As soon as Xiumin opened his eyes that morning, he dreaded the predictably droll day to come. He stretched in bed for a little while to loosen his aching joints before turning to Chloe. She lay peaceful and vulnerable, without an ounce of the anger or resentment that she had been carrying around with her recently.

His fingers unwittingly moved pieces of her unruly hair out of the way so he could see more of her face. For some reason, she didn’t quite look like herself that morning.

It was as he was staring at her sleeping figure, that he realized why. It was her eyes. Those were where her personality came through. They were always so sharp and unrelenting. But now that they were obscured behind her delicate eyelids, he found he missed them. It had been so long since Chloe had last looked him in the eyes. 

She turned in her sleep, quickly deterring Xiumin. He quickly went about his own business, moving into the bathroom to shower.  

My foot tapped impatiently as I waited for my turn to use the kitchen sink, eager to get back to hitting the books.

Xiumin seemed to be taking his sweet time washing his dishes, rinsing each item twice for no apparent reason. I knew he was trying to invoke a reaction out of me, but even knowing that, I still felt my blood simmering with agitation.

Because despite my insistence on keeping my silence, there was one question that was still gnawing at the back of my head.

“Cho Jinho. What did you do to him?” I finally managed to spit out.

Xiumin seemed visibly disturbed by the name, turning off the faucet immediately. “Where’d you hear that name?”

His reaction put up red flags in my mind.

“Answer the question.” I responded with a considerable amount of force.

He let out a sigh before prefacing, “He stole seven thousand dollars from me.”

I let out a scoff. “Is that what a life is worth to you? Seven thousand dollars? He was trying to pay for his wife’s medical bills.”

He wiped his hands with a kitchen towel, before moving out of my way. “It’s the principal. If he had asked me for it, I would have loaned it to him.”

“Oh, so you can charge a ridiculous interest rate and have him wipe your for the rest of his life, trying to pay it off?”

I could see the wheels turning in his head as he thought of what to respond with.

I threw the ceramic bowl I was holding, into the sink, before speaking again. “So why didn’t you kill me?” We both locked eyes, ceasing all movement. “If it was about the principal, as you say?”

There was a delay in his response, before he finally answered, “It would have looked too suspect if you had suddenly gone missing.”

My fingers started to tremble as a sliver of fear crept back into my system. Without another word, I turned the faucet back on, getting to work scrubbing the leftover food particles that still clung to my plate.

“For the record, I didn’t kill Jinho.” Xiumin mentioned after a while. My scrubbing slowed as I listened. “I sent him overseas to work off his debt. When he finished paying it all off, he moved on to another syndicate where he chose to remain in hiding. He still sends money to his family through anonymous means.” 

He left once he said what he had to say, moving into his home office to do god knows what. I, on the other hand, stayed glued in place in front of the sink, still unsure how to take this new information. What? Did he expect me to feel sorry for him again? I had already made the mistake once, and I didn’t plan on doing it again.

By why was it I still felt guilty?     

I thought back to Suho’s words. Stockholm syndrome.

What if he was right? What if, I was so mentally ed up in the head because of Xiumin, that my own judgement was no longer to be trusted. If I can’t trust myself, then who am I left to trust?

Chanyeol’s fingers ran up and down the smooth surface of the phone in his hands, frustrated by the fact that this little device probably held all the evidence necessary to lock Xiumin up for good, yet he couldn’t get to it. And all because of a simple four-digit passcode.

He wouldn’t dare guess at the code, out of fear that the phone would disable completely. He couldn’t turn to the forensics department either, because he hadn’t technically obtained the device by legal means.

But it wasn’t like he had stolen it or anything. He had just happened upon it, still laying on one of the chairs in the interrogation room, just minutes after Xiumin had already left. The only reason he knew it was Xiumin’s was because he had seen Xiumin checking the time on it a few times.

Since then, the phone had been lying in the back of his bottom desk drawer, and it was only when everyone else had already gone home for the night, that Chanyeol dared to take it out again. 

Calls had been coming in non-stop, all from the same unknown number. Chanyeol was tempted to pick up the line, but he knew better than that. The last thing he wanted, was to risk losing the one shred of evidence he had left.

“Yo