It had taken 15 minutes to drive out to Osan and Chanyeol didn't have much time to spare, but he still had to spend a couple of minutes sitting behind the wheel of the parked SUV, steeling himself for what was to come. He wasn’t usually this bad, but as Baekhyun had noticed after their failure last night, this case was getting to him. When he had forced himself into a semblance of calm, he got out of the SUV and walked into the long, low building that was the Osan Nursing Home.

The lobby was empty, so he pressed the call button on the reception desk. The buzzer sounded further inside the building, and he glanced across to the electronically locked door that separated the lobby from the residential area. As usual, it was mere seconds before a wrinkled face pressed against the reinforced glass window. Mrs. Kim’s mouth opened and closed. Chanyeol couldn’t hear her through the door, but he knew what she was saying. I have to go out, just like she always did. I have to go out.

Chanyeol hated seeing this. He knew the words were just an echoed memory or replayed action, a symptom of the dementia that ravaged both body and brain. She couldn’t be let out. She would simply wander, lost and confused. It didn’t stop him feeling like he was witnessing the imprisonment of an innocent victim.

Finally a couple of staff members showed up behind the door. One took Mrs. Kim aside, and another, a nurse Chanyeol had met a couple of times before, unlocked the door from the inside and smiled out at him.

“Come in, Chanyeol,” she said. “Shinbeom is in the Yellow Lounge today.”

Chanyeol walked through the door into the familiar corridor. To his right, a care assistant was gently but firmly holding Mrs. Kim’s arm, preventing her from making a break for the open door.

“I have to go out,” she quavered as she tugged ineffectually against the carer’s hold. “I have to go out...”

Chanyeol made his way towards the Yellow Lounge. He knew his way around. Shinbeom had been here for nearly two years. Chanyeol tried to visit him as often as he could, but it was getting harder. The further Shinbeom’s illness advanced, the heavier Chanyeol’s heart became. Shinbeom was on a road with only one ending.

Arriving in the doorway, he glanced around the yellow-painted lounge. Elderly residents sat on the couches, staring at the TV or into empty space. Some repeatedly muttered meaningless phrases. Others, their illness further progressed, were in wheelchairs. The carers had parked the wheelchairs in a line in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked a tidy lawn ringed with flowerbeds, but Chanyeol knew the patients weren’t seeing the view. There was no life in those vacant eyes.

Spotting Shinbeom in the row of wheelchairs, Chanyeol crossed the lounge and came around to get between him and the window. Like the other residents, Shinbeom was staring blankly ahead, head tipped at a strange angle. The cheerful greeting Chanyeol had prepared died on his lips. Shinbeom was emaciated, the skin of his face papery, his cheeks hollowed in where he’d lost most of his teeth. His hair was thin and prematurely grey, and a slight, constant tremor shook his wrinkled hands. Chanyeol battled the pain that tried to rise up out of his chest and into his throat and eyes.

“Hi, Shinbeom,” he managed finally. He knelt down in front of the wheelchair, took the trembling hands in both of his and looked up, searching for any spark of recognition, any tiny hint of light. “It’s me. Chanyeol. Your little brother.”

Nothing. Shinbeom stared as if Chanyeol was not even there. Chanyeol bit his lip, hating how hard it was to control his emotions when faced with the ruined man in front of him. He was a police officer, a member of a specialised armed crime squad. He dealt with horror and injustice and death all the time. But even the worst crimes never hurt him quite the way the sight of his dying brother did.

A carer Chanyeol didn't know wheeled another patient up to the window. Chanyeol blinked hard, chasing the tears away before they could fall. The carer gave him a sympathetic smile.

“Hello there," she said. "Are you Shinbeom's grandson?”

The words, though kindly meant, felt like being stabbed in the chest. Grandson. His brother was only three years older than him, but the drug addiction and the early-onset dementia it had caused had aged him so much that he looked older than their father.

“It’s good of you to come,” the carer continued without waiting to hear his answer. “Not many of the patients here get visitors.”

Chanyeol knew he was Shinbeom’s only visitor. When Chanyeol was 15 and Shinbeom was 18, their father had found out Shinbeom was heavily involved in drug dealing. He had thrown him out of the house, and Shinbeom had vanished. A decade later, a pair of beat cops had found him unconscious on the street and brought him to a hospital. They had identified him by his fingerprints and contacted Chanyeol, but by then it had been far too late. Shinbeom had been addicted to meth for ten years and was dying. When Chanyeol had told his parents that he was paying for Shinbeom’s care in a nursing home, his father had told him never to mention “that person’s” name in his presence again. He thought that his mother, perhaps, still had love for the eldest child she’d lost, but she would never go against her husband. To them, Shinbeom had died ten years ago.

Chanyeol swallowed against the rage that always kindled inside him when he thought of his father. With Shinbeom out of the picture, Chanyeol was his father’s heir, but he could hardly bear to think of it. He almost wished his father would disown him too. He sometimes toyed with the idea of getting himself struck from the family register. He knew exactly how he would do it, thanks to his father’s bigoted ranting when a colleague’s son had moved overseas so he and his boyfriend could get married. All Chanyeol would have to do was tell his father he was gay, and that would be the end. But the thought of his mother held him back. He couldn’t inflict on her the grief of losing both her children.

A slight motion in front of him drew him out of his thoughts. Shinbeom had moved his head, and his gaze now rested on Chanyeol’s face. Chanyeol caught his breath. Sometimes the illness made a brief retreat and allowed him a glimpse of the older brother he’d once known, but the moments were increasingly rare. Chanyeol’s heartbeat quickened as he searched his brother’s face.

“Shinbeom?”

“...Yeolie?”

His brother’s voice sounded like leaves rustling in the wind. The barely-repressed tears sprang into Chanyeol’s eyes. He hadn't been called that nickname since he was a child.

“Yes, yes it’s me. I’ve come to visit you.”

His brother lifted a shaking hand and reached o