The bright side was the next person wasn’t wearing a dress. Instead, he was wearing a very shiny blue shirt and black pants.

The down side was he still referred to himself as ‘Mrs’.

“So, Tao- may I call you Tao? Just Tao?”

The man across from him wiped his eyes and nodded.

That was another down side; he was already crying.

Baekhyun decided to ignore that for now. “Ok, good. So, Tao, what can you tell me about last night? Starting with the dinner, maybe?”

“The dinner was very nice.” Tao said in a shaky voice.

“Did you notice anything out of the ordinary during the dinner?”

Tao thought a moment and shook his head. “Everyone was getting along. I... I don’t understand why this happened. Why Kai was... why he was...”

Oh my god. Just get over it and answer my questions clearly.

Baekhyun offered him a box of tissues. Tao took one and blew his nose.

“So there didn’t seem to be any animosity during the dinner? No one was quiet, or looked unhappy or seemed- say- jealous?”

Tao shook his head and took another tissue.

“What about Mr. Oh Sehun?” Baekhyun asked, “How did he and Kai get along?”

Tao’s eyes widened, “Sehun? You don’t think Sehun could have done this!”

Well duh.

“I just need to know everything I can about the circumstances prior to Prince Kai’s death; that includes his relationships with everyone.”

“Oh...” Tao sniffled. “In that case... I... I didn’t really notice anything between him and Sehun. They didn’t seem to dislike each other, they just never seemed to spend time together. They were both with Luhan a lot, though, but never at the same time.”

“Really.” That sounds promising. “How about after the dinner? What did you do then?”

“Kris and I went to The Billiard Room for a game of pool.”

So the colonel wasn’t lying about that, or they made sure their stories were matching...

Baekhyun got his pen ready, “Can you tell me about that in detail?”

“There’s not much to tell...”



“Are you sure you’ve played pool before, Tao?”

Tao tried to ignore Kris and line up his next shot.

“Do you want a tutorial before we continue the match?”

Tao missed.

“Kris, that’s not fair! You distracted me!”

Kris shrugged. “You would have missed anyway.”

“No I wouldn’t have! Let me redo it!”

“You’d still miss.” Kris gestured for Tao to get out of the way, then took aim with his cue. 

“Watch. This is how it’s done.”

Kris smirked as he took aim.

He missed.

“See!” Tao exclaimed, “You can’t play either! I wasn’t even distracting you and you still missed!”

Kris waved him off. “It’s all part of my strategy. You’ll see.” Tao probably would have believed him too, if Kris hadn’t added a fake laugh.

That was when Xiumin showed up. He gave the pool game a very brief, very judging look, then told Kris he had a delivery for The Library. Kris left immediately after, promising to be back soon to win the game.



“He didn’t.” Tao said.

“He didn’t what?”

Tao looked very smug. “Win the game.”

Baekhyun wrote that down.

“So after you and the colonel finished playing pool...?”

"I went to bed.”

Who didn’t?

“Thank you.” Baekhyun said, “That should be all for now.”

Tao didn’t get up. Instead he looked at Baekhyun hesitantly. “There’s... there’s something I want to say.”

“Go ahead.”

“I... I don’t think any of us did it. Everyone really was getting along. Even the staff were really nice to us. I don’t think anyone here had it in them to kill. It must have been an outsider. Or maybe an accident. It could have been an accident.”

An accident? Multiple scratches, bruises, burns, a wound to the stomach and possible internal damage. An accident. Right.

Tao looked hopeful, “It really could have been an accident, couldn’t it?”

“I won’t rule it out.” Baekhyun said as he mentally ruled it the out.