“JaeJoong-ah! What do you think you’re doing running around outside with the weather like this?! Of course you’d get sick!”

JaeJoong pulled his phone away from his ear, brain throbbing painfully. “Right. Well, just tell the chief I won’t be able to come in today.”

“Yeah sure.” YoungWoon hung up.

JaeJoong tossed his phone carelessly towards the nightstand. It clattered loudly against the side and thumped to the ground. Irritated, JaeJoong buried himself deep underneath his covers and stuffed his head into his pillow.

JunSu gazed over with a smug look, clucking at the lump across the room. “That’s what you get, hyung. Calling in sick with a hangover. You should’ve stopped when I told you to!”

JaeJoong grumbled an incoherent reply and slowly wormed off of his mattress, still encased in his three blankets. He lumbered clumsily to the floor table and sat in a heap on one side, leaning over the wood miserably. JunSu brought a bowl from the half-kitchen and placed it in the center of the table.

JaeJoong moved slightly. “What is it?”

“Just an egg and rice.”

“…don’t want it.” He went back to slumping over the table.

“Aw, come on! You’re annoying when you’re like this! Oh.” JunSu got up and fished something out of another pants’ pocket. He returned and set it next to the bowl. “Here. Since you were talking about drowning it in a bottle of soju.”

JaeJoong looked up this time and saw the little tape recorder he vaguely remembered bringing along the night before. He reached out to rewind the tape; the high-pitched whirr started to amplify in his ears, so he began burying himself again.

When it snapped to a stop, JaeJoong hit the Play button and scooted the bowl of rice towards him, jabbing at the raw egg with his chopsticks.

“Oh, what will you have?”

“Eh. Whatever.”

“JunSu, you gonna have some?”

“No thanks…”

JaeJoong reached out again, speeding the tape forward. “I remember this much, at least.” He continued stopping to listen to fragments of conversation and skipping ahead for a bit before he fumbled a bit. “Maybe around here…”

“Haha, you’re having more?!”

“Yeah, that’s how it’s done! Come on, JunSu! Just one shot!”

“No thanks…”

“Did you even drink at all?” JaeJoong asked. “They paid for it, didn’t they?”

“I’d rather not become the group of mindless primates you all became.”

“Ouch.”

“You know, Cassiopeians are the best.”

“Heh?”

“Our fans, ya know? Out there, see? Hiiiii!! See? They’ll jump out into the middle of the street just to breathe the air around us.”

“Sounds crazy to me.”

Shoveling a gob of egg-rice into his mouth, JaeJoong hit the recorder again. “Did they say anything worthwhile that entire time?”

“Nothing really. You brought up the murders a while later, but they didn’t say anything about it.”

“Check it out! I’ve been taping you all! Cuz I’m a detective!”

“Whoa! You’re gonna convert- contest- con… uhh… constrict us?!”

“No way! Destroy the evidence, puhahaha!”

“Ahh, hyung, don’t drop it in there!”

“Yah! Uhh… HongShik? Jun… What’s your name? I forget…”

“Tch, forgot my name too…” JunSu sulked.

JaeJoong stopped the tape and slid the recorder across the table. “Yah… I was drunk. At least cut me a little slack.”

“No way.”

“And so where’d we go after that? No one broke away, right?”

JunSu shook his head. “No. I drove those three to the house they were staying at, and they all passed out immediately.” He looked towards the stove. “I think I’ll eat some…”

“You do that. I think I’m out for now.”

JaeJoong stumbled back towards his bed and slept for most of the rest of the day. By the next morning, he was back in the station leaving JunSu agitated for being left alone again. He shut himself in a conference room and scattered all of the files that had piled up across all three long tables in the room.

He spent a good amount of time arranging the files in a circle around where he stood, ordered chronologically. Revolving, he visualized the scenes and testimonies of the murders. There was something that stuck out in his mind every so often, but when he started to think about it, it would vanish.

“First, Gwangjin. Drown, drown, strangle, drown, strangle. Three high schoolers and two university students. All girls.

“Second, Gangnam. Strangle, drown, strangle, strangle, fall. All high schoolers. All girls. Text message.

“Third, Seongdong. Fall, fall, fall, fall, cut throat. Four high schoolers and one university student. All girls. Still on the scene but escaped.

“Fourth, Yongsan. Fall, fall, fall, fall, fall. Three university students and two high schoolers. All girls. ChaeRim and JiWon. JiWon’s video, but image enhancements didn’t get anywhere.”

“JaeJoong, what are you doing? You look like you’ve gone mental.”

JaeJoong looked up and saw JunJin giving him a strange look from the door. JunJin crossed the room and stood on the other side of a table that held the second incident’s files.

“I’m still wondering if there’s some kind of connection,” JaeJoong replied.

“I thought you decided this guy was going after girls at random.”

“Yeah, it’s what I thought, but I’d like to think he’s not.”

“…flip-flopper.”

JaeJoong started to revolve again, but he stopped and turned to JunJin again. “Choong- JunJin-sshi.”

JunJin’s eyes flared. “What?”

“I just realized… Why are you helping me out so much with this? When it started, I figured you would call on your cronies to solve this and leave me to sort out archives from six years ago.”

“Yah, you think I hand-picked you? Chief told me to make you do something.”

“…I should’ve known…”

Revolving again, he was just about to restart his thoughts to the beginning when his eyes fell on a map across the room. It was a map of the districts of Seoul.

Gwangjin. Gangnam. Seongdong. Yongsan.

JunJin looked up. “What’re you looking at?”

In his mind, JaeJoong remembered the rooms of the girls. On the walls, on the desks, on the bookshelves, there was a name that was always there.

JaeJoong jumped to the computer. “This is just a hunch, but… if my hunch isn’t a hunch, then the next place our guy plans to hit will be…” He looked up at the map again. “Mapo.”

“Where’d this come from?” JunJin leaned over to look at the computer screen. “That again? I think you really have gone mental.”

“We’ll see.” JaeJoong closed out the window of Cassiopeia and went back to the files.