It was rare for either of them to go see Kyungsoo without each other. Rare meaning, they never went without each other. So one Friday, when Sehun was running a little late, Jongin started getting a little impatient. Impatient meaning...bored. He was bored.

Jongin shot Sehun a text, telling him to just meet him at Kyungsoo’s apartment. Even if he didn't go in alone, maybe he could stop and greet Minseok and Jongdae. He had been just slightly avoiding them, since they clearly didn't think that it was a good idea to be engaging with Kyungsoo at all. It made sense why they wouldn't want to. They had known him alive. Jongin hadn't known him any other way.

It had become a routine, taking the elevator down to his old floor, though he usually wasn't alone. What wasn't part of the routine was to see someone standing on Kyungsoo's side of the hallway.

He had become almost an expert at avoiding Junmyeon on campus. He wasn't one to seek attention so avoiding it wasn't much of a chore for him and he knew all the routes between his classes and to and from the cafeteria to make sure he would never run into Junmyeon. Not alone at the very least. But all that was apparently in vain, as Junmyeon stood a few feet in front of his old door.

Despite that, he seemed to be staring blankly at Kyungsoo's door, not at all registering that the elevator had opened and someone had stepped out. Jongin tried to quickly back up but his back just hit the closed metal doors. Junmyeon looked up at that, turning to him with a smile. Jongin's breath was caught in his throat.

“I was just about to knock,” Junmyeon said.

“I— I don't live on this floor anymore.”

Junmyeon frowned at him. “But you're here.”

Jongin tried not making eye contact. How could he when he knew his professor had killed two people? At least two people.

“Uh, I have a friend who lives on this floor,” he said. “You know Sehun, right?”

Luckily the lie left his tongue easily. He wanted to ask how Junmyeon knew what apartment he used to live in, but that was the least important thing right now. He knew Kyungsoo would be out on the balcony by now, but he wondered if he could feel Junmyeon's presence here the way he could feel Chanyeol's whenever he dropped by.

Junmyeon's frown didn't leave. “Yeah.”

Junmyeon looked over at Kyungsoo's door again and Jongin remained silent.

“So it's almost the end of the semester,” Junmyeon said, moving his gaze back to Jongin, and stepping a little closer. “You haven't submitted your application for the trip yet.”

“About that, Professor Kim,” he knew that outright rejecting the professor might cause some problems, but what else could he do? “I don't think I can go.”

“And why not? I don't offer these kinds of opportunities to just anyone. Don't you want to succeed?”

Junmyeon came closer still until Jongin's back was against the wall opposite the two doors.

“W-well, I've been staying away from home, so much, uh, my mother really wants me home for the summer, and I can't really say no to mother.

“What, exactly, makes you think you can say no to me?”

Jongin’s eyes widened, flitting to Kyungsoo’s door for a fraction of a second. Junmyeon’s gaze followed, and his expression went from frowning to hard glare.

“You know, don’t you?”

Jongin shook his head frantically.

“I don’t know anything,” he said, before he could think of anything better.

Junmyeon swore under his breath before roughly grabbing Jongin by the elbow and forcing him away from the elevator. Jongin struggled against his hold, but the Professor was much stronger than him.

“Wait! I haven’t told anyone, I swear!”

Junmyeon pushed Kyungsoo’s door open hard enough for it to slam against the wall and then into Jongin’s shoulder as he was pulled through the doorway. He thinks he hears something out in the hallway before Junmyeon shuts the door.

“It’s a shame,” Junmyeon said, his voice strangely calm and composed, the opposite of how Jongin was feeling. “I was putting so much effort into you. You’ve been doing so well lately. I don’t know how you found out, but with how annoyed I am right now, I don’t even care. I thought I could have made something out of you.”

Jongin was shaking. Things were never supposed to turn out like this. He already knew there was nothing he could do to bring Junmyeon to justice, which was why he hadn’t tried to do anything. Still, he was caught.

His only thought as Junmyeon pushed him to the floor was that he hoped Sehun wouldn’t read his text and would go to their apartment instead of coming here.

Jongin's mind went blank as Junmyeon moved his jacket to the side to reveal a holster.

“This is the same one, you know. I didn't always carry it around, but boy does it feel good—just the weight of having it on you. Lucky too, you can probably guess I wasn't expecting this to happen but I'm prepared so it doesn't really matter.”

Jongin's throat felt strained, but no sound was coming out.

“I want this to be clear, I'm not going to kill you because you know, Jongin. Plenty of people know—that Chanyeol kid, those s down the hallway, the cops. No one can touch me.”

Jongin swallowed thickly, struggling to force the words out.

“Then—” He couldn't stop the tears flowing from his eyes. He was past being scared. He didn't even know what this feeling was. “—why?!”

“I'm going to kill you because I’m getting sick of you. I tried to be nice. I've treated you better than I've treated anyone else. But you just can't take the hint. I thought you were better than the others. I even gave you space, so you wouldn't be pressured. I could have been much more forceful. I wanted you to make the decision yourself Jongin, but I can see from your lack of interest, you don't deserve my attention.”

Jongin couldn't even begin to guess what Junmyeon was babbling on about. Whatever it was, it had to be something going on only in his mind. Junmyeon did seem to engage with him more out of all the other criminology students, but Jongin always wanted to believe he only ever pursued students outside of the program. Maybe he should have just believed Sehun from the get go, when he had said all that time ago that the Professor had ulterior motives behind wanting to give Jongin an internship. Maybe he just wanted to believe his assignment really had been that impressive.

He didn't know, but he didn't want to know either. He just wanted to get out of there.

----

“Oh Junmyeon,” a fairly old officer and his younger partner stood in the doorway, a little ways behind Sehun.

Jongin wasn't sure when they had arrived. There had been pain, and then nothing. Just blank, for who knows how long. But he could see again, hear again, think again. He couldn't feel.

His sight too, was strange, flickering. Like his eyelids were too heavy to keep open but without that feeling. His hearing seemed to be perfect.

“There has to be something we can do.”

“Look at him,” the officer pointed to Sehun, who was obviously still stunned by the sight of Jongin's not yet dead body on the floor.

Jongin felt a pull from his body. But an even stronger push. All of a sudden, he was no longer in the strange in between state he had been experiencing so far. He was completely out. His sight was restored, but it was different, like looking through a filter. He was staring down at himself, severed from his own physical form. His body, completely still on the floor, emitted a sound. His lungs expelled all the air that had been in them.

Sehun gasped. “No.”

“We know we said we'd help you out when you needed, but that was as long as you didn't get caught.”

“What?! Obviously you have to cover this up the same way.”

Sehun dropped onto the floor next to Jongin. Jongin watched as Sehun tried and failed to get a pulse. “No, no, no, NO!”

“There's a witness this time.”

“Then we kill him too!”

“We don't kill anyone. You did the killing. And we promised that we'd cover it up as long as you remained under the radar which you obviously haven't been careful about at all. The whole building heard the gunshot. Do you have any idea how many calls we got? What the hell were you thinking?”

He wasn't. Clearly Junmyeon had never been sane, but how he had hidden how crazy he really was, Jongin had no idea. It was that crazy that turned him so reckless. He was reckless enough to dig himself into this hole when he'd been careful before.

“Jongin,” Sehun called his name out. Jongin wished he could stop watching. Kyungsoo had said that he couldn't remember what had happened the first few months after death. Then why was he so vividly aware of everything? It felt like he had only lost his dying moments, the moments between when he had been shot till his last breath. “This isn't real. You promised. You promised you wouldn't get involved and… and—”

“Oh shut up, can't you see there are more important things going on?” Sehun looked up at Junmyeon. Jongin was sure this was the first time that Junmyeon had ever spoken to Sehun directly. “I got caught, because of you.”

Sehun turned his gaze back to Jongin's lifeless body. “Can't you see what you've done? What was all this for? Just to get away with sleeping with students? First Kyungsoo didn't want to you anymore then—”

Sehun took a shaky breath. “Do you kill everyone that doesn't want to you or was there something special about Jongin and Kyungsoo?”

“What the are you on about?”

Sehun didn't reply to him. “Jongin, please. I was only a little late. Please. You can't do this you ing promised!”

“Give it a rest kid,” the officer told him, “there's no way he's coming back from that.”

“No one questioned a thing last time.” Junmyeon was obviously feeling a bit desperate, not knowing where this predicament might lead him. “Kyungsoo had friends. He had a brother. They knew me. They still know me. They couldn't do about it back then or now, what makes you think this kid can do anything.”

“If so many people already knew then why the hell did this kid matter? If he’d known all this time while he was interning with us and still didn’t say anything then why do it at all?”

“This is ridiculous—”

“What's ridiculous is that even after five years of keeping this covered up for you, you didn't have the decency to even think about what the precinct would go through if it came out that we covered up a double homicide.”

Jongin could only watch as Sehun was suddenly overtaken by sobs. He buried his face into Jongin's neck. The police officer only shook his head.

“Kim Junmyeon—”

“No.”

“You have the right to remain silent—”

“Stop!”

“Anything you say can and will be held against you—”

“I've done so much for you over so many ing years and this is how you repay me?!”

Junmyeon raised the gun that was still in his hand, but the officer's partner, who had only been a silent observer thus far, was faster. A deafening sound, and then a thud. Junmyeon had only been his own worst enemy.

He didn't appear wherever it was that Jongin was. Jongin didn't know if Junmyeon's soul or whatever existed on a different plane from his, or if the way he had died—at the hands of a police officer who had stopped him from killing yet another person—meant he went somewhere else in the afterlife, but Jongin saw or heard nothing more from him once his body had stopped twitching on the floor.

Sehun was still breathing hard into his throat. Well, his body's throat. He couldn't describe the feeling of watching Sehun embrace his body but not feeling it. As Jongin stepped away from the scene, through the door to the bedroom, unable to see how devastated Sehun was, he noticed Kyungsoo, peeking in from the balcony, a horrified expression etched onto his teary, busted face. Jongin could only stare back.

What the was he supposed to do now?