Undercover

All Roads Lead to the Mountain

"Detective Ha? You came dressed like that? It's freezing out there!" Haeyoung shot up from her seat the moment Seojin walked in, crossing the room in a few long strides. She grabbed Seojin's ice-cold hands and pulled her straight to the old wood-burning stove in the middle of the container, which was crackling and popping against the silence. Seojin sank into the folding chair in front of it and started thawing out. "Stay there, I'll make you coffee." Haeyoung tore open a packet of instant mix and poured it into a paper cup. She knew Seojin always needed coffee the moment she walked in. She lifted the aluminum kettle sitting on top of the stove and poured — her round glasses immediately fogged over with steam. She wiped them on the sleeve of her navy hoodie, then took them off entirely and, since she was at it, pulled her hair back out of her face and re-tied it. Then she tugged her hood up over her head. Nobody would have pegged Yoon Haeyoung as a cop. She looked more like a college student than anything else.

All Roads Lead to the Mountain — 1

Undercover All Roads Lead to the Mountain This winter in Korea was unusually warm. Temperatures had stayed above freezing throughout December, and people wouldn't stop talking about the strange weather. Jokes circulated that bananas might actually grow in December. Everyone exchanged the same seasonal greeting as if they'd rehearsed it: Have a cozy year-end. The holidays passed, the new year arrived — and then the sky, as if scattering ash over all of it, chose today, sometime in mid-January, to deliver the first brutal cold snap of a very long winter. The weather forecast, as always, missed the moment that mattered most. Clear skies became a heavy gray ceiling. The pleasant above-freezing weather became a wind chill of negative fourteen degrees Celsius. It went without saying that the people who'd dressed light on the forecast's advice were now exhaling white clouds of breath alongside a string of curses. Seojin Ha stared blankly at the red left-turn signal across the windshield, then let her gaze drift to the gray clouds massing behind it. They were dark enough to threaten rain — or worse, snow. If it snowed, the roads would ice over. If the roads iced over— her thoughts were already chaining themselves together, her brow beginning to furrow, when the light changed. She eased down on the accelerator, and her white SUV swept diagonally across the four-lane intersection. The moment she turned, the building rose up ahead of her, tall and immediate.