Chapter Four: Reading the Room

Jiyong couldn’t suppress the shudder that ran through him as he pulled the car up to the steel warehouse. It still looked cold, dark and foreboding; the same way it had looked two years ago when he and Youngbae first arrived to investigate. It was an older building, so the exterior wasn’t exactly kept up to date with the colours that newer models had; it’s dull grey hue matched the sky at the moment. The weather seemed to decide to change in order to match Jiyong’s mood.

Rust was starting to form around the rivets of the building, which told Jiyong that no one had been come by to repair the outer damage, which meant that no one had thought about buying it since it had been shut down. Not that he was surprised since finding out that three people had been murdered here would turn away most interested buyers.

“This was where the first three bodies were found,” Jiyong explained. The four of them exited the vehicle and Youngbae shook his head, “I hate this place.”

“Shall we begin?” Seunghyun asked. If Jiyong wasn’t mistaken, the man sounded eager. The smirk on his face certain proved the theory. The eldest walked towards the entrance and pulled off a slip of paper that had been posted to it, handing it to Jiyong. The words ‘condemned,’ filled the top half of the notice while below it explained that the building would be torn down in a week in order to be rebuilt.

“Good thing we came now then,” Jiyong muttered. Seunghyun stood off to the side and removed his red blazer, handing it to Seungri, “Will you hold this for me, please?”

“Sure.”

“Thank you.”

The man then ed his cuffs and rolled up his sleeves to his elbows. His hand then hovered across the door handle and he paused, “I’ll have to ask that you not touch me while I work,” he warned them, a smirk still plastered on his face, “I don’t need you guys messing up the flow or contaminating what it is that I’m seeing.”

He then gripped the handle and threw the door open, walking inside as the others trailed behind him. The place looked no different from the last time they had been here, save for the fact that there weren’t any bodies on the floor. There had been three victims, all of them men and all varying in age; 20, 33 and 47. It had been a complete mess. One had been hung from the rafters, another had pieces of rebar run through his body, and the third and but cut open from his throat all the way down to his pubic bone. Needless to Youngbae hadn’t been able to stay in the place for long. Not exactly the best start to a career in the homicide department.

“Is that blood?” Seungri asked, pointing to one of the many huge stains on the dirty floor. Jiyong nodded, “Yeah, it doesn’t really come out of concrete very well.”

“.”

For the most part, the warehouse was silent, save for the nearby traffic echoing from the streets. The lights had been at Jiyong’s request and the harsh florescent lights, the ones that worked anyway, illuminated most of the room. The catwalks above them casted shadows along the floor and the chains that still hung from the rafters lightly clinked together as a breeze blew in from an unknown opening. The scene before them came together to form a rather depressing nuance. For a moment it even seemed to feel colder inside, but Youngbae chalked that up to Seungri and a glance at him confirmed it.

“Sorry,” the young man muttered, shaking out his hands, “This place makes me nervous.”

“No worries,” Youngbae replied.

“You don’t have to do what I can do to feel that what happened here was bad,” Seunghyun pointed out. He stood in the center of the room, and his eyes closed while he held out his hands with the palms facing down. His body seemed to tense for a moment and then a smirk filled his face once again, “Got it, now, we can start the fun.”

“Fun? You find this fun?” Jiyong snapped. Seunghyun snapped his fingers and pointed to the detective, “Be quiet, I’m listening.”

“You could at least have some respect for the dead,” Youngbae pointed out. Seunghyun turned to face them and cocked his head to the side, a genuine look of confusion on his face, “Why? What will my tears matter to them? They’re dead. The best thing I can do is to stay focused and try to figure out who is doing this.”

Seungri frowned, this man was a wild card, and it made him nervous. Not to mention he had full use of his powers, which meant that at any time he could set the place on fire if he so wished it.

“May I continue?” the man asked, staring down Jiyong.

“Fine.”

Seunghyun started to move about the room; stooping low to the floor here or using a left behind chair to see up higher over there. He was a flurry of movements and the other three watched as if mesmerized, wondering what he was coming up with while he worked. He ran up the nearby steps to the catwalks and took his time using them to see the room from all different angles. He was humming quietly to himself while he did all of this, completely ignoring the fact that he was not alone in the room.

While it seemed like he was doing well, Seungri noticed that small beads of sweat were trickling down the man’s face. Not only that but every so often a look of disgust filled his features and he would shake his head or rub his eyes as if he was trying to force whatever he was seeing away. What he was doing right now was straining him, but he refused to back down until he was finished with his task. Seungri had to admire him for that.

The tall man then moved back the front entrance, brushing past Youngbae without even acknowledging him, he truly seemed to have no idea that they were still there. He mimed dragging something across the floor and to the far left of the room, where the huge blood stain was. He then stooped to the floor and picked up a piece of left over metal rebar, which had been lying on the floor. He turned it over in his hands, like a staff and then carried it back to the where he had been before. There he plunged it through the imaginary object on the floor.

Seungri was suddenly aware of what was happening. Somehow Seunghyun was seeing one of the victim’s l