⁞⁝⁞⁝⁞ 4 ⁞⁝⁞⁝⁞

 

Pride breeds pride. It was a three-worded citation that had been ringing around Kyungsoo’s head since he’d first concocted it two days earlier. At the epicenter of his and Jongin’s orbiting mindsets—where Kyungsoo’s thoughts now spun and festered—he’d come to a stalemate in his internal debate. Both sides of the chessboard homed himself, even though one wore the face of a victim’s son.

To get inside the mind of a killer was to empathize with him, and it seemed Jongin now lived somewhere too deep in the sinkhole of understanding to make his way out again. That was precisely why Kyungsoo would be the one able to give the innocent an answer: dull faces and dulled fingertips didn’t pull at heartstrings.

Liquid chilled Kyungsoo’s ankle, a call to lucidity, running down his leg and wetting his sock. The puddles and wells that littered the ground proved why precipitation was best left outside the town’s confines, and even the foggy veil of the morning sun breathed frost past his clothes and flesh.

The night prior had been the first time Kyungsoo had beheld any rain in Greyvil. In all honesty, he was of the impression God had cursed the land to an eternity of drought as penance for the sins of the locals. As it happened though, he had been awoken past midnight by the bulleting downpour. It held no finesse, no beauty to its movement. Fluid ammunition jetted straight downward, meeting the corrugated metal roof with a cacophonous banging that had Kyungsoo bolting upright at its first drops. He had gotten no rest nor reprieve from its ruckus until day break.

At the first sight of sun, the clouds had scattered themselves scarce, leaving the entire landscape to begin drying. The evaporation had steam rising from asphalt, and wooden boards shrinking back to size. The grass over the prairie glittered with liquid gold at its tips, the twinkling of light just the call of a siren, hoping to see children bound into its domain to receive nothing more than squelching shoes and soiled trouser legs.

Kyungsoo didn't relent to the call, instead suffering similarly by the path’s edge. The sand on his soles clumped together and weighed him further down with each step. The rain was thankfully gone, but the fine smog had his eyes narrowing.

It was an impressively horrid morning, and for the first time, he felt relief unbind him from the sandy mud as he made it to the chipseal of the main street. The grainy crunch underfoot continued to stalk him, but the sight of the redbrick pub wasn’t much beyond that.

It was still unsociably early, and on a Sunday morning at that. The pub was well-settled in being closed to patrons, but despite this fact, he found himself inside minutes later. Byun Baekhyun had been cleaning the furnishings, and though he’d bolted behind the bar at first sign of Kyungsoo, he also seemed to know that the knocking wouldn’t relent until he did.

“Here for a drink?” Baekhyun said, closing the door behind Kyungsoo. He bit his lip as though to hide a laugh, but his chuckles were perfectly audible. “Sure looks like you could use one, but sadly no can do.”

Kyungsoo surveyed the establishment, finding the lack of patrons did nothing to decrease its grubbiness and overall facade of sordid content. Neither Chanyeol nor anyone else was settled behind the bar: the two were alone.

“I…” Kyungsoo paused. His hesitation was a stranger that blew air over the back of his neck, making him reach back to rub down the blossoming goosebumps. His eyes trailed Baekhyun as the waiter returned to mopping the floor.

Pride seemed to be at the crux of the murders, and so Kyungsoo took a gamble on the resolution being born from the opposite side of the spectrum.

“I’m giving you a chance to explain yourself. The Sheriff’s office: who was behind its mess?”

“How would I know?”

Kyungsoo had always preferred to live his life without the uncomfortable crawl along his skin that accompanied asking a question. There was a certain transparency about it; a racket of weakness that lobbed the ball of inquiry into the other person’s court. Though he couldn’t argue he didn’t enjoy winning, he definitely didn’t appreciate sport, and Baekhyun was beginning to make him regret taking the chance.

“Because you were there.” The comment ended in a jagged cliff when Baekhyun whipped his head up from watching the floor. Kyungsoo his lips, trying again. “I mean,” he said, “I think you were there.”

“You think?” Knuckles blanched around the timber rod in Baekhyun’s grip, grounding the cotton mop head further into the grotty floorboards below. His more placid expression turned sharp with how narrow his eyes had become. “Get outta my establishment now, you sadiddy prick.”

The ovens in the back of the building must have been burning: even the patron’s area was encroached by humid warmth. The windows were haloed by condensation and Kyungsoo repressed a shiver as his body thawed out.

“I know about the affair,” he announced.

The part of his gut in charge of instincts and hunches lurched at having placed Kyungsoo’s cards face-up on the table. The other part, slightly higher, where Kyungsoo figured the human soul would be located should such a concept be humored, seemed satisfied. It was as though this small, neglected area of himself considered this secret not his own, and it praised him for releasing it back to its borrowed lender.

“That, in light of the suspicious factors surrounding Park Chanyeol and Kim Junmyeon, and in addition to the fact you lied about where you’d been on the night of Mr Zhang’s death, leads me to believe you sneaked into the office and framed both other men.”

“How—” Baekhyun was immediately whirled into a frenzy. He dropped the mop to lean rigidly against the bar with a staccato smack, striding towards Kyungsoo like a tsunami to the shore. “How dare you come in ‘ere and say that to me.”

“I’m not the only one who knows,” Kyungsoo rushed, ing the words forward like the abstract notion could protect him in place of a physical shield. He had to calm himself as Baekhyun stopped before him, propelling his face forward and uncomfortably close to Kyungsoo’s own. "I'm only helping you help yourself."

"You, yeah right." Baekhyun barked a cheap laugh. “You’re makin’ stuff up to feed your own narrative.”

Kyungsoo didn’t exactly have a rebuttal to that claim, but he knew it was those with a weak case that made the most clamor. He took a deep breath. He was not there to intimidate.

“You said you’d gone straight from the pub to Mr Zhang’s residence, but approached from the opposite direction. Your shoes, too, left footprints of soil that night,” he said. The man opposite him looked to the side, and swallowed twice in succession. Color leaked from beneath his collar; it wasn’t an affected pink, but a tempestuous red that gave him away. “All you have to do is say why.”

“Fine,” Baekhyun hissed. He glanced at the front door then the entranceway to the back, all the while grinding his teeth. “I may’ve taken some soil from Junmyeon’s that night, puttin' it in the Sheriff’s office when I took certain documentation. But I never killed no one!” Despite his accentuation, he still kept his words hushed. “And I certainly didn’t plant that knife at Chanyeol’s place; mean to make him look bad, neither. We were together the night the Sheriff died, anyway.”

The hole where Kim Junmyeon's name was supposed to fit was left hollow, and that silence told Kyungsoo more than his words did.

“You still deliberately planted evidence with the intention to frame Junmyeon for the breaking and entering at the police station.”

“Course!” Baekhyun grimaced as he flicked his wrist with a spell of dismissal. He returned to his mop by the bar and continued his previous task as though having not just confessed to a crime. “And between you and me, there was some pretty fishy stuff in his file. All gone now, obviously, along with the bits of Chanyeol’s and mine that referred to you-know-what.”

The waterlogged fibers of the mop squelched as they mashed along the floorboards, what was once a pristine white now a dull beige. The smell of beer seemed seeped into the very furnishings, and the constant bombardment to his senses had Kyungsoo wishing to return to the clammy outdoors.

“Still doesn’t explain why though,” he said.

“Why? Chanyeol’s married.” Baekhyun looked at Kyungsoo with more repugnance than he did the furry white stain crusted to the floor. “The Sheriff came by on one of his early morning stints n’ caught us. He may’ve been able to keep a secret but I doubt Jongdae can.”

Criminal intent fueled by the desire to protect another. The sentiment, no matter how irrational, seemed entirely plausible. Still, Kyungsoo was not all himself in response. Unbalanced, in a way. He’d asked a question, and he’d received an answer. The duality struck him; both simplicity and emotional complexity interwoven into an outcome. There was something to be said about it, but he couldn’t find the words.

In the end, not much had changed, only the journey there.

“Say, before you’re off,” Baekhyun called out to Kyungsoo as the latter navigated his way back to the hollow chill, plucking him taut. “How in sweet Jesus’ name did you find out about Chanyeol n’ I?”

Only the creaking of the front door slamming shut responded to his inquiry, seeing as Baekhyun couldn’t see Kyungsoo’s reluctant smile as he again set off through dense fog and steeped dirt.

 

⁞⁝⁞⁝⁞

 

The beige of the plaster walls and the scuffs on the floorboards had Kyungsoo’s eyes yet again settling over Jongin’s hands as they worked. Tan fingers pinched and pried at the sinews of straw as they wove pieces together with jolting movements, tendons bouncing like the chords of a grand piano as he worked. Despite the amount of time he’d spent outdoors, Jongin’s hands weren’t particularly rough. Kyungsoo knew his right palm held a blister and the skin next to his left thumbnail was still dotted red from where he’d jammed a piece of straw into it end-on, but they didn’t imply a life of hard labor. Perhaps it wasn’t the physicality of the appendages, but rather the purpose of their gestures, that gave the myth of clemency. There was something graceful and renewed