Seulgi made another call. “Hello, sir, its Kang Seulgi. Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. The reason I am calling is that we have a potential situation involving an employee. I need permission to get the security team to start reviewing the tapes of my office. Yes, sir, I have already got them looking.” Small smile. ”But I need your permission to ask them to do so. Thank you, sir. Yes, I’ll let you or your people know if there is anything else needed. Goodbye.”

  Then Seulgi turned her attention to the envelope. The pin white envelope was the size of your standard birthday card. In blood red ink was written ‘If you want to get Jackson back, open me, Seulgi.’ She had an incongruent moment when she noticed that the calligraphy was beautiful and elegant. It was only a small, tiny fw that showed that it was actually handwritten and not printed. Someone went through a lot of effort to make sure she was interested in opening this particur missive.

  She started reaching for the envelope when her hand was stopped mid-air by a hand around her wrist. She looked up and saw Bhuwakuln standing there. He shook his head. “I’ll open it. We don’t know if there is anything inside that might be bad for you.”

  This started a chain of thoughts about anthrax powders, letter bombs, and all sorts of other nasty things that could be in this. She started to say that he could not open it either, but he took that option away by picking it up. He flexed the object to see if there was anything solid in it that shouldn’t be there. He felt it to see if there were any wires or something like a battery in there. So far, it seemed that his precaution was overkill, and that was a good thing. So, by pulling out a small pen knife he slit the top.

  No one died in an explosion, so they continued to proceed. He opened the container, he didn’t see anything other than a card with some writing on it. Nothing more than just the card. He pulled the card out, shaking it. Nothing else was in the envelope. Making sure the card was clean, he handed it to Seulgi without reading it and set the envelope down on the desk. Then he started walking around the office. Nobody knew what he was doing, or currently cared.

  Seulgi took the proffered note. Yeji, ever curious, stood behind her and they read it together. A soft gasp was heard at the content.

  The Twins heard that the Boss was in her office and came to see what was going on. Before they could enter, Bhuwakuln popped up like a goblin and stopped them from entering. The Twins started getting red-faced in anger at the obstruction then they saw who was blocking them and the look on his face. The normal teasing hint of humor was completely gone. The look was deadly serious.

  From behind, they heard her drawer open. Seulgi pulled out a small cerulean blue box with a cream ribbon.

  “Bhuwakuln?”

  He turned around. She held out the note to him, then looked at the box and then back at him. Being the clever guy, he knew what she meant.

  He went over, took the note, and read it. He looked at the box. He looked back and simply said, “Get out.”

  Without a word, she got up, gathered Yeji, and joined the Twins at the doorway.

  “Are you sure we should not call someone to open it? Protective gear? Masks?”

  “If they wanted to hurt you, they would have done it without the box. But this is just a precaution.”

  “But, I should open it. It was addressed to me….” She trailed off due to the look that she got from even suggesting outing herself in harm’s way.

  He sat in her seat. He felt the warmth of her body still lingering in her seat. He picked up the box. He shook it next to his ear, there was in fact something inside. It was lightweight, but still solid enough to hear sliding across the inside of the box. He took a moment to smell the box. He had a slight frown of concentration. Even more bizarrely, he licked one end of the ribbon.

  “It seems safe.”

  Mystified by his actions, Seulgi, Yeji, and the Twins came in. The Twins pulled on Yeji’s sleeve and asked her what was going on. What’s up with the note and the box? Yeji hissed back to ask her again after the box was opened and she would know more.

  Stunned at her unusual demeanor, they got quiet after that, but then their eyes got rge enough that they had trouble blinking. Seulgi went back to her desk. The other three knew that something was going on, but not what. They were dying of curiosity but stayed where they were because they were not invited back inside. All they knew was that there was something going on and they were not privy to it. Yet. Seulgi was acting strange. Bhuwakuln was also acting strange. Well, even stranger than usual.

  The ribbon was not there to secure the top of the box. It was tucked under the lip purely as decoration. Still, Seulgi borrowed Bhuwakuln’s pen knife and ran it around the underside of the box, unwilling to accept a potential trap without trying to prevent something bad from happening.

  All of this was new to Seulgi, so she was trying to remember all the tricks she had ever seen in thriller movies, procedural dramas, and every spy movie. This also included every other thing that had booby traps until she could not think of anything else to try. So, she simply opened the box and paled as the blood drained from her face.

  Seulgi said to Yeji, “Call the police. Tell them we have a kidnapping in progress. We need to get someone over here with a quickness. Do you know anyone on the police force, Yeji?”

  “I do,” said Min-jeong. She continued, “My uncle is a detective. I’ll call him.” After saying this, she pulled out her cell phone and dialed a number. She started speaking quietly to the other person on the line. “He will be here within an hour.”

  Inside the box was Jackson’s shiny golden wedding ring.