A few days had passed since the incident on the countryside and although we didn´t have scheduled any visitors, I still had a work to do. Today I was supposed to put down the huge photo of Donghae in dress. Even though my boss is about the same height as me, my arms are longer and so he couldn´t take it down by himself. This added to my amusement. I was just about to climb on a stool and bring the picture down, when I heard urgent knocking on the door of my office. I jumped down from the chair and ran to open the door, ignoring Donghae´s protests.

“Good morning, is this the agency of detective Lee Donghae?” The visitor asked the first thing when I opened for him.

“Yes, I´ll show you to his office.” Before I finished the sentence, the young lady was already knocking on my boss´ doors.

I didn´t manage to stop the small lady from turning the handle abruptly and so she entered the room to see detective Lee Donghae balance on the chair, trying to touch a huge picture of himself in dress and make-up. The detective got startled and almost fell down from the chair. I had to hold back my laugh especially after the lady introduced herself.

“My name is Kim Taeyeon and I work as a curator for a private gallery,” then she glanced at the picture. Donghae reddened with shame and I chuckled. Then my boss finally got to take the situation into his hands again.

“Good morning, I´m detective Lee Donghae and the prankster who put on this terrible photo is my assistant Lee Hyukjae.” The curator turned then to me and I gave her an awkward smile. But instead of being stern and prude, the woman seemed to be amused by the whole situation and sat down on the leather armchair with a playful smile on her lips.

“Don´t be embarrassed, Mr. Lee. The dress fits you perfectly!” She giggled.

“Ehm, so how can I help you?” Donghae hurried to change the topic and in the meantime climbed down and sat on his chair. I took my place in the corner and opened my laptop.

“As I said, I work in a private gallery. All of the art pieces were donated by the wealthiest people in the country, including some of your family treasures, Mr. Lee,” Donghae nodded as if to say, that he knew about it, “But an unfortunate events have started taking place since four days ago.” Kim Taeyeon bit her lip in nervousness. “Someone had stolen already three art pieces, one every day!” She was becoming upset. “I´ve strengthened the security but to no help and I don´t know, where to find the lost paintings! I can´t go to police because I´m too scared of the owners´ reaction on the lost wealth of theirs,” she then sighed.

“Please calm down, I´m sure everything will end up well. Right, Hyukjae?”

“Of course! Donghae´s the best!” The detective glanced at me. Did I went overboard with my reaction again?

“Would you mind showing us the gallery? I´m free right after Hyukjae takes down that horrible photo,” Donghae said it in his sweet voice but I still shivered. He´s angry at me.

As ordered I climbed up on Donghae´s table and pulled down the photo. I intended to ran out of the office with it and hide it somewhere. It may be of some use later, hehe. But my boss was of course cleverer and confiscated the masterpiece. Kim Taeyeon only watched the scene amused.

In the afternoon we visited the art gallery. It was a small but modern building in the middle of the city. I remember passing by it many times and wondering about the purpose of such a strange house. The building was made almost only from glass. The main skeleton was from steel painted in red and black and the house had a roof from a white, to me mysterious, material. The whole thing was shaped as a traditional house with trees and flowerbeds all over around. The contemporary feeling of the building was equilibrated with the ancient and it was a nice change compared to the last week.

We entered the gallery and I sighed in awe. There were many rooms in the same style as could be seen from the outside but filled with various paintings, photographs and sculptures. They were divided according to their age and worth into two floors and six rooms. According to Mrs. Kim there was a cellar underneath with safe and a laboratory where the damaged pieces were being repaired. I couldn´t help myself but stare at the beauty all around. Even the smell was nice!

“Hyukjae, close your mouth and stop drooling everywhere. Someone could slip because of you,” Donghae stopped my sightseeing with his rude comment. I know you are laughing, bastard! I closed my mouth and wiped my lips with the sleeve nevertheless.

“So this is the place where one of the stolen paintings was hanged,” Donghae pointed to a white wall. Only a lonely metal nail signalled that the spot wasn´t supposed to be vacant, besides that there were no traces of the theft.

After the short tour around the gallery, mostly the crime scenes, the curator went back to her work leaving us alone. I don´t know about my companion but to me the case was a total mystery. There is one day and one night guard, the CCTV is always on and there´s also an alarm installed on each art piece. Why wasn´t the thief caught on the camera or by the guard? And why didn´t the alarm ring? The criminal must be a ghost or else it doesn´t make sense to me.

“Hmm, I see,” the detective then said and I cocked my eyebrow.

“Are you only pretending or did you really find something?” I put my hands on my hips and watched my boss closing his eyes and breathing hard in order to stay calm. He can´t yell at me in the gallery and I´m very well aware of that fact. I act this way every time we are in a museum or a library too.

“For your information, yes I really did. And if you continue being this impolite towards me, I´m gonna hang your picture in the office,” the brunette hissed. For the second time today I had to close my mouth.

Donghae then went to check other two white walls where the pictures got stolen and in the end even walked around the building from the outside. After that he went to the security guard´s office and took a copy of the video from the CCTV. Before going out he bid goodbye to the curator and told her to calm down, he would find the culprit till the end of the week. All the time I followed my boss silently and watched his every move. I know I have already mentioned this, but Donghae looks so handsome while working so seriously. His soft brown hair would always go into his eyes when he tries to look underneath something and he keeps his lips when he´s focused. His suit would tighten every time his muscles stretch under the clothing in order to squat down or to lift anything. His eyes would shine with brightness and intelligence leaving me in awe. I told you there are some awesome perks in the work I do.

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In the following night and day we would keep replaying those four days long tape from CCTV. I had to fast forward the useless part and then focus on the theft. But although I watched the video many times, I still couldn´t find anything strange. In one moment the painting was there and in another it was gone! As if someone snapped his fingers. Of course I know that the painting didn´t just disappear, I´m only blonde, not nutty. Someone must have played with the tape or the camera. I told this to Donghae and he agreed with me but we didn´t know who could have done it.

“It was the guard! Who else?” I couldn´t think of anything better.

“No, that´s impossible. I´ve already thought of that but the guy has alibi,” Donghae was sitting in front of me in his office and leaned back in his seat, “he got a phone call from the hospital during the second theft. See, it´s there on the video and I got it confirmed by the hospital. Something about his aunt,” Donghae pointed to his screen and I just nodded.

“But the day guard has the access to the CCTV too. He could have stolen it at night and take care of the video during his shift,” I tried again.

“That´s even more absurd. The guy is already over sixty years old and he only knows how to check if the system isn´t off. He doesn´t even know how to switch it on if it isn´t. You were there when I asked him for the copy of the footage,” my boss sighed.

“Yeah, you are right. He looked so confused that time. So what do we do, Donghae?” I looked at him with a sad face. I got a warm smile as an answer instead.

“What we do always, Hyukjae. We will go there tonight and find out the truth with the old detective method!” He made a fighting gesture and I smiled widely again.

“But be careful not to hurt yourself again. I got almost a heart attack last time when you fell into the well,” his expression turned worried. I blushed and whispered a weak sorry.

The atmosphere was awkward so we both focused back on the footage from the gallery. I was slowly falling asleep and instead of really watching the video, I started wondering if it truly couldn´t be a ghost who stole the paintings. But at that moment I noticed something on the screen.

“Donghae!” I screamed and covered my eyes with my palms. “I knew it! I was right!”

“What are you talking about? What did you see?” Donghae rushed to my side.

“It was a ghost Donghae! Only a ghost could steal like that and I was right! Look!” I rewound the video and pressed the play button. The video started playing again showing the night gallery. I pointed to the corner of the screen which was illuminated by the light of the moon and for about five seconds the ghost appeared there. It was a man with short hair, straight nose and pointy chin. I had to say that the ghost was quite handsome, it´s a pity that he´s dead already. After that short interval it disappeared at the same moment as the painting. A true mystery indeed.

“You are a genius, Hyukjae!” Donghae exclaimed and gave me a tight hug in his excitement. I didn´t dare to protest and grinned although I had no guess why I was called a genius.

“Hurry, let´s prepare! We´re going to catch him tonight,” Donghae let go of me and started giving orders. I just managed to nod weakly, still dazed by the hug. His chest was so firm!

“How do you know, he´s going to show up again?” I asked when I was finally composed again.

“Because it´s his last chance tonight!” Donghae called from the kitchen. I didn´t ask any more questions and went to prepare everything I could remember from his orders.

We arrived to the museum just a little bit before it´s closing. The guards were changing at that moment and Donghae made it a point not to get caught by them. We sprinted as silently as possible to one of the rooms on the first floor and hid in the corner across the strange modern painting of a spaceship.

“Now we can´t move anymore or the guard will see us on the CCTV. This is a blind spot,” Donghae whispered and I nodded. I didn´t mind not moving at all. We were both sitting close to each other with our backs against the wall and looking into the darkness. It was somehow romantic.

“I bet we have some time now. Wanna hear what I found out?” Donghae asked me and I hummed.I was so curious I could bite my arm.

“Well, first I realised that the thief must have been very tall and a bit strong too to take down the painting from the wall, meaning the curator is out of question,” so he wasn´t pretending that time, “But from then I didn´t have any other clue until you found that ghost of yours,” I hummed again although I still didn´t understand how could we catch a ghost.

“It wasn´t a ghost, idiot,” Donghae bumped his shoulder against mine, “it was a shadow of a person. And because I searched about all the people working here, I perfectly knew to whom this handsome profile belongs.” So he thought that the ghost looked cool too? Maybe we have a similar taste for men then, keke.

“Just like you have said before, it was the night guard!” Donghae raised his voice for a moment because he had to chuckle. When he calmed down he continued with the story: “I believed he had perfect alibi because of the hospital but it was the opposite. Someone called from the hospital but it wasn´t about his aunt because it was his aunt who called. She lied when I tried to check the alibi and I didn´t go as far as to really visit the hospital. I had it in my report though, that he has an aunt in the hospital but I didn´t manage to connect the information,” the detective sighed.

“But how do you know which painting and when would he steal again?” I still didn´t understand the way of Donghae´s thinking.

“All the pictures that went missing had to do something with-,” he didn´t finish because we heard a noise coming from the hallway. We snuggled even closer to each other, to my liking of course, and held our breaths.

A tall young man walked into the room and went straight to the picture on the opposite wall. I noticed his shadow in the moonlight and it looked perfectly like the one on the tape. This was our thief, a handsome young man in a guard uniform. He put a chip, that probably turned off the alarm on the painting, on the frame and then slowly took it down. I felt Donghae shuffle a bit, probably preparing for the attack. But I wouldn’t be Lee Hyukjae, if I didn´t make the situation complicated.

I was holding back my breath all the time and now I couldn’t anymore. I needed air! And so I suddenly started coughing and lapping for oxygen as if I just got above the water-lever after five minutes under water. The thief became alarmed by our presence and started running. Donghae immediately went after him and ended up alone in the gallery. , I messed up.

I stood up and joined Donghae in his pursuit. The thief was almost already under the stairs while Donghae wasn´t even half way down. I was a lot faster than my boss and made a big step towards the stairs in order to save the situation. But something went wrong and instead of running down, I ended up flying down from the stairs! And as if it wasn´t enough I brought Donghae with me. But to my happiness, the thief wasn´t a lucky one either. Just as he was about to touch the ground floor something heavy hit his back. The heavy object was of course Donghae with me in follow. I have to ask Mrs. Kim to give me the footage of this stunt because right now there was a huge human tower in the private art gallery. A tall thief face-palming the floor with a detective on his back and a detective´s assistant on the very top. I hope, I won´t lose my job this time.

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I didn´t get the footage of our flight but at least I didn´t lose my job either. It wouldn´t be fair for me to get fired when even the thief got to keep his job. The night guard, his name was Kris, wasn´t stealing the painting to sell them or destroy them. He simply believed that he was much better artist than the ones in the gallery. Apparently there was supposed to be a special exposition of Galaxy centred paintings and sculptures and Kris was a huge fan of this topic. He wanted to remove for this special occasion the usual paintings of Space that were hanged in the gallery and replace them with his own pieces. But instead of asking Kim Taeyeon, the theft was more his style. The young curator was so kind and didn´t fire him. She even put some of Kris´ picture to the gallery, only to the guard office though.

And so the art pieces were found and everything ended up well. Almost everything. Donghae was still mad at me for both the photo that I put into his office before and for the danger I brought again during the operation. As a punishment I had to start preparing Donghae not just a coffee but a breakfast in the morning too, which means I had to wake up much earlier. And there was one more thing. I had to go to my hairdresser again because Donghae said that the blonde only brings us bad luck and my stupidity had worsened since I bleached my hair.

I bleached them blue, keke.

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So how´s the third case? There was a dead person the last time so I wanted something less harmful. If you don´t know the connection between Exo´s Kris, art and Galaxy, you can watch Exo´s showtime. I like to collect real info about the characters and use them in my story. I love when Hyukjae changes his hair colours :D Only three months and Leeteuk´s back! - Thank you very very much for reading! I love your comments and love you all! :)