⁞⁝⁞⁝⁞ 6 ⁞⁝⁞⁝⁞

 

Jongdae once told Kyungsoo—on the day he’d been evicted from the investigation, no less—that life was like a seesaw. Growth and good things, he’d said, were reached on the rebound of mistakes and hardship. It had been a puerile metaphor, one Kyungsoo hadn’t found any comfort within, and yet entirely adequate. What Jongdae had failed to mention however, was that the exact opposite was also likely. Nay, inevitable.

It was the overcast and yet blindingly bright morning on the day of May six that Kyungsoo decided he thought that the number three was most certainly not lucky. Neither when it was Jongdae crying nor when it was homicide. The third body had been found on Mr Kim Junmyeon’s property a few hours after dawn. In fact, the man himself had been the very one to find it.

This murder immediately identified itself as different than the others. Stabbings were brutal, of course. A gunshot to the chest was also a far cry from civil dispute. Even with all of that taken into consideration though, the final act of the trilogy was the most violent. The most macabre.

Rust and hay played master over the fresh morning air, no wind present to whisk away its title. The plains expanded around the scene and any other hint of live environment trembled by the trees and sheds on the horizon. Neither wanted anything to do with the situation, surely abhorred by its prospect, much alike to Junmyeon himself.

“Please, I dunno who else to call,” was all he’d said to the pair before scrambling a few yards away. That moment, dwarfed by the distance and in genuine despair, had been the only time he’d removed his hat within sight of Kyungsoo. Nothing concrete could be discerned however, seeing as Kyungsoo wasn’t scrutinizing him.

At the expense of oversimplifying things, his mind had been busy.

Details morphed and blurred the longer he stared at the corpse, as though repressing them in real time. Scratches of fine crimson bloated into rubies, larger gashes weeping and glittering in the morning glow. Straw, dirt and feathers stuck in, on and out of the body. It was maimed beyond recognition, and the only way it could be identified was by the clothes.

“Lord, have mercy.”

Jongin’s face was pressed against Kyungsoo’s shoulder, a hand covering his mouth as added precaution. The vice grip around Kyungsoo’s elbow restricted him from looking around further, but the distraction was welcomed. It acted like an anchor, keeping him from getting lost in the surrealism.

All he could think was that Minseok would have hated to see himself end up that way. His once pristine gloves now tattered across its leather, bleeding from its seams. His hair was clumped in areas, ripped off from others, with clothes in shreds. He was face down in the coop, and even the roosters didn’t care anymore.

“Go,” Kyungsoo commanded, rubbing his palm across his forehead. When nothing happened, he nudged at Jongin. “Jongdae should have arrived at Wattlesburg by now. Call him.”

Jongin left wordlessly, though the chill that seeped in through the void of his absence sent unsettling vibrations bounding across Kyungsoo’s skin. He rubbed a hand over his arms, and was set adrift.

Further blood flooded the straw and grass surrounding the body, inundating the soil in a sticky, red wax. A dam had broken somewhere, and Kyungsoo neared to find it. He didn’t bother closing the gate behind him as he approached—Junmyeon had already removed the livestock from the paddock and into the pens—nor did he wear gloves as he gripped the body's shoulder.

There were few sensations so haunting as the touch of cold, dead flesh. It sunk itself into Kyungsoo’s fingers as he levered upwards. The corpse lifted with reluctance at his persuasion, giving him only a coy glance at its stomach before his strength gave way. More dark wax strung from the abdomen to the ground in visceral sinews, a hole dark as sin at its center.

Minseok had been shot. Before, of course, he was covered in animal seed and left to be trampled.

It was barbaric overkill. An odd twist to the killer’s modus operandi. Kyungsoo wondered what had changed, from the fear shown for the Sheriff to the brutal disdain for the librarian.

Moreover, what connected them beyond that seemed impossible to infer. He had assumed the Sheriff was murdered due to his knowing of something the killer didn’t want known. From there, his identity had been found by Mr Zhang. That made sense. Where the hermitted, fantasy-driven boy came into it, he couldn’t decipher.

Unless of course, the assumed motive had been wrong all along.

Kyungsoo wiped his hand on the side of his pants as he rose from a crouch, kicking at the blades of hay that crunched under his leather shoes. A deep breath later, he circled the body, mapping out the splatter pattern. Further inspection murmured tales to him, unearthing the inconspicuous trail of blood that led away from the body. Minseok had been moved to the paddock after being shot, and Kyungsoo was all too keen to follow the hidden path and leave the potent odor of death and dirty animal behind him.  

It led him out the corral and further along the field until it ended in a modest puddle. Or rather, began there. Kyungsoo stood over it, feet either side of the crimson blot, and took in the last sight Minseok had seen.

Grassy plain, dull sky. Idyllic, really. For anyone who hadn’t been the city-obsessed son of a farmer, that was. The more Kyungsoo thought about it, the more his heart descended, until finally anchoring itself somewhere near his stomach.

The field’s boundary ended no more than twenty yards in front of him, Kim’s property giving way to the languid tar of the Vega Highway, the prairie picking up on the other side. A few feet to Kyungsoo’s right showed distressed ground. Closing in on it, he could clearly make out the two rows of upturned soil, strips where grass had been ripped up by tire treads.

A picture was starting to form, and as it did, Junmyeon came to stand next to him, body facing the prairie.

“It don’t make sense,” he said, voice both exasperated and hollow. It sounded like he was a degree removed, despite being right there. “I ain’t ever seen nothing like it. Not like my stock to do somethin' so wild.”

Of course, Kyungsoo wanted to say, they’d never been coerced to before. Instead, and in lieu of both mistimed explanations and brittle condolences, he managed a squeeze to Junmyeon’s shoulder. He joined him, looking out over the wildflowers that dotted the distance.

“How often do people pass along through here?”

“Ain’t much along the highway ‘cept for imports n’ exports.”

Junmyeon cursed under his breath a moment later, dipping his head down as he sniffed. The grass of the prairie bowed as one under the blanched sky, a single-toned whistle filtering through the stems. Kyungsoo leashed his gaze to it, flexing his hands by his side. He wished Jongin were there: he would’ve known what to say, how to turn rude pestering into caring inquiries.

“Any scheduled for this morning?”

A juicy “” fell from between the two hands Junmyeon had plastered to his face. They rubbed up and down harshly until all the skin underneath flushed raw. After they finished their duty and dropped to then brush along the side of his pants, Junmyeon took in a rocky lungful. “What you on about? No,” he said, annoyance mixing with his obvious distress.

Kyungsoo’s next thought scared him when it appeared unannounced, and continued to do so the more it settled in. There was at least one person he knew to have driven along the Vega Highway that morning. And as much as he wanted to laugh it off, he simply couldn’t find the humor. Especially when Jongin sprinted back from Junmyeon’s house, as distraught as he’d ever been.

“He’s got him!” he yelled across the field as he neared, panic projecting the exclamation through the respectful silence still domed over where Minseok lay. Every limb pierced the morning haze with each bound, his plain shirt and cotton pants whipping around taut muscle. “Jongdae never showed up! He’s supposed to have arrived hours ago!” He didn’t slow much as he approached, Jongin’s body barreling into Kyungsoo’s side and immediately clawing his fingers into his clothing and pinching his skin. “He’s missing! Kyungsoo, the killer’s gotta have him!”

It was then that Kyungsoo knew things weren’t going to end in any discreet way. He’d had his joy the evening prior, when he’d managed to keep Jongin’s company throughout the night, and now that fateful seesaw Jongdae had warned him about was providing a swift descent.

“Calm down,” he urged, “panicking won’t help us.”

Kyungsoo tried to eclipse Jongin’s clenched hands with his own, managing one swipe of a thumb across his knuckles before Jongin jolted away from the touch.

“Calm down?” He was aghast, recoiling further from Kyungsoo and piercing him with a disbelieving leer. “Jongdae’s”—a killer, Kyungsoo considered—"in trouble, I have to do something!”

Junmyeon didn’t yet know his son had been murdered as opposed to the unlucky recipient of a freak trampling, and Jongin didn’t know that all the evidence so far pointed to his brother being the killer. Jongdae, of all people. The news unsettled Kyungsoo, to the point he almost ditched the idea entirely.

And yet… killing the Sheriff had put Jongdae in charge of the police force, and could also explain why Yixing would have requested his company one-on-one. Still, it felt like something was wrong. Missing. Overlooked.

Before he noticed, Kyungsoo’s eyes had already squeezed shut. He covered them with a hand to further block out any distracting light.

“Let me think,” he said. Thoughts shot like canonfire, ricocheting off the walls of his skull and dizzying him. He just needed a little bit of time to sort through them all.

“All you ever do is think!”

Jongin's exclamation came as a faithless surprise. And yet, despite the lack of visual confirmation, Kyungsoo could all but picture his burning eyes and bloating veins. The tone was a of desperation as he continued.

“How am I supposed to sit around and wait for you to do somethin' when the last of my family's gone?"

Bright light faded into focus and there stood Jongin, just as upset as Kyungsoo imagined. It stung. Enough so that Kyungsoo was momentarily devoid of rebuttal.

Junmyeon spoke up from somewhere nearby, while Kyungsoo frowned at the grass below him.

“What’d ya have in mind, kid?”

Kyungsoo glanced up at that, watching the gradient of indignation on Jongin’s face turn to uncertainty.

“I—I dunno.” Then, Jongin had the nerve to look to Kyungsoo for an answer.

But in lieu of that answer, Kyungsoo just shot him with another question.

"Does Jongdae carry a gun?"

"No, not usually.” Honeyed hands pulled at sun-bleached hair. Jongin was frantic, rumbling like a rain cloud before lightning. “He’s got nothing to defend himself with."

"He’s perhaps not as defenseless as you may think." Kyungsoo began the journey back to the body, talking over Jongin who was still speaking, though at least following him. "Minseok was shot."

Junmyeon reacted instantaneously, puffing uninsightful disagreements along with hot air into the chilled morning that Kyungsoo promptly ignored.

“Look for yourself if you don’t believe me,” he invited.

Junmyeon did check when they reached the body, recoiling as soon as he saw the proof. The valleys of his frown matched the contours of confusion, more so than of sorrow.

“That—” he spluttered, “that can’t—”

Jongin wedged himself closer, cutting off Kyungsoo’s sight of the farmer. He reclaimed his position as all Kyungsoo could perceive with a fluidity that spoke of belonging, his words whispered in a quiet frenzy. “The killer was here, can’t have gone far to get Jongdae.”

Despite thinking his brother was in grave danger, Jongin’s hooded eyes still had that wide look in them that they always did—that look Kyungsoo attributed to something as innocent and simple as hope. It was soft, gentle, fragile. And while Kyungsoo usually latched onto such things, melting them down to then use as instruments for examination, this time the observation made him grimace.

How unfortunate, that for once he would receive no pleasure from stripping away someone’s delusion.

"The tire tracks." Kyungsoo could do little more than point back towards where they'd just come from. "They look the same as those from Jongdae's truck."

Jongin’s eyes blinked furiously and his gaze flitted. He shook his head. "What? What tire—"

"Jongin, listen to me," Kyungsoo implored. He didn't want this to take longer than it had to. Whoever the killer was, they were still very much at large. "Someone pulled off from the highway, shot Minseok, then tried to play it off as an accident. The tracks match Jongdae's truck, and no one else was supposed to drive past this morning."

Despite Kyungsoo’s certain tone, Jongin wasn't absorbing what he was saying. Instead, his head shook again and his frown grew.

"No. There's no way."

Junmyeon sat still a distance away, and Kyungsoo observed him as Jongin continued to defend Jongdae's character.

"—He's been shot himself just because he couldn't manage to shoot someone else. He doesn't have it in him—"

Junmyeon was immobile. No curses falling from his lips, no glare sharpening his expression. He was distant; a glossed stare hovering in the direction of his dead son. Kyungsoo could only wonder what was going through his mind. Perhaps he too could see the inconsistencies with the timeline, maybe he was also confused why Jongdae would choose to kill Minseok out of nowhere.

Then again, perhaps Junmyeon was just in shock, and Kyungsoo was the only one of the three of them that bothered to analyze it.

...Minseok was shot. No amount of animal seed or clawing was going to hide that from them for long. And one last glance along his remains had Kyungsoo locating the itch in his mind.

"The seams," he said.

Only the breeze replied to him, the air beginning to warm. The two words seemed enough to have Jongin's jaw momentarily snapped shut.

Kyungsoo was urgent, falling into a kneel over the body. The spongy hay beneath his knees squelched, staining his pants redl. The stench of raw meat warned him back, though he ignored it with a curled lip.

The leather of Minseok's gloves were as good as glued to him as Kyungsoo attempted to peel them off. His hands kept slipping, blood and something like condensation slicking the surfaces.

Junmyeon was saying something, and Jongin's fist was at the back of Kyungsoo's shirt. He was trying to pry him backwards.

"He was maimed by claws and beaks," Kyungsoo urged. He just couldn't get the fabric over the palms, and his fingers we