The sun had already set as Jeonghan finally came home. His apartment was located in a rather quiet area of the town. Not many neighbors, not many people to deal with. Jeonghan sighed as he unlocked his apartment door. Coming home was always like stepping through a portal into a completely different world. A world where he could forget all the stress that work was putting him under and finally start to take care of his own life.

Today had been especially stressful. This morning his boss had ordered everyone into his office. The housemaid of a middle-aged and wealthy woman had called the police not long ago. Her employer hadn't left her room for at least three hours, even though she was supposed to meet one of her business partners to discuss a very important deal. After the housemaid had called for her and received no response, she decided to open the door. It was an incredible shock for her to find her employer lying on her bed.

Tied up. 

Covered in deep cuts.

Dead. 

The policemen who arrived at the crime scene first, decided to inform Jackson immediately because the pattern of the murder was well known to them.  As it was to every single police officer in town. At the moment, there was only one person who tied their victims to their bed taking hours to torture them and eventually killing them by stabbing the abdominal area repeatedly.

The victims showed clear marks of strangulation on their throats and their faced would always be completely maimed by cuts and punches. That was the only thing no detective could find an answer to. Why was the perpetrator so incredibly furious? There was no connection between the victims, so the first assumption was that they were chosen randomly. But the amount of anger that the perpetrator put into his work showed the clear opposite. He had to have a personal connection to each of them.

A majority of the detectives just kept insisting that that's what psychopaths do. Killing people in bizarre ways to fulfill their own sick fantasies. Jeonghan despised them. Every human has reasons for what they do. Every move, every thought has something that causes it. Sometimes the individual isn't even aware of it. But sometimes they are. And Jeonghan couldn't understand why his colleagues had no intention of finding out what S.Coups' something was. He, on the contrary, was ready to move heaven and hell to find out what made his opponent tick. Why was he the way he was and why didn't he get caught for such a long time? Those questions were what defined this job for Jeonghan. He didn't have a choice of getting another job anyway, so why not make the best of it?

When Jeonghan had been called to the crime scene this morning, his hopes that the flower bouquet a few weeks ago had just been a bad joke, were instantly crushed. Deep down he knew that it had indeed been S.Coups who had sent them. But why? The dead woman was  convincing evidence that he was back. Why send Jeonghan a message first?
He was still pretty much convinced of his theory that he only did it for the attention. But Jeonghan hadn't given it to him. He didn't tell his colleagues about the card and his encounter in the prison, kept his mouth shut for weeks. Was it perhaps his fault that S.Coups was now bringing the big guns in and started to kill again?

He had to stop himself from diving into that thought too much. That was the risk of this job. You constantly play with the thought that certain things happened because you made the wrong decision. But as his father had once taught him: “Never blame yourself for a crime that you haven't committed. Whether a person pulls the trigger or not is entirely their own decision.” Even though in this case it was rather a knife than a gun.


Jeonghan dropped his bag and shoes in the next best corner and threw his jacket away, missing  the coat hook only by a few centimeters. He didn't bother to  go back and pick it up, though. The best you could do after a long day of work was taking a hot shower and then cuddle up in a soft blanket.

As soon as he entered the bathroom he was facing his own self in the big mirror that almost took over the complete wall. The longer he kept looking at his reflection, the more things he noticed about himself. His cheekbones, for example, had become much more visible over the past weeks. Constantly forgetting to eat and drink had become a habit of his, since working on cases and additionally having to deal with S.Coups was taking up the majority of his time and attention. Being reminded to eat while being in the middle of his investigations was considered nothing but a disturbance. He just wasn't able to leave his work unfinished.

With everything around Jeonghan being quiet there was also this heaviness that kept coming over him ever since he was a child. It felt like he was being wrapped up tightly in a thick layer of fog, not willing to let him go. His heartbeat being the only sound to reach his ears.

He remembered a phone call of his dad which he had overheard when he was little. He said something about two sides and that time will show which one Jeonghan would choose. He said he hoped that Jeonghan would choose the right one. He looked really sad and visibly worried but Jeonghan didn't really understand his words back then. Which sides was he talking about? 
But with the age also comes experience and by now, Jeonghan seemed to know what his father had been talking about. And he was proud. If his father had meant what Jeonghan thought, he did the right thing. Out of the two sides he chose the right one.

Jeonghan felt like an entirely new person as he stepped out of the shower. Amazing, what a little bit of warm water could do.
With a towel draped around his shoulders he stepped in front of the mirror to see whether his relaxation was physically visible , but as he looked into it, his face immediately froze. For a moment, time was passing in slow motion and Jeonghan felt his heartbeat increasing with every second. His breathing became faster and he couldn’t take his eyes off the glass in front of him. 
Almost the entire mirror had steamed up because of the hot shower but a few areas were as crystal clear as they had been before. But those areas weren't chosen randomly.

"Didn't you like my flowers?"

Someone had written these words across the whole mirror. And judging from the choice of words, it hadn't been just someone.

Jeonghan wrapped the towel around his waist and reached for his weapon that he always kept within reach, even if it wasn't exactly in line with the safety instructions. But if someone had written on his mirror there was a high chance that he might still be in the apartment.

Mentally cursing that someone, because he probably had seen Jeonghan in the shower, he started to sneak through every room of his flat and checked every possible hiding place big enough for a human to fit in. Twice. But he couldn't find anything. However, he still was almost too anxious to breath. After reaching the living room for the third time Jeonghan went straight towards the windows and closed all the curtains.
Assuring himself that there really was no one except for him in this apartment, he flopped down onto the couch.

"Okay Jeonghan, calm down. He's not here. It's just you, your couch and your way too big plush cat. No one is gonna hurt you", he whispered to himself trying to calm down his rapid heartbeat and put the weapon, that he had been clutching at way too tightly, on the table.

He reached for his phone and pressed number one on his speed dial. Besides Mingyu, Joshua was one of his best friends and co-workers. Jeonghan could have also called his boss and immediately informed him about the incident but he didn't want to draw too much attention to it because then he would get police protection 24/7 and that really was the last thing he needed right now. Moreover, if he told his boss about this, he’d find out about the flowers, too. And then Jeonghan would be in the exact situation that he had tried to avoid so badly. First of all, he would give S.Coups his attention, and secondly, his boss would question Jeonghan’s loyalty again and eventually suspend him from the whole S.Coups case. And that would be it for his career.

After he had made the call and Joshua promised he would get to the apartment as fast as possible, Jeonghan went to the bathroom again. He sincerely hoped that the writing was no longer there and tried to save himself with the it could've all been imagination thought. Over the time and with everything that had happened he started not to trust his consciousness anymore. Whether it was because his brain had played tricks on him before or just a defense mechanism when he was confronted with things that he desperately wanted to be untrue.

But as he entered the room, everything was the same as he had left it. Although, the steamy mirror started to clear up more and more and the writing was fainting with every minute. 
Jeonghan decided to quickly take a photo of the mirror because after enough time no trace of this incident would be visible anymore.

The sudden ringing at the door completely caught Jeonghan off guard. I had been so quiet that the doorbell seemed as loud as a siren. While still holding his phone Jeonghan made his way over to the door and opened it. As expected, Joshua was standing outside. His whole appearance seemed kind of messy. His hair was ruffled, his shirt was a bit too big and hung loosely around his thighs and instead of saying 'hello' or something, Joshua was just staring at him with his mouth slightly opened.
"Was it really so important that you had no time to put on some clothes?", he said with a slight stutter.

Jeonghan noticed just now that he was only wearing the towel around his hips and disappeared into his room faster than you could say the word psychopath. Since Joshua had been to his flat before, he knew his way around. He quietly sat down on the couch in the living room and waited for his friend, trying to calm his blush because damn, shirtless Jeonghan was hot.

As he entered the living room dressed in sweatpants and an oversized shirt, he immediately led Joshua to the bathroom and showed him the mirror.

"Now please don't tell me the flowers last week were from a crazy stalker."
Joshua said in a whiny tone. Shortly after waking up from his nap, he really didn't have the energy to deal with this.

"They weren't. More or less," Jeonghan answered, desperately trying to find the right words to tell Joshua that a psychopath, THE psychopah, was targeting him. But there obviously were no right words to explain Jeonghan’s current situation so he decided to go for the direct way:

"You heard about this S.Coups escaping from prison thing, right?"

Joshua nodded.

"Well, you remeber the flowers? They and this message are most likely from him."

Joshua blinked a few times in confusion, suddenly wide awake.
"Are you sure? I mean, maybe it's really just a crazy person that has a crush on you"

"The one does not exclude the other," Jeonghan mumbled as he searched for the card in the pocket of his jeans that were lying around on the tiled bathroom floor.
As he finally found it, he handed it over to Joshua, pointing at the initials at the bottom of the card.

Joshua nodded slowly.
"Okay, let's assume you're right. Why would he do this? No offense but if I'd have broken out of a prison I would be setting up abroad or something, but I definitely wouldn't waste my time writing love letters to a cop."

Now it was Jeonghan who started to blush.
"These are no love letters, that guy is threatening me! May the game begin again can't you read?!"

"The card came with the biggest bouquet of flowers I've ever seen", Joshua countered.

"Touchè."