Sungmin could tell that nothing he said was getting to her. She was smiling and nodding, but her eyes kept flickering to her phone every few moments.

“-and then Siwon planted a whoopee cushion under Chief’s chair,” he continued.

Haruki nodded again. “That’s really…” She blinked and tilted her head in confusion. “Wait, I thought we were talking about your manic plumber.”

“Ah, so you were listening,” he grinned, before nodding at the phone in her hand. “What’s going on? Hot date?”

“Something like that,” Haruki muttered as she checked the screen yet again. She sighed and his eyebrows rose.

“Wait, seriously? You’re waiting for a guy-”

“What? No! Not like that!” she protested, blushing slightly. “I…it’s not like that!”

“Then what?” Sungmin’s eyes narrowed.

Haruki sighed and adamantly shoved her phone in her pocket. “It’s nothing, it’s just related to the case. Sorry, I’ve just been distracted all morning. What were you saying about your plumber?”

Sungmin gave her a long look before smiling and patting her arm. “Don’t worry about your case, okay? You’re closer to finding him than you were before.”

“What makes you say that?” Haruki asked, taking a step back, out of his grasp.

He just shrugged. “I know you. I know you’re brilliant and figuring out complicated cases like this one.” He drained his cup of coffee and tossed it into the trash. “I’ve got to go. I’ll see you later. Oh.” He stopped in the doorway and glanced back at her. “Are you meeting with the other girls for lunch today?”

Haruki shook her head. “I’ve got a date with my roommate and her parents,” she replied with a grimace.

Sungmin winced in sympathy.

“Hey!” Donghae poked his head through her door as she hastily put her phone in her pocket. “Is…something wrong?”

“No! Not at all!” Haruki smiled as brightly as she could, hoping he would be fooled.

Apparently, she wasn’t very convincing, because Donghae gave her a suspicious look before shrugging. “If you say so.”

“So…what’s up?”

Donghae entered her office and began pacing back and forth. “I was thinking that we should comb through all the background checks for the people in our department and see if anything comes up.”

“Nothing is going to come up, Donghae,” Haruki argued. “You and I took the exact same background checks. Our records have to be completely clean to work here.”

Her partner sighed as he perched on the edge of her desk. “I know, but I can’t help thinking that we’ll find something there.”

“Why’s that?” Haruki attempted to discreetly check her phone, but Donghae grabbed it from her.

"No texting other men when you’re working with me!” he teased. “Who are you texting, anyways?”

“I’m just…waiting for someone to get back to me about…something.” Haruki waved her hand vaguely. “What were you saying?” She attempted to grab the phone back, but Donghae held it over her head. “Donghae! Give it back!”

The sharpness in her voice startled him. “Okay, okay,” he replied, placing the phone back on her table. “But no touching it until I’m done talking, alright?”

“Fine.” Haruki dropped her phone into her file cabinet and shut it, looking at him expectantly.

“Anyways, I just don’t believe that anyone could get away with such…violent acts and not show some tendencies early on,” her partner explained. “I know Onew said that it isn’t a rule, but I just can’t help thinking that there has to be some way of seeing that their murderous tendencies would appear, at least in hindsight.”

Haruki’s eyes lingered on her file cabinet.

“Haruki!”

“I heard you!” She sighed and rubbed her forehead. “But hasn’t Onew been looking through the background checks?”

“Onew’s been busy testifying at a trial this past week,” Donghae replied. “He’s swamped, but I think we can figure it out without him. And if we find anything suspicious, we can always just ask him to look it over later.” He hopped off her desk and headed towards the door. Smirking, he glanced over his shoulder at her. “You coming?”

“In a moment,” Haruki replied. She began opening her file cabinet-

“Leave the phone here!” Donghae ordered. “No distractions allowed! Geez, aren't you the one always telling me that?”

“Whatever,” Haruki grumbled.

"Three parking tickets in one year,” Donghae whistled. “Yesung, what a rebel.”

Normally, Haruki would have screamed at him to focus, but instead, she offered a slight smile and went back to reading Ryeowook’s papers.

He narrowed his eyebrows slightly. After what had happened over the weekend, he wasn’t surprised to find her acting differently, but he was still worried. He still wasn’t sure about what scared him the most: the fact that Daesung had been murdered in such a brutal fashion, or the fact that the killer had told Haruki about it.

She’d been surprisingly agreeable when Chief suggested she stay away from the crime scene. Their boss had known how personally she was taking this case, and had wanted to protect her from it. They’d left out a lot of details about the event: the riot that had nearly followed the discovery of the body, the burned pile of money that represented the rent owed to the hacker, the pile of dolls in the cell, each representing a gruesome death, and the one that Daesung held in his own hands that represented his own.

The killer was one sick bastard.

All of that had been left out of the police report, though Donghae couldn’t erase it from his memory if he wanted to. He’d initially protested hiding the details, but he understood why Chief and the other higher-ups wanted it done. They couldn’t afford to admit that they’d hired such a psycho.

Either way, seeing a colleague, former or otherwise, murdered so brutally had turned his stomach and he hadn’t been able to eat or sleep since, especially knowing that he could have prevented it. He needed to share the whole story with someone, and he didn’t trust anyone else to know how he felt.

“Haruki, about what happened to Daesung…” Donghae began.

She jumped. “Huh? What? Daesung? Oh, do you think we should look at his background check, too? What did they do with his paperwork now?”

“Haruki, I’m serious. We should talk about it.”

She was pretending not to hear him as she opened a drawer and began sorting through the paperwork.

He kept talking anyways. “The killer…the photo he sent you didn’t show everything.” At this, he got a raised eyebrow in reply, but she still said nothing. “And we, uh, didn’t want to worry you or anything, so we censored it a little bit. But...I think you should know. It was wrong to hide it from you."

Haruki finally looked up, narrowing her eyes at him. “Donghae, what are you talking about?”

He left nothing out as he described the cell Daesung had been found in. The dolls and how the way they were scattered suggested that the hacker had been forced to pick one at random, thus sealing his own fate. The blood dripping from the still-warm body onto the pile of burnt twenty-dollar bills that seemed to make up all the rent owed by the killer. The way several guards had puked upon seeing the crime scene.

When he finished, Haruki’s forehead was creased, but she didn’t look as disturbed as he expected she would. Her voice shook with forced calm as she murmured, “We knew we were dealing with someone who’s crazy, Donghae. We knew that from the start.”

“I thought we'd be dealing with a Ted Bundy, not a Hannibal Lecter," Donghae replied. "I'm just saying that this is more insanity than either of us imagined.”

“Why are you looking at me like that?” his partner snapped.

Donghae sighed. “Look, he’s targeting you. You’ve seen what he’s capable of, and he doesn’t like being crossed. If he gets angry with you-”

“Shh!” Haruki hissed, eyes flashing towards the door..

Donghae nearly cursed out loud. He was such an idiot. Of course, he shouldn’t be talking about things like this in the middle of their department, where everyone was a suspect. “I’m just saying, you need to be careful.”

“No, you’re saying that you think I should be off this case,” Haruki retorted. “I heard you over the phone, Donghae. You were the one telling Chief that you didn’t think I should go to the crime scene.”

“I didn’t think you could handle it-”

Haruki’s mouth fell open in disbelief and she huffed in irritation before she could stop herself. “I went through the same training as you and all the other men here. I have been in this department for more than two years and I’ve dealt with plenty of disturbing cases. I think I know what I can handle.”

She slammed a stack of papers into the box they’d set aside for Onew to look at later and yanked another folder out of the cabinet.

Donghae sighed as he put another stack of folders back where they belonged. “I’m sorry,” he ventured after a few moments. Haruki didn’t reply, and they spent the rest of their investigation in silence.

“She’s hiding something,” Donghae complained as he paced back and forth inside Jiyong’s office, much to the hacker’s annoyance.

“Who is?”

"My partner,” Donghae replied.

“What makes you think that?” asked Jiyong.

“She kept checking her phone every few seconds,” Donghae replied. “And this was after she received a text with a picture of…”

Jiyong smiled, though it looked strained. “It’s okay. You can say his name. Daesung. She got a text with a picture of Daesung? Wow, after that, I’d imagine she’d smash her phone and never look at it again. Who the hell was dumb enough to send her that?”

"Wait, she didn’t tell you?” Donghae asked. The hacker shrugged and frowned. “The killer sent her the picture.”

Now, Jiyong looked alarmed. “What? She got another text from the killer and didn’t tell me? How am I supposed to redeem myself now?” The detective rolled his eyes. “I’m just kidding! How did you find out she got a text from the killer?”

“She showed it to me,” Donghae replied.

"Did she hand you her phone?” Jiyong asked after a pause.

The detective frowned. “Uh…no?”

"She just held it at a distance and let you look at it?”

"Something like that. Why is this relevant?”

Jiyong cursed under his breath and jumped to his feet, pacing back and forth across the room. Just as Donghae was about to decide to leave, the hacker looked up, a very serious expression on his face. “Donghae. I need you to do something for me.”

"Sure.”

“I need you to steal Haruki’s phone.”

Thirty hours, sixteen minutes, forty-two seconds since she’d sent the message.

Nothing.

Thirty hours, sixteen minutes, forty-four seconds since she’d sent the message.

Still nothing.

Thirty hours, sixteen minutes-

“Are you okay?” Jessica asked. Haruki’s head shot up to find Jessica, as well as her parents, staring at her.

“Yes. I’m fine. Sorry.” She smiled at the older couple in embarrassment, but they only continued to stare at her.

“Are you expecting a text or something?” asked the model.

“Yes, it has to do with work and it’s really important,” Haruki replied, shrugging and smiling at her roommate’s parents again. “You know how it is…” Their stares only intensified and Haruki quickly dropped her eyes back to her plate, shoving a too-large chunk of salmon into .

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Jessica roll her eyes. Haruki felt a bit like a girl meeting her boyfriend's parents for the first time, only she was sure the experience couldn’t possibly get more terrifying than this. Why on earth was she sitting in the middle of a French restaurant, surrounded by crystal and waitresses in tuxedos, eating dishes whose names she couldn’t even pronounce?

Jessica had picked her up from work around noon and promptly taken her to the fanciest restaurant Haruki had ever seen. She hadn’t known it existed- it was way out of her price range. She glanced over at Jessica’s elegant dress, and her parents’ stiff formalwear. Had she known lunch would be a much more serious matter, she would have changed, though she didn’t have anything that could possibly make her fit into this place. She didn’t even know what all the forks and knives and spoons spread out across her placemat were for, though Jessica often gave her hints by kicking her shin and subtly gesturing to the correct utensil.

She was never agreeing to anything Jessica asked her to do again.

“Yes, let’s talk about your work.” Jessica’s father said suddenly as he set down his fork and knife, wiping his mouth with his napkin. “You’re a police officer, is that correct?”

“I’m a detective,” Haruki replied with a nod.

“You were assigned to the Lobotomist case,” he continued.

Haruki froze, knowing exactly where this was going. “Uh-oh,” she heard her roommate mutter. She wanted to excuse herself, but her voice caught in and her legs seemed to grown numb all of a sudden. She couldn’t move if she wanted to.

And besides, the cell reception was better here.

“Yes,” she forced herself to say. “That’s correct.”

“And how many girls has he killed now?” The man’s eyes were icy as they bored into her skull. His wife gave her an equally hard look. Though she had been cold to her husband all throughout lunch, they were united against the detective. No sympathy from either corner. Fantastic. “Five?”

“Four,” Haruki corrected, though she knew that it was more than that. Officially, the count was four, if only the cases that followed the killer’s method of attack counted. But there was also Victoria. As well as Taecyeon and Daesung and Henry the security guard, though they weren’t girls…

“Interesting.” The man picked up his wine glance, though he didn’t drink. Instead, he just stared at her over the rim. “How exactly is the investigation going?”

"I can’t give you the details,” Haruki replied. “They are private.”

“Private?” The man’s eyebrows rose the way Jessica’s did when she’d suggested pairing khakis with a blue blouse. “Krystal Jung was my daughter-”

“Oh, now he cares,” Haruki heard Jessica mutter, but her parents ignored her.

“-and this investigation is being kept private?”

Haruki took a deep breath. “I am very sorry about what happened to your daughter, but any details I give you may be released to the general public, which would hinder our investigation. I can only assure you that we are doing everything possible to find the man responsible.”

“And how many more do you plan on letting die before you catch him?” Mr. Jung raised his glass to the light and swirled it a few times.

“Dad!” Jessica snapped.

“I’m only curious,” he replied mildly.

Haruki’s smile felt even more strained now. “I don’t plan on letting any more die,” she replied evenly.

“I’ll hold you to it,” Mr. Jung replied as he sipped his wine.

“It’s not her fault!” Jessica shot at her father. “Just because you stormed out of our life for all these years doesn’t mean you can barge back into it now and be angry over a daughter you never cared about!”

The entire restaurant fell silent as Jessica jumped to her feet, snatching up her purse and sprinting out the door. Haruki gave the model’s parents an embarrassed smile. “Excuse me,” she murmured, before getting up and chasing after her roommate.

“Jessica!” she called as she spotted her roommate stomping towards her car, yanking her keys out of pockets as she did so. “Jessica, wait!”

“Leave me alone, Haruki,” the model snapped. “I’m not going back in there!”

“No.” Haruki snatched the keys from her roommate and held them behind her back. “You dragged me into this. You do not get to be the one to escape.”

“Fine! You can come too.” Jessica made a snatch at the keys, but Haruki transferred them to the other hand and dodged out of her grasp.

“Come on! Jessica, you haven’t seen your parents in years. This is your chance to talk to them again and work things out!”

“I don’t want to talk to them!” Jessica shrieked. Then she added, in a calmer voice. “You don’t talk to your parents either.”

“It’s not something I’m proud of! You can try again. They want to try again. They’re the ones who asked to meet with you!” Haruki snapped. She sighed as Jessica merely scrunched up her nose. “Look, today isn’t even supposed to be about you or your parents. It’s about Krystal.”

Jessica’s face fell slightly. “Well, I never talked to her much either.”

“And you regret that. You told Donghae just as much,” the detective added.

The model scowled up at her. “Does Donghae tell you everything?”

“Pretty much,” Haruki replied, forcing a smile to hide her guilt. She was keeping so many secrets from him, while he'd gone against Chief's orders to tell her the truth about Daesung. “But- ugh! Stop getting me off topic! This is about your sister! It’s your chance to say good-bye and apologize! I know you think your parents stopped caring about you, but trust me, they really do love you. They just don’t know how to show it.”

Jessica bit her lip as she stared towards the restaurant. Haruki fell silent, hoping what she’d said had changed her roommate’s mind. She hadn’t realized until that moment how similar she and Jessica were. Both of them had lost a sister, both of them regretted how that relationship had fallen apart, both were estranged from their parents. If Haruki could salvage her relationship with her parents, she would, but it was too late. She didn’t want Jessica to go through the same thing. If only her roommate could see that…

“You know that was really corny, right?” Jessica asked. She snatched the keys from Haruki’s grasp and stomped back towards the restaurant.

I hate you. “You’re welcome,” retorted the detective. She was about to follow her roommate, when her phone buzzed and she pulled it out of her pocket.

Unknown sender.

With shaking hands, she opened the message.

Re: Morita Haruki

What do you want from me?

“Haruki?” She looked up to see Jessica staring at her again. “Are you okay?”

“Fine,” Haruki replied. “You go on ahead. I need to, uh, answer this text.”

Her thumb shook as she scrolled down to see the killer’s reply:

Everything.

A/N: Er...wow. I did not expect Daesung's death to be as creepy as it was. Wonder what that says about me...