She can't remove his smiling image inside her head. She's missing him. A lot. So much. So bad.

Soomin wants that smile to come back right now, feel his lips against her cheeks, tighten her arms around him until he can't breathe.

As much as she is concerned, Soomin wants to join Sehun and Chanyeol, run around the streets, track her boyfriend’s whereabouts, investigate the scene over and over again but she clearly knows that none of those things she identified in her head is her strength.

Kim Soomin is panicking as hell but she needs to act rational. Every millisecond is important.

Since she has been working as a forensic scientist all her life, she ought to do what she has to do. This is the only way she can make a relevant contribution but the heavens know how much she is itching to run around although it won’t produce significant results.

Holding the tube containing the blood she extracted from the scene, she fights the tears that is about to leak from her eyes. It never crossed her mind that she would actually come to this very day, examining the sample from the scene where her boyfriend is involved. Not until this very dreadful day, that she’s actually doing it.

Things in their job are never easy. Every kind of work is never stress-free. They get acquainted with a lot of police officers, men inclined to improve justice for the many, passionate people who help others by solving crimes and spine-chilling mysteries. But then again, alongside those positive benefits, they get to meet merciless criminals and many convicted murderers find out about their identities. Soomin and Baekhyun lost count how many threatening letters they have received ever since they took on this career.

She wears the white gloves in utter silence. While preparing the apparatus and materials she will need, a single drop finally activates the leak of her warm tears, travelling her back to the memory lane of the first day she met Baekhyun. The sassy, loud, condescending male she has ever laid her eyes on.

“Please be safe.” She exhales the breath she didn’t notice she has been holding in earlier. Soomin always misses Baekhyun even if it’s just minutes without him. But it’s been hours. It’s killing her.

“Please.”

--

“Byun Baekhyun at your service.” The annoying creature winked at Soomin and he earned a scowl from her. She was doing her best to be polite so she accepted his palm with a curt hand.

Dear Lord, the handshake was short and brief. All but professional.

But what was that buzzing sensation?

She cannot lie. She felt the electrifying spasms that caused her to lose her balance and she was grateful she had a table behind her for support.

Fine, she has to admit. This man is handsome, cute, and hot. But the moment he opened his mouth and made a monologue about his credentials and achievements, Soomin pursed her lips and left her snarky comments to herself. She hated loud people. Boastful and overconfident men? Despise isn’t even the word enough to describe it. Probably loathe but that would be way too much considering they just met.

Bottom line was, she hated him from this very day and she’ll never associate herself with someone like him even if he was her coworker from now on. It’ll be hard but she’ll manage. Soomin has always had her own space and she could do things independently. She is a self-reliant forensic scientist and being the rational woman that she was, she has accepted the fact that she needs to put up with a seemingly obnoxious man named Byun Baekhyun. Nothing will change. There was just someone to help her with the analyses, lift some weight off of her shoulders, and decrease her work load. Simply put, make her life better.

Too much. That the word better wasn’t befitting anymore. Byun Baekhyun showed her the best. The best in forensic science. The best in life. The best in love. The best in feeling that there’s someone she can call home.

He’s the sun she hates but this annoying sunlight was actually nurturing and warm. Baekhyun has been straightforward from the start and each touch from him burned her skin in a good way. He once said to her that he’s a celestial body, the solar star that Kim Soomin needed for her photosynthesis. Soomin got used to his cheesy jokes as time passed. But she still had the hate for him in her throbbing ribcage.

And never in a million years did she imagine herself under him, begging for release, at the male’s mercy as he displayed such a glorified smirk. True enough, she hated him from the moment he was introduced to her but who in their right mind would be able to resist Byun Baekhyun? She tried. Awfully so. Unfortunately, she lost her resolve after sixty nine days. What began as a coworkers with benefits rendezvous eventually developed to dating and after a year, they finally gave themselves the label.

They were each other’s half. That had to be it. Soomin and Baekhyun were polar opposites but that what makes their relationship work perfectly. Baekhyun had declared that he was her sun and that she was his moon. The cold satellite but the beautiful heavenly body that pulls him to the ground like gravity.

It was such a romantic line but Soomin never really asked what he truly meant by that. She simply construed that he thought of a random way to describe her and that the moon was just a last minute bulb that lit in his so called brilliant mind.

--

A realization hits Soomin’s mind, like there is a bulldozer hitting her temporal lobe. Damn it, the pain is also somewhere in her frontal lobe. Maybe between those two? She couldn’t decipher. She has no energy to. She hasn’t eaten anything since Baekhyun went missing.

The realization activates her tear ducts.

“The sun and moon can never be together.” She murmurs to herself as she removes her gloves. “You’re an idiot for calling me like that. You should’ve called me Earth instead. Or maybe any other planet on the solar system. Just not the moon!”

She has finished running the DNA test and other relevant analyses. It hurts but there’s nothing she could do but wait. One thing she learned about being in this field for many years now, she must always be patient. And she knows she’s not capable of doing that right now. She had to know whose blood is this.

--

The pattern still didn’t make sense to her no matter how much she stared at the pictures. She tries to imitate it by using some fake blood and playing with the angles but none of her attempts is successful.

The ringing of her phone distracts Soomin. With a heavy sigh, she removes her gloves and approaches the middle table to retrieve her phone. Sehun’s name is displayed on the screen.

“N-Noona.” His voice is ragged, breath shaky and uneven.

“Where is Baekhyun?” Comes her automatic query.

“No, we haven’t found him yet.” The male sighs in the other end of the line. “But one of the officers here in charge of the CCTV monitoring was able to get a clip. How’s the test going?”

“You know that the test will take time. I’m done processing but I’m waiting for the results. I want to leave here so bad, you have no idea. But I will wait here since I know that’s for the best and I will wait even if it takes days.” She bites her lip in utter annoyance. She knows but she’s impatient too, like Sehun. “And what’s that clip about?”

There’s a silence on his end.

“Sehun?”

More silence. Silence that’s slowly and swiftly killing her respiratory system.

“S-Sehun.” She calls his name again, this time in a weak whimper. Damn, the tears is beginning to stain her cheeks once more. The salty taste makes its way to her taste buds and it was awful. She’s missing Byun Baekhyun and the starvation makes her weak. Both things are making her suffer. Mentally. Physically. The bulldozer drilling on her brain intensifies.

“Oh.” He says distractedly and if Soomin can see his face, she could tell that there’s a furrow in his brows, in that naturally grumpy face. “I…” He trails, trying to find the right words. “I don’t k-know if I should tell you this.”

“Of course you have to spill any leads to me! We’re talking about my boyfriend here! No one knows, Sehun! He could be God damn dead!” The idea she has been rejecting to formulate in her brain made its way out of . She didn’t meant to but it slipped out of her tongue. But, she isn’t prepared for Sehun’s next words.

 “Around six hours ago…” There is a deafening pause.

Kim Soomin glances over her wrist watch for time check. Baekhyun has been missing for more than nine hours already.

“What?” The female wipes her tears messily.

“The recording here reveals he was in Gangnam. In an ATM near a hotel. That’s where the only footage we have of him got extracted from.”

The word hotel makes the woman's breathing hitch. What is this all about? And what the was Baekhyun doing in Gangnam six hours ago? Soomin never heard about this.

“And?” She presses him for more details. But it’s more like a threat. Her tone is rigid and strict.

“He was…”

“Oh Sehun, I swear to God. I’ll ing extract your blood until your veins are empty if you don’t spill everything right now. You’re making me nervous here and it’s not helping.”

“I’m sorry… I j-just.” A gap indicates he’s gulping and there’s a three second interval before he begins to speak again. “ it.” He curses under his uneven breath. Those words make her shoulders jump. Whatever he’s not telling her yet, it made her blood boil and the pit on her stomach is urging her to throw up. And that’s strange considering that she has an empty system. She can’t eat even if she forces herself to.

“He was withdrawing money. And he was with a woman.”

Tightening her hold on to her mobile phone, she opens to say something but