Chapter 3

It’s been a week since the incident and Park Bom was busy with her work when the teacher comes up to her.

“Park Bom-shi , I heard your group sustained injuries while working on this project.”

Bom figured she wanted to tell her that they weren’t supposed to go there anymore.

“As a teacher I am supposed to stop you, but Jonghyun-shi got angry at me and Jongin-shi did said he did not see a reason as to stop. Even Junmyoon-shi seems keen to continue. However if even one of you wants to stop then I won’t hesitate to stop all of you.”

Bom nodded. In the beginning when they started the project, many of them were reluctant to go when she suggested it, but now when the teacher asked them to stop, they wanted to continue. Life was a strange thing indeed.

Bom firgured it had something to do with their pride or something like that.

“Please Bom-shi, tell them it’s stupid and that they’ll only get injured.”

“I don’t think it’s my place to stop them,” she said with a smile. Sure if she wanted to she could possibly convince them.

They couldn’t bribe her into saying yes.

She was just as rich as Jongin and Jonghyun, maybe just a little poorer that Junmyoon, but that meant nothing.

The reason why she agreed to it in the first place was because she actually wanted to go.

Jongin and Junmyoon both had self-defence lessons while Jonghyun tried to do some investigations. It would be at least a week before they go back to the ghetto once again. Jongin was surprisingly good at self-defence because he was so flexible.

Junmyoon also improved fairly quickly because he was so disciplined. But even then it would probably not stand a chance against those people.

Jonghyun spent every free second trying to figure out more about the people they were dealing with. He analysed what he saw last time and made sure someone made sketches of the people they met.

And once again they were standing in the narrow alleyways of the run-down place called the ghetto. Jonghyun swore he would get to the bottom of this case.

“I thought you would leave after the last time.”

Jongin looked back to see the guy who had told them about the Zutters.

“How do you know about it?” Jonghyun asked, already knowing the answer.

“Word gets around.”

“May I ask your name?” Jonghyun asked, trying to use a different approach.

The boy burst out laughing again. “You think I’m going to give my name to a bunch of students.”

Junmyoon’s eyes twitched at how low this stranger thought of them.

“What can you tell us about the Zutters?” Jongin asked.

The guy laughed once again.

Junmyoon wanted to twitch again, but by now he had realized how inelegant it looked and he decided against it.

Jonghyun opened the file he was carrying and showed the sketches of the people who had attacked them. “You know these guys?”

The boy grinned. “I know everyone wandering these streets.”

“Everyone?”

“Including the fact that you’re part of the police.”

“If you know so much about everyone, then you would have no problem finding out things about the Zutters,” Junmyoon said, clearly annoyed.

The boy grinned. “And you seem to have.”

“We know quite a bit already though,” Jongin suddenly spoke.

The boy eyed him up and down before fixing his gaze on Jongin alone. “Do you now?”

“We do,” Jonghyun caught on to Jongin’s bluff and decided to go with it, “If you know where to look, there are quite some things to find about them.”

The boy shifted his attention and his smile dropped a bit.

Jonghyun was quite impressed with Jongin. He didn’t think of such a tactic let alone make it work. Jonghyun had always known that knowledge was a valuable thing, but he had thought that it didn’t work that way in places like this.

“Let’s make if a fair trade then; I’ll tell you my name and I’ll tell you the name of one of the Zutters if you tell me what you know,” the boy said with a condescending smile on his face once again.

“And you call that a fair trade?” Junmyoon asked.

“Yes I do.”

“Our information seems more valuable,” Jongin stated.

The guy shrugged, “You probably don’t know anything I don’t know, so you would give me information I probably already know and I would give you information you don’t know.”

“How do you know we don’t have that name you’re going to give us,” Jonghyun said inquisitively.

“Because I dare to bet with my life you don’t know this name,” the boy stated.

“Fair enough, but you’ll tell the name of the person from the Zutters after half of the information we give you. You’ll give your name at the end,” Jongin stated.

“Precaution,” Jonghyun added.

The boy grinned, “You’re not as stupid as you look.”

Junmyoon wanted to bang his head against the wall, but had once again stopped himself because of the inelegance of it. Yes even in the ghetto Junmyoon still needs to look sophisticated.

“We know what we told you last time and what you told us last time,” Jongin stated. He figured if he told him the new information first the boy would just walk away without giving them the name.

“That’s half of it?” he snickered, “That’s hardly worth the names.”

Jonghyun glared at him.

“Don’t worry I’ll tell you,” He snickered again, “Kim Hanbin.”

“Then we know the Zutters were found about 3 months ago and reached the top here in less than two days. They usually don’t kill and hurt their victims as little as possible. They have avoided the police thus far and have a number somewhere on their body,” Jongin was stuck, he didn’t know what else there was to tell.

“The people in the character sketches are known nowhere but here. Someone from the Zutters has hacked into the police computer system before,” Jonghyun added.

At the last comment, the boy seemed surprised. “You sure know to investigate,” he giggled.

“And your name?” Jonghyun asked.

“Key.”

“We didn’t exchange information for you to tell me some nickname or codename,” Junmyoon stated.

Key laughed. “Well that’s too bad,” he says sardonically and turns around to leave.

Jonghyun grabs Key’s wrist to prevent him from leaving which is very un-Jonghyun like.

Key smirked, “What are you that infatuated with me?”

“W-What?” Jonghyun  let go, clearly flustered, “Why would I be?”

Key laughed again, clutching his stomach, “You look like the player type, yet you’re still so innocent.”

“What’s so funny?”

“It’s hilarious,” he says as he wiped away a tear and walked off.

“Well at least we got one full name,” Junmyoon stated.

“Do you think we can find out anything?” Jongin asked.

“We can probably find out Kim Hanbin, but as for ‘Key’ probably not,” Jonghyun speculated.

Jonghyun thought a name like Kim Hanbin would be easy to find. How wrong he was. There was not a single trace of the name anywhere. The database was completely void of the name, as if this person by the name of Kim Hanbin never existed to begin with. He was starting to believe that Key had lied to them and there was no such person.

Suddenly he remembered that their system got hacked by one of the Zutters before.

At this point he sincerely hoped that the reason why they got hacked had something to do with the non-existent name. He pulled out his phone and phoned his friend who was an expert when it came to hacking and retrieving information.

“Hey, are you able retrieve data that was deleted,” Jonghyun got straight to the point.

“It depends. I can try.”

“Okay please do”

A few hours later, while Jonghyun was with Jongin, he receives a call telling him to check his e-mail. Since his computer was already on, he quickly typed in his email and password on the keyboard in front of him. He clicked on the unread message and his eyes widened in surprise.

He found it. The information he was looking for.

He scrolled down the page. Jongin joins him, looking at the screen.

Kim Hanbin, missing 2 years, age 16. A description of the person followed and a picture that was taken a few years back, showing a young male smiling brightly at the camera.

“You think it’s him?” Jongin asked.

“I wouldn’t know why his file was deleted if it isn’t him.”

“We should call the others and start with talking to his parents,” Jongin said.

Jonghyun nodded, “I’ll call them.”

“Sorry for bothering you.” Jonghyun said as he entered the living room of an apartment.

Jongin also joined him.

“No it’s alright. You said you might have heard something about our son right?” a woman in her late thirties said. She had black hair and a kind, welcoming kind of smile, on her face.

“Well we’re not sure. Someone mentioned his name in association with a gang,” Jonghyun said, not creating the illusion that they actually saw her son.

“A gang?” she asked surprise clearly evident in her voice.

“It might be hard to imagine,” Jonghyun said, trying to lessen the shock.

“It most certainly is. He was always a nice boy.”

“We wanted to ask if you might be able to tell us if he associated himself with people who might have stood in contact with a gang,” Jonghyun tried. He wanted to know all of them and preferably arrest most of them.

“I’m not really sure. He did make some new friends a little before he disappeared but I never really met them,” the mother looks down sadly, “Oh wait, I might have seen someone walk home with him once.”

“One of these people?” Jonghyun asked, holding up the sketches of the people who had attacked them.

“No they don’t look familiar,” the mother shook her head.

“Maybe someone with long-ish brown hair? He might look a little girlish,” Jongin tried.

“Yes. Yes I actually thought it was a girl at first. When I asked Hanbin about it, he got mad at me,” Hanbin’s mother shook her head sadly

“Anyone else?” Jongin asked.

“Yes a very serious and handsome looking young man,” she said frowning, “oh and there was another smaller young man. It was a long time ago so I don’t remember very clearly.”

“We’ve seen them too,” Jongin said, recalling the first day they went to the slums.

“So then you know where my son is?” the woman sounded so hopeful that Jonghyun found it hard to tell her the truth.

“We only heard his name,” Jonghyun said.

“We’re trying to find them,” Jongin clarified.

“Will if help if I give you a picture? It’s been two years already but it might help. This is the first news I’ve heard in two years,” the woman said while searching through a box filled with pictures.

“Thank you, it will help us a lot,” Jonghyun said.

“The truth is they actually stopped searching pretty soon because it wasn’t an important case. They said he would come home in a few days. That he was probably at his friend’s house,” the woman sighs regretfully, “I often wonder if we did something wrong.”

“You probably didn’t. Children around that age are over sensitive and he probably made some wrong friends and it probably is not your fault ma’am,” Jonghyun said. He felt angry. He wished he could do something about this. It felt wrong in every way. He hated these children for breaking up families.

Jonghyun was not the only on feeling such emotions. Jongin felt the same. He wondered why the hell any child would do this to their parents. He realized that that it was caused by the three boys he saw on the first day and decided that they were to be blamed for everything. 

A/N: Thank you to all the people who subscribed, commented and read my fic :D I can't promise anything, but I think I'll be able to get the next chapter up in about 2 weeks time. Hope you enjoyed this kinda boring chapter :P