Three hours passed, and to Shin Hye it felt like thirty minutes. Both Jae Suk and Yoo Bi had thrown themselves into sifting through the data, though she was certain that while Yoo Bi was applying strict method to her search, Jae Suk was only playing the role of sleuth. He was intelligent, to be sure, and he could connect dots, but he wasn’t able to see patterns in numbers the way Yoo Bi could.

There was electricity in the room, a fascination with the investigation as if it were an epic game of charades. The answer was there, just there, hidden in the mounds of evidence and data, waiting to be identified by the jack in the whole.

Sister Mi Kyung came in twice to check on them, eyeing Min Ho and her with particular interest, Shin Hye thought. Sister was up to something. She wanted Shin Hye to connect with Min Ho, clearly. It was the psychologist in her trying to help Shin Hye climb out of her hole, and although Shin Hye had no intention of climbing anywhere, she was surprised at how eager she was to play along.

In fact, she was playing him, not the other way around.

“How many words in the first sentence?” Jae Suk was asking.

“Eleven. Times eleven, times two. Two forty-four, but the last sentence only has eight. Eight words.”

“And what is that?”

Yoo Bi’s eyes darted. “Don’t know. Just there. Like two holes, snake in the hole. Jack in the whole.”

“This is too random!”

Shin Hye walked around the couch where she’d been watching them. Min Ho was in the adjacent room connected by an open door, talking quietly on his phone.

“Random to you, oppa. You know that’s not the way Yoo Bi’s mind works.”

“Eight, thirteen, five,” Yoo Bi said. “But that’s not it, not at all. Does the number of pictures count?”

“No, the photos were taken by the Special Agents, not the killer. And don’t assume the key he left is mathematical. It could be any pattern.”

Yoo Bi scratched her scalp and started to whimper, then glanced at the corner. She listened and looked back at Shin Hye.“That’s not it. It’s a number. Like the number of raindrops. A showerhead, cleaning the world. Maybe it’s about water.”

Shin Hye understood Yoo Bi enough to know that her mind had to run through its own secret labyrinth to find the center. Min Ho’s voice carried softly through the open doorway. Her skin tingled at that sound. She had no business allowing a man’s voice to make her feel like this, but she had a job to do. She had to play him.

“Let’s go, Yoo Bi!” Jae Suk said, snapping is fingers. “Work to do, work, work. We’re running out of time!”

“What time?”

“Time, time it’s always about time. They never come to me unless they’re at their rope’s end and the ticker is seconds from blowing. You think the Agent would have brought us all this” – he motioned at the piles of data – “unless they were beyond the limits of their own wits and needed me? I don’t think so. Focus!”

Yoo Bi whimpered again and hurried to a large white wallboard, where she’d written out the last note, then marked and remarked it a dozen ways that could only make sense to her. Next to it, the original photocopy of the Bride Killer’s writing:

They’re trying to kill me, everyone is trying to kill me.

But the advantage of being God is that I get to change my mind. Why did you move my bride? My time. Have you killed Jack lately? The snake waits in the garden, seeking a new bride to join him in the hole. Perfect twice. Me. Paradise lost. It takes one to know one. To know the insane. When the jack is in the whole. Does jack want me to hide from you? No, I’m not sick, I’m just better than you. I’m the messenger and you’re the Romeo.

Shin Hye read the note, but her mind wasn’t on the killer’s writing or Yoo Bi or Jae Suk oppa or the mounds of evidence.

Her mind was lost on Min Ho.

I’m a twenty-four-year-old woman and I have not yet had a single romantic relationship. I am unlovable and I would make a lousy lover. I am the dirt on the bottom of society’s shoes.

For three hours she’d paced around the room, pretending to help them work, but half her mind was running circles around her feelings, justifying, criticizing, accepting, rejecting, a nonstop mess of emotions and reasoning that should have left her exhausted.

Truth be told, she couldn’t wait for Min Ho to finish his phone call and rejoin them. She had good reason for this. She had to play him for everyone’s sake; this was her contribution. Even knowing that she was in part fooling herself, she was eager to continue. She was pathetic.

The emotions came suddenly, as if she’d been swept away in a flash flood. Any other time she would have fled to her room and buried herself in her novel in the making. But it was okay, it really was okay, because nothing was happening. She was simply imagining more than what was there. Min Ho would look at her and she would see soft, imploring eyes, yearning to know her more intimately. Puke.

He would speak and she would hear a voice calling to her gently from the darkness, asking if he could stand beside her, telling her that he liked being close to her. Sick.

And that was only the half of it. Her highly imaginative mind, cursed from birth, had already spun off a dozen fully fleshed scenarios, including everything from she and Min Ho as co-pilots on a deep-space research to their attending an extravagant royal ball.

Puke, puke, sick, gag.

It was all a sad joke. In reality, he was only doing his job. He was showing kindness to all three of them because he was a kind man who found each of them fascinating and their gifts helpful. That was perfectly reasonable.

What are you looking for, Shin Hye-ah? A lover?

“Pathetic!” She growled more than said the word, and the others looked at her.

“We are?” Yoo Bi asked.

“Ani, Aniyo... not you. Keep going, I’ll be right back.”

She had to put an end to this or risk flipping out, because if she did that, Yoo Bi would snap and it would be over.

She marched up to the open doorway and stepped in. Min Ho was seated on one of three couches that formed a U for group therapy. He saw her and sat up.

“Arrosso, Min Hyuk. Anything else, let me know. I’ll call you when I leave.”

She walked up to the couch and stopped five feet from him as he ended the call.

“Any luck?” he asked, lifting his eyes.

Looking at him now, she was certain that she’d made a complete fool of herself with him, prancing around the room like a filly in heat while the big stallion here strutted back and forth. His face, boyish features, with neatly combed dark hair. Those eyes searching hers, seeing her stringy hair, her short frame, her stubby fingers with chewed-off nails, her white face, which had not once seen a jar or tube of makeup.

Apes did not marry men, birds did not cohabitate with whales, and men did not like Shin Hye. Which was okay, because she did not much like men in that way, either.

“I’m sorry, we can’t do this anymore,” she said.

He stood up. “They’re giving up?”

“No. I’m not talking about them.”

“So…” His eyes twitched, one of those slight movements that signalled he had just caught on to something.

She spoke quickly, before he could embarrass her. “I know what you’re doing, Min Ho Oppa. I know you’re toying with me. And I need to confess that I’ve been playing you as well. But now we have to stop.”

His face drew a blank.

“Please don’t tell me you don’t know what I’m talking about.” She stepped over to the adjacent couch and sat, facing him. “You’re trying to earn my trust so that I can help you. Sister Mi-Kyung has gone along with the idea because she thinks I need to break out of this shell that has me trapped. She thinks you might be able to win my trust, and if so, you would be the first man from the outside to do so.”

He swallowed, looking guilty, and sat back down. “No, not entirely. Yes, in part, Sister did say that, but that’s not – ”

“But you need to know oppa, that I’ve been playing you as well.”

He didn’t laugh. He didn’t cross his legs or sigh or condescend to her. In fact, he looked genuinely embarrassed.

“You should feel shame for what you’re doing, I suppose,” she said, “but I’m guilty, too, so I guess we’re both in the same boat.”

“I don’t understand, you’ve been playing me?”

“Normally I would panic if a man showed interest in me the way you have. All those looks and winks… I would normally take off running. Didn’t Sister Mi Kyung tell you? Men and I don’t mix too well.”

“She did say that, yes. But – ”

“Normally I would flip out. But today a woman’s life is at risk and as a group we’ve decided to do our best, no matter what the cost, to save her life. So rather than flip out, which would cause Yoo Bi to quit, I decided to let you play your games with me. And the only way to do that was to let you think you were being successful in accomplishing your goal.”

After a pause, “My goal?”

“To win my… my affection. My trust.” She was moving her knees back and forth like a girl who had to use the restroom, and she stopped them.

For a long drawn-out moment, he just looked at her, face shy and red like a kid caught with his hand in the jar. “I don’t know what to say,” he finally said.

“Me neither. I’m ashamed to have led you on like that. Honestly, I don’t know what came over me. I’ve never done anything like it.”

She looked out the window and was struck by the realization that it would all come to an end. The idea of climbing back into her dark hole of loneliness, no matter how safe, terrified her. It wasn’t supposed to go this way! He should be stopping me, saying, No, no. I do love you, I don’t know what has come over me, but you’ve bewitched me. I look into your eyes and am swept away and I don’t know what to do about it!

But that wasn’t what he was doing. And why should he? She was right. It really had just been a game. A dream. A story. A nightmare.<