It was his darkest demise, the one thing he could not refuse, and she sang to him in happy tune and a promised numbness. Like a fool, he believed in her fake happiness, swallowing every broken ounce until the bottle was empty and robbed of its contents. Like the grown man that he was, he placed on his button-down shirt, sprayed his cologne, and walked out the door, heading to his routine job and greeting people with a broken warm smile, casted in all directions.

“Are you drinking already this early?” Then there was her, the girl that made his day slightly better just by saying hello and giving him a gentle smile, forcing his heart to race and stop at the same time. It was a strange feeling, one he wished he could feel more often, and yet he could only roll his eyes and offer her the same broken smile given to everyone else.

“Of course, not” he lied, he always lied.

“You smell like it” she challenged, taking her seat across from him and turning her computer on, catching his eyes as she peeked from the side, giving another soft gentle smile that wrecked his world and completed it all the same. “We got a murder in this morning; you might want to check it out” explained the lack of conversation in the room.

“Who was it?”

“A little girl, the age of seven.” That made him glance up from the computer, reaching for the files that created a mountain on his desk, scanning through the various crimes until finding the said case.

“Cause of death?” He asked, filing through the papers.

“She drowned, but she had several abrasions against her neck and wrist, suggesting there was a struggle.”

~ ♦~ ♦~ ♦~ ♦~

Kim Jongin didn’t entirely love his career choice; in fact, he often pondered the reason he stayed behind the desk. There were days when he was reminded such as these, when an innocent child’s body ended up in the morgue, and she demanded justice and clearance of her name, her story told to the world. It was why he was standing outside of the country home, a lake on the one side and a highway on the other, a beautiful 12 acre stretch with a wrap-around porch to polish it.

“When was the last time you saw the girl?” Jongin asked the owner of the house, seeing how she was the closest neighbor and babysat for the older couple frequent