Kang Areum heaved into the paper bag.

She knelt on the glittery black floor and rested her cheek against her knee — her matted dark hair bunched in her fist at the nape of her neck — waiting to see if she was going to actually throw up last nights takeaway. While her stomach thought about it, Areum stared dully at the words scribbled on the compartment.

Love is murder of the soul.

Of course. How delightfully befitting.

Being a TV crime reporter was thrilling, but the sight of blood made Areum sick. After three years of gory murder scenes she’d had plenty of opportunities to perfect her emetic technique.

Today’s was plain chaotic.

She hadn’t been able to see a thing from the busy streets of Haeundae because of the one-way glass, so after doing her piece to the camera she had sneaked in through a side door manned by a newbie policeman, who had been no match for her combination of threats and wheedling — a technique her cameraman, Kim Jungkook, called “threedling.”

The policeman had let her in, and Areum almost wished he hadn’t. The body had been removed, but the blood alone was enough to feel as though someone had body slammed her to the ground.

Before her stomach had twisted over on itself, Areum had registered the sheer shocking quantity of it. Splatters up the glass walls, and a wide, calm, maroon lake, as if someone had gripped the young woman in giant hands and squeezed her like toothpaste until she was empty. And from one edge, a trail of red footprints, where the killer had climbed out of the lake to dry marble land and walked out the front door.

Areum dry-heaved into the bag again at the memory and then laid her forehead on her knee again, gasping and trying to think about sunshine and ponies. That wasn’t easy when she worked on what everybody but Human Resources called “the red black”. An endless show of red stains and black bags.

She was twenty-four years old, but on days like this she felt forty. Already she had an ulcer that flared at moments of tension. Probably an ulcer. She hoped it was an ulcer, because she didn’t have the time to let a doctor find out for sure.

“You okay?”

A man’s voice outside the door.

Areum lifted her head long enough and high enough to give her the strength to sound pissed off.

“Do I sound okay?”

She laid her face down again and felt the cold sweat drying on the back of her neck.

Kim ing Taehyung.

She hated people knowing that she was squeamish. You had to be tough in this business. If you weren’t tough you were locked off and brought down like a wounded wildebeest. Especially if you were a wounded female wildebeest

Areum her dry lips and grimaced at the floor. Her stomach had apparently decided to call it quits, so she clambered slowly to her feet to straighten her blouse, then opened the cubicle door.

Kim Taehyung from News 24/7 was checking his eyebrows in a mirror ringed by bright, showbiz worthy light bulbs.

Areum rinsed to rid of the dryness and washed her face, then pulled a paper towel from the dispenser.

“Sick, isn’t it?” Taehyung asked, eyes still focused on his thick brows.

Areum gave her reflection a cursory glance before giving him a sharp glare at the demeaning comment. “I’m not an ‘it’, so I’d rather be called by my name, thank you.”

He grinned slyly and jerked his thumb at the door. “I’m not talking about you. I mean, whoever did that to the poor woman. S