SORRY it took so long! Longer than I said, at least. I have current exams to take and considering this took longer than expexted, i had to write more, so..

anyway, I hope you like it! I tried to fasten things up so it’d be posted in Jongdae’s month, heheh, so it might sound like some things were a bit abrupt. I hope it doesn’t ruin the experience for you nevertheless.

ENJOY IT!

Jongdae looks down at his comrade, snorting. “Well, aren’t you attractive.”

Eunsoo, who has knocked herself over a protruded bush the size of her head, and is now hissing as she squats to examine the bleeding scratches upon her knees; lifts her head to shoot her companion a deadly glare, her catlike eyes making her face looks sharper than usual. “Shut. Up! I have two left feet and you know it!”

“You probably have two left eyes as well, considering you haven’t seen the shrub across you, which is as big as your Santa nose in Christmas.” Jongdae snorts again, his eyes practically shining in happiness and joy at the misfortune of his most favorite lawyer. 

“I’d still be able to see correctly if I have two left eyes because unlike legs, eyes are shaped the exact same way!” She barks, sitting down on her so she could stretch her legs and prevents the stretchy jeans from causing more damage to the skin between the scars.

Jongdae pauses in his strides towards the house they’re supposed to be inside hours before; his face taking on a confused expression. “Right. It makes sense.” He turns to her and doesn’t bother offering her a helping hand. “Are you coming, or not? I don’t want our suspect to know we’re onto him.”

“I bet he’d figure it out with your high pitched, endless whining.” She says in an irritating voice merely so he’d feel the slightest of pain that she feels regarding the peeled skin of her knees. He doesn’t, of course, because Jongdae might’ve been a fierce, brave solider in his past life. Practically nothing’s able to scratch the walls of his heart. She should know. It has been years now since she has firstly met him, and despite his mysterious personality under all of his fake cheerfulness and playful endeavors; she’s proud to say that she’s the one that knows him the most.

“I don’t whine.” Jongdae whines, just for the heck of whining. 

She rolls her eyes and stands, dusting her bottom from the first that got up there and wincing at the pain in both of her knees, reacting to the oozing blood seeping past her jeans. She ignores the wounds, though, knowing that she isn’t exactly in a spot where she’s allowed to ponder over them. They’re in an arrest mission and they barely have time to converse and idle around; which’s exactly what they’ve been doing. 

She follows Jongdae through the lit porch of their suspect’s house and suddenly smacks against his back when he stops in his strides. He turns to her as she rubs her nose, bearing a scowl, and raises his eyebrows questionably. “Before we go straight and break someone’s arms in order to contain them, I find myself sensitive enough to ask you this: did you bring your gun?”

She splutters, eyes widening. “Of course not!”

Jongdae’s eyebrows furrow in what he deems a reasonably concealed annoyance; but it litters his face like sunlight. “Why not? We’re going through a very dangerous arrest process. For a criminal defense lawyer; I thought you know exactly what that entails.”

“You’re a detective,” she says this like it’s very obvious, which it is from his standard police detective jeans and his brown, ugly sweater. “You have a perfect reason to hold a gun. Although I have a license to carry a gun myself; I know about human rights, too. I’d rather not press a gun’s barrel into a suspect’s head.” She stresses the word suspect so that he understands where she’s coming from. Just because some poor man is suspected to be a murderer for a twenty two years old young girl; it doesn’t mean she has to be violent towards him and disrespect his rights as a human being. She has been a criminal defense lawyer for a long time now to learn to humanize criminals, the very same quality that had put her through four years of law school and another two for internship. A devoted detective like Jongdae wouldn’t probably understand.

True to herself; Jongdae gives her a look that had a giant stamp of ‘STUPID’ on his forehead, directed to no one but herself. “Honestly, for a badass lawyer, you’re so dumb sometimes.”

She gasps, offended. She’d take any cuss word except the taboo word that starts with D. “Excuse me?”

He turns towards the house, rolling his eyes. “Stay behind me, then. We don’t know if he’s armed, and I’m sure that all your precious interns would cry if a hair’s out of your pretty little head.”

She doesn’t exactly have any interns. But everyone in their police department respects her. Jongdae’s sure most of them has a crush on her, too, whatnot with her being a sophisticated, smart woman with a brilliant mind and a personality of a mature and responsible person. All of the new officers worship her for the way she treats them, and her divine beauty kind of makes them gape at her like she’s a misguided goddess lost on her way to her shrine. It’s pathetic; really, how so many men he’s personally friends with like her. He doesn’t despise her — not at all — but he’d rather not have so much competition. 

“.” She grumbles under her breath while following him.

He doesn’t look back, but he perks his little ears like a bat. “What was that?”

“I said how gracious of you to care about the interns’ sensitive hearts. You’re one delightful human being.” She sarcastically slurs, her footfalls lazy and uncoordinated under her, wishing she can twirl around and dump his in here. 

He smirks, delighted to be complimented, by her nonetheless. “Why thank you. I appreciate it when you finally get down your high tower and admit of how amazing I am.”

She says nothing, but she does grumble another insult under her breath at him. Thankfully, he doesn’t press on what she’s doing and continues to walk through the wooden flooring of the house’s porch. He reaches the door once near and knocks on it, his face taking to its usual serious mask whenever he knows playful time is over (or when he knows he’s about to win in poker and he needs his instant resting face to be on so he can deceive his friends) and Eunsoo follows after him, standing a little to his back because he has a gun and she doesn’t. Even though she knows self defense — she has a black belt in Judo and Hapkido — she knows that in times — like her suspect owning a gun — her bodily strength won’t be working as much as she likes it. She doesn’t have an impressive shield ability, after all. 

Jongdae knocks the door again when no response comes. There’s a ruckus coming from inside the house, and then silence. Jongdae frowns, and brushes his knuckles against the door to knock once more. Nobody responds.

Eunsoo blinks, sighs, and then walks to the door only to twist her body sideways to punch a fist on the bell’s button on the far left. It releases a shrilly sound and she turns to give Jongdae a smirk, one which he responds to with a condescending scoff.

Seconds after that, the door squeals as it opens, just a centimeter stretch, and a woman’s face appears. She appears overweight by her round cheeks and her jiggling chin. She has exhaustion marks all over her face, and her eyes flash with an ancient sadness that almost makes Eunsoo gulps. She always finds women older than forty who harbors such intense anguish to be suffocating to watch; having seen first had how her orphanage lady that took care of them destroyed herself after withstanding such moroseness for a long. 

The woman frowns for a long time when she sees them, her eyes staring at them from head to do; scrutinizing them.

“Yes?” She finally manages; her voice scratchy and hoarse, like she has been smoking too many cigarettes in her life and her lungs are non functioning anymore. 

Jongdae takes his badge from his pocket and shows it to her, face expressionless. “We’re from the police. We are wondering if Kim Jimin’s around? He is nowhere to be found in his dorm room at university and we were hoping to find him here.”

The woman’s eyes flit from Jongdae and Eunsoo’s face, and she almost looks nervous. She clears and opens the door wide enough for them to see the insides of the house. “He hasn’t been going to his classes in university these couple of days, so I understand that you wouldn’t find him in his dorm.” She pauses, then presses. “Is he... in trouble?”

Before any of the two can say anything, a loud crashing sound is heard from inside the house, and Jongdae brushes against the frantic mother and enters the house right away; noticing the sound of escape immediately. Eunsoo gives her an apologetic look and then follows him, hearing the mother burst into loud cries as they do so.

They see their suspect trying to climb through the kitchen’s window. He turns, gives them a fearful look, and then pushes himself out. Jongdae curses and follows after him, climbing through the window in haste.

Eunsoo turns around and goes back to the front door, thinking that she’d be able to intercept his way if he decides to rotate around the house to escape, considering there’s a large fence in the house’s backyard which is hard to climb over, and knowing that someone’s chasing after him; the suspect wouldn’t dare waste time trying to climb the fence, and instead would turn around and flash towards the front yard.

True to herself, the guy runs between the house’s dark allay, and his eyes widen when he sees her standing there, waiting for him. Instead of stopping all together, he accelerates his speed, and Eunsoo sighs. She doesn’t want to do this, but considering how he’s running so fast towards her as if hoping to tackle her small frame under his six feet tall girth; it makes her want to do it.

So, when he’s close enough to ‘tackle’ her; she jumps and somersaults him right on his face, her heel digging into his nose. She lands back on the ground at the same time he does, too, with a cry of pain escaping his mouth. He pathetically flops on the ground, holding his bleeding nose, and stares at her like she’s a demon’s spartan here to destroy whatever remains of his dignity. 

She shrugs at the look, unsurprised at all. “Sorry, mate. I had a lot of misogynistic pigs in my work field and I had to learn how to kick their asses pretty early on. It works in my favor a lot.”

Jongdae appears before the guy, Kim Jimin, can say anything, and he bends over his knees, taking large breaths in. Her stares at her with an annoyed look, irritated that she always ends up knocking their suspects down like this before he gets a chance to grab them, and she shrugs again.

“Told you I don’t need a gun.”

-

Eunsoo’s walking towards the court for a hearing she has with one of her old clients, an underage guy who as innocent as his smiles are, is the devil in disguise and always put himself in trouble for stupid crimes that he easily can prevent. But crime is unreasonable and humans are moreso, so she doesn’t end up lecturing him about the importance of morals to a world free of anarchy like she used to do to people when she was young. Now, she simple rolls with them. 

She bumps into someone, however, that makes her pause in her stride and freeze like a popsicle glued in the side of a fridge. She stares at the woman in front of her with wide eyes, while the woman merely looks back, raising her eyebrows.

The woman she’s bumped into is a beautiful forty something woman with the classic beauty of an elegant novelty from the eighteenth century. She’s tall, regal, and holds herself with dignity. Eunsoo feels the side of her face twitches as if she’s undergoing a heart attack; her whole body reacting to the angry pumps of her heartbeats within their cage. She has a very decent thought to run away from her; but she has been bumping into the woman for many times in the past seven years she worked for the government. She doesn’t always need to freeze up like this. She doesn’t need to be so scared and angry at her anymore. But Eunsoo simply couldn’t help herself. It’s like her head registered that it hates this woman with every beating fibre of her being; and that it can’t tolerate the presence of her. So, like the nomadic nonliving brilliant thing that it is; it’d simply shoots her with images of the past she so harshly tried to forget instead. Like the bastard it is; her freaking head!

“Eunsoo,” the woman calls with her authoritative, compelling voice; pulling Eunsoo from her inner terror. “Are you heading to the courthouse now?”

Eunsoo clears and fixes her blouse in an excuse to do something that would guide her eyes away from the brown eyes of prosecutor Han. “Yes. I have a case waiting for me. Why do you ask?”

“I was actually in my way to see you,” the woman, prosecutor Han titters like she doesn’t notice the ice that’s encompassing Eunsoo’s heart whenever she sees her. “I heard your suspect in the murder of Lee Young, Kim Jimin, has ended up having a strong alibi, which rendered him innocent.”

Eunsoo purses her lips tight, looking at the prosecutor’s lips rather than her eyes in fear the woman would notice her hate and blatantly ask her about it like the psycho person that she is. “Yes. And?”

The prosecutor’s eyes furrow, not liking the disrespect, but she doesn’t point it out. “The court has a new suspect, but all evidence against him is thin. He’s also from a big name around here and the courthouse is nervous about prosecuting him. They asked for a good attorney to represent him, and I gave them your name.”

Eunsoo snaps her head towards her moth— this woman, and squints her eyes dangerously like a hissing predator ready to withdraw it claws at her. “Without my permission?”

Prosecutor Han gives her a look as if she’s silly. “They haven’t yet contacted you about it, so you have a chance to refuse it. I wouldn’t decline it though, if I were you.”

Eunsoo sighs, tired of the agonizing turmoil growing in her belly. “I’m afraid to ask, but why do you say that?”

Prosecutor’s Han is happy to answer, “The suspect’s from a big family, and he’s one of the chairmen in Wrin’s Entertainment company. He’s got a large range in TV and taking his case will raise your reputation so you can be able to work as a free lancer and choose your own cases. It’d help you greatly in your career.”

Eunsoo furrows her eyebrows. “Don’t say this like you give a damn about my career, prosecutor Han. I’m pretty good in creating my own reputation without your interruption. Good day.”

She passes her by and Eunsoo practically feels the fire that’s seeping out of the prosecutor’s body like liquid lava. She shudders, but doesn’t turn around to check if she’s still there watching her, because she knows that she is; and like all the time, Eunsoo’s body chill like it’s a winter breeze flowing from the windows when it’s really a warm summer morning. But that’s the thing with Prosecutor Han and her relationship; it always put forth such coldness in her.

The thing is; her icicles are pretty justified, but it still makes her feel bad for treating her this way nonetheless. It’s the warrant of being a good person; you’ll always feel like you’re the dirtiest scumbag on earth, even when you’re merely wearing your shoes against the dirt under your feet. 

-

She finds Jongdae standing in front of her office, once she finally manages to arrive there without smacking into other annoying people she hates. Upon seeing him, her eyebrows fly to her forehead, not because he’s waiting for her or anything, but because it hasn’t been three hours since she saw him at the front desks this morning.

“What are you doing here?”

He looks at her cooly, shoving his hands inside his jacket’s pockets as if his eyes aren’t the prettiest shape of crescent moons or as if his presence doesn’t annihilate the fuzzy darkness in her being. “Heard the courthouse got a new suspect to the case. Another team kind of put his name for the judge and he agreed to bring him in for interrogation, despite his solid alibi.”

“And? You know I don’t work in this case with you. I only agreed to help you with the suspect because you begged me to. I don’t have to give you a hand every time you need one.”

She pushes past him towards her office and he follows like a puppy wagging his tail, closing the prim wooden glacier of her door behind him and trapping them in the silence of their inner thoughts. Eunsoo perches on the chair behind her desk and watches him, and he leans his thigh against her desk instead of sitting down on the couch in front of him like he knows exactly what kind of effect he has on her. 

“Funny, because I heard you were put as his lawyer.”

She whips her head towards him, scowling. “I wasn’t put as anyone’s lawyer! They want me to, but I’m probably not going to agree!”

He raises his eyebrows, his tone cool and not judging at all. She kinda finds her fire puts down a little. “Why? You’re a criminal defense lawyer. He’s a criminal accused of killing Lee Young. Why wouldn’t you want to be his lawyer?”

She gives him a funny look. “Do you want me to be his lawyer or not?”

He shrugs. “It’s your choice.”

She leans backwards in her seat, and squishes her face between her hands. “ if I know.”

Jongdae takes liberty in playing with her colored pens right across him, eyeing her with a strange pair of eyes. “For real though, why wouldn’t you want to do it?”

“Because prosecutor Han asked me to do it.” She finds herself answering smoothly, breaking the calloused grip she has on her face so she can peer into his face, wanting to see what kind of an expression would paint his face upon her words, knowing one hundred percent that he — and everyone else — is clueless about her relationship with the older, esteemed woman. 

True to herself, his eyebrows fly towards his forehead in stunned astonishment, curiosity burning in the drizzled brown of his iris. “Do you have something against her that a single request is making you all.. frizzy?”

“Frizzy?” She deadpans.

“Your shoulders are tense. You’re not as loose around new cases as you are. Usually, you’d jump to the idea of helping some helpless innocent guy accused to being a murder, but now you’re sulking like a little girl.”

She rolls her eyes painfully slow, never used to his ridiculous sense of humor and his style of speech when it comes to her and her troubles. “I don’t want to do anything prosecutor Han wants me to do. She’s belittling and obnoxious. She stares down people like they’re beneath her, and she has a strange sense of accomplishment that flashes in her eyes whenever someone’s embarrassed of her. She’s a fox; believe me.”

Jongdae raises his eyebrows, totally disbelieving her. “Really? I always thought she was stern but gentle. Despite being the first in the food chain; she’d still treat us with respect.”

“You don’t know anything about her..” Eunsoo murmurs secretly.

Once again, Jongdae’s ears perk up like an elephant’s’ ears. “What was that?”

She shakes her head, breathing through her nose like an angered cheetah. And she is an angered predator; wishing she can devour someone that her name starts with Han. “I’ll take the case.”

His face brightens like a ing cannon or a high density TV and she feels so, so affected by his radiance that thinks she did something good, even if she was opposed to just minutes prior. “Great. I want you to be on my side. Report to me anything that you find suspicious.”

She raises her eyebrows with a blank look on. “You realize that I’m his lawyer, right?”

“So? We’re a team. We always work together. Besides,” he leans against the desk, his face growing into a cunning brilliance that makes her heart thump. “Would you defend him if he ends up being the true predator who killed Lee Young?”

She leans on her desk to meet his eyes cooly. “Yes, that’s what a criminal defense lawyer does. It’s the whole point, Jongdae.”

“Eunsoo,” he whines. He whines a lot considering his objections to the matter. “C’mon. You can sneak a bit of what you find here and there to me. I don’t care if you’re his lawyer as long as I benefit from it as well.”

“Wow, you’re an .”

He glares. “Eunsoo. C’mon, be serious.”

She relents. “Okay, I’ll see what I can do.”

He allows his lips to curl into a daunting yet amused smirk, knowing that he has her wrapped around his dainty little fingers. “Awesome. I’ll be waiting for any kind of updates from you.”

-

She doesn’t expect the suspect to look the way he looks.

He’s tall and lean even when he’s sitting down on the chair in the confinement room; his face as sharp as a sewing machine, and his eyes are catlike, resembling her own pair of eyes that makes her instantly feel something akin to acquaintance bloom in her heart for him. She notices that despite the suit he’s wearing, there’s something disheveled about it; like he has been running his hands through the fabric so much, causing it to wrinkle. 

He’s sitting alone, of course, waiting for her to arrive as he drums his short fingernails on the table in front of him. She instantly takes notice of the twinkling gold of his multiple rings adoring his fingers, the one standing out the most is his middle finger. 

Eunsoo clears to pull herself from her flabbergasted haze and walks towards him. He instantly notices her and his cold face breaks into a nervous one, almost like he knows exactly what’s about to come towards him. She finds this strangely interesting, and she wonders if he has had experience with police investigation before. She quickly shakes the thoughts, though, and pulls the chair in front of him to sit herself in. 

“Hello, Mr. Oh Sehun. I’m Do Eunsoo, I’ll be your defense lawyer from now on.” She offers him a hand, looking all professional and socially distance. Oh Sehun gulps, his throat popping up and down as he eyes her calloused hands with even more obvious nerves than before, before accepting it with a bow of his head.

“Hello, Hi, uh, Eunsoo-ssi,” his voice is deep and ruffled, like a cat trying to squeeze a voice recorder into its throat. His anxiety shows much more in his tone than his naturally blank face, and her conferment of her earlier thought comes clear. He’s familiar with police investigations. “I know that.. I’m a suspect here, but I.. well, I want to be of help to you.”

Eunsoo raises her eyebrows. Finally, someone who’s willing to help instead of acting like a self-righteous scumbag. He earns a few cookie points from her, and she offers him a cordial smile. “That’d be great, Mr. Oh. I’m glad that your first instincts in the police department is to be of help.”

Sehun’s face looks drowned in sadness and despair. He looks down at his large, calloused hands and begins to flick through the skin between his fingernails, the action subconsciously nervous. “It’s just— I know Lee Young and I.. I’ve always thought of her as a delicate person, someone who’s too sweet to elicit such violence from anyone.”

Eunsoo opens the file of the case in front of her and begins to slide the papers around, her expression professionally blank. “The victim has been close to you, correct?”

Sehun’s face crumbles at the mention of their relationship. Eunsoo has always been in awe with relationships these days, especially those related to criminals and criminals-to-be. The few cases that she has for murdered girlfriends and hanged wives, she’d always see fierce protectiveness from their suspects — usually boyfriends, husbands, and someone very close to them — it always made her wonder if such love truly existed; considering her single for so long. 

Sehun’s voice os shallow and brisk when he talks next, but Eunsoo’s not deaf to the undertone of misery lacing through it. “She’s someone important to me. Even though we didn’t have a label on our relationship; I still considered her as a girlfriend of sorts.”

Eunsoo wants to show some sort of friendly understanding when she speaks to him; but years of dealing with clients have made her voice — and expression — solidly unmoving. “May you please explain the dynamics of your relationship throughly?”

Once again, Sehun begins to fiddle with his fingers; the sound the rings are making as they click against the mahogany table making Eunsoo has a strange sense of foreboding. “Well... we did the normal things couples do these days. We’d go on dates, have sleepovers at my house, and I’d occasionally take her as my guest in my entrepreneur trips regarding my company. Every single tabloid knows of her as the girl that’d accompany me in my parties, and I considered her to be that person I’d go to when I faced problems outside of work,” 

Sehun’s voice cracks in the midst of his feigned professionalism, and he cease to knock his finernails on the table as if he’s suddenly seeing images of Young in his head. Eunsoo waits patiently for him; knowing that such traumas can cause anyone to lose their cool, whether they’re truly the cause of destruction or not. Unless they are sociopaths; most committers of crimes go through something like anguish and despair when they end up doing something horrible to people they appreciate, so what if they’re innocent? Eunsoo’s positive that Sehun’s going through a lot right now. Slowly, he swallows his insecurities; fear and trepidation and finishes, “She was.. my everything.”

Eunsoo flicks through the file, her eyebrows furrowed as she gathers through the information he gave her that are quickly circulating her mind. “You mentioned that you’d have ‘sleepovers’ at your house. Have you ever been to her place before?” 

Lee Young; age twenty three and in her last year of university, was found murdered with a deadly knife wound in her abdomen in her apartment; and she was left to bleed to death. It took her mother a whole two days to find her in her apartment lying in a stale pool of her own blood. Eunsoo wants to make sure that Sehun’s aware of this before going through other details.

Sehun looks stricken yet tired; as if this whole entire fiasco is exhausting his weary heart. “Not really. We’d usually meet up in a coffee shop, a restaurant, or my place. She lived in a, pardon me for this, but she lived in a conservative place and her family was very intent in her never inviting anyone to her apartment. She took this rule very seriously for some reason and I didn’t really push it. I wanted her to feel like I cared about her needs so I just always invited her over to my place instead.”

Eunsoo pushes a white sheet of paper towards Sehun and clicks open a pen. “May you give me the names of the coffee shops and restaurants you usually meet in? I’d like to see the camera footage and make sure you have a strong alibi.”

She watches his expression closely, and as expected, he doesn’t look frightened or worried about whatever she’d find in these footage. He easily concedes to her request, taking the pen in his hand. “Sure, okay, I don’t mind. We frequented these places at most because Young liked their food. I don’t mind giving you their names.”

Eunsoo spends a few seconds watching him write the names of the shops and restaurants while keeping a solid eye on him. Despite his impeccable beauty and the slight ruggedness of his whole appearance; Oh Sehun doesn’t look like a person who’d commit a murder at all. But she knows better. For a defense lawyer, she has met a lot of crazy s in her career, and they always looked different than she expected. She has grown used to seeing pretty and accomplished people with everything a normal person can want do the most unreasonable of things, so she doesn’t scratch Oh Sehun from the list of her possible suspects despite looking so outrageously gaunt at the prospect of his dead girlfriend.

When he’s done writing the names of the shops and restaurants and he slides the paper back to her; she gives him another stern look. “Do you have a deep or profound knowledge of Lee Young’s personal life outside of what she tells you? Do you think she might have had an enemy that’d target her and murder her in cold blood?”

Sehun instantly shakes his head, confident about what he’d say next. “No, absolutely not. Young’s a very sweet girl, and most of what she does is by her own free will. She’s the most selfless girl I’ver ever known, and she’d usually tell me of her past endeavors. She never mentioned having anyone she disliked or having been in a relationship that was violent. I don’t think she’d gain someone who’d hate her enough to kill her.”

Of course he’d say this. More often than not, lovers always ended up having secrets more than the other party could believe in; so she doesn’t stick her heel into his words immediately. 

She asks him a few more questions in which he answers to his best ability. He seems to know a lot about Lee Young and it solidifies her opinion about their actual relationship. Sehun looks remorseful for not having payed more attention to her and caused her to die outside his sight and he ends up crying in the middle of the session. She hands him a pair of tissues he sniffles upon, eyeing her with a pair of watery eyes that softens the harsh lines of his facial proportions.

“Now,” Eunsoo intertwines her fingers on top of the table and clears , getting herself ready to the reaction her next words would elicit. “You know that considering I’m your defense lawyer, most of what you tell me would be available for previewing for the detectives working in this case, so anything you say can be used for or against you. But I don’t always have to tell them everything you tell me.”

Sehun looks surprised yet confused. “What do you mean?”

She leans closer to the table, eyeing him with a pair of calculative, intelligent eyes. “It means that I can omit a lot of what you tell me legally. If you know something but you’re scared of your own involvement in the matter; I have a legal obligation to keep it to myself. It’d help me greatly in understanding the actual threads of this case better.”

Sehun looks horrfied, and the red blotches quickly gathering around his cheeks makes his sharpened face appear soft. “How preposterous! Are you claiming that I know what happened to my dead girlfriend but I’m hiding it for my own protection?”

Eunsoo has seen a lot of criminals act innocent and pure when they have more of a hand in their cases than they let on; so she doesn’t let Sehun’s reaction deviate her. “Anything you can remember, or anything you find suspicious but think no one would care about. Anything that makes you feel uncomfortable; you can tell me.”

Sehun now looks angry, the previous trepidation and fear that has encompassed his face fading away like a drizzling fire upon oil. “I have nothing to tell you, attorney Do. I have no hand or no reason or anything you might think I do. I haven’t seen Lee Young for days before she has been killed, and I’ve missed her so very much everyday I was waiting for her. Then suddenly she’s dead and you think I have something to hide?”

“Calm down,” Eunsoo’s tone is solid and firm. “I just wanted to make sure that you know I can protect you and what you know.”

He stands up in rage, the chair he’s been sitting on screeching loudly as it drags backwards on the floor. He stares at her with a pair of wide, predatory eyes, and Eunsoo feels a headache quickly building up in between her eyes. “I don’t want to talk to you anymore. This session is over.”

Eunsoo breaks into a sigh and stands up herself. “You’re a suspect. You’re held here by the word of law. You can’t end sessions; I do. But I’ll leave for now, and you take that time to calm down. I’ll be back if I find anything in your defense or if something new comes up. Good day, Mr. Oh.”

She turns around and leaves him alone. She hears him sit back on his chair and she hears him break down into a new batch of tears. She doesn’t turn back to assess him or see if his tears are genuine. The only thing that’d really make her believe is evidence, and now she hasn’t got any.

-

Eunsoo turns left and right in the big detective room that she has to pass by in order to reach her office so she can check if anyone’s watching her or not. She sees a lot of detectives and police officers that she worked with and memorized their whole family line but she’s happy to note that none of them seem to be paying any extra attention to her. So, she walks in a snail’s pace towards her office, checking around her one more time, before closing the door and leaning against him. 

Once she’s inside and secure — away from the eavesdropping ears of a bunch of bored and gossipy police people — she brings her phone out of her jeans, and rings one of her old best friends; a guy she used to hang out around back in high school. When he picks up; she doesn’t bother to greet him or give him a few pleasant comments; she quickly goes to the subject and tells him exactly what she needs him to do.

“You want us to do what?” The guy exclaims, horrified by the prospect of her wants, as if he hadn’t done so many preposterous things as worse as what she requests him to do. 

Eunsoo rolls her eyes. “I want you to find the CCTV images in the locations I sent you earlier by the mail from the past two weeks and see if you can attest Oh Sehun’s existence with Lee Young. I need to find a solid alibi that’d go well with his testimony.”

“That’s illegal, Eun. That’s super illegal.” Baekhyun murmurs, sounding fearful to a T, which doesn’t suit him at all considering he’s the existence of illegal activity. 

Knowing this, Eunsoo scoffs. “You have a software company with underlying illegal hacking activities to whoever pays you more money and you tell me that it’s illegal? Didn’t you know of that already?”

“Don’t say that while you’re in the office!” Baekhyun barks through the phone, and she doesn’t need to be next to him to know he’s squeezing the hell out of his private cell phone. “All of your gadgets are monitored by the government!”

Eunsoo snorts a little, amused by his frightened personality for someone so intense. “For a genius in engineering computers, you’re stupid when it comes to conspiracy theories.”

He whines. “My theories are profound and are the process of science and long hours of history classes in university!”

“History classes you dumped in the middle of the first semester.” 

“What do you want with me?” Baekhyun wails eventually, having never been able to win against her. “Why do you always bully me!”

Eunsoo’s amused face cracks into a serious one. “Are you going to do what I asked or not? I want the CCTV images by three days’ time.”

He splutters around like a headless chicken for a bit before finally releasing his suffocated breath in a gasp. “You know that we’re a busy place! If you want to put on an order you have to wait at least two weeks like the rest of the costumers!” 

“Give me Chanyeol, then. I’ll make him do it in three days.”

“He’s busy.” Comes his grumbled reply, both of them knowing that he’s either lying or reluctant in handing the phone over to his partner. 

“Baekhyun,” it’s Eunsoo’s time to whine and Baekhyun enjoys the few seconds she breaks out of her superhero disguise and act like the child he knows she truly is under all pretense of being the bigger person. He knows he for a long time and by the time she’s been to law school, she started to lose a bit of her childish demeanor, the stress of university and adulthood taking a tool on her fragile heart. Whenever she breaks out of that shade of hers, Baekhyun’s reminded of her true self suppressed under all of these responsibilities of hers; and he finds that he likes her a whole lot better like this. “What is the point of being friends with you if you’re not going to give me favors?”

“Remember that favor I asked of you regarding your co-worker and how you so blatantly slapped me in the face?” He sarcastically says, or grumbles, really, recalling that one time he asked her to do something for him and she laughed so hard at his face. 

She raises a single eyebrow up in ridicule. “Seriously, Riyeon likes mature, grown men. I don’t know how much nicer I can put it for you, but you’re not even close. She also likes guys that initiate first. You’re hiding in your company and you want me to hook you up with her when you don’t even come all that frequently in here. Also, she likes much older men, not men her age, and definitely not men who look super cute—“

“Here’s Chanyeol. He’s free to receive your call.” He gives Chanyeol the phone before her lips can even curl into its massive smirk, annoyed at her frivolous personality towards him. And he has been so nice to her, too! Sometimes, the woman acted like she’s so much better than anyone. 

“Yo.” Chanyeol greets, his husky and booming voice sounding low and distracted. She remembers the times when his voice used to give her shudders, having been so adoring to him that she wanted him to ask her out. These days are over, of course, but he still manages to warm her cold, cold heart. 

“Chanyeol, my man,” she smiles wildly. “Did you see the mail I sent you?”

Chanyeol snorts loudly. “You mean the one Baekhyun shredded into pieces and violently threw in the garbage?”

She gasps. “How dare he! Did you at least get to see it?”

“Yup,” Chanyeol’s smiling wildly and she knows he is. His voice kind of changes into a high pitched squeal whenever his cheeks are lumped so high in his face. He’s cute like that. “I’ll be working on it real soon.”

“I need it in three days’ time, Yeol.” She uses the nickname she has for him so that it’d soften her request, knowing that her time is ridiculous compared to their packed work schedules. 

He sighs, like he’s super tired of her nonsensical requests. “The only thing I gain from this friendship with you is misery, Eunsoo. Misery!”

She smiles wide and lovely. “I’ll make it up to you, I swear!”

-

The atmosphere around the bar she frequents is low and safe; the reason why she likes coming here so much in the first place. Unlike the uproarious music sounds of other clubhouses and the grinding bodies of both mature and underaged people; this bar has their music sound minimal and calm, so tortured souls like her can find both peace and quiet, and a good dose of alcohol.

She’s not