Chapter 14

“So why are you here?”

Kyungsoo kept his eyes fixed on the end credits that were still rolling in, obviously reluctant to answer. He’d been avoiding it for the best of the time, Yena realized, but he had mentioned it, which meant he wasn’t completely against talking about it. Getting him to actually start talking was always the most challenging part.

Finally, his shoulders sagged. Still staring at the screen, he gave her a half-hearted shrug. “What else? My parents started arguing again, and then my brother tried to talk to my dad and he got yelled at too, and then went to bed crying. My mom tried to get me to side with her. My dad tried to get me to side with him. Nothing new. I gotta… I gotta pick Hyunwoo up from piano class in another hour, though. And see if there’s anything we can do before… going home.”

Again. It wasn’t unexpected, but it still didn’t make it any less worse. “You’re free to stay over if you want,” she offered. “Hyunwoo too.”

He stared at his hands. “My parents will want him back.”

There wasn’t any more she could say, really, or do. Same with Kyungsoo, really, stuck between as a middleman all the while his parents fought. He didn’t want to move out and leave his brother there. According to him, they didn’t want to divorce because it was apparently less harmful to keep fighting practically daily.

He finally turned away from the screen. “It’s fine,” he said, though it was completely unconvincing. “There’s good days. He’ll… he’ll be in seventh grade soon, and my parents are thinking about sending him to a boarding school. And I’ll probably move out too.”

“That’s in another two years.”

“Yeah, well.” Kyungsoo shrugged. “Gotta live with what you have, right? Besides, two years passes quick.”
 

All of a sudden, what had happened the day before didn’t feel like as much as it had before. “You’re free to drop by,” she offered. “With Hyunwoo. My dad will probably be happy to see all of you, and Yerim obviously enjoys your company much more. My mom also cooks better when you guys are there than when I go home.”

“Your dad doesn’t call me the child he actually wants for no reason.”

She threw her pillow at him, which Kyungsoo batted aside, laughing slightly. “I should probably go,” he said. “Honestly, freeze the leftovers. I think I’ll take my brother out for ramen today. We don’t need more food.”

“You can still eat more?”

“He’ll eat, not me,” Kyungsoo corrected, then paused. “Be careful too. The police still haven’t caught the murderer, but they did report that they tracked him through the city and he appears to have tried to leave.”

“That’s a good thing, right?”

He pulled on his winter coat. “Yes and no,” he replied. “I can’t tell. But just… be careful. And just call me if you need me to take you anywhere, because it’s not that much of a nuisance and I’d rather do that than…” He trailed off. “You’re a .”

“Thanks.”

“Anytime.” Slipping on his shoes, Kyungsoo gave her a slight smile. “See you.”

The door shut behind him.

***

Jongdae had a headache, and he was pretty sure that he hadn’t had one for nearly a hundred years.

It felt downright miserable, and for some reason, drinking tea just made it worse. For a good three hours, he went through Jongin’s files, put them into a better dated order, rearranged it again, sorted them out alphabetically, hoping to connect something that seemed to be missing. None of it seemed to work and five hours later, he had figured as much as he did when he had been talking to Jongin, which wasn’t a lot. There wasn’t nearly enough information for it to make sense (apart from the fact that it was obviously very, very wrong), and Jongin obviously wasn’t capable of hacking back into their files. The only thing Jongdae would’ve been capable of was possibly breaking in to find the physical copies of the files, but there was no way he wouldn’t get caught, so that was impossible too.

By the time it was two in the afternoon, Jongdae was nowhere closer to anything but wanting to hit his head on the table. A couple sheets from the files had fallen to the ground and he wasn’t nearly in the mood to pick them up, and, head still pounding, looked up from the papers and tried to collect his thoughts. It was nearly impossible.

Fifteen minutes later, he had labelled it as a lost cause (at least, without more files or digging around in the Sicari’s labs, it genuinely was). Then, with absolutely impeccable timing, the door to Jongin’s room swung open and he poked his head outside.

“Dude,” Jongin started. “I can feel your stress in the air.”

Jongdae frowned. “That’s…”

“Seriously.” Jongin pointed at the files. “Just give up. You’re not going to find much more for now. Give it a break. You’ve been at it for hours.”

Jongdae pushed the stack of papers away from it. Black dots flashed briefly over his vision as he tried to blink, though they disappeared quickly enough when he spun around in his chair to face Jongdae.

He had his arms folded in front of his chest as he watched him, expression surprisingly guarded. Or maybe it wasn’t a surprise. Jongdae wasn’t thinking straight enough to tell.

“You want to hear about Yena?” he asked.

Jongin didn’t beat around the bush for once. “Yeah, you said you’d tell me after I showed you the files.”

“Yeah, well…” Jongdae glanced at the papers one more time, then decided they would be much better if they weren’t in his line of vision (they were, quite frankly, distracting). “That was quite a bit of information to stomach.”

Unrelenting, Jongin shrugged. “You’ve had six hours.”

As if six hours really is enough to stomach something like this. Instead, Jongdae winced. “Fine, sit down.”

Jongin had the audacity to give him a dubious one over as if killing him was still one of the options (granted, Jongdae didn’t have a perfect solution, but offing Jongin was the last thing he wanted to do) before pulling out the chair across from him and sitting down. “Okay, well, tell me—”

There was a quiet ding from Jongdae’s phone. Blinking, he glanced down at it, a bit confused. The text tone still sounded weird from the couple of times he had heard from Yena, and then Jongdae realized that it probably was Yena, because no one else would have texted him.

“Give me a second,” he told Jongin before reaching for his phone.

Kang Yena, 2:47 PM

Hey, I was wondering if I could drop by to see Jongin? He actually left a couple of things at my place from the last time he visited.

Kang Yena, 2: 47 PM

Which was like five months ago. But if you’re busy or not home, I can wait. And I bought him some food. Sorry if it’s any inconvenience :(

Jongin leaned over the table slightly before seeing to realize that he was getting too close and could very much get killed before sitting back into his seat.

“Who was that? Wait, let me guess, my cousin?”

Jongdae nodded. “She wants to come by.”

His eyes seemed to light up at the mention of Yena. “Okay.”

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