Yoohyeon pressed her palms together and rested her lips on the tips of her fingers, closing her eyes. "Alright..." she murmured. "If I was a cheater who accidentally killed the guy I was cheating with, where would I be?"

Sanghyuk scoffed lightly, pulling up on the chair opposite her. "Could you at least try to give her the benefit of the doubt?" he asked. "Besides, we don't know if she's even alive."

"We don't know if she's even dead," she shot back at him. "We found death certificates for all other classmates who've died...except her."

"Perhaps a death certificate was never filed," he suggested.

"That would make sense," she agreed. "But only if no one got her cremated or buried normally and burned her body on a pyre out in the woods."

"It's not impossible, is it?"

"That's stretching it a bit thin, isn't it?" 

He rubbed his palms together. "Alright then," he announced. "Through the wonderful process of pure induction, we've established that Kim Bora is most likely alive and in hiding somewhere." He placed his hands on the table. "Now the question is...how do we draw her out of hiding?"

Yoohyeon scoffed. "What is she, a super-villain?" she asked. "We just start from square one." 

"And square one is...?" Sanghyuk prompted.

He glanced at the open file on the desk in front of her; Kim Bora's family file. 

"Was it part of the investigation?" he asked.

She shook her head. "They never looked into it," she reminded. "They didn't need to, as the case was solid enough to not merit further looking into."

"So I wonder where you got that."

"City Hall," she reminded. "It's a normal file I put together. Not as good as a proper investigative file, but it's a start." 

As she looked down at the file, he moved over behind her, leaning over her shoulder to get a better look. "So, what have you found?" he asked as she opened the file.

"Definitely something strange here," she said, not even looking at him. "There are absolutely no records of her anywhere beyond a certain point."

"What do you mean?" he asked.

"I was able to find her school records, all the way till 1968," she said, flipping through printouts of the old records that had been scanned and stored on a digital server. "But after that? Nothing. No college applications. No marriage licenses. No visa applications. Not even a readmission to the school or transfer application."

"But...?"

"But there was never a death certificate filed. No trace at all. She simply fell off the face of the earth." 

"So where does this leave us?" 

She shrugged. "Honestly, I'm stumped," she admitted. "I've got no leads and my mind is blank, like I'm staring at white paper."

She sighed deeply, leaning back against the chair, turning her eyes up at him from below. "Any ideas, big guy?"

Sanghyuk pursed his lips. "Hm..." he hummed. "What would you do?"

"Huh?"

"If you were Kim Bora, what would you do?" 

He looked down for the first time, his deep brown eyes meeting hers. The question that he posed, combined with the look he was currently giving her, sent a light chill down her spine. 

"What I would do?" she murmured.

She furrowed her brow, her eye falling from his face to the tiny patch of skin peeking out from his shirt as he left the top button open. "What I would do..."

"Did you think of something?" he asked.

"Not yet..." she trailed off. "Something's bothering me."

"What is it?"

She looked back up. "The time between Taekwoon's sentence and his suicide."

"What's so important about that?" he asked.

She pulled herself away from the chair to look over the desk, pushing Bora's file away for a moment to pull Taekwoon's file towards her. Sanghyuk pulled himself away from her chair to grab a seat beside her. 

"Look at the time," she said, opening Taekwoon's file. "Taekwoon was convicted on 17th July 1968, right?"

"Yeah, that's correct."

"And when did he take his own life?"

He peeked into the file to catch the date. "17th December 1968," he read out. 

"Exactly five months later," she said.

"You think there's a connection?" he wondered. 

"It just makes no sense," she explained. "All his records say that he was a model patient. Never caused trouble, was always quiet and obedient. But we do know that he was storing his medications for some reason. So why suddenly take them, exactly five months later to boot?"

"What happened in those five months?" he voiced her question.

"Or rather, what happened that day?" she corrected.

"So, what're you thinking?" 

"I think I want to pay another visit to the institution. There's something we might have overlooked." 

"You were here earlier, right?" the receptionist narrowed her eyes at Yoohyeon. "A couple of months ago, if I remember correctly."

"Yeah," Yoohyeon sheepishly said. "I need to inquire about some documents from before the facility was renovated."

"From back then?" the receptionist asked. "That's a hard favor to ask for, considering that proper administration wasn't a big feature of this place back then."

"I don't need much, I promise," Yoohyeon assured. "I just...need to check the visitor check-ins for a particular date."

"Which date?" 

"17th December 1968." 

The receptionist hummed. "I'll see what I can do," she said, before going into the back and rummaging around behind the scenes.

"You really think there's something here?"

She turned her head to find Sanghyuk standing by her side, leaning on his elbow on the desk. 

"Something happened that day," she rationalized. "I have a hunch." 

He didn't say anything further, just turning his head to look after the receptionist who was returning with a thick ledger under her arm. She placed it on the desk. 

"You're free to look at the item, but you must return it back within twenty minutes," the receptionist told her. "All resources must be returned and none should be removed from the premises."

"I understand," Yoohyeon nodded. "Thank you." 

Finding a table nearby, she placed the thick red bound ledger in front of her before opening it. 

"All handwritten," she murmured.

"Different handwriting too," Sanghyuk pointed out behind her. "Different colored ink as well."

"People must have had to sign in by themselves," she presumed. "There's a lot of inconsistency in check-out times."

She turned the yellowed and faded pages of the ledger carefully till she landed on a page with the word "DECEMBER" sprawled on the top with a couple of lines under it. 

"Here we are," she said.

She placed her finger on the date columns, searching for one particular date. 

"7th...8th...10th..." she ran her finger along the page.

"17th."

She drew back from the page. "This is it."

Sanghyuk leaned over. "What does it say?"

She looked at the entries. "Hm," she hummed. "There was only one person who visited that day."

"Who was it?"

dropped a little. "I-I don't know this name," she said. "It's like, someone just wrote it in order to be allowed in."

He leaned over her shoulder to look at the ledger. Only three letters were visible under the "Name" column.

S-U-A

"Some sort of alias?" he wondered. 

"Seems to be," she agreed. "But look!"

He looked to the other column, the column marked "Visiting."

"It says Jung Taekwoon here," she said. "Whoever this person was, visited Taekwoon that day."

"And he took his own life later that day." Sanghyuk narrowed his eyes.

"I think we know who this Sua is, don't we?" Yoohyeon asked. 

He nodded. "There's only one person who was capable enough of sending him past the breaking point." 

"It's Kim Bora."