes?" Zhoumi said incredulously. "Where do you learn to do these things? I spent so much money trying to crack this problem."
Gyuri shrugged and pulled a water bottle out from her backpack.
"Just something I picked up in high school," she said, flicking her hair over her shoulder as she took a gulp. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. "Mmmm, you should've just come to me, oppa. I'd have fixed it for you for free."
Zhoumi laughed; he wasn't sure whether it was because what she said was funny or the fact that he was rendered speechless at what she just did, or plainly because he was now thinking of the amount of money he could've saved if he went to see her first. He also didn't know why he was always so baffled and surprised every time he witnessed Gyuri do something like this, and compared to what he's seen her do in the past, blocking out Kyuhyun from his email accounts was nothing for her.
Not noticing that the bus had been still at a red light for a minute or two now, Zhoumi was nearly thrown forward when it abruptly moved again. Luckily, Gyuri had quick reflexes and seized the laptop before it dropped to the ground. She grinned cheekily and tapped his shoulder.
"Leave them a message, Mi oppa," she urged. "When they try to log in again, I've made it so they'll come to a replica site, and that'll be all they find. Come on." She used the palm of her hand as a flat surface and lifted up the laptop to him.
Zhoumi feigned a regretful expression before sinking into thought as he stared at the laptop, no doubt thinking about what to write. He licked his lips and after a few moments of pensive thinking, he raised his one free hand over the keyboard. Biting into his lip to hide the same mischievous smile he shared with Kyuhyun and Donghae, Zhoumi typed something very brief. Though anticlimactic compared to how he dreamed he would take his revenge, it still felt pretty good, and he grabbed Gyuri's bottle and took a long swig before reverting back to his old composed self again. Gyuri smirked and took the laptop back, sneaking a peak at his note before closing the lid down. It was just one simple sentence.
You guys are dead if you're reading this~
Gyuri covered her mouth again to muffle her giggle; he was clearly no less childish then his friends were.