Bzzt bzzzt. Daehyun's phone buzzed and he stirred in his bed, easily awoken by the vibration. He rubbed his eyes as his other hand reached for his phone on the night stand. The sky outside was atramentous and tiny little specks of light from stars scattered across the dark infinite night. The light from his phone blinded him temporarily as he adjusted to the sudden brightness emanated from his screen and saw that he had a new message notification from none other than Officer Brock. 

Hey Daehyun, it's happened again. We didn't touch the body in case you wanted to do a quick investigstion first. Liver temperature showed that he died about two hours ago. The body has yet to rot yet, so arrive with before complete rigor mortis sets in and the body starts to decompose. 

Once Daehyun managed to finish the message after battling fatigue, he hopped out of his bed as his mind processed the message. Another body was killed and this murder was committed in half the time of the previous one. The Vixen, whoever she is, has crossed the line with this recent murder and as the pattern should have it, the next victim will be killed in another week unless Daehyun could stop it but she is so proffesional that she has yet to leave any slip-ups or clues except for a dried tear drop.

Daehyun opened his cabinet, took out his pill bottle and swallowed two pills of morphine. He leaned against the wall and slid down against it as Daehyun could feel the pills starting to take effect. He covered his face with his palm and sighed deeply. Daehyun has seen a little too many dead bodies this entire month and he didn't want to go to the crime scene, but if he doesn't, he knew that the police would be a few months slower and who knows how many more victims will die in that time. 

Daehyun took more effort than usual to stand up and went to his wardrobe. The little fluorescent light that flickers on whenever he opens the wardrobe doors could always calm his nerves a little without fail. He changed into the usual clothing, a white shirt and a pair of jeans with a black tie strapped on. This time, he sneaked out of his window and slid down the roof to the porch instead of going down the stairs to leave the house. 

                                                          ~

The walk to this house was much shorter than the previous one but still long enough to make Daehyun feel a little jittery. He didn't understand how the police were so calm with seeing so many dead bodies. Every time Daehyun sees a dead body, he would always dream about their faces and wake up all sweaty unless of course, he takes the morphine pills.

As he got closer to the house, the usual "Do not cross" tape lined the perimeter of the place. One of the policemen recognized Daehyun and gestured for him to enter the crime area. The policeman escorted Daehyun to officer Brock, who was inside the building talking to the CIS agents. Visible from where Daehyun stood at the main hall, he saw a body lying on the ground in the kitchen.

"Daehyun, thank you for coming. If you would follow me, I'll get you a pair of gloves so you can get started on your examination of the body." officer Brock said. 

Daehyun wore a pair of the plastic gloves and went to the body in the kitchen to examine it. As he predicted, the body belonged to a man who looked to be in his forties. He was lying on his stomach in a large puddle of his own vomit. With the assistance of officer Brock, they flipped the body on his back and they had a good look at the man's face. 

"Does this man have any family?" Daehyun asked officer Brock. 

"No, this man lived alone. He is actually a manager of a certain company. Good job, good life. Pity actually, that the killer didn't seem to have seen it that way." officer Brock replied. 

Daehyun observed the man's face. His empty dead eyes seem to be glaring more than when one would have when alive. Fear. The man died in fear. His large blue eyes stared at his murderer as he drew his last breath. 

"I asked you to check eye color before, what were the colors of all the previous victims?" Daehyun inquired. 

"Well apparently, the three victims had blue eyes. I didn't really think that there could be a pattern there, which is pretty amazing!" officer Brock praised. 

"Our victim here also has eyes with a shade of blue. Now that we know what kind of people out victim goes for, we should try to predict the next victim and be there to nab the killer once and for all." Daehyun said. 

"Easier said than done. We don't even know a single thing about the killer, how do we know who to strike when we are supposed to?" officer Brock objected. 

"Firstly, if you could cross out the murders on a map, you would know that the killer only hunts within the city and that decreases the search area. Now with that, you get your people to pull up past records of ual harassment cases within the city and who share the same identification points as our previous victims, eye color and age. I'm sure you know how to do your job from that point on." Daehyun calmly reasoned with officer Brock. 

"But What if the eye color was really a coincidence?" officer Brock asked. 

"The eyes never lie, officer. Now if we could leave questions aside, I am gonna do a quick examination." Daehyun said. 

Daehyun gave the man a slight pat down from his shirt and he realized that his belly area felt a little strange, as if he touched wet cardboard. Daehyun slowly ed the victim's shirt to reveal a horrific sight. Around his belly, spider veins covered every part of his abdominal muscles. The sight made his hair stand on edge. Officer Brock caught a glimpse of it and gagged a little and decided that he had more important jobs like helping the rest of the officers set up a small lab than to stand and watch the sight. 

The skin seems to have been destroyed from the inside. Daehyun then observed the contents of the vomit and paid more attention to its details before he realized that there was blood in it as well. Vomit spatters were also seen on the cupboard doors just a few feet in front of the body. Daehyun rolled up his sleeves to prepare for what he was about to do. He took out his little pocket knife and gave himself a small cut on his forearm.

"Oh, this part is going to really bad." Daehyun sighed.

He then dipped the tip of the blade into the vomit and as disgusting as it may be, he smeared the vomit onto his wound. A sharp pain overcame him so surprisingly that he dropped the blade and immediately fumbled to stand up and wash the wound. After the stinging pain dissipated, he called for officer Brock. 

"What seems to be the problem?" officer Brock came over, turning his back on the victim's ed shirt. He was used to seeing dead brodie and blood as much as the next police officer, but the way that the spider veins were spread across his entire abdomen just gave him the worst goosebumps. 

"The victim died from an extremely severe rupture of his stomach lining. So much so that the hydrochloric acid inside him burnt through his stomach walls and destroyed most of his abdominal muscles and his small intestine, this caused the high velocity projectile vomit." 

Officer Brock stared at him. "It's just vomit! How can you know all this!" 

"I tested the acidity of the vomit on myself, " Daehyun showed the little cut on his forearm. "Hydrochloric acid in humans are very highly concentrated and to make sure that wasn't ordinary vomit in which bile would be the more dominant content, I cut myself to test the acidity."

Officer Brock looked amazed as usual, but this time, there was a look of horror tinted on his face. 

"Kid, that has got to be the most disgusting thing I've ever witnessed in all my years of service. You could've just asked the lab rats to have tested it for you." 

"That would've taken forever. But what you can help me ask of them however, is to identify all the contents of the vomit. Such a severe perforation of the stomach walls don't just happen out of the blue." Daehyun requested. 

"Alright, I'll get them to do that now. Do you need anything else?" 

"Yes, I need the results in half an hour. I need to know what caused this." Daehyun added after a short pause, "And a cup of coffee. I can't stay awake forever like you adults, I'm just a teenager."

Officer Brock just chuckled and went out to find one of the scientist to identify the vomit contents. In the meantime, Daehyun exited the house to get some fresh air. To expel his lungs of the stake air of the dead. He surely did not need this extra pressure on him now that he was getting closer and closer to Karrin. He had to protect her and made sure nothing like this happens to her now. 

                                                     ~

In exactly half an hour, officer Brock came out of the lab tent and headed towards Daehyun, who was just sitting on the top of a police truck with his leg dangling over the edge. 

"Mr. Jung, here's the contents of the puke. How did you get up there in the first place, there is no ladder to the top."

Daehyun simply clasped the paper between his feet then grabbed it with his hands. He then laid down flat on the top of the truck so that officer Brock couldn't see him. Officer Brock just sighed. 

"Teenagers. What a bunch of rebels." he mumbled. 

On the paper was a list of almost over forty substances that was supposedly in the vomit sample. Daehyun scanned through the list and the two highest items were obviously the hydrochloric acid at 52%, bile at 17% and 25% belonged to acetylsalicylic acid. The other 6% were other insignificant items. Acetylsalicylic acid? That stuff is aspirin, it must've caused the severe rupture. 

Daehyun got up and hopped off the truck and landed on his feet. He went to look for officer Brock to tell him the results. 

"So The Vixen seduced our victim here into letting her come over again, like the previous case. They had a couple drinks, as seen from the wine glasses just now and our victim got extremely drunk. Perfect for the killer to have added the huge amounts of aspirin into his drinks and with a little effort, she got him to drink it. It's ironic how aspirin was meant to induce pain and it turned out to have killed him in such a brutal way instead." Daehyun concluded. 

"I see, so in that case, I'll get some men to run a sweep down of the building to make sure she isn't here. I'll set up a perimeter just in case she forgot to leave again." officer Brock told Daehyun. 

"There you go, I see you're starting to think ahead as well. Anyway, the killer had already made a minor slip up."

"What's that?" officer Brock inquired. 

"Emotion." Daehyun simply stated. "The amount of aspirin she used probably measures up to at least eighty grams. That's easily more than over fifty pills crushed. Check up on the drug stores in the city to see if there are any bulk purchases and if so, then finding the killer would be easy already. But if not, then it shows that the killer is also going through something emotional that requires the use of aspirin. She has killed men with ual harassment records and no other types so far, so now you have the motive."

"Right." officer Brock said, and immediately dispatched a few men to go check on the aspirin sales in drug stores. 

"Whoever this killer is, I want her to be brought to justice as soon as possible because she has crossed the line. I'll do anything in my power to stop her." Daehyun assured officer Brock. 

"Thanks kid, you're a great help." officer Brock pat Daehyun lightly on the shoulder. "Well, I think that's all the work you can help us with already. We can't deprive you of your sleep anymore. Thanks for your help again."

"It's my honor." Daehyun simply said and he left the building and headed for home again.

                                                       ~

 Once Daehyun reached the porch of his home and sneaked inside, the lamp in the living room lit up and it scared Daehyun half to death. Both his mother and father were standing with their arms crossed. 

"It's 1:27am. You better have an explanation of why you were out so late, son." his father said in a stern voice. 

Daehyun was calm as his mind constructed an answer to give and he wondered if he had any choice left but to tell the truth. 

"Okay you got me, I'm sorry." Daehyun started to speak. "I actually lost my phone during the celebration of Junhong's skate competition at the carnival just now. I realized I didn't have an alarm clock so I just decided to go to the police station to see if anyone would be kind enough to have returned it and there it was!" Daehyun shook the phone in front of his parents. They didn't say a word, as if skeptical. 

"What, you don't believe me? I can even call the cop who passed me my phone! Okay listen!" Daehyun dialed officer Brock's number and prayed that he would play along.

"Hello Mr Jung, you're still up? Do you still have anything to ask about the crime?" officer Brock answered. You dense pabo. Daehyun thought to himself. 

"Um.. Yeah. See, my mom and dad doesn't believe that I came by the police station just now to collect my phone that you found!" Daehyun prayed twice as hard that officer Brock would get the hint and play along now. 

There was a quite an awkward pause before officer Brock finally exclaimed, which made everyone jump slightly. "OH! That's right, Mr and Mrs Jung, your son was very worried about his phone and came by to claim it just now."

"See?" Daehyun said to his parents. "Thanks again for finding my phone, keep making our streets safer at night!" Daehyun then said to officer Brock and hung up. 

"Okay, I guess that's fair enough." His mother said. "But your grounded for a week for sneaking out of the house in the middle of the night and not telling what was going on first hand." 

Daehyun just nodded and pretended to look guilty as he walked up to his room. When he closed the door behind him in his room, he started to chuckle and took off his shirt and just plopped onto the bed. He will have to thank officer Brock the next time he sees him. For now however, he would not be able to sneak out of the house which would mean a big deal as the next victim will die in a week. That took the smile off of Daehyun's face. 

His chain of thoughts were broken when his phone buzzed with a message notification from officer Brock. Daehyun viewed the message. 

You owe me. -Brock

Fine. Trouble though, I won't be able to leave the house this entire week because of this incident. My parents are sure to have top notch security to make sure I don't sneak out at night again for some time. 

So what now? -Brock

Well I guess we'll have to communicate through the phone. 

Alright. Go to sleep or I'll arrest you for truancy if you're late for school tomorrow. -Brock