Mysterious Messages:
Mint Eye – a paradise, a peaceful and blissful sanctuary in the troubled world we live in. To spread their noble goals further, they must gain the help of and settle an old score with former allies. And so begins a game of cat and mouse between former childhood friends.
"…he's turned on us, Brother. You'd have to be blind to not see it."
The man in green and blue frowned as he remembered their last conversation with their superior. His colleague next to him had a morbid grin on his face as he scanned his laptop while listening to the conversation.
"He's been up to suspicious activity lately but you can't make a judgement yet. We have to keep checking on him."
"Do you think he'll…"
"No. He's too much of a softie to break it to them. As far as secrecy is concerned, we have nothing to worry about."
His colleague was clearly being too flippant about the possibility of a betrayal within their ranks. It worried him, and he had to address it. He was also tempted to reach for a light, he couldn't stand this dark room. Sometimes he didn't know why he was here. The place was oversaturated with emerald greens, deep blues, and that eye was painted on every wall, in every room. It gave him the creeps. The décor of this place was immaterial though, compared to what they were doing.
"But Saviour…"
"Our Saviour says lie low for now,but with the right funds and the right connections…"
His colleague had typed a URL into the browser, and it was a website for C&R International. He scrolled through the About Us page, and found a photo of an elderly man in his 50's. He was partly bald, with grey hair surrounding the sides of his head, and wearing a suit. Next to him was a much younger man in his mid-twenties, his son. His dark brown hair was slightly tousled but not unkempt, and unlike the cheerful eyes of his father, this man's black eyes were serious and cold.
The man stared at the monitor and gasped, knowing exactly what his colleague was implying.
"Wait, is that… oh my god you can't be serious."
"Our Saviour wants us to be world famous, this is a good place to start."
He grabbed the laptop from his colleague's hands, and his colleague glared at him as the man scrolled through the website furiously.
"They're… they're one of the top ten richest corporations in this country. They're everywhere from hotels, to finance, to apparel to- no. No way in hell are they going to be hand in glove with us."
"True, not willingly. But under duress," his colleague took the laptop back from him and kept repeatedly pointing at the chairman's son, "Perhaps the odds will tilt more in our favour."
The man caught on to his colleague's meaning, though he said very little.
"So, you want us to use our trump card to get to him. And when we get to him, we have him eating out of our hands."
"Yes…"
"And then what? How the hell are we going to do that?"
His colleague typed in the URL for another website for a charity organization, and showed a group photo of its members where the same corporate director's son was present along with two more familiar faces. The man's eyes widened and he hit his forehead with his hand. Of course, how could he be so stupid?
"If there's any way to get to these guys, it's through them. We've already compiled a goldmine of information on these guys for the past two years. But we need more than that. We need them all here." His colleague grinned sleazily as he assessed the photo, staring at each of the members like a lion would a gazelle.
"Look at them… have you ever seen a more perfect batch? Funds and connections, another public figure to endorse us, a whiz kid who will dance to our every tune if we play our cards right, and two sycophants. Well three if you count… but well, even he's starting to outlive his usefulness. Still… a perfect batch indeed."
"Yes… but how are we going to bring them all here? They're not going to just raise their hands and bow down to us."
"I thought of that. We need to use a medium. Someone they know… someone they trust…"
"You mean a middleman."
"In this case, middle woman. I did some digging and found this."
He clicked on the My Computer icon and found his USB, and in it were several photos. He clicked on one of them, an elementary school graduation photo, and zoomed in on the second to last bench. He used the pen tool to circle two girls. One of them had blonde pigtails and green eyes, the other girl had tied her reddish-brown hair in a ponytail and had brown eyes. He recognized the blonde, but not the redhead.
Next, he brought up a photo of the same two girls in what appeared to be a kindergarten. The blonde-haired child was grinning from ear to ear holding a rabbit doll that had been mangled. The redhead was kneeling on the ground crying, obviously unaware that she was being photographed.
Then, a photo of the girls and three boys in front of what appeared to be their middle school. He recognized the red-haired boys. One red-haired boy was smiling and making a peace sign with his hand, the other sat on the ledge and shyly stared at the camera. The third boy had mousy brown hair and looked younger than his friends.
Finally, a more recent photo. A selfie taken at a café about four years ago. The redhead had changed her hairstyle around this time. She let it loose and curled it. He was there too, and appeared happy, a rarity these days. Both women and the man were holding cold coffee in their hands and smiling for the camera.
"She knows our Saviour better than any of us combined… even better than he does. Oh… and there's more. Take a look at THIS…"
He brought up the red-haired woman's resume and her LinkedIn account, with all her professional details therein. He also brought up a much older photo, taken in what appeared to be the early 90's. It was a family of four. He had circled the daughter, a high school girl with reddish brown hair and brown eyes, with a blue pen. He circled the son, a man in his mid-twenties with a similar appearance, with a red pen. He brought up two more photos separately. One was a family photo taken in 2004, with the daughter and her family… and her children were the red-haired girl and the younger brown-haired boy from earlier. The next was a photo of Sejun Choi, the latest Prime Minister candidate, and his face was circled in red pen.
"Wait… no way."
"Oh yes… so you know what this means, don't you? Two birds, one stone."
Indeed, it seemed too good to be true. However, there was one more problem. The red-haired girl was currently working in E&Y's marketing department. There seemed to be no incentive for her to leave her current job for C&R whatsoever. And as for joining the RFA? If they allowed a college boy in there… there was no way she'd even look twice at them.
"Forget it. The girl's overqualified. Think about it, if you were a businesswoman with a master's degree, would you want to quit to join the likes of these?"
"She might not have a choice."
"What do you mean?"
"The office she's working at… well, Brother Park works there as well. And I've devised a way to make sure she's leaving her old job whether she wants to or not."
His colleague showed him a computer program. Then, he showed him the Networks window, and saw an icon for a computer that wasn't there before. The man smiled widely, gleeful at the prospect of their plan coming into fruition.
"Oooh, I like the way you think…"
His colleague began bringing up more documents, blueprints, and he opened another lengthy, albeit unfinished program. He showed it to him, and he smiled even wider as he combed through the lines of code. He looked at his colleague, and they knew exactly what the other was thinking.
"Next we set up a few… mysterious circumstances that will lead her to them…"
"…and with her kind of qualifications…"
"…they'll have to welcome her in with the big fish…"
"…and she won't even realise…"
"…that all their secrets will go straight to us, through her."
"Let them have their fun, and then when they least expect it…"
"…we spring our trap on them, and make them believe it was all her doing."
Both men smirked at each other, one of them rubbed his hands together and rolled up his sleeves, and then picked up his cellphone to make an important call.
"…perfect."