"What're you thinking?"

She raised her head to find Sanghyuk leaning against the doorframe. "Hm?"

"You were staring off into space," he said, pushing away and going towards where she sat on the bed. "You usually do that when you're thinking about something."

She didn't even try to refute that claim. "I was thinking about the case," she said.

"What about it?" he asked, sitting at the foot of the bed.

"About what Yoobin said." She removed the pencil that she was chewing from and let it fall onto the bed from her fingers, watching as it rolled on the uneven mounds made by the covers. "She seemed uneasy about Taekwoon, yet even she didn't feel like he could be a murderer. And still, she seemed ready to accept the fact that he killed Jaehwan so easily."

Sanghyuk cocked an eyebrow. "And your point is...?"

"Why?" Yoohyeon prompted. "For someone who seemed to know that he wasn't a killer, why was she so ready to accept that he was? She didn't even question it, if you noticed."

"Giving her the benefit of the doubt, it could be that she had a love-hate relationship with that case, well, bordering more on hate," Sanghyuk suggested.

"And why do you say that?" she asked.

"She wasn't crazy about Taekwoon to begin with, but she loved her brother more than anything," Sanghyuk noticed. "When he died, Hongbin became obsessed, separated himself from the family, kept trying to prove his innocence. It makes sense that she'd see the case as causing the death of her brother, taking her away from him."

"You seem certain," Yoohyeon said.

"If I were her, I'd hate Taekwoon too," Sanghyuk replied.

Yoohyeon pursed her lips as what he said made sense to her. She released a deep, frustrated breath, pushing away the notes in front of her.

"You seem stressed," the young male commented.

She hummed. "I keep feeling like I'm missing something, like the answer's right in front of me, but I'm blind and I can't see it," she admitted, gesturing in front of her. "It's like, it's right here, but it's invisible." She then paused and considered her word choice.

"Well, maybe perhaps it's in your blind spot."

She looked up at his strange suggestion. "What on earth are you talking about?"

"It's like a horse," he said, sitting upright and facing her. "A horse has two types of vision, right? Complete side vision, and binocular vision in front of them. But, those two fields of vision overlap, and horses have a two meter blind spot right in front of them."

"Right..."

"If you cover the sides of their eyes so they can only see in front, they literally can't see anything or anybody for two whole meters."

She considered it. "So what do you mean?"

He leaned in closer to speak in a lower voice. "What if we've got blinders on?" he slowly offered. "What if, we've covered the sides of our eyes, and we can see far ahead, but we have a blindspot in front of us?"

"You think the evidence is right in front of us but we can't see it?" Now that she thought about it, it did make sense.

He nodded triumphantly. "So what's our plan of action now?" she asked.

"We try to remove the blinders," he said, leaning back with a smile on his face.

She chuckled. "Why are you so happy?" she asked.

He moved his shoulder a bit. "I feel accomplished," he said. "I feel like I'm in a detective drama."

She scoffed lightly. "Yeah, a detective drama might be better than this," she said. "But then again, a detective drama doesn't usually involve ghosts."

"You could write one," he said.

"I'm a criminologist, not a screenwriter," she chortled, pushing his shoulder.

"Then ask Yoobin to write it for you."

"You go do it."

"I would, if she could see me."

"Ah, that's there too."

She laughed for once, the weight of the case being lifted from her shoulders. Sanghyuk joined her with a chortle., and she marveled at actually how cute he looked when he laughed.

"I need to ask," he said. "Why didn't you go to the dungeon?"

She hummed in question. "You could have gone right after you met Lee Yoobin," he pointed out. "Why didn't you?"

She sighed, leaning back against the pillow. "We found nothing much there," she said. "I wanted to go there when we have something more concrete."

He moved to the other side of the bed, leaning back against the second pillow and staring up at the ceiling, quite similarly to her. "Why?" he asked.

"Those four depend on me," she replied, watching as the evening sun rays peeked through her curtains, drawing vertical stripes on the ceiling. "They trust me to help them set Taekwoon free, even more so after that first shackle broke."

She turned her head to him. "I don't want to let them down, not when they look like they finally have some hope after decades of being trapped." 

A lips drew back into a smile, not a smirk or a playful one, a genuine smile. "You've got a good heart," he said. 

She didn't say anything, opting to close her eyes instead, hoping to calm the flurry of thoughts running through her head, hoping to get a bit of clarity. 

"So what do we do now?" his calm and deep voice broke the silence.

She released a small stream of air from between her lips. "What else can we do? We investigate every student we think might be a lead. Hopefully, even if we don't find the perpetrator himself, he may at least lead us to the one that did it."

He turned to her. "You think so?"

"I sincerely hope so."

He watched her for a few moments, noticing how the smile fell off her face and her eyebrows frowned in deep thought. He then reached his hand out, laying it on hers which sat on her stomach.

She didn't pull back, or even offer much of a response apart from looking down at it for a moment before turning her eyes back to the ceiling. His gaze softened and he slowly began running his thumb across her soft skin reassuringly, and he could feel the tension flowing out of her.

"You'll get through this," he murmured.

"Hm?" she asked.

"If anyone can do this, you can."

She her side away from him and he let his hand slide off. Not saying anything, he got off the bed, but she didn't feel the weight shift. Well, there never was any in the first place.

"I need to," she said.

He turned to her, silently waiting for her to continue.

"I-I don't want to think about what will happen if I can't solve this case," she said. "For my own sake, I need to free you guys, else I'm pretty sure you're gonna be haunting me forever."