chapter sixteen (*edited 2021)

“Up already?” Matthew asked as Somin shuffled into the kitchen, arms wrapped around her middle to stay warm. The apartment was usually cold in the morning, no matter the heat setting.

“Couldn’t sleep.”

Matthew flipped the omelette he was making before heading to the fridge to grab more eggs. He glanced at Somin, her dark circles more noticeable this morning; she wouldn’t meet his eyes. Matthew frowned. “Hey, sit down—you look like you’ll fall asleep any second. Breakfast will be ready in a few minutes.”

The strange, uncomfortable atmosphere became only more apparent as they sat in silence, eating without conversation, at the table; there was a tense undercurrent, but neither seemed to know how to acknowledge it, let alone be willing to do so. Eventually, Matthew set down his fork—his plate was clean, while Somin’s omelette was more or less untouched, though it had been moved around the plate considerably.

Matthew decided to be the first to address it. “Somin.” She looked up. “About yesterday. The ring.”

She stiffened, as if bracing herself for what she knew he would say.

“I understand, if you’re not ready to tell me something. I know that you always have a reason for doing something . . .” Her insistence on keeping blankets on the sofa flashed through her mind, and a small smile formed on his face. “As ridiculous as the reason might be. Or as serious. But since you always have a reason, I’ll wait for when you decide to tell me, okay? I trust you—so I’ll give you time.”

Somin stared at him for a long time, but really, it was only a few seconds. And then she sighed, looking away, but not before Matthew saw the deep resignation in her eyes. “T-Thank you.”

And the atmosphere seemed to lighten.

“So we’re calling Hongbin in?”

“Yep,” Jae said, having just caught Matthew up to speed on the new developments. “He isn’t under arrest, but we just asked if he’d be willing to answer some questions, and he said sure.”

“Why would he willingly give us more info if he doesn’t have to?” Matthew grumbled. “He seemed pretty set on telling me to forget everything he’d said.”

“Well, guess he changed his mind. Oh look, I think Jiwoo’s bringing him up here now.” Jae clapped Matthew on the back. “And I emailed you the updates, in case you—oh, you don’t have your laptop, do you? Idiot . . . use my laptop for now—and look harder when you go back home.”

Matthew rolled his eyes, standing up to grab Jae’s laptop from his desk. He paused, though, when his phone began to vibrate.

“Somin? What’s up, do you need anything?”

“Yes—no—I mean—when are you coming home?”

Matthew frowned. It was rare for Somin to call him at work, and her voice sounded strange. Panic? “You okay?” he asked carefully. “Is something wrong?”

“No, I just—Matthew, when are you coming home?”

His frown deepened. Something was wrong. “When do you need me to be home?”

“As soon as you can, I found—” She cleared . “I . . . I need to tell you something. In person.”

The ring? Or maybe not. “Is it an emergency?”

“No, no—of course not. Just . . . get home as soon as you can?”

Probably the ring. Matthew felt slightly relieved.

Matthew turned to Jae. He was talking to Jiwoo, who had just entered their office after leaving Hongbin in the interrogation room. “Hey, do I have anything to do after questioning Hongbin?”

“No, why?”

“Somin said she needs to tell me something, so I’ll need to take a break to talk to her.”

“Yeah, sure, I think that’s fine . . . do you have anything, Jiwoo?”

Jiwoo shook her head. “No, he can take a break after this.”

Matthew nodded in thanks, and then returned to his call. “I can get back right after this one questioning session. It should take ten, maybe fifteen minutes, and then I’ll be home in another ten.”

“Okay, yeah . . . that’s okay,” Somin said slowly. “Thank you.”

“Don’t worry about it . . . love you.”

“Love you too.”

Matthew stepped inside the interrogation room with Jae’s laptop in hand. “How are you?” he asked, a gesture of courtesy, and Hongbin looked up.

His dark circles were even more pronounced, if that was even possible. He looked like he hadn’t slept in days; probably since Youngji’s death, in fact.

Suddenly, Matthew wondered if he was as unsympathetic as he believed himself to be toward Hongbin at this point. The promise he had made to Somin that fateful day still rang in his ears, and combined with the newfound knowledge that perhaps he was involved in Somin’s accident in a completely different manner, Matthew found himself more invested in Hongbin’s situation than he thought he could ever be. Had someone told him that fact just a month ago, he would have laughed in the person’s face.

“Doing okay?” Matthew asked again; for some reason, he felt like he needed a verbal confirmation from Hongbin, whether he accepted or denied the fact.

Hongbin sighed. “It’ll be okay.”

Matthew pretended to not notice the intentionally cryptic nature of the response. “Well, you know you’re here voluntarily, right? You’re not under arrest—you can leave at any point.”

Hongbin nodded, a tight smile on his face, as Matthew took a seat across from him. Matthew glanced to the right, unperturbed by his own reflection staring back at him, giving a signal through the one-way mirror that he was about to begin.

“This questioning session is being videotaped for future reference. I am inspector Matthew Kim. You are here today, May 14th, 2017, for questioning regarding your involvement in the fatal DUI case from December 29th, 2013. You are not obligated to respond, whether to particular questions or at all, if you do not want to, and you can access a lawyer at any time. If, at any point, you wish to take a break or end the questioning, let me know. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“Okay . . . then, your name?”

“Lee Hongbin.”

“Date of birth?”

“September 29th, 1990.”

Matthew finished typing up the required information and then looked up. “So, if you don’t mind, I’m going to read to you the details of the original case report from four years ago. This is the information that the police working on the case at the time had gathered.” Hongbin nodded in acknowledgement, and Matthew pulled up the summary of the original report.

“On the night of December 29th, 2013, there was a car accident on the campus of Chaewon University, near the Chaewon University Library. There were four college students in the vehicle: Jeon Somin, Lee Jaehwan, Lee Hyeri, and you—Lee Hongbin. Does this all sound familiar?”

Hongbin nodded, his expression blank. Matthew sighed and continued.

“There was one witness, who called the police to the scene.” Hongbin seemed to stiffen, but that was the extent of his reaction. “The name of the witness is Kim Taehyung.”

Matthew cleared his throat. “The reason you were called here today is because of new information we have found regarding your involvement in the accident. The main point is that the accident is not on your medical records, even though we have a file of your hospitalization after the accident. Can you provide an explanation as to why?”

Hongbin stared at the table, seemingly unaffected, for longer than was natural for just thinking; Matthew was about to repeat the question when Hongbin spoke up. “I can,” he said.

Matthew held back his annoyance. “Are you willing to?”

“No.”

He’s allowed to be like this. He’s allowed to be like this. He’s allowed to say no. Relax.

“Understood. Can you describe your relationship with each of the other three in the car?”

“Other three?”

“Jaehwan, Hyeri, and Somin.”

Hongbin cocked his head. “Jaehwan was my roommate, in college. He was . . . very easy-going. Too easy-going, at times, and didn’t realize when something went too far, which got him in—in trouble. A lot. He . . . he was a good person.”

For Matthew, the last sentence sounded less like a statement of fact and more like Hongbin trying to convince himself.

“Hyeri was his girlfriend. Don’t know much about her, didn’t care much either. He didn’t really bring her to our dorm, thank god. I don’t know, she was probably a good person—she seemed nice, good for Jaehwan, but it’s awkward to be there when they’re, um, in the same room.”

Matthew fought the urge to smile at Hongbin’s discomfort.

“And Somin . . . she’s a good friend now, and she was a good friend at the time, too.” Hongbin seemed to be choosing his words carefully, and Matthew appreciated it. “She was just a positive person to be around.” He cleared his throat. “Um, so—is that enough about those three?”

“If you think it is,” Matthew replied, typing up the rest of his notes. “In that case, that’ll be all the questions for today. Would you be willing to return if we contacted you for more information?”

“Depending on my schedule. But sure, I guess.”

Matthew got back to his desk to pick up his phone and keys. “I’ll be heading home then—it should only be a few minutes. Do you need anything?”

Jae shook his head. “I’m good for now, Jiwoo went out to get us all coffee, but don’t worry, I’ll drink yours too.”

“Thanks man, I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

Matthew was surprised that Somin didn’t answer the door when he rang the bell, especially since she would have known he was coming there. Confused, he dug out his keys and opened the door himself.

The TV in the living room was still running, but Matthew couldn’t see Somin on the sofa, or in the area for that matter. His laptop was on the table, though, which started the alarm bells in his head. He glanced down the hall at the bathroom, but the door was slightly ajar and there was no light visible.

Matthew frowned. “Somin?” he called out, and he wished he could ignore the strange way that his gut was twisting even as he said her name. Something was wrong. Something was very wrong. “Somin, I’m here.” He checked the bedroom. “Somin? Where are you?”

Five minutes later, Matthew was sure he had scoured the whole apartment, but there was no sign of Somin. Her phone was switched off. It was too early to jump to conclusions, but he knew, he knew, that there was no other explanation.

And then his phone started vibrating on the counter. Matthew stood frozen for a fraction of a second before springing into action, almost dropping the phone in his hurry to answer. His brain barely registered that it was a private number, not Somin, but he was already answering.

“Hello?”

“Don’t worry about Somin,” a male voice answered. “She’ll be safe with me.”

Matthew’s blood ran cold. “. . . Excuse me?” he managed to say.

There was a laugh on the other end, but it was mocking, derisive. “I gave her back once, I might decide to do so again if it gets boring.”

His mind raced, connecting the dots quickly, but he knew that he was already too late. “J.Seph.”

“You’re smart, aren’t you? Just not smart enough.”

Matthew couldn’t bring himself to formulate a response—it was all he could do to avoid throwing his phone, and as a result breaking off the call, in frustration.

“This has been a nice game, but it’s gotten a little too close for comfort. Look forward to hearing back,” he said, his tone friendly despite the context.

He could feel his breathing becoming more erratic, so he gripped the kitchen counter and forced himself to take steady breaths. In his mind, he was no longer in his apartment, but at the entrance of the cul-de-sac.

The first time, he had watched while Somin was taken away, unable to help her.

The second time, he was too late to even try.

.

.

.

.

Reading over the police report on her accident was one thing that Somin never thought she would have to do.

It was strange, reading the third-person descriptions of an event so personal. The reports, the medical files, the car inspection, the crime scene . . . the consequences.

The first files were of Jaehwan and Hyeri. Her memories of them were faded; she hadn’t known them too well, and Youngji had told her that she’d gotten to know them the most in the days before the accident, and as a whole that period was a bit dimmer in her mind, not as clear. She spent a little more time when she reached her own file, one particular side effect standing out: Apparent lacunar amnesia.

The accident—and the day preceding it—was completely lost to her, and though the doctor had said the memories may return with time, it had been four years. Somin had largely given up, accepting that maybe forgetting it was for the best. She was about to move through the rest of the files when another memory—more recent—popped into her mind.

The broke, fiery remains of the car. The heat emanating from the wreckage. The light.

The voice. “Holy . . . Somin? Somin, can you hear me?”

Somin, can you hear me?

Somin’s eyes snapped open. She had closed them while trying to remember—that had been during the accident. The car, it was burning—that was from that night. She had remembered that scene. She had remembered the car.

She had remembered.

There was something significant about the voice, though, and it was on the tip of her tongue, she just needed to finish reading the files, and maybe—

Hongbin.

The next medical file was Hongbin’s.

The voice had belonged to Hongbin.

The file slipped from Somin’s grasp.

Hongbin had been the one to call the police. She could remember the conversation, and snippets of other people talking—she remembered the way he was panicking—the way he kept trying to talk to her, even as the ambulance arrived. She hadn’t been able to respond the first time, even though she was awake; the second time, he hadn’t been there when she woke up.

Somin glanced back at the medical file and frowned. Why was he hospitalized? Did he get hurt trying to save her? But then a more pressing thought occurred—why hadn’t he been listed as a witness? Surely he would have told them something.

She jumped slightly when she heard Matthew’s laptop make a sound for a notification. She felt slightly guilty as she looked at it, at how Matthew trusted her enough to accept her answer when she said she hadn’t seen it. But that feeling was pushed to the back of her mind as she checked the notification—a new email.

Clicking on it, she downloaded the attachments, gathering the paper files into a neat pile as she waited. Once the attachments were downloaded, she clicked through them one at a time.

The first few were different reports on the medical history, and she quickly realized they pertained to Hongbin. Though it was a bit hard to understand the point of them without any clear objective, having read the paper files beforehand must have pointed her in the right direction—Somin recognized that there was no mention of an accident in Hongbin’s medical records. She decided that she would look more into that after checking the last attachment.

The last file was a PDF, an old article dated the day after the accident. They were interviews, she realized. Transcriptions of interviews of the victims’ friends and family. One interview in particular was marked in the PDF, so Somin zoomed in on that first.

And then blinked a few times, rereading it, sure that she had read the name wrong.

Kim Taehyung? She knew that Hongbin was the one that had called the police, so it should have said Lee Hongbin, not Kim—

“I’m Kim Taehyung. Have you heard that name before?”

Somin froze.

No.

She read the article again, but the text didn’t miraculously change in front of her eyes. The witness was Kim Taehyung. The witness was J.Seph.

J.Seph had probably known Somin beforehand. He may have recognized Matthew for sure, but now there was a possibility—with a high likelihood—that he had recognized her, too.

And then another thought—she hadn’t said Kim Taehyung in her statement, had she? She had skipped over that scene as quickly as she could, the memories sour in her mind, but that one part had never seemed essential anyway.

Matthew and his team knew about the witness, and they knew about J.Seph, they just didn’t have enough information to connect the two.

Before she knew it, her fingers were dialing Matthew’s number on her phone, even though her hand was trembling. He picked up after only a few rings.

“Somin? What’s up, do you need anything?”

“Yes—no—I mean—when are you coming home?” Somin coughed a few times to clear .

She could practically see Matthew frowning. “You okay? Is something wrong?”

“No, I just—Matthew, when are you coming home?”

“When do you need me to be home?”

“As soon as you can, I found—” She cut herself off. She remembered the extent to which J.Seph had gone to cover his trace when getting Somin to just call him with information, and she had a strange thought that, maybe, the phone wasn’t the safest form of communication. She didn’t want to know what would happen to Matthew if J.Seph knew that she had told him, even if this helped the investigation . . . who knew how long the investigation would take. It certainly wouldn’t take J.Seph as long to retaliate. “I . . . I need to tell you something. In person.”

“Is it an emergency?”

Somin took a deep breath. “No, no—of course not. Just . . . get home as soon as you can?”

She could hear Matthew saying a few things to someone else. “I can get back right after this one questioning session. It should take ten, maybe fifteen minutes, and then I’ll be home in another ten.”

“Okay, yeah . . . that’s okay.” At least twenty minutes. She could survive for another twenty minutes. “Thank you.”

“Don’t worry about it . . . love you.”

“Love you too.”

Somin uneasily paced around the room. Ten minutes left. Just ten minutes. Matthew’s laptop was where she had last touched it on the table, still open to the article. Her head began hurting as soon as she glanced at it, so she looked away quickly.

Then the apartment intercom chimed. Somin’s first reaction was relief—and then confusion. It had only been ten minutes.

Then fear.

She stood rooted in her spot for a few seconds before the intercom chimed again. There’s a monitor. Just check the monitor.

Slightly less terrified, Somin went to check the monitor, and then breathed out in relief at the familiar face.

She opened the door with a smile. “Hey, Jiwoo,” she said, gesturing for the other girl to enter. “Did Matthew tell you to come here?”

Jiwoo didn’t respond, or even move. Somin looked at her carefully, getting a strange feeling in her stomach. Jiwoo’s hand reached behind her jacket, and Somin plastered a smile to her face. “Actually, I need to go check on something, I’ll be right ba—”

But Somin had barely blinked, let alone moved to shut the door, before Jiwoo’s foot was wedged between the door and the doorframe and Somin saw the flash of the hall lights glint off black metal. Jiwoo motioned with her gun for Somin to step out of the apartment, and Somin had no choice but to follow.

“Jiwoo?” Somin asked quietly, her mind refusing to comprehend the situation. This wasn’t happening. “What are you—”

“I’m sorry,” Jiwoo finally said. Her voice was shaky. “I have to.”

early update because i'll be busy the next week or two (moving, starting college, etc.) ... so hopefully this'll help keep you guys busy till the next update :) thank you for all the comments, you guys are so nice!!