Kyungsoo drummed an index finger on the formica table, impatient at being kept waiting for so long. He was tired of hearing the constant buzz and clang of security doors as the prison’s denizens moved between sections. He wanted to be outside, where he could feel the sun on his face instead of fluorescent radiation and smell actual nature instead of spring-scented cleaning products and concrete. They’d only been here for half of an hour, and the feeling of being stifled was already beginning to drive him batty. He had no idea how the inmates could stand being trapped in this place for years. He would rather be put to death. 

The soft clacking of wood beside him warned Kyungsoo that his partner was also getting restless. Jongdae was their squad’s pillar of discipline and reserve, the obvious choice to pair with a rookie like Kyungsoo even if they hadn’t been childhood friends. But even he was fidgeting, carved cherrywood bracelets shifting up and down his wrists as he picked imaginary lint from his pants, smoothed his hair, checked his watch. His uncharacteristic antsiness would have been a source of great amusement if Kyungsoo hadn’t been so close to climbing the walls himself. With difficulty, he stilled his own tapping fingers and pulled a long breath through his nose, trying to wring calm collectedness from the air. This visit had been his idea after all, so he had to bear the inconvenience with a semblance of self-control. His resolve began to erode once more as he stared at the room’s dingy concrete walls, but finally, the sharp click of the door lock echoed into the room. Jongdae instantly straightened in his seat, arms crossed, his icy, justice-wielding persona slamming into place like a bulletproof shield. Kyungsoo sat a little straighter as well as the inmate they’d been waiting for was escorted into the room at a shuffle, handcuffs and leg irons clinking.

As soon as he spotted his visitors, Yeol broke into a grin that stretched from one ear to the other. Normally, Kyungsoo would have returned the friendly greeting and maybe asked about those new bruises on his chin, but Jongdae stiffened, his fingers curling into claws over the arm of his chair. Jongdae’s legendary poker face was back in place instantly, but Kyungsoo had known him for too long not to clock the strange reaction. 

It shouldn’t have been a surprise that they were here to see Yeol— everybody knew about Kyungsoo’s relationship with him.  Arresting the infamous Virus before he’d had even a full month on the force had won Kyungsoo his first medal, his current assignment, and an embarrassing amount of media attention.  Even after chasing the Virus for three years, the international task force had never found any concrete evidence of his identity.  Eventually it was discovered that one person, Yeol, been ‘seen’ at every arson site, but shady witnesses and doctored security camera footage were barely enough to arrest him. In order to prosecute, they needed him to confess. Helpfully, Yeol had announced his intent to confess to the horde of reporters flocking around the police station on the night of his arrest. Unhelpfully, he’d stopped speaking to anyone except Kyungsoo after that announcement, forcing the rookie to visit him every week to gather evidence, drip by drip. It didn’t take Kyungsoo long to figure out that Yeol was playing them. Every once in a while, he would tell Kyungsoo something juicy, and Kyungsoo would dutifully report it to the task force. But the tidbit was always poisoned, contradicting one of the witnesses or something captured on the security camera footage, forcing a reinvestigation and whipping the media into a frenzy. After nearly two years, he’d trashed so much of the evidence against him that the task force didn’t even have enough to keep him in jail if he chose to retract his confession. The flimsiness of their case was a state secret guarded around the clock against the FreeYeol fan club, who left pink love letters embedded in the prison fence when they weren’t stealing the tarnished evidence and posting it online. Yet, Yeol kept himself in prison with the weekly interviews, 99 parts pointless chatter, 1 part useless confession. Kyungsoo saw Yeol more often than his own parents, and they lived in the same apartment building. 

Oblivious to Jongdae’s death glare, Yeol had plunked himself down in the small chair opposite the two investigators,cheerfully allowing the guards to chain him to the steel ring embedded in the floor.

“Kyungsoo!”  Yeol’s deep voice resonated in the small room as he cheerfully allowed the guards to chain him to the steel ring embedded in the floor. “Wow,” he sighed dramatically, ”It’s not even my birthday, but you visit twice in one week and even brought a present.” He beamed his megawatt smile at Jongdae and seemed utterly unfazed by the stony face of rejection he received in return.

Kyungsoo tossed a folder onto the table with slap, glossy crime scene stills sliding out from the cover towards the inmate, who peered at them interestedly.

“This isn’t our usual type of conversation, Yeol. You owe me a favor from the last time, so I’m here to collect.” Kyungsoo tried very hard to ignore the sudden prickling in his neck as Jongdae turned his medusa stare onto him. That stare had been known to break down criminals faster than any fancy interrogation technique, and, frankly, it was unnerving to have it used on him. It was like Jongdae was trying to peel pack his skin to view his soul, using only his eyes. 

Clearing his throat nervously, he picked up a picture from the top of the pile, showing Yeol the blackened interior of an apartment. “My team is investigating a string of apartment fires,” he explained. “We’ve traced all the fires to their origin points, but we can’t figure out how the accelerant was applied. Since you using undetectable accelerant is your specialty, I’m hoping you’ll help us out.” He put the picture on the table and slid it towards the other man.

Yeol shrugged and leaned closer to the picture, until his nose was almost touching the table. He studied it for a long moment, and Kyungsoo seized the opportunity to steal a glance at his partner. Jongdae caught his glance and held it, mouthing with deliberate slowness, We. Will. Talk. Kyungsoo gulped and turned back to the picture, suddenly dreading the end of this interview.

Yeol awkwardly stretched his chained hands over the picture, pointing out a spot beside the sink with one long finger. “What’s this?”

Kyungsoo reclaimed the picture and squinted at the spot, but it just seemed like another sooty pile of debris in the kitchen to him.“I don’t know,” he admitted, showing it to Jongdae.

“Latex,” his partner ground out in a low voice, jaw clenched. “From a pair of burned kitchen gloves.”

“Ah,” Yeol quickly looked down at the table, but not before Kyungsoo caught the flash of realization that crossed his face.

“What is it?” Kyungsoo pressed, “You thought of something?”

Yeol looked away, his ears turning pink. “No…”

“You’re a terrible liar. Tell me.”

Yeol leaned in, a strange glint in his eye. “If I tell you two things about this photo, will you grant one wish?” he asked.

Kyungsoo considered it. He didn’t relish the idea of agreeing to a nameless wish made by an incarcerated felon, but Yeol knew something.

“Fine,” he agreed. “Tell me the first thing, and I’ll decide if it makes us even on the favor you owe me.” Jongdae radiated disapproval, but Kyungsoo was past trying to decipher his  problem.

Yeol tapped the photo again. “That pile isn’t from gloves. I mean, I can’t tell from here, but I’d bet it was a balloon.”

Kyungsoo looked at the nonescript, sooty pile in the picture, barely visible. Damn. He was going to owe this guy a wish. He opened his mouth to tell him to go on, but Jongdae slammed a hand down on the table, the first time he’d moved the entire time Yeol had been in the room. It startled Kyungsoo so badly he had to remind himself to take a breath, and Yeol looked a little rattled as well.

“Enough. Conversation over.” The senior investigator stood, gathering up the photos with brisk efficiency, and fixed Yeol with a steely stare. “He owes you nothing. You’re even. Consider whatever deals you and Do had in the past to be null and void, and stick to the confessions, convict.” With that he stalked to the door and hammered on it to alert the guard. “We’re done here!”

Kyungsoo rose with an apologetic shrug. He was reluctant to leave when he felt so close to breaking this case, but he’d never seen Jongdae this way before. It was better to leave now and find out what was wrong, and come back later alone. He was halfway to the door when the table thndered against the wall behind him, and he whirled to see Yeol lunging at him.

Kyungsoo screamed involuntarily, dropping into a defensive crouch, but the leg chains tangled around Yeol’s calves before he could take two steps. He ended up sprawled on the floor, his body stretching across the distance between them, clutching Kyungsoo’s ankle with both manacled hands. The guards were in the room and on top of him in moments.

“Just answer the phone when I call!” Yeol shrieked as the guards pried Kyungsoo’s ankle out of his hands, and Jongdae dragged him out of harm’s way by the collar as they battled to keep the tall man on the ground. “Answer it!” Another guard appeared at a run and leapt into the fray, and Kyungsoo let himself be towed out of the room. As they disappeared from view, Yeol let out a howl of pure frustration, and Kyungsoo finally caught a glimpse of the person behind the smile, and he was young, desperate, and scared.

The sight floored him, and Jongdae managed to drag him all the way out to the parking lot before he twisted out of his iron grip. 

“Why did you end the interview like that?” Kyungsoo demanded, adrenaline overriding his earlier caution. “He was going to tell us something important and you ruined it!”

Jongdae moved fast, slapping Kyungsoo across the back of the head before he could dodge.

“Why didn’t you tell me your informant was the Virus,” he hissed back. Kyungsoo was about to come back with a retort about that much being obvious, but the look in his friend’s eyes turned his tongue to wood. Jongdae was livid, his chest heaving,  jaw and fists clenched, his whole body vibrating. Kyungsoo was suddenly certain that Jongdae would beat him bloody if he said something sassy.

“I didn’t think it would matter to you,” he said honestly. “It just seemed like he would be able to help.The modus operandi is similar, and I talk to him all the time—”

“Stop.” Jongdae ran his fingers through his hair, then struggled for something to do with his hands, finally planting them on the car. “This guy we’re chasing is some petty pyro who’s burned down a few kitchens. The Virus,” he spat the name like the title of a depraved war criminal, “left a trail of destruction worth billions. Every time you come here he tells you about another fire he’s responsible for— do you have any idea what his death toll is?” Kyungsoo really didn’t want to be wrong, so he said nothing. Jongdae placed his hands gently on his shoulders, his voice going calm as he looked into his eyes. “ Sixty deaths and counting. Sixty.  God knows how many injured. My grandmother’s entire village went up in flames because they didn’t have enough volunteers to put out all the little fires that monster started. She died for no reason!” Jongdae yelled the last words in Kyungsoo’s face, his voice shaking with rage. “And you didn’t think it mattered?”

Kyungsoo bowed his head in contrition, unable to meet Jongdae’s gaze. The fires plaguing Southeast Asia and China had been news even while he was high school, and the hunt for the arsonist the media named The Virus was discussed in nearly ever class at the police university. He’d had nightmares about the pictures he’d seen from a fire in a Hong Kong hotel, a roomful of charred corpses forever frozen at the moment of their death, arms outstretched towards the window, their mouths gaping open in silent screams. But when he’d met Yeol for the first time, he’d only seen a person, not the monster Jongdae so clearly hated. Then again, none of those corpses had been someone he knew. None of the dead littering Yeol’s footsteps had been Kyungsoo’s family. In the face of Kyungsoo’s apologetic silence, Jongdae blew out a long breath, and released him to lean against the car again, looking up at the sky. They stayed that way for a while, letting the tension bleed away from the moment. Paper hearts twisted into the iron fence fluttered in the breeze above their heads.

“What was the favor he owed you?” he asked finally, his voice a little less poisonous than before.

Kyungsoo relaxed incrementally. “You know how I’ve always thought Yeol chose me to talk to because we’re donggap, the same age?” Jongdae was nodding, and Kyungsoo relaxed further. “In the beginning, I traded favors with him to get answers to our questions. They were always small, stupid things like bringing him a chocolate bar or telling him the score of the football game, so the task force allowed it. We don’t do it much anymore, but last week I brought him was one of those hotel bottles of hair oil, but he didn’t tell me anything new, so I told him he owed me a favor.”

Jongdae was side-eyeing him now. “You think of him as a friend,” he said. It wasn’t a question.

“He’s just a felon,” Kyungsoo assured him. That I bring gifts to and have long conversations with. “I’m only interviewing him because we need his confession to close all of those open arson cases.” Not because he’s my only friend or anything. “I’m just doing my job.” 

Jongdae raised one eyebrow. “Just remember, natural disasters have killed less people than the Virus,” he told him, pulling out his car keys and tossing them over. “You drive.”

Kyungsoo trotted to the driver’s side, relieved that Jongdae wasn’t angry anymore but still uneasy. He knew Jongdae was right. He knew. Yeol wasn’t his friend. He was an arsonist, so devastating that the media had named him after a disease and so mainpulative that even his confessions worked in his favor. But still…his face when he’d asked for that final favor--it had tugged at something inside Kyungsoo. When Yeol called, of course he would answer. 

— 

Jongdae glanced up from his report briefly as Kyungsoo skipped off to the interrogation room to watch the questioning of their new suspect. The clue the Virus had given them, that the latex wasn’t from the kitchen gloves, had been the key to the whole case. The arsonist had been using gas-filled balloons as his accelerant, and Jongdae had kicked himself the entire drive back from the prison for not seeing it in all the time they’d been investigating this case. Knowing that the disease had figured it out in seconds, that they might have lost this case completely if not for his help, rankled him to his very core. 

Kyungsoo clearly didn’t mind his assistance, bouncing back and forth between the local detectives in charge of the case and their temporary special consultant’s desk with barely contained energy. He was so similar to Jongdae’s younger brother, bright-eyed and bursting with the belief that justice would prevail in all things. Sometimes that undying optimism was inspiring. Most of the time, the dogged insistence that trash-like people were worth saving made Jongdae grind his teeth with frustration. His brother wasted his valuable time with the inmates at the prison, volunteering free legal advice from the classes he was taking and putting his treasured psychology degree to work with unofficial counseling sessions. He and Kyungsoo loved to natter on about the difference they were making in the world whenever they were together, and normally Jongdae weathered it all with the patience of an older brother.

Except Kyungsoo had treated that undeserving, unrepentant human pestilence like a friend. Jongdae had seen in his partner’s eyes that he was worried about the inmate when they left, even after he knew what he’d done to Jongdae’s family. There was no doubt in his mind that, on one of his many ‘research’ trips to the file room across the hall, he’d contacted the prison to leave his number. If the Virus called, Kyungsoo would answer and go running.

Jongdae rolled his chair across the narrow aisle to Kyungsoo’s desk. Electronic devices weren’t allowed in the interrogation room, so he always left his phone is his top drawer for safekeeping. Jongdae pulled it out and entered the code, his birthday backwards, like all of his passwords. He swiftly typed in the number that always popped up in his brother’s  caller id whenever the inmates were feeling bored and wanted to take advantage of his good nature. Just as he finished typing, the phone shivered in his hand, humming as that very number scrolled across the screen. With an immense sense of satisfaction, Jongdae thumbed the button to end the call. With a few more quick swipes, he erased all traces of the call and ensured that the number would never ring in that phone again, no matter how many times they called. Humming softly to himself, he gently placed Kyungsoo’s phone back in his desk and rolled back to his own station. Sometimes the young ones need to be protected from themselves.