AT THE CREW HEADQUARTERS

Yuri and Hitomi’s staring match continued for a good five minutes until Sakura tried to break it up and said, “Yuri! Hitomi! Stop! We must think about saving Yena first. You two can sort this out later.”

The two paid no heed to Sakura’s words and did not budge. Not wanting to waste any more time, Sakura just ignored the two girls and asked Hyewon, “Can you help me look through the CCTV footage near the building to check whether Jang Wonyoung’s car has left the building?”

Hyewon nodded in response. She was about to walk towards the computers when she noticed someone else was missing.

“Where’s Chaewon?”

Upon hearing her girlfriend’s name, Hitomi broke her eye contact with Yuri and answered, “She told me she was going for a walk to clear her head since her role for the con was finished anyway, but she should have been back by now. Maybe she’s at---”

Yuri chimed in, “That cheater? Why are we looking for her?”

Hitomi shushed the singer and took her phone out. The room fell silent as she dialed Chaewon’s number, and the silence was broken by the sound of a familiar ringtone coming from the couches in the common area.

Being the closest one to the couches, Nako ran to the common room to check where the sound was coming from. She rummaged through the cushions and the pillows in the couch and shortly after, she stood up holding a phone with a familiar mint green case.

This can’t be, Hitomi thought.

“Sakura-unnie, track Chaewon’s comms right now!” Hitomi commanded as she rushed to the screens, hoping that Chaewon was just at home.

After a few clicks, Sakura turned to Hitomi with a grim face, “Her comms is turned off right now. Her last location is a couple of blocks from here. Hiichan, wait!”

Hitomi ran out of the headquarters as fast as she can and headed straight to the place where Chaewon’s comm was last pinged. Hitomi did not need to know the exact address where the comm was turned off: she already recognized the area. It was near the convenience store where she usually gets her cheese hotdogs. She remembered Chaewon offering to buy her one, which makes it likely that she was there earlier today.

Once she reached the convenience store, she looked around looking for clues. Soon after, she saw a small piece of plastic with small wires and circuitry protruding through it. She picked it up and recognized it as Chaewon’s earpiece based on its mint green color. She thought about possible explanations for this happening and came up with two plausible ones, one coming with their own negative sides.

She could have been abducted.

Or she could have been a spy who sold us out.

In any case, she scanned the area for cameras and saw three different establishments that might have had a view of what happened. She went to the first two and discovered that they only had interior CCTV cameras. When she entered the third establishment, which was a coffee shop, she calmly asked,

“Hello. I am Honda Hitomi, an investigator for the Seoul Prosecution office,” Hitomi then flashed a fake investigator ID to the person at the counter. The part-timer reached out to the manager, who guided Hitomi to where the monitors for the CCTV were located. Once the workers were gone, Hitomi started working through the footages. Luckily, the store had an exterior CCTV that gave Hitomi a good view of the street. She rewinded the tapes until she saw the red-haired girl walking down the street. Chaewon was walking nonchalantly, kicking small stones when they appeared in her way. Everything seemed normal until Hitomi noticed a black van creeping from behind Chaewon. Hitomi watched in horror as the red-haired girl got tackled and dragged out of the frame.

It was a scary sight, but it made Hitomi breathe a sigh of relief. She didn’t want the possibility of Chaewon selling them out voluntarily become a reality. She trusted Chaewon, arguably more than anyone else in this world. Chaewon was there for her when she was down and played a big part to find another purpose in her life. If she saw Chaewon voluntarily destroying her comm, she would have lost it right there and then. Hitomi slapped her cheeks repeatedly, a habit of hers to get her to focus, and made a copy of the footage using a flash drive. She thanked the staff members as she walked out, and once she was safely out of sight from the coffee shop, she sprinted towards their headquarters to report what she had just seen.

Yuri was stunned by what she saw. The people in the headquarters, including her, were huddled up near the monitors to watch the footage Hitomi brought from a café nearby. Although she resented Chaewon for almost conning her and trying to steal Yena from her, she couldn’t help but cry in horror when she saw her ex-friend getting dragged by a masked person to an unmarked black van.

Sakura and Hitomi kept rewinding and zooming in to the footage to get more clues about the abductors. It was clear that the ones who abducted Chaewon were professionals based on how they kidnapped Chaewon. The black van did not have a plate number and the windshield was heavily tinted. They waited for the perfect time when there were no other people walking down the sidewalk and got Chaewon at the back of their van in a matter of seconds.

While the others were busy looking at the van and the assailant, Yuri focused on the driver of the van. She knew that in some way, shape, or form, the driver could have left her trace somewhere since she was the one who was in the safer position between the two assailants. After looking at the footage repeatedly, Yuri noticed a reflection coming from one of the parked cars.

The driver had pink hair.

Soon after, Yuri realized what she had done. She remembered calling the officers who came by her house to report Chaewon out of spite when she saw her being too comfortable with Yena, and one of those officers had hair with the same shade of pink as the one in the video. Before sorting things out with the authorities, she had wanted to get Chaewon arrested, let her stay in jail overnight, and warn her about trying to steal Yena from her. However, what she saw from the video did not look like an arrest.

Did I trust the wrong people again?

Yuri fell to her knees and cried out, “I’m sorry, this is my fault!”

Suddenly all eyes were on the singer who was uncontrollably sobbing on the floor. Nako walked towards Yuri and tried to console her by rubbing her back gently. Although she had a bad-girl image, she had a soft side for people bawling their eyes out, especially if it’s the girlfriend of her best friend and crew leader.

“What did you do, Yuri? Shhh. It’s okay, just tell us what you did,” said Nako while trying to calm Yuri down. She looked up and saw Cha