Chapter 6: Replay (Part 1)

Replay of the previous night’s incident…

          “Hey Eunji, are you ready to spend another night at apartment 1124?” Key asked as Eunji was fixing up her baseball cap over her head.

“Sure,” she said nonchalantly. “I’m starting to think that it’s a real ghost though. I mean, I looked it up on the internet and there are pretty ridiculous food-stealing ghost stories too. One ghost in particular only wanted Mexican food. It was so strange.”

“Nah, I just prefer to think of it more logically,” Key shrugged.

“Oh, but you never know,” Eunji shrugged too.

          That night, Eunji prepared to sleep at apartment 1124. Onew and Jonghyun decided to stay at the Sherlock Headquarters to review the interrogation tapes and research more possible theories and similar cases. Minho stayed with them at the headquarters to watch the live broadcast of the surveillance camera. Key and Taemin both went with Eunji so they can sleep in the living room, just in case anything strange happens.

          Team Leader Onew ordered two buckets of deep-fried chicken that night to keep him awake as he reviewed the interrogation tapes. He planned on eating all of that scrumptious meat for himself, but then Minho and Jonghyun came along to “steal” some crunchy chicken legs from him. No one should keep me and my chicken apart, he thought.

          With a tap of a button, a video played under the leader’s command from his trusty laptop. Soo-Young’s friend Taeyeon appeared on the screen. So then, Onew listened closely to the interview as he munched on come tasty chicken legs. The crunchy breading on the chicken skin crackled in his watering mouth.

          “What? You think I have something to do with the ghost and disappearing food?” Taeyeon looked at Jonghyun and Taemin and sneered. Onew continued watching the tape. “Look here, young men, I live like fifteen blocks away from her apartment. Why in the world would I waste my time scaring that tall girl? Playing a prank on her may sound fun, but I wouldn’t waste my effort on it every single night.”

“From the way you and your friends visited last night, I got the impression that you have been to the apartment before, have you, Noona?” Taemin asked.

“Oooh…The battle of the ‘Tae’s,’” Onew mumbled as he continued watching. Then he wiped some crumbs off of his lips.

“Yes. Look, even Soo-Young knows about this. Jessica suggested this apartment for me and Tiffany a few months before Soo-Young even knew that the apartment existed. But then Sunny said that she wanted to live with us too so we ended up taking a different apartment with three rooms about fifteen blocks away. I don’t know if Soo-Young still remembers this but it is true,” the woman in the screen confidently replied.

          Wondering what Jessica has to say about this, he paused the video and clicked the minimize button on the upper-right hand corner of the screen. The window descended down the bar. Then he opened a different video file containing Jessica’s interrogation recordings.

          “…and play,” he mumbled to himself as he picked up another piece of chicken.

          Meanwhile, Jonghyun and Minho are focused on the huge television screen showing divided panels of Soo-Young’s house at present time. They were eating chicken too, even grabbing seconds when Onew wasn’t looking.

          From what they can see, nothing interesting was happening at all. Soo-Young and Eunji were conversing in Soo-Young’s room, Key and Taemin were setting up camp in the living room and even packing snacks, and Yuri was talking to someone on the phone, which looked somewhat suspicious but since audio can’t be picked up from the surveillance cameras, they have no clue about what she was saying.

          After Jonghyun stretched and yawned on the comfy bean-bag chair, everyone in the apartment 1124 surveillance screens suddenly stopped what they were doing, as if they were started by something.

          “Huh? What’s happening?” Jonghyun asked as he rubbed his sleepy eyes while watching.

          By this time, Yuri already started running toward the front door and looking through the peephole. Key and Taemin quickly fixed themselves up, and soon, Eunji and Soo-Young also headed to the door to meet the guest.

          “Who the heck comes to ring a door bell at 11:45 at night?” Minho scratched his head as he watched.

          When Yuri opened the door, no one entered. But Yuri and Soo-Young seemed to be greeting someone out of thin air. Minho and Jonghyun both looked closely at the television screen. Now the two apartment 1124 owners seemed to be hugging the air.

          “What the heck is going on?!” Jonghyun finally blurted out. “Is everyone playing mime or something?!

          “Just continue watching,” said Minho while rubbing his chin in deep thought.

          Soon, Taemin, who was sitting with the silent Key on the living room sofa, walked up to “no one” and bowed. He seemed to be talking to thin air. Either that or he was bowing to Eunji while looking at a different direction for no reason since she was the only person close by. Then while their youngest detective Taemin was still talking, Eunji slowly backed away and sat beside Key on the living room sofa. It seemed Taemin wasn’t talking to her after all.

          “Onew Hyung, you have to come and see this,” Minho called their busy leader watching the interrogation videos.

          Onew put down his laptop and scooted over between Minho’s and Jonghyun’s bean bags on the soft rug. “What’s going on?”

          “Look, aren’t they talking to someone invisible?” Jonghyun pointed out on the screen with his finger.

          “Hmm…” Onew slowly breathed out.

          “Wait, Eunji and Key are whispering to each other,” observant Minho pointed out.

          Then Soo-Young talked with Key, Taemin, and Eunji about something. Ah, the struggles of not being able to hear anything. The rest of the team at the headquarters could only guess and try their best to lip read.

          When Soo-Young and Eunji left to go back to their room, the three Sherlock members in the headquarters watched a Key hastily grabbed his cellphone and called someone.

          “Cold heart, baby! Cold eyes, baby! Let’s go! Met her, fell for her; I have fallen for her; At first sight, y…,” Jonghyun’s ringtone started playing.

(Amigo - SHINee)

“Oh, someone is calling me!” Jonghyun exclaimed.

          “It’s probably Key,” Onew said as he sat up on the rug.

          “Hello?” Jonghyun answered the phone.

          “Hyung!” greeted Key as if he was in a hurry. From the way he looked at the surveillance camera, he was being a little secretive. Then in a lower tone, he spoke to through the line, “Jonghyun, I want you to go out of town and visit a certain address. It’s this Seohyun girl’s current home. I want you to investigate and ask around, okay? Sorry for making you go this late at night, but I just have this bad feeling…”

          “Uh-huh, okay, I got it…” was all Onew and Minho heard as Jonghyun talked with Key. Then he put his phone back into his pocket.

          “So, what did he say?” Minho asked, his eyes growing bigger with curiosity.

          “He wants me to go to this city about three to four hours away by train and see if I can find anything about this girl named ‘Seohyun’—Seo Joohyun to be exact,” Jonghyun explained to them.

          “Seohyun? Who’s that?” the two asked in unison.

          “I don’t know yet, but I’m going to find out soon enough.”

***

“I think Seohyun Eonni should stay in Yuri Eonni’s room. I’m on watch-out duty with Soo-Young Eonni tonight to make sure nothing strange happens,” Eunji told the other girls as they all prepared to go to bed.

“Sleepovers are fun, don’t you think?” Seohyun said with her unusually bright disposition. The rest of the restless bunch didn’t seem to share her energy. This case had been frustrating everyone with their strange sleeping patterns that it was hard enough to smile. Those bags under their eyes weren’t all too pretty either.

Later at about midnight, Seohyun and Yuri got settled in their own room and Soo-Young and Eunji were about to lay their heads peacefully on the soft pillows. Suddenly, Eunji got a text message from an unknown number, saying, “Eunji, where are you? Come home right now. From your parents.”

“Oh, I need to go!” Eunji immediately dressed up to leave.

“Hey, where are you going?” Soo-Young asked.

“My parents sent me a message that I should go home. I don’t know why but I need to go.”

“What about the case? What if the ghost shows up?” Soo-Young was getting worried.

Although Eunji wasn’t quite trusting of Seohyun, she just said, “Don’t worry, Seohyun Eonni will take my place for now.”

As Eunji was about to head out, Key grabbed her hand to stop her. “What are you doing? What about the case?” Then he whispered, “You know I don’t trust this Seohyun lady!”

“Sorry. My parents will kill me if I don’t obey them and you know that. I’ll be back as soon as possible.”

          Instead of bothering the youthful Seohyun to watch out for her, Soo-Young just decided to just brave it out and get by on her own. She had seen the ghost a bunch of times. Maybe by now she had become too jaded by it enough to be placid when it appears. However, she just couldn’t force her alert mind to fall unconscious on her bed, so she just got up and decided to watch television all through the night while Key and Taemin reviewed case files in the kitchen.

          Meanwhile, Eunji got home to her house to see what her parents so urgently called her for. It was late at night. There could be a good reason. Hopefully it won’t be as bad as an accident or anything.

          “Mom, Dad, I’m home!” Eunji called out when she entered the sliding bamboo doors of their little Joseon-style bungalow house.

          Nobody was in the living room.

          “Mom? Dad?” Eunji called out once more.

          Finally, her father groggily came out wearing a robe; his hair all messed up and his eyes barely open. Then he said, “I thought you were staying at the ‘haunted apartment’ for your detective case?”

          “But you sent me a text message saying, ‘Eunji, where are you? Come home right now. From your parents.’”

          “What? I don’t remember sending you anything like that. I’m sure your mother didn’t either; she was with me the whole time.”

***

          After boarding the train three long hours late into the dark of night, the tired detective Jonghyun finally arrived in the city described by Key where this Seohyun—more formally called Seo Joohyun—was said to reside. He took a deep breath and exhaled out into the cold air. The place was very still and quiet late that night. Most of the shops were closed, the busy cars in the light of day were all parked neatly on the sides of the road, and the mass of pedestrians crossing streets were all in bed, dreaming the night away. So then the lone sleuth walked out in the dusk to look for information.

          “If Key could just be a little more specific about the address, it would be so much easier,” he thought. “All he told me was that it was this small house on a certain street in a certain subdivision in this city…there are plenty of houses; I can’t possibly go through them all.”

          As he was walking around the town, an old black sedan pulled up by the side walk of a certain house. Jonghyun definitely took notice of it, since there were no other cars driving that night. The driver’s car door swung open and out came a slim girl of about Soo-Young’s age with long black hair and beautiful, youthful face. The girl quickly ran into the house yelling, “Hyoyeon Eonni! Hyoyeon Eonni!” From the cracking of her loud, frantic voice, she seemed to be in tears. She did not care about the neighbors’ preference of a silent night either.

          “Hyoyeon?” Jonghyun fixed the fedora on his head and thought. “That name sounds really familiar…”

          Then he remembered the interrogation from earlier. Yuri said in the interview about it…“Soo-Young, Jessica, and their other friend Hyoyeon used to enjoy intimidating me back in grade school. I was so scared of them back then that I talked to them too respectfully…”

          “Hyoyeon…Oh yes! Hyoyeon! She’s a friend of Soo-Young!”

          Jonghyun ran to the house and rang the doorbell. After a few minutes, a shorter girl a little older than the previous one opened the door.

          “Can I help you?” she asked in a not-so-friendly tone. Her bloodshot eyes glared at him like he was a midnight burglar.

          Jonghyun was intimidated by the blond girl, but asked anyway, “Are you Miss Hyoyeon, by any chance?”

          “Yes, what do you want?” she looked like a fierce tiger about to strike.

          Jonghyun tried not to provoke her with the wrong words or who knows what the woman might do to her in this agitated state. It was late at night after all, and no one would be expecting to be investigated at this hour. Behind Hyoyeon was the same girl who came from the car, still weeping down on her palms. Jonghyun couldn’t help but notice it. “I wonder what happened?” he asked himself.

          “Do you know someone by the name Seo Joohyun, by any chance?” he finally inquired.

          Hyoyeon’s pupils dilated even in that dark night. The girl sobbing in the background stopped to look up and wiped her tears. The name Seo Joohyun definitely grabbed their attention. However, they were still a bit suspicious about this dubious man standing on their front door at late past midnight.

          “I’m sorry, but may I at least know who you are and why you are here?” Hyoyeon replied with a question instead of a proper answer.

          “I’m helping a person by the name of Miss Choi Soo-Young with a case. I’m a detective,” Jonghyun replied and handed her his Sherlock ID from his trench coat. “I’m here for a case. Sorry for bothering you this late at night.”

 ***

          Eunji checked her phone to see if the message was still there. Yup, it was still there. It clearly says, “Eunji, where are you? Come home right now. From your parents.” Oh but something was odd. It was sent from an unknown number. How could some random number just send her a message with her name on it and pretend to be her parents?

          “Well, there’s only one way to know who sent this stupid message,” Eunji said to herself. Then she took the unknown number and called it a different phone to make sure that she won’t get fooled. “…and press ‘call’…”

After a few seconds, an automated voice echoed from the speakers, saying, “The number you dialed is out of service…”

          Eunji stopped the call and put the phone down. “Well that doesn’t make any sense,” she thought.

          Eunji grabbed her phone and dialed a number, assuming it was Key’s so she can inform him that she will be back as soon as possible. The “unknown parent message” was a false alarm.

***

“My heart was stolen…My heart was stolen; don’t let go of my hand; save my life SOS…”

(Bodyguard - SHINee)

          “Hyung, I think your phone is ringing,” Minho said as soon as he heard the ringtone. Despite being focused on the surveillance screens, he still noticed the faint into of the song playing from Onew’s phone. Onew, however, was not responding. He had fallen asleep on the soft been bag chair. It was already fifteen minutes past three AM. The Sherlock Leader values his well-deserved sleep.

           “Aish, this hyung is really…,” Minho mumbled in frustration. Everyone was working hard on the case while the leader just sleeps. Then Minho grabbed Onew’s phone and answered the call. It was from Eunji.

          “Hello, Key Oppa?” she greeted.

          “Oh, hey Eunji, this is Minho talking on Onew’s phone, not Key,” Minho replied.

          “Oh dear, I’m really sorry. I’m kinda tired. I must’ve dialed the wrong number. Anyway, I already packed a thermos full of extra sweet mocha to keep me awake so watch out for me in the surveillance screens. Keep up the hard work, Minho Oppa. Fighting…,” she said in a shaky, sleepy voice.

          “Wait, Eunji,” Minho stopped her before she cut the call. “Can you come over to the headquarters instead? I just have some questions. There are some things that I don’t understand. And bring that extra sweet mocha along.”

          When Eunji arrived at the Sherlock Headquarters, Minho kicked Onew awake and they all had some mocha together. The last bits of the chicken were finished too.

          “Eunji, why’d you leave the apartment a few hours ago?” Onew asked as Minho continued watching the surveillance feed.

          Eunji showed the strange message and told him all about how it was not sent by her parents. She also told him about how it was an invalid number.

“…yeah, so that’s what happened. Then I spent some few hours at home thinking about who and why, because that message was so strange.”

Onew just yawned and scratched his head. “You better be careful. Don’t go out alone without a guardian. Some creeper might be stalking you. You should stay here tonight and help with some research.”

          Now everyone on the surveillance screens was falling asleep. Yuri slept peacefully in her room for a few hours, and Soo-Young slowly dozed off on the couch after eating a burger and watching some nonsense on television. Key and Taemin were still looking through some files though, but Taemin’s head was slowly nodding off to sleep. Even Key was looking drunk and tired.

          “Oh yeah,” Minho remembered. Then turned to Eunji and asked, “Who were you all talking to a few hours ago?”

          “What do you mean?”

          “Watch this.” Minho replayed a few screens and showed her the footage of everyone in the apartment communicating with an invisible being. It looked absolutely strange. In the footage, all of them looked like insane folks from the mental hospital. Only crazy people talk to imaginary friends, right?

          “Oh. My. Gosh,” Eunji mouthed out. “S-s-seo-h-h-hyun…”

          “Seohyun? Jonghyun went off out of the city to investigate on her under Key’s orders. Who is she?” Onew asked. Then with his laptop, he typed the name “Seo Joohyun” on the search engine and pressed enter.

          Meanwhile, Eunji was just too speechless to even say anything. In fact, she was too tired, highly-caffeinated, and very confused. She thought she was hallucinating. How could Seohyun not be captured by the surveillance cameras? She was definitely there and very tangible. She shook the guest’s hand and heard her talk with her very own eyes. How can she not be visible to the cameras? Does that mean that she was the ghost?

          “Come to think about it, the doorbell rang exactly after I prayed with Soo-Young Eonni,” Eunji inaudibly mumbled to herself.

          “Eunji, are you okay?” Minho asked. She doesn’t look like the same cheerful girl that she used to be.

          Mostly because of exhaustion and shock, the young female sleuth fell on the soft bean bag chair, and slowly, she closed her eyes and fell asleep. Minho thought that she fell unconscious though. To he took her to Key’s room and laid her on the bed to let her rest. Everyone barely had any sleep in the past nights after all.

          “Um, Minho, check this out,” Onew said as he gulped the lump that formed in his throat. Before him was his laptop screen with an article from the news. The artical was about a week old.

          Minho looked over Onew’s shoulder to look at the article. “Girl Hit by a McDonalds’ Delivery Motor…,” Minho read the headline and stopped. “Oh dear god…”

***

          “Okay, maybe I shouldn’t tell them that it’s a food-stealing ghost case. They’d think I’m crazy,” Jonghyun thought as he stood on the front door of Hyoyeon’s house.

          “Why are you asking about Seohyun? Are you here to investigate her accident?” asked the girl who was sobbing from behind Hyoyeon.

          “Yoona, go to bed and take a rest. I’ll handle this,” Hyoyeon said to the girl. Apparently her name was Yoona.

          Accident? Oh well, might as well go with it, he thought. “Yes, I’m investigating it. Can I ask some questions?”

          Hyoyeon gave him a sharp look and replied, “It was an accident and nothing more. Some things just can’t be helped. Look, it’s three in the morning. Come back tomorrow.” Then she readied to close the door, but held on for one more moment and said, “Just so you know, she died hours ago at the hospital. There’s nothing we can do about it now.”

To be continued…

Part 2 of this chapter is coming some time soon. :)