As Sejeong and I exit strategic sparring, I rub my ribs, certain I have a serious bruise forming. I spent the entire class holding my breath and sweating over the possibility of getting paired with Taemin, but it never happened. He shot me taunting looks whenever he could, though. The moves Sehun has been showing me definitely helped, but I still have a lot to learn. And to top off this horrible morning, Sejeong still isn't talking.

Everything feels on edge and upside down, like we're all collectively waiting for the next unexplainable horror. And now I have another dead body seared into memory, another image I won't able to erase from my mind. It's obvious everyone knows what's happened. People keep stealing glances at me and Sejeong when they think we're not looking.

I turn to Sejeong, who is walking so slowly in the direction of the library that I wonder if she's having some sort of meltdown. But she doesn't look at me, and she also doesn't push through the library door. She just walks past it at a snail's pace.

"Sejeong?" I say, walking slowly next to her, and she shushes me. 

Her eyes are alert, and she's silenced her footsteps.

We make a turn and I realize where we are - the first floor of the boys' dorm. I turn to her in shock. I want to say something to dissuade her, yet at her that this is a bad idea, but I don't dare draw attention to us.

Three doors down she lifts a handle and slips inside a room. I hesitate for a split second and she grabs my arm and pulls me inside, closing the door silently behind us.

"Damn it, Sejeong, you should have warned me," I whisper at her. "And tell me we're not where I think we are right now."

"We only have forty-five minutes before these hallways will be crowded again and before Jungkook will be headed back," she says. "We'll start in Taehyung's bedroom."

Everything inside me sinks."You don't say anything all morning and now you sneak us into Jungkook's  room?" I say with frustration. "Don't you think that's a supremely bad idea when another murder victim just appeared in front of our door? You're supposed to be the sensible twin."

Her dark eyes flash the same fire they did that night she was angry about the parlor. "I didn't warn you because you wear your thoughts on your face like a child - something we really don't need right now. And I haven't spoken all morning because I was thinking, watching, observing - maybe if you and my brother did more of these silent activities we wouldn't be in danger ever other damn day!"

I swallow.

She narrows her eyes. "And I am well aware that there was a body in front of our door this morning. Did you see a murder weapon with that body? No, you didn't. So where is it?"

"I -"

"Exactly!" she says. "It's still out there. And as far as I can tell, none of this makes any damn sense. Not Taehyung's murder, not the blood on your floor, not the guard. Yes, there have been deaths in this school before, but nothing like this. Nothing on this scale has ever happened here. So I'm going back to square one. We are very obviously missing something and I want to know what it is before one of these people succeeds in killing you."

"Sejeong -"

"I don't want to hear it. Either help me or don't. But I need to get to work." She turns around and walks away from me.

I stand in Jungkook's common room for a couple of seconds. As much as I don't want to admit it, she's right. And as much as I hate this, I can't leave her here while she's trying to help me. I huff once and follow her, nothing exactly what position the door was in so that I can put it back before we leave.

At the sight of Taehyung's room my stomach clenches and my heart pounds in my temples. It's set up exactly like mine, except the air feels stale, like there hasn't been anyone in here in days.

Sejeong lifts her head from the storage trunk she's been examining. "Look for any trace of blood," she says, still with an edge in her voice. "If Taehyung was killed here, then the killer would likely have to keep his body here before planting it in the hallway. There are only a handful of places he would fit." She looks up for a second. "The way you used the soot from the fireplace last night made me think of it. Even if someone cleaned and covered their tracks, there's every likelihood the blood would get caught in the imperfections of the stone or wood."

I nod and dedicate myself to examining the base of his nightstand and the feet of his bed, but there doesn't seem to be any discoloration.

Sejeong moves on from the trunk to inspecting the perimeter of the room itself. She takes a small piece of white paper out of her cloak and runs it along a couple of cracks in the stone.

I stick my head under the bed, but with dim lighting in this place, it's hard to see. "How risky is it if I light the candle? Will someone notice?"

She purses her lips for a second. "Someone may notice a match is missing, but it would be unlikely for Jungkook to think it wasn't his butler or his butler to think it wasn't Jungkook."

"Then come hold the candle for me? The last thing we need is for me to burn something," I say.

Sejeong puts the paper back in her cloak and I slide under the bed. That mattress is resting on a frame of crisscrossing rope. Sejeong lights the candle and angles it just under the edge of the bed, with her other hand held below it to catch any dripping wax. The problem is that I can only see one section well at a time.

I slide my fingers along the wooden frame. "Move the candle closer to my head," I say as I scan the rope and the underside of the mattress. "Okay, now move it slowly toward my feet." I shift with her as the light moves. "Wait, hold on, go back."

On the rope, about an inch long and a half a millimeter wide, is a brown mark. I grab the rope and separate the fibers between my fingers as best as I can. Brown flakes fall onto my shirt. "Omo."

"Slide out slowly," she says in a commanding voice, and I listen, even thought all I want to do is wiggle and run away. Sejeong blows out the candle and puts it back where it was as I shimmy out from under the bed.

She kneels down next to me and her finger.

"Tell me you're not going to -" But she's already picked up a couple of the flakes on her fingertip and stuck them in . "Ohh . . . that is so . . . You're crazy."

"Blood," she says. "Someone definitely hid Taehyung under this bed. Which means he was killed here and put in that hallway later for you to find." She frowns in concentration.

I sit up and smack at my shirt, trying not to think about the fact a dead guy's blood was just on it. "Sejeong, how is figuring out the details of Taehyung's death going to help us sort out the bigger picture here? Isn't the important part that we know who committed the murder? And why is knowing where his body was kept so urgent that we should sneak into this room today of all days?"

She looks at me for a long second. "From what you described, Taehyung was stabbed in the heart. And in order for Kai to avoid making a huge bloody mess all over the furniture and the rug, there couldn't have been much a struggle. And for there not to be a struggle, Kai would have had to stab him in an instant kill zone, like the aorta. But it's extremely difficult to get a clean shot like that. And Taehyung was a good fighter. So the only thing that makes sense is that Taehyung was taken by surprise."

"Okay . . . so then Kai killed him right when he walked through his door, or something like that, before Taehyung even realized there was a threat?" I say, trying to follow her train fo thought.

"Something exactly  like that," she says. "Remember how we were talking about figuring out a timeline for who had seen Taehyung last? Then there was that assembly and Kai was accused and it became a moot point. Well, last night I asked Sehun to check anyway. He told me that no one saw Taehyung after his last class, not at all."

"So Taehyung was killed right when he got back from class that day?" I say. "Actually, that does fit your timeline for how long he was dead, considering he was only a little stiff. But I still don't understand."

"Hear me out," Sejeong says. "Jungkook's last class ended at six-thirty that day. But no one saw him after that, so the only thing we can conclude is that he went straight to Kang's office and was sent to his punishment without being allowed to return to his room. Now, Taehyung's class wasn't supposed to end until six-forty-five - he was in boxing with Sehun, and Sehun said that the teacher let them out twenty-five minutes early." She looks at me expectantly.

"Wait," I say, and hold up my hands, my mind spinning. "You're saying that whoever was here was actually trying to kill Jungkook, not Taehyung?"

"That's exactly what I'm saying," she says. "I think Kai was trying to take advantage of the fight you got in with Jungkook by murdering him and making it look like you did it in retaliation. Which makes far more sense if you think about it. However, Kai wasn't aware that Jungkook had been sent to the outer perimeter, rather than being allowed back to his room. And Taehyung's class got out early, putting Taehyung in the wrong place at the wrong time."

I push my hair back from my forehead. "So Kai wanted to take out the firstborn of the Eagle Family? I guess that does make more sense. A neat crime that he could pin on someone else. But why me? Because I got into that fight with Jungkook and it was a good opportunity?"

"It was a good opportunity for sure, but my guess is that there's more to it than that. Otherwise why put that blood in your room? Why sent Jennie after you publicly? And why was that guard killed?" she says, and for the first time I fully understand why she's been so insistent that things don't add up.

"You were right, Sejeong. We did need to come here. I'm sorry I fought you on it," I say.

She smiles a little. "But now we need to go," she says, and I don't hesitate.

I jump up and straighten out the comforter. Sejeong wipes fingerprints off the trunk with her sleeve.

She checks the floor for stray hairs or anything we might have tracked in, and we make our way to the door. Sejeong cracks it open, looking out. She nods and we slip back into the hallway, closing the door quietly behind us.

Class must have just let out. I can hear doors opening and hush conversation. We round the corner and come face to face with Dr. Yoo.

He eyes us both. "The boys' dorm?"

"Yes," Sejeong says with a neutral expression. "Just passing through on our way from the library."

"I see," he says, but I can tell he's reading more into it.

At which point Jimin and Rosé pass and give us a look, also assessing which direction we came from.

Sejeong makes a small curtsy to Yoo and we continue walking. 

"Yoo knows something, doesn't he?" I whisper to her as soon as we're out of hearing range.

"Unfortunately, yes. He's the head of assessment. He misses nothing. And Rose seeing us doesn't help. I would bet money she tells Jungkook just to stir up trouble. That missing match could become a problem. We didn't burn the candle itself long enough for there to be noticeable difference in height, but if someone checks it soon they will discover the hot wax."

My stomach does a turn. "Can we at least replace the match?"

Sejeong shakes her head. "No. If a match is missing and then shows back up, it will look a hundred times worse. We're stuck."