It's been two godforsaken months but here I am!

“Tao, have you seen Sehun?”

“So what if I have?”

Jongin swears he could jump over the counter to strangle the kid. Sehun hadn’t been back for a couple of days and his phone was off. Jongin felt horrible when he realized he didn’t know anyone he could talk to, to find out where Sehun might be staying to avoid him. They didn’t really have the same friend groups, so he could only try the one place that he knew Sehun couldn’t avoid. Work.

Jongin avoided overreacting. “Have you? He was supposed to be working today.”

“Ugh, I know. That’s why I took this shift. But then I come in and find out he switched all his shifts this week. I was so pissed. So then I asked Yifan if I could switch all my shifts this week too, but Yifan was all like ‘ing hell, Zitao, do you ever stop talking long enough to actually get work done?’ and I was like…”

Jongin sighed, tuning Tao out, and looking around to see if Yifan was in sight. Maybe Sehun had said something to him. Yifan came out from the back and a disapproving frown settled on his face when he noticed Jongin standing at the counter and Tao talking at lightspeed.

“It’s good that you came in,” Yifan said. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about something.”

Yifan led him to the back and into the break room, closing the door behind him. Jongin had a feeling this talk wasn’t going to be about Sehun.

“Jongdae and Minseok told me that you moved floors.” Jongin nodded. “But that they see you down on their floor just as often, if not more often than before.”

“Um… I can explain.”

“I don’t need an explanation. I’ve known you for a year and a half now Jongin. You’re hardworking and dedicated and I have no doubt that you’ll excel in whatever you do. However, I think that you’re wasting your abilities—that might not be the best way to say it—perhaps you’re putting too much effort into the wrong things. You should focus on the things that you’ll get something out of in the end. Like that internship you told me about. But chasing for answers in places there are none is only going to land you into trouble.”

“You know about Kyungsoo?” Jongin asked wide eyed, then he mentally shook his head. Of course, he already knew that Yifan knew about Kyungsoo. “I mean, you know that he’s not… gone.”

“Just promise me you’ll think about what I said.”

Jongin nodded. “Jongdae and Minseok aren’t the only ones you’ve talked to about this, are they?”

“Sehun has expressed some concern as well. Though not directly about Kyungsoo, but just about your well-being in general. I made the assumption that it may be connected.”

“I’m guessing, you probably won’t tell me which shifts he switched to.”

“You guessed correctly, I can’t give out information like that to non-employees.”

Jongin tried hard not to pout but he was sure the expression on his face as Yifan kicked him out—no sign of the caring man during their little heart-to-heart just moments ago—must have been absolutely demolished, because not even Tao said more than a half-hearted goodbye as he slunk out onto the street. Yet another dead end.

He’d been working so hard trying to find Sehun, he truthfully hadn’t even thought about Kyungsoo until Yifan had brought him up. It would have been stupid of him to try and continue his research about Kyungsoo’s death while he was looking for Sehun, since that was what had driven Sehun away in the first place.

Jongin calls and texts what seems a like a million times that week. Sehun wasn’t anywhere on campus. At first, Jongin thought that he was just skipping the classes that they shared, but when he skipped his own classes to go to Sehun’s lectures, he wasn’t in those either. He checked the signup sheets in the dance studios on and off campus, he loitered around the places he knew Sehun liked to go frequent, bars and clubs and restaurants alike, but it seemed as if Sehun had just disappeared.

Jongin was more than worried. Sehun wasn’t good at taking care of himself, and it had only been a couple of months since he had been badly injured. The last time Sehun hadn’t replied to his calls and messages was when he had been in the hospital, but this time, it was because he didn’t want to see or talk to Jongin, and that was killing him.

His messages got more and more desperate as the days passed. Most of the time Sehun’s phone just seemed to be off. Sometimes, it was on, but it would just ring without an answer, before going to voicemail, at which point Jongin would leave another pitiful message full of apologies. Jongin had thought that he had been at his lowest after finding out that Kyungsoo was dead, but he was wrong.

He was at his lowest without Sehun, who had been his anchor, whereas Kyungsoo just had him floating away from sanity.

----

Against all odds, Sehun comes back to him.

Jongin enters their apartment late one night after being made to stay to organize paperwork from some drug bust made at the precinct. He scoffed at the thought that the cops, whom the city depended on to keep them safe, left something of such importance to an intern who couldn’t even screw his head on straight, while they went out and got drunk to celebrate. Then again, if they did what they were supposed to, and had helped Kyungsoo and Luhan instead of turning their back on them, he wouldn’t be in the mess he was in at all. It didn’t matter much to him in the end, because he didn’t have anyone waiting for him.

At least, that’s what he thought.

The lights are on when he comes in and when he sees Sehun in the middle of the room, paused, as if he had been pacing, he drops his bag onto the floor with a thud—that was not good news for his laptop—and runs over to him, wrapping his arms around him tightly, even though he knew how likely it was that Sehun could push him away.

But Sehun doesn’t push him away. In fact, Sehun pulls him closer, mumbling apologies into his ear.

“Don’t. It was my fault,” Jongin said. “I broke my promise.”

“I’m still sorry. For running away, instead of talking it through. For leaving you. I never should have done that.”

“I don’t care, you’re back now. That’s all that matters to me.”

“I hated being away from you,” Sehun whispers into Jongin’s hair. “It was torture. Not knowing how you were, what you were doing, it’s an emptiness I never want to feel again.”

Jongin pulled away slowly, as much as Sehun would let him. “I’ve let it go. I won’t bring up Kyungsoo or anything else related to him again. I want to say I promise, but I’m afraid you won’t believe me.”

Sehun kisses him, a sweet gesture, despite their salty tears in the mix. “I believe you. I just don’t want you to suffer because of something that doesn’t have anything to do with you in the first place.”

Of course, that’s technically true, but Kyungsoo’s words about him being different from the other people who moved into Luhan’s apartment aren’t forgotten. But he can’t say that to Sehun. Not when he just got him back, and not when Sehun just blindly trusted him again. He would just have to stay true to his word and leave this whole thing alone. That’s what Sehun wanted, that’s what Kyungsoo wanted, that’s what Yifan had told him, and what Minseok and Jongdae wouldn’t stop telling him.

It wasn’t exactly what he wanted, but if everyone around him thought it was for the best… then maybe it was.

They couldn’t all be wrong.

Right?

----

Even though the internship wasn't with Professor Kim, Jongin found out that he would come into the precinct at times. He was one their top consultants, which wasn't surprising considering he was a senior in his field.

The first time he came in while Jongin was working, he was greeted with a warm and friendly welcome when he walked through the doors. It was clear to Jongin that he was well respected here. But the way he seemed to be revered—with everyone's attention on him as soon as he had entered the building—made Jongin uneasy.

Even more unsettling was the suspicion that forced itself into Jongin's mind when an officer asked the Professor how his wife was doing.

Jongin knew—he had seen first hand—that Professor Kim was known for flirting with students. He was sure that Professor was a bachelor, no one had ever told him any different. Not to mention, Jongin had never seen a ring.

It was two weeks after Sehun had come back and Jongin had put Kyungsoo out of his mind as best as he could. He didn't mean to overhear the private conversation but it wasn't his fault that they were talking so loudly right outside the record room doors where Jongin was looking through a box for a file that someone had asked him for.

He came out just as Professor Kim seemed to be leaving. The Professor waved at him in greeting, but with his right hand. His left hand was conveniently tucked into his coat pocket. He turned to leave but the same officer from before called out to him.

“Junmyeon!”

Jongin froze as the Professor turned. This couldn't be his first time hearing someone address the Professor by his first name, right? He was sure he had heard someone calling him….

Thinking about it in the moment, this really was the first time he had heard Professor Kim’s first name.

“I need you to sign these before you leave.” The officer held out a clipboard towards the Prof—towards Junmyeon. Jongin could only watch, still in the same spot. Junmyeon took his left hand out of his pocket so he could hold the clipboard and sign at the same time and sure enough Jongin caught a flash of silver glimmering under the harsh fluorescent light.

But he had to be over thinking. He had to be making connections where there were none.

He was jolted out of his trance when the officer shoved the clipboard into his chest.

“Make sure this gets to the right person.”

Jongin glared after him. People said that to him often, leaving him to figure who the the right person was supposed to be. More often than not, he just dropped the papers into the unsuspecting secretary's in-tray and gave her a charming smile to distract her. No one had ever come asking about any of those papers after leaving them with him so he just assumed they got to where they were supposed to be.

Once that was done, he almost went back to pondering what the hell had just happened. Then he remembered how those days without Sehun had felt, and why he had had to suffer through them and pushed all thoughts of Junmyeon into a dark corner of his mind as far away from his stream of consciousness as he could manage.

----

How he ended up in front of Junmyeon's office the next morning was beyond him. But he wasn't going to knock and go in. He wasn't. That's not what he wanted to do at all.

Sehun wasn't the only reason that he didn't want to think about whether his professor could be Kyungsoo's murderer. There were a lot of reasons why this was the worst possible way things could turn out. It meant that the culprit had been in front of him all along. It meant that Junmyeon really did have a lot of irrevocable power with the police. It meant that he had been given an internship by a murderer in a precinct where the officers had aided the murders.

His eyes widened as he realized something, and he stopped frantically pacing outside the criminology department door.

His boss—well, ex-boss—had slept with his friends murderer. Yifan hadn't known Kyungsoo well at all, which meant he would have had no idea and Jongin doubted that Yifan was the kind of person to brag about a ‘booty call’, as Sehun had put it all that time ago, so Minseok and Jongdae wouldn't have been able to warn him. Jongin wondered if Junmyeon knew that Luhan had been Yifan's friend. His stomach churned knowing from what Kyungsoo had told him, it was likely Junmyeon was sick enough to sleep with Yifan just because he was Luhan's friend and an oblivious bystander in all of this.

Huffing loudly, the action causing his bangs to lift from his eyes and fall back down again, he tried to convince himself he was being ridiculous. But the worst reason was looming in his thoughts like a thunder cloud.

If Professor Kim Junmyeon was the same Junmyeon that had done all those horrible things that Kyungsoo had told him, then it meant that there really was no hope for Kyungsoo to ever move on.

And if there was no hope for someone like Kyungsoo—who was so undeserving of the terrifying situation he was in—then how could there be hope for anyone else, much less Jongin. As that last selfish thought hit him, the door swung open, revealing the last person Jongin wanted to see.

Junmyeon smiled a pleasant, angelic smile. Usually Jongin was indifferent to it. Right now he wanted to empty the contents of his stomach—the disastrous Nutella pancakes that he and Sehun had attempted to cook in the morning—onto the floor right at his professors feet.

Instead he just stared with what he knew was a ‘deer-in-the-headlights’ expression. He could feel the strain on his widened eyes and he could feel his mouth hanging open. Junmyeon didn't seem to notice his uneasiness.

“Is there something I can help you with Jongin?”

“Uh…”

Junmyeon chuckled lowly.

“Sorry I couldn't stick around too long last night. But it's good to see that you're fitting in well. It's a great opportunity for the betterment of your future.”

“Yeah, about that…”

Junmyeon frowned. “Something wrong? Do you not like the job?”

“It's not that,” Jongin said, a white lie forming on his tongue quickly, since he wanted to get out of there as fast as he could. “Seeing you there yesterday made me realized I haven't come to properly convey my gratitude for giving me the opportunity in the first place. For insisting I take it, even when I thought it wasn't a good idea.”

“You're very welcome, Jongin. Though I have a feeling that you rejecting the offer was due to that lap dog of yours, always attached to your hip.”

Jongin was surprised by the words and the tone Junmyeon used when referring to Sehun. Despite what he knew, or what he possibly knew since there was lack of concrete proof, it was rare to hear the Professor with such malice in his voice. He wanted to defend Sehun but he also wanted to no longer be having a conversation with a murderer. He was about to politely bid a farewell and then go hyperventilate in a bathroom stall but before he knew it, Junmyeon's arm was resting on his shoulder and guiding him down the hall.

“You know Jongin, there are several other opportunities I have to offer for someone as bright as you. I see a lot of potential in you.”

“Um, thank you Professor but I should really—”

“I want to take you under my wing. How would you feel about being a part of my research team this summer? We’ll be travelling overseas and working actual cases with some special ops. You'd get a full course credit, you'd be the youngest person there, and you don't have to worry about it costing too much because I want to sponsor you for a grant that will cover your every expense.”

Jongin was speechless. Of course that sounded ing amazing. Had it been coming from anyone else, Jongin would have screamed ‘yes!’ for the whole world to hear right there and then. But he could only notice how the hand on his shoulder had travelled down to his lower back and was now more so pushing him along rather than guiding him.

It seemed that Junmyeon didn't know what to make of his silence. “Of course you don't have to answer now, there is plenty of time until the applications are due for submission.”

Jongin wanted to reject the offer right now, so that he hopefully wouldn't have to deal with it again. But even as his lips parted, no words came out. He didn't know where the Professor was taking him but it didn't matter when he stopped abruptly. Jongin found himself with his back against the wall and the hand that had been in contact with Jongin seconds ago was now pressed flat on the wall right next to Jongin's face. The Professor was far too close and Jongin unconsciously turned his head away from the gaze, eyes latching onto the hand that was also too close.

Junmyeon's left hand.

The ring finger was bare.

There were far too many coincidences clashing in Jongin's mind.

“What the hell is going on here?” a familiar and welcomed voice reached Jongin's ears before the Professor could say anything.

Junmyeon didn't even attempt to hide his eye roll as saw who it was that had interrupted them.

Chanyeol looked angrier than Jongin had ever seen him before. If even his jolliest friend who saw the best in everyone and everything couldn't stand the man, then there had to be something wrong.

Chanyeol reached out and pulled Jongin away from the Professor, who was still leaning on the wall.

“You know, I thought it was pathetic that you tried to lure Baekhyun—who by the way is way out of your league—into some weird play you're directing for the excuse to ually harass the Arts students, but seriously? You can't even keep your hands off the students that you're in charge of?”

Chanyeol didn't wait for an answer. He pulled Jongin through a door that led to a gloomy stairwell, not stopping, slowing, or letting go of Jongin's hand as they descended the stairs, walked through the courtyard, and were in the drama building. As soon as they were through the doors they could see Baekhyun standing in front of an overflowing notice board with a pen in his hand.

“Byun Baekhyun I swear if you sign up for that God forsaken play I'll tie all of your favourite clothes in a bundle and throw them in the ocean!”

Baekhyun looked over and stuck his tongue out at Chanyeol. “It's a good extra curricular and I'm doing it.”

It was Jongin that reached over and snatched the pen out of Baekhyun's hand. “Don't do it. You'll regret it.”

“Seriously? What's wrong with you two?”

“I am being serious. He's a far worse person than you could imagine.” As soon as he said those words, he had to refrain the urge to slap his palm over his mouth to avoid saying anything else. Baekhyun had already been giving them a weird look but now even Chanyeol, who already thought Junmyeon was a creep, was staring at him curiously. “So… who's hungry?”

That broke the weirdness as both of his friends loudly claimed that they were, in fact, both starving and the trio head to the main cafeteria where Jongin already knew Sehun would be meeting them because Jongin had already asked him to. Sure enough, Sehun didn't disappoint. He had already secured a table large enough for the four of them in the corner of the cafeteria since all the benches outside had been practically buried in snow.

As the three friends joined him, he looked up and smiled in greeting, accepting a kiss from Jongin gratefully as Jongin brought their foreheads together and then initiated the intimacy. Baekhyun threw a fry at them off of his lunch tray. Chanyeol ignored them.

He was obviously still not calm after the encounter with the professor and Jongin knew why he himself was uncomfortable but he didn't understand why Chanyeol was still so on edge. Even after they had spent the night over at Chanyeol and Baekhyun's place, Jongin and Sehun hadn't told them the entire story about Kyungsoo. Jongin knew that Chanyeol had weird thing about ghosts because he was superstitious and he also knew Baekhyun was the complete opposite. He didn't believe in any of that kind of bull so they had not given either of them too many details.

So there was no way that Chanyeol knew what Jongin knew, which meant there was no reason for Chanyeol to be as on edge as Jongin was. But he very obviously was. Jongin was aware that he had drifted slightly from his two older friends, the two people who had found him young, naive and confused, and helped him through his freshman year despite having no reason to besides the few clubs they had shared in high school.

If Jongin was them, he'd have ignored anyone he'd known during high school. It made him glad to know that they obviously had more of a conscience than he did, but he still needed to know if Chanyeol knew more than he let on, or if Chanyeol knew something he didn't. Because of both of them knew something the other didn't, or if one of them had more information than the other, then the only way they would both benefit is if they were both at the same place.

If Chanyeol knew something, he could help Jongin, and maybe Jongin could help him.

----

Unfortunately, Chanyeol knew even less than he did. It took him a bit of courage to ask but he eventually did.

He asked Chanyeol about his vindictiveness towards the Professor and Chanyeol hadn't hesitated to tell him everything.

Chanyeol was extremely certain that the Professor had hurt someone close to him, an older stepbrother.

“He started going to uni, he was still living at home and it was great. I still saw him everyday and there was absolutely nothing wrong. It was like nothing had changed at all. But after a couple of years he moved out. During the final year of his degree he said he'd rather have some space than be suffocated by his family. I knew it was because of someone he was seeing and not actually because of us.”

Chanyeol stopped talking.

“You don't have to talk about this you know,” Jongin said, “if it's making you upset.”

They were in a far corner of the quiet library. It was too early in the morning for anyone to be around to shush them.

“It's just—he said he was moving in with one of his friends, then after a year or so, he stopped calling. And… and only then we found out he hadn't actually moved in with anyone. He'd moved in next door to one of his friends, but he had been living alone. Until some freak incident where someone who was breaking and entering had apparently ended up killing both him and his friend. Or at least that's what we kept being told anytime anyone inquired about anything.”

Jongin froze.

“The police didn't even ing tell us. Three months he was dead and we had no ing clue. We would have had no idea if it hadn't been for his birthday coming around. I went to personally drop off his present and kick his for not calling and… there was no one there for me to—”

“Stop.”

Chanyeol raised his gaze from the multiple things written on the old library desk he was sitting at, and met Jongin's eyes with confusion.

“So you knew. When you came over, you knew that someone had been murdered in my apartment and next door.”

He could almost see Chanyeol struggle with how to answer.

“I didn't think it would matter. But… how did you know?”

“What?” Jongin asked, not realizing he had given himself away. Given away the fact that he had already made the unfortunate connection that Kyungsoo must be Chanyeol's stepbrother.

“I didn't tell you that my brother had lived next to you. Or that his friend lived where you do. How'd you know that these were the apartments?”

Jongin decided that instead of digging himself into a deeper hole, he'd answer Chanyeol's question with another question.

“How'd you know that Professor Kim was the one that killed them?”

I have three excuses; grades, bills, and health. But it's winter break and if i don't update before Christmas or New Years then Happy Holidays to you all!

Please comment to let me know your thoughts because interacting with y'all is really the best part of posting what I write and it's also the greatest motivation to me to know what people are interpreting out of my work :)