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You're To Die For
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“How’s it going?”

Byul looked up from the book she had her nose stuck in to look at Sehun. He was peeking around his computer monitor to check on her while they continued to do their own work. “Good. I think I’m three quarters done,” she informed him. Her back was starting to hurt from hunching over the book.

They were in Sehun’s home office for the day. The room was lined with computers and gadgets she had never seen before and didn’t care to ask about. His job seemed to require a lot of technology. A mahogany bookcase stood beside the wide window and Byul wondered if he read through the books because most of them looked like medical books. A globe sat in one corner of the room, a dart stabbed into where Seoul was.

Sehun’s face wrinkled in distaste. “Didn’t you just start class? Why do you have homework?”

“I’m studying the readings for next class so I’m not behind.”

He snickered. “Nerd.”

Byul was about to retort something back at him for his joke, but they were interrupted by the door opening. Chanyeol staggered inside. Quite frankly, the boy looked like a mess. He was sporting unkempt hair, dark circles and bloodshot eyes.

“And where the hell have you been?” Sehun barked at him. “The casino again? You have to stop before that becomes an addiction.”

“I’m—” Chanyeol froze in his tracks as if he’s seen a ghost. He gawked at Byul with an expression of pure surprise. She stared back at him silently, unnerved by his reaction. “Oh, Byul is here. What a surprise,” he managed to say.

“Yeah, I hope you don’t mind.” She gave him a tight-lipped smile. “You okay, Chanyeol? You seem… distressed by something.”

“Do I?” he laughed, plopping himself down in front of another computer adjacent from Sehun’s.

“You lost money, didn’t you?” Sehun glared at his friend. “Idiot. I told you to stop gambling.”

“I’m fine, I’m fine.” Maybe Sehun wasn’t able to catch on to Chanyeol, but Byul noticed how nervous and fidgety he was. He hid his panic behind his wide smile. It was like a child hiding from his parents that he had broken a flower vase. “What are we working on?” he asked Sehun.

He tossed his partner a manila folder and the two began automatically working in sync. Byul thought she was hard at work, but looking at how Sehun was so concentrated on something on his computer screen, she didn’t even seem to compare. It looked like there was going to be a permanent wrinkle between his eyebrows. Byul still wasn’t quite sure what he did for work. He mentioned something about his client asking for a task to be done. She was facing away from their screens and couldn’t steal a peak. Without any need for an exchange of words, the two seemed to be seamlessly collaborating on work. Such teamwork could have possibly only been achieved through them working together for a very long time.

Chanyeol broke the concentrated silence nearly forty-five minutes later. “There’s gonna be a party at Eight Point. You coming?” he asked Sehun, rolling away from the computer in front of him to stretch out his arms and legs.

“When is it?” Sehun asked without looking away from his screen.

“Friday evening.”

“Hm, I don’t know. I think Byul wants to do something on Saturday evening, right?” He looked to her for confirmation. Byul knew that they had nothing planned and he really just didn’t want to go.

“It's a costume contest!” Chanyeol added before she could say anything.

“It’s not Halloween,” she pointed out.

“So? The winner gets a cash prize.”

Sehun’s chair squeaked as he leaned back on it. “I don’t need petty money right now.”

Chanyeol turned his attention to Byul with a big grin that she knew meant trouble. “What if Byul is coming?”

She eyed him incredulously. “I am?”

Sehun spoke up for her. “She’s not much of a party person.”

“Everyone is as long as you get a little alcohol into their system.” Chanyeol wagged his eyebrows.

Sehun gave him a hard glare that could burn through his skull. “You’re not getting her drunk. Shut up.”

“We’ll see— Ow!”

When Sehun reached over to punch Chanyeol’s arm, Byul laughed. She excused herself to the bathroom. Byul was still unfamiliar with the way around Sehun’s house because she wasn’t there enough. It was full of halls and doors and turns into the unknown. She wasn’t surprised to enter the wrong room which she had assumed was the bathroom.

When she flicked on the lights, she noticed immediately the giant corkboard that hung on one side of the room. Photographs, documents and newspaper clippings were attached to the board with thumbtacks. Red yarn connected things together with lines and decorated the board like a spider web. The yarn all led to one photo of a man in the middle of the corkboard. The whole thing looked like a giant web of information and images.

The photo was labeled “Kim Kyungmin.” It almost looked like a stalker’s room, but Byul wanted to laugh at the thought of Sehun stalking some old man. The more she looked around, the more she felt like she wasn’t meant to be there. Byul left quickly to look for the bathroom, the feeling in the pit of her stomach causing her to feel disturbed.

Returning to Sehun and Chanyeol later, she didn’t bother to ask about it. Byul mostly found it odd. She wouldn’t even know how to start the question.

Hey, Sehun. I accidentally looked in one of your rooms. Why are you such a big fan of some old guy?

But that sounded like she couldn’t keep her nose out of someone else’s business.


 

It was her lunch break during school when Chanyeol sent Byul a text of an address.

...That’s the Eight Point party I was talking about! Sehun is going to be there. Come too.

“Is that your boyfriend?” Jongin asked from beside her, noticing how she had been staring at her screen for a while.

“No, his friend. But since we’re on this topic...” Byul drenched her fries with ketchup, squirting the packet over them, “you should meet him.”

“His friend?”

“No. Sehun, I mean. The first day of school, you just disappeared.”

“I told you. I had to pee really bad,” Jongin insisted, picking out the onions from his salad and placing them away on a napkin.

“How about the other days?” she countered.

He shrugged. “I go to the bathroom after the end of the day. It’s a routine.”

Byul thought that Jongin and Sehun could get along. They had the same mild-mannered personality. He wasn’t loud, and when he spoke, he immediately got to his point. Byul considered inviting Jongin to the party as well if Sehun was apparently showing up according to Chanyeol, but she felt like Jongin might not know anyone and then end up sticking awkwardly to her. She hated being that person during social events and figured she could save Jongin from that experience.

Byul looked up at the TV that was playing overhead as she bit into her sandwich.

“...back to the story of missing sixty-three-year-old Kim Kyungmin whose blood was found in his hotel room Friday evening at 11:30PM. Surveillance tapes from the Eastern Hotel show Mr. Kim checking into a room at 5:15PM. A cleaner had noticed his door was left ajar and immediately called police upon discovery of the blood.

His body was not found in the room, though DNA tests have confirmed that the blood is his. There is no sign of forced entry. No other fingerprints except for Mr. Kim. No eye-witness reports. Surveillance tapes have allegedly been tampered with. Mr. Kim is known to be heavily involved in gambling and police have reasons to believe he has a connection to a string of criminals…”

Byul felt her blood run cold and the rest of the newscaster’s voice sounded like she was underwater. It wasn’t the Kim Kyungmin in Sehun’s odd room, right? She had no idea why Sehun would be involved with someone like that. She shook her head after reasoning that there was no way Sehun had anything to do with the disappearance of the man.

“Hey, Byul?”

“Hm?” She turned her head and noticed that Jongin had been studying her.

“You zoned out there. Is everything fine?”

“I’m okay.” Realizing that she’s been chewing for a long time, she swallowed.


 

That evening, Sehun called her and said he was going to pick her up at nine o’clock to do some sightseeing. Hours later, he was at her front door at nine o’clock exactly. She rolled up the window in his car while Sehun the AC, that night being a bit too humid and warm.

“Did you have work today?” Byul asked as they got on the main road.

“No, I finished everything up yesterday,” Sehun said, shaking his head.

She noticed his phone’s screen light up. “You got a text.”

“What does it say?” he asked, not taking his eyes off the twisty road.

“Pick up in five,” she read. “What does that mean? It’s from a number you didn’t save to your phone.”

Sehun muttered something under his breath that Byul didn’t hear. He craned his neck left and right to look out the windows. “I have to go pick something up right now. You don’t mind making a quick stop, do you?” he asked even if he had already switched lanes.

“I don’t mind.”

He led them into a different part of the city that she hadn’t been to before. Byul thought for a while that they were lost, because for a good ten minutes, all she saw were factories, warehouses and empty fields. Sehun stopped in front of a large building that looked barely put together. It was an abandoned apartment building that looked two hundred

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Comments

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penagainstpaper #1
Chapter 28: Chanyeol's comments is making me rlly annoyed of him omg. He obviously wanted them to separate 😡 be safe sehun!!
ohsehun1219
#2
Chapter 28: Hi, new reader here. I really love the storyline and both sehun and byul’s character. Ugh i can imagine how handsome sehun is with his jacket
Byun_Rara
#3
Chapter 28: Lmao really guys???? In the middle of a fight 🤣🤣🤣🤣
aes-velvet
#4
💗💗💗
Byun_Rara
#5
Chapter 27: BE SAFE BYUL..... PLEASEEEEEEEEE
Chocoseunie
#6
Chapter 27: GO BACK GO BACK?!? THAT BETTER NOT BE HER I'm gonna choke baekhyuns nasty weak ur killing me with that cliffhanger 😭😭😭 it didn't even take a minute for chaos to ensue I feel si bad for both of them especially sehun he's putting himself down like ugh
Sey-ra
45 streak #7
Chapter 27: And I hate cliffhanger....,.
silvergun #8
Chapter 27: Adagsjslalshshsk noooo byul you cannot die pleaseee
Wanderer_bj
#9
Chapter 18: Kim Jongin as in Kai whom if i am not wrong Sehun mentioned before. Crap what's he doing here? I did not see this coming at all.
penagainstpaper #10
Chapter 26: oh my gosh you already know baekhyun sent those guys over as soon as he left. It looks like sehun will HAVE to explain himself now!!