”What? No!” Yixing defended, backing up a few steps away from Hana. She was well aware that she was radiating anger, and her hands were balled into fists. Somewhere deep in her clouded mind, there was a voice telling her that her actions weren’t rational, but in that moment, the voice wasn’t very loud to Hana, and so it was quite easy to push it far away.

“Then how else would he know you?” she asked. Yixing looked into her eyes, and she stared right back, not willing to back down. The chief stayed quiet, and from the corner of her eye, she could tell that he was staying quiet on purpose.

“I don’t know! This is as much as a problem for you as it is for me! You think I’m not completely freaked out by the fact that he somehow searched thousands of fan-meeting accounts just to find one where I mentioned that I like tulips?” Yixing countered, betrayal and confusion seeping into the tone of his words.

“Then what in the world is going on?!” Hana exclaimed, suddenly tired. “How does he know this stuff? Why did Baekhyun claim that he knows you?”

“Hana, you didn’t think about the fact that this might be a tactic to scare you and Yixing. If he were keeping an eye on you long enough to realize the little things about you — like the lavender flowers — then why couldn’t he do the same and figure out the flowers that Yixing liked?” the chief reasoned. Hana watched Yixing nod enthusiastically.

“Baekhyun probably knows that I’m working for the precinct as a criminal psychologist, and he wants to make sure that I don’t help you guys any more than the last criminal psychologist did.” Then, as an afterthought he asked, “How did she end up quitting anyways?” He was looking at the chief rather than Hana, and she was grateful, because she wasn’t sure if she could stop herself from throttling him just to release some tension. She was so confused, and she was just so tired.

Hana sighed, the tension leaving her body as she finally let her thoughts consume her. It was becoming painfully obvious that she overreacted too quickly. She had only known Yixing for a few weeks, but there really wasn’t a legitimate reason for her to doubt him. He had always helped the precinct out, and he even did some analysis on Baekhyun last night as she told him what had happened with Baekhyun. She had this instinctive need to trust him, and her instincts hadn’t failed her yet.

Hopefully this wouldn’t be the time that they failed her.

Hana remained quiet and in place as the chief answered Yixing’s question. “Long story short, Baekhyun scared her off. She was doing some research at the precinct when she started receiving threats that said that she would be the next to get kidnapped. Needless to say, she was extremely worried about herself and decided it would be best to quit and move somewhere else.”

“Well then,” Yixing replied, his voice slightly strained, and she couldn’t blame him.

Although, it was obvious to Hana that the chief and Yixing had purposely directed the attention away from her, but she was wondering why Yixing hadn’t said anything about how she accused him of knowing Baekhyun. She was startled out of her thoughts by the phone ringing and the chief sighed, moving to answer it.

“You two can leave now. You have work to do,” the chief instructed as he rubbed his eyes for a moment. Now that she was paying closer attention to him, he looked almost haggard. There were dark circles under his eyes, and his hair looked mussed, as though he ran his hands through them several times.

“What’s going on?” Hana decided to ask before they left.

“Somehow it got leaked to the press that Baekhyun killed his next victim so now the phone’s been ringing all morning. It must’ve been someone from the restaurant last night,” he murmured. He had been ignoring the phone ringing for almost half a minute before he gave up and picked up with an angry Hello?

Hana and Yixing took that as a cue to leave and walked to her car in absolute silence, an awkward atmosphere falling over them. Usually, the silence would be filled with Yixing’s humming, and that would be make everything better, but he wasn’t humming. When Hana looked over at the man walking next to her, she noticed that he was deep in thought. His eyebrows were furrowed, and his eyes were darting from left to right as though he were trying to figure something out. Hana didn’t feel as though it was proper to bother him while he was seriously pondering something – that something most likely being Baekhyun – but what happened just a few minutes ago was bothering her. She was starting to feel guilty about blaming Yixing, and he hadn’t even brought it up once since it all happened.

Hana cleared and spoke.

“Hey, Yixing?” she called apprehensively. Yixing jerked his head towards Hana as if he had momentarily forgotten that she was with him. She didn’t blame him considering she was like that quite often. She thought of what Yixing told her about Myungsoo saying that she didn’t pay attention to her surroundings when she was so absorbed by something and realized that she and Yixing were more alike than she originally thought. While writing a report or reading a case file, if she got really involved, no one would be able to get her attention by calling her name, and it seemed like Yixing got the same way.

“What’s up?” he responded. They both got into the car and put on their seat belts before Hana spoke up again as she put the car in reverse and started backing out of the parking space at the precinct.