CHAPTER TEN

questions

He’s angry.

Those were the only two words Rei had to say of the ordeal she, Kyungsoo and Sehun had eavesdropped on last night. ‘Of course he’s angry,’ Sehun had said. ‘What if he gets framed for his sister’s murder?’

Rei had shook her head, a sad look about her eyes. ‘He’s not angry at her,’ her stare was empty, devoid of anything else but grief. ‘He’s angry for her,’ she said. It was now Rei understood. He had not wanted to move on at all. He had not wanted to forget. He did not feel angry towards his sister. He wanted to hunt down whoever did this to her.

But for her sake, Jongin let his sister go.

To do that, he had to give up asking the moment he found out she had passed. It was hard. He felt angry all the time. He could not wipe the images from his head, but he forced himself. He was not the one who was dead. She was. And he knew well what her wishes were. The least he could do was fulfil that for her as a last deed.

Rei walked grimly alone back to her dorm room and immediately collapsed onto her own bed face down. She slept for a good hour or so, untucked until Soojung finally returned to the room, waking up the girl accidentally just by opening the door. Rei was drowsy for several seconds, then lifted her head. ‘How’s Jongin?’ she managed to make out with her dry voice.

Soojung shook her head. Jongin was not okay.

Rei sat up, letting Soojung sit down beside her. Her shoulders were sagged and she had bags under her delicate eyes.

Jongin took a short bath, and looked ready to end the day and just sleep after all the hassle he had to go through. When he walked out of the bathroom, he was surprised to find Soojung still in his room. ‘You’re still here,’ he merely said and went on to change into a fresh pair of clothes.

‘Jongin?’ she called, not looking at him.

‘What?’ his intonation was cold and unwelcoming, but Soojung was the least offended.

‘I’m here,’ she turned her gaze to him.

‘So?’ he seemed unaffected, almost as if he did not understand her intentions.

‘I am here. You’re not alone, Jongin.’ She stood up. ‘And I mean it,’ he could hear the difficulty in her voice. ‘You’re not going through this alone,’ her voice was choked with tears. ‘I can feel you,’ she walked up to him, trying to get him to look in her eyes. Jongin did not say a word, and tried to avoid her eyes, but he could not help it.

He stifled a sob, then sunk his head in the crook of Soojung’s neck before she wrapped her arms around his body. His hands began to tremble and his sobs loudened. Soojung could feel his legs weaken but she held him tight and kept him stable. She bit into her lips, feeling her own tears welling up in her eyes.

Jongin tried to talk but his throat was filled to the brim with tears and Soojung shushed him. ‘I don’t know what to do,’ he kept mumbling. ‘I don’t know what to do,’

Soojung tried her best to not let him hear her cry, for she was shaking with the fear Jongin was emitting from his insides. He was like a child, and outgrown boy, and Soojung was lost. She did not know how to help him. He could be facing charges for his own sister’s murder. He could not lie to himself that those policemen who questioned him, did scare him.

All he wanted to do was to do the right thing, though he had no other way to redeem himself with his sister. He failed to protect her.

Jongin cried for quite a while, cradled in Soojung’s arms. The emotions had been welling in the inside of him for weeks. He had suppressed them far too much. Soojung sat him down after he calmed down and drank some water. His eyes with still rather swollen from crying and he looked lost still. ‘What did they ask you?’

Jongin opened up.

Ms Yoon was there to accompany him as his guardian still. He was brought to a small police station, where he sat in a small interrogation room. It looked ordinary, unlike the ones they showed in movies. But Jongin did feel as if he was confined. There was one police officer in there with him, who kept shooting him prejudiced glances as he flicked through Jongin’s profile.

The door then opened, and a middle-aged man in a suit entered. By the way the first one had a look of wariness about him made Jongin assume that he was of superior position. He waved his hands as a gesture of dismissing the other policeman, and the other obliged, hurrying out of the room quickly.

‘Kim Jongin?’ he had dark brown facial hair and looked to be in his 40s. ‘So you are the brother to the girl who supposedly committed suicide?’

Jongin nodded, shifting uneasily in his seat. ‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ he sat down. ‘But it appears that she was killed. We are in the middle of questioning other people as well, but we need all the information we can get to solve this case, do you understand?’

Jongin fiddled with his hands. ‘Where were you on the 7^th at around 12-2am?’ he began.

‘Work,’ Jongin hesitated.

‘Where?’

Jongin took a moment. He prayed at that moment that Ms Yoon was not there. She was the last person he would want to find out of his side job.

‘Don’t worry, your caretaker is not outside this room.’ He said without controlling the volume of his voice. Jongin inhaled.

‘I move about,’ he replied.

‘As?’ his eyes were droopy, but did not look exhausted. He had the gaze of an experienced man, neither warm nor cold. But Jongin knew one careless mistake could be sniffed out as easily like a dog, and that scared him.

Yet, he knew he had to be firm. Even if this was procedural, the man was assessing every move of Jongin’s. He still had to make sure he had no reason to suspect him. Jongin gathered up his courage to look him in the eye. ‘e,’ he said bluntly, hiding away his slight shame. ‘Don’t tell her please,’ his eye changed into a pleading expression, and the man in the suit cleared his throat.

‘I won’t,’ he assured him. ‘And this client of yours? A name?’

Jongin hesitated. ‘May I-‘ he gestured his wish to write rather than verbally express. The man slide a piece of paper to him and a pen, and he wrote a complete name. The man read it and looked at Jongin with a strange look. Jongin tried to ignore it, knowing he only looked that way because it was a man’s name.

He then put it aside. ‘Your sister,’ he started. ‘How was your relationship with her?’

‘Distant,’ Jongin described simply.

‘Your parents, died in a car crash when you were five?’

‘That’s what they all tell me,’ he shrugged. The man nodded, reading through Jongin’s profile again. He expected to see the slightest remorse in Jongin’s eyes, but there were none. He felt rather surprised, almost scared.

‘And you’ve been living with that lady ever since?’

Jongin nodded.

‘You’re a smart boy,’ he nodded towards the badge on Jongin’s blazer, and Jongin touched it slightly insecurely. Jongin swallowed hard. ‘Why are you doing such…work?’ he questioned, his striking blue eyes focusing on Jongin.

‘Money,’ Jongin said almost a little too purely.

‘You need money,’ he tried to imply something. Greed; the purest motif for crime.

‘It’s fast cash,’

The man studied Jongin. He was conflicted between feeling sorry or suspicious. But there were so many like him. Youths who struggled to live properly because of things like tuition fees and rent. It was the sad reality, but he could not be swayed by it. A crime was still a crime.

‘Killing your sister and claiming her insurance is fast cash,’

Jongin stopped for a moment, then helped a smile. ‘If I wanted to do that I would have done a better job,’ he assured the detective. ‘Maybe stage an accident, not make her look like she killed herself. Besides, even if I pulled it off and made you believe she hanged herself, I can’t claim the money can I?’

The man gave Jongin a wary look. ‘Well, then did you fail?’

Jongin’s smile vanished. ‘As a brother? Yes,’ he answered. ‘I failed,’ he clasped his lips, then smiled again at the detective. ‘But I’m not going to deny that she brought this on herself.’

‘Why do you say that?’

Jongin sighed, looking away before looking back. ‘She doesn’t know how to take care of herself,’

The detective waited.

‘Jongyeon’s always getting into the wrong group of friends, going out with the wrong guys.’

‘The wrong guys?’ the man tried to hint at something.

‘She used to date this one guy who were always fighting or something,’ Jongin shrugged. ‘I don’t know who he is,’

‘But she was working that night, wasn’t she?’

‘Her shift ends at 11,’ he told him.

‘What time were you at ‘work’?’

’12-3? As soon as I got the call from the hospital I ran,’

‘An hour. Gives you enough time to head out of school, see your sister, and still be on time to meet your client, and that is, if¸ you were with your client in those three hours.’ He provoked Jongin. ‘Or perhaps you met her, killed her, and waited for someone to find her and rush her to the hospital then pretend like you came running when you heard the news.’

Jongin had nothing else to say. Even though the man had no further proof, he was still afraid. If he got convicted, this would not be the first time legal misconduct occurred. It scared him to think the possibility of him being charged guilty and being punished for something he did not do was always there.

‘I didn’t do it,’ he shook his head, having enough of this fight for himself.

‘We’ll see about that,’ the man pushed his chair back and stood up, taking all the papers with him before he walked to the door. ‘You should get back to school,’ he opened the door, and Jongin obligingly exited.                                                                                           

He did not dare look in Ms Yoon’s eyes, who waited loyally in the lounging room. She hurriedly stood up seeing the boy heading out. ‘Jongin?’ she called out towards him, but he walked on as if he had not heard. She turned then to the detective, who did not seem as if he wanted to entertain her either. ‘Tell me he is innocent, please.’ She pleaded.

‘We’ll keep in touch,’ he said, and Ms Yoon went after Jongin.

‘Jongin!’ she found him standing outside the building idly, hand inside the pockets of his school pants. ‘Are you alright?’

Jongin did not answer, and showed no convincing expression either.

‘Should we get you home?’ she offered. Jongin smiled, and shook his head.

‘I’ll go back to school,’

‘I’ll send you,’ she was about to put a hand behind his back.

‘It’s okay,’ he refused. Ms Yoon looked at him. ‘I..I think I need to take a walk,’ he said. Ms Yoon looked at him sadly, then pulled him into an embrace.

‘Alright then.’ She said. ‘Don’t be out too late.’ She was reluctant to let him go on his own; she had lost a child under her care just weeks ago. She did not want to lose Jongyeon’s brother too. And at a critical time like this, she would rather not take the risk, but she had to trust Jongin. ‘It’ll be fine,’ she whispered to him before tiptoeing to give him a kiss on his cheeks. She patted his shoulders twice before walking to her car.

Jongin watched her drive off before taking slow steps down the streets. Nobody gave a second glance to this grimly-looking high school student who seemed as if he was still experiencing the storms of hormonal changes during the peak of adolescence. By the time he reached a park it was already 4 in the evening.

Jongin sat quietly, like a sad statue on a bench, watching kids run around the large patch of green that stretched across acres, their laughs floating in the clear air. He wondered when was the last time he ever played with Jongyeon like that.

His earliest memories he could recover revolved around moving from one place to another, looking for relatives who would take care of them. They had nobody here; everyone else was either dead or could not take care of them. At last they were sent to stay with Ms Yoon, whose orphanage home was still relatively small then.

He only remembered there being three other kids; two boys and one girl.

It was a small group, but it was enough. The company was enough. The attention was enough. Jongin remembered constantly taking his sister to the library and they would sit and read in silence. His sister always grew bored too easily, but would keep on reading next to her quiet brother. She was the first to talk to the other kids in the orphanage.

‘Do you think anyone would adopt us, Jongin?’ he remembered her asking once.

‘I wouldn’t hope on it,’ his thirteen-year old self had said bluntly. ‘None of Mum and Dad’s family want us, why should anyone else?’

‘So what do we do?’ she asked.

‘We survive ourselves,’ he had looked into his sister’s eyes. ‘We get our own money, we go to school, get good grades and get a good job. Be rich,’

‘What if we feel alone?’

Jongin shrugged. ‘But we’ll be stuck together for a long time,’

‘Bet you hate that,’ Jongyeon had smiled cheekily. Jongin smiled to himself, imagining what life would be like when they were older. He imagined a studio apartment; just the two of them living distant with each other under the same roof. Maybe they were destined to be with one another forever. Maybe it was not going to be that bad.

‘Not that much,’ he said.