새들은 알고 있을까 그리운 당신의 목소리?

Would the birds know the voice of you who I miss so much?

떠나간 그대여 내게로 오라

You who left, please come back to me

Rolling onto his side, Myungsoo's gaze flickered over to the usually empty space of mattress beside him only to be greeted by a pair of familiar brown eyes staring blearily into his own. The detective yelped loudly in surprise and sat upright so suddenly that he sent himself toppling to the floor with arms flailing, frantically scooting backwards until his back met the wall. Lee Sungjong, who had been occupying the other half of the mattress, held a fistful of their shared blanket to his chest and peered down at the older boy with eyes widened in mutual shock. Scrambling onto his feet, Myungsoo found himself clutching at his dresser as he raised a shaky finger of accusation in Sungjong's direction. "What . . . what are you doing here?" he managed to sputter.

Sungjong knit his brows, confused. "You don't remember?" he inquired. Myungsoo glanced up at him blankly, unable to recall much of anything last night. "You let me sleep here last night. I thought it would be okay since we used to . . . share beds back in high school."

"Why the hell would I let you do that?" the older boy cried out. "Who knows what you could've done to me in my sleep?"

"What I could've done?" Sungjong retorted suddenly with a change in expression, swinging his legs over the mattress and storming his way over to the boy huddled by the dresser. "Out of the two of us, you're the touchy one here. You couldn't keep your hands off of me back in high school, so stop trying to make yourself look like the victim!" Unknowingly, the younger boy had drawn himself closer to Myungsoo, their foreheads only separated by a little less than an inch of space. Myungsoo, unable to scoot away any further, held his breath as he gazed directly into that of Sungjong's (it wasn't until now that the detective had realized that Sungjong had actually grown to be as tall as him), and he tentatively placed his hands on the boy's shoulders to push him back a step. 

"Breakfast," he mumbled, brushing past him. "Let's eat breakfast."

Sungjong followed closely behind. "Maybe you should let me do the cooking," he piped up, the slight hostility in his voice from earlier disappearing.

"I don't have much of anything besides ramen," Myungsoo said with a shrug.

But the boy had already begun to make his way around the kitchen, digging through cabinets and peering inside the refrigerator. Myungsoo couldn't do much besides lean against the counter and keep out of Sungjong's way. That hasn't changed since high school either, the fact that the older boy could only watch the hurricane that is Lee Sungjong from a distance. Even back then, Sungjong had been strongly independent, always moving forward to the point that he had already finished the race of high school and had begun to mentally prepare himself for the outside world. He'd always been one step in front of his classmates, and Myungsoo had believed that such a person was unreachable; no matter how often Sungjong's shoulder had brushed against his or how often the younger boy had smiled in his direction, Myungsoo couldn't help but think that his best friend, the number one student in the nation, was almost unreal. Three years since then, in his very own kitchen, Myungsoo watched Sungjong tend to the eggs, humming softly to himself and smiling in his own little world while the older boy watched from his.

Myungsoo vaguely heard his phone go off from the bedroom, and he silently slipped out of the kitchen to answer it. The caller ID read that it was Dongwoo who was calling, and the detective thought it was odd that such a name turned up on his screen. Wasn't it a bit too early in the morning for his groupmate to drop him a call? Myungsoo pressed the phone to his ear. "Mm, hyung?" he said, his voice still slurred with drowsiness. 

"Han River," Dongwoo said hurriedly from the other line. "Come quickly, Myungsoo." He hung up. 

It didn't take long for Myungsoo to react; it came almost naturally to him as a detective, after all. Hastily stepping out of his sweatpants and pulling on a pair of jeans, Myungsoo yanked a coat off its hanger as he dashed out into the main room to put on his shoes. Sungjong poked his head out from the kitchen doorway. "Hyung, breakfast is . . ." The younger boy trailed off, his lips curving downwards into a befuddled frown. "Are you going somewhere?"

"I'll be back," the detective assured in a hurry, slipping on his shoes. "Go eat breakfast without me."

Sungjong stepped out into the hall. "Is everything alright?" 

"I'm fine." Myungsoo glanced up, briefly meeting the boy's gaze with a pair of eyes that glimmered not with the usual flame of apathy but with all the vulnerability Sungjong could ever imagine to exist in the world. All at once, memories of the gentle, soft-hearted Kim Myungsoo from high school seemed to pull themselves free from the pockets of Sungjong's mind, revealing themselves like snapshots. This was his best friend, the boy who held in all the pain to himself for the sake of others; this was Kim Myungsoo. 

Sungjong drew himself closer to the older boy and reached for the his hand, a response that seemed all too familiar to him. "It's going to be okay," he replied with a meek smile. Myungsoo lowered his gaze to the hand holding his own and stood motionless in a half-dazed stupor before tearing himself away to rush out the door. 

~

Myungsoo ignored the seemingly distant voices of his teammates calling out to him as he roughly elbowed his way through the small spectacle surrounding the crime scene. A hand — presumably belonging to Kim Sunggyu because Myungsoo could vaguely recognize his team leader's firm yet reassuring touch — held him back by the shoulder, but the youngest detective shrugged it off before ducking underneath the police tape. He set his gaze on the body sprawled out by his feet, which the paramedics had already thrown a white sheet over to conceal everything but the victim's head. Head spinning, Myungsoo knelt beside the man and felt his own breath hitch as he took in the reality of it all, the grotesque sight of death itself; the target (could he still call him that even after seeing that the killer had already disposed of him?) laid motionless, face drained of color and lips blue. He was pushed into the river, Myungsoo realized.

"Choi Jihoon," his team leader murmured. "He was one of the last . . ." The detective didn't need him to continue; he already knew the answer. Sunggyu, once again, clamped a hand on Kim Myungsoo's shoulder, but this time, it was as though he wanted to keep the boy from falling apart. "We'll find him, Myungsoo. We'll find him before it's too late." The promise came out in such a rush, that even Sunggyu was unsure if he could find the certainty in his own words. But something had to be said, even if that something happened to be a lie. 

Myungsoo nodded slowly in a daze, fists clenched at his sides and heart wrenching in his chest. He suddenly envisioned living in a world without Lee Sungjong in it, without being greeted by the boy's wide smile and crinkled eyes. Such a world, he thought, was unimaginable.

~

"Goddammit!" Woohyun cursed, striking the wall with the side of his fist. "He was the last living evidence, the last damn clue we had to close this case. I don't even understand how the bastard managed to find him before we did. We had a damn search team, for God's sake-"

"His phone," Sunggyu interjected solemnly. "The cyber crime unit found that Choi Jihoon accessed his email account through his phone last night, so the killer was able to track him down that way." He leaned back in his seat, crossing his arms over his chest in distaste. "Seems like technology is only being used as a weapon rather than a utility nowadays."

"Either way, it doesn't change the fact that the killer's still out there, and we don't even know who the hell he is!"

"No, but we can find out," Howon declared, sliding a manila folder across the table to their team leader. "Now that we've identified all of the targets, excluding Lee Sungjong, I was able to look into the police records to find out more about the incident from February 10th. The paramedics on duty that night reported to have taken two people to the hospital that night — Lee Sungjong being one, and the other still happens to be a patient there. His name is Lim Jaeheun, a comatose patient and supposed victim of assault."

"But how is a comatose patient and a college kid who lost his memory going to help us find the killer?" Woohyun demanded impatiently. "Unless Lee Sungjong suddenly gains his memory back anytime soon or Lim Jaeheun magically decides to wake up in the morning, we're sitting ducks."

"Isn't it obvious, Woohyun? This is a revenge plot; the killer's taking revenge on the people responsible for putting Lim Jaeheun in a comatose state. Obviously, the patient and the killer have strong ties with each other for him to resort to murder."

"If this is true, then isn't it likely that the killer would pay occasional visits to the hospital? In case Lim Jaeheun wakes up?"

Sunggyu nodded firmly in comprehension. "Then, we're going to have to keep a close eye on that particular hospital. Starting tonight, of course." The team leader swiveled around in his chair to face a slightly jaded Kim Myungsoo, calling out to him so abruptly that the youngest detective jumped a little in his own seat and redirected his gaze to meet Sunggyu's. "Kim Myungsoo, from now on, unless you're called to duty, I'm forbidding you from coming into the station for the remainder of this case."

As Sunggyu had expected, Myungsoo rose swiftly to his feet with brows knit in disbelief. "Team leader, I don't understand," he grit out, resisting the urge to raise his voice. "What good does this-"

"While the rest of this team is keeping an eye out for the killer, I need you to watch over Sungjong with more precaution. He's the only one being targeted now, so it only makes sense for you to remain by his side. Do you understand, Myungsoo?" Sunggyu leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table as his gaze hardened into that of solemnity. "If you can't protect him this time, you'll lose him."

~

Myungsoo drove with the window beside him rolled down. At times like this, he liked to think that there needed to be an opening nearby to let the clutter of his own thoughts spill out. It's been months, he recalled, since he last did something like this — purging himself from everything bad that seemed to stack up in his mind and replacing them with emptiness. But what irked him the most was the fact that even after doing so, thoughts of Lee Sungjong still managed to remain. He was buried in the creases, hidden beneath the folds as though waiting for Myungsoo to pull him out. 

Myungsoo decided to ignore it. He rolled up the window, and his fingers jabbed at the buttons of the stereo, twisting and turning knobs to the point that he could only hear a small snippet of each song blasting through the speakers as he skipped through the channels. Finally settling for a radio station that only broadcasted ballads at this time of night, Myungsoo exhaled and leaned back in his seat. The song was just ending (much to his disappointment), and the first few bars of another tinkling ballad filled his ears. The familiarity of the melody surprised him in such a way that he ended up swerving out of the lane and lurching to a stop by a nearby curb. Still gripping the steering wheel, Myungsoo gazed down at his speaker system in a sort of trance. Part of him wanted to turn off the radio and lock the song away forever, but his heart seemed to be urging him to listen further and recollect the memories that came with it. 

Shin Seung Hoon's "What Should I Do?" The song that first made Kim Myungsoo fall for Lee Sungjong three years ago . . .

One of the benefits of having the number one student in the nation as his best friend, Myungsoo used to think, was that they were able to study together without much of a struggle. Sungjong did, after all, have most of answers. But the older boy realized that there was more to it than that; he simply liked being around Sungjong, and he was delighted that his younger friend felt the same way. 

They were sitting in the school courtyard, deciding that they both needed to get away from the rowdy classroom atmosphere by isolating themselves on the grass field by the track. But after hours of flipping through their written notes and working out math problems, it was inevitable that one of them was going to end up dozing off. When Sungjong peered over his workbook to ask his older friend if he could borrow a pen, he saw that Kim Myungsoo had fallen asleep slumped upright in a sitting position. With a light smile playing on his lips, the younger boy tenderly situated his older friend to lie down with his lap now acting as a comfortable headrest. Myungsoo blinked awake an hour later, finding that a uniform jacket that did not belong to him had been draped over his sleeping form and a pair of earphones playing a soft piano ballad had been wedged into his ears. The older boy remained motionless as he stared blearily up at the figure encased by a halo of sunlight, and a thought suddenly came to mind: It's beautiful . . . He's beautiful. 

Sungjong glanced down to see that his friend had roused from slumber and greeted him with a wide grin. "Isn't it a good song? I didn't think you'd be awake to hear it," he laughed airily. "It's pretty old, but I've always liked Shin Seung Hoon. I just thought it was quiet enough for you to fall asleep to."

But Myungsoo was barely listening; he could only bring himself to hear the singer's voice echoing in his ears and absent-mindedly watch the boy scribbling in his notebook.

What should I do? I love that person

He's looking at me with a smile, he doesn't know this kind of me

What should I do? If I'm caught like this

I won't be able to see such a smile again . . .

~

Sungjong rose from the couch just as Kim Myungsoo slipped inside the apartment and closed the door behind him, and the younger boy took cautious steps towards the detective. But before he could reach out to the older boy or part his lips to speak, Myungsoo had already brushed past him without sending him even a glance of acknowledgment, leaving him standing motionless in the hall. Sungjong trailed after the older boy and touched his shoulder to stop him. Turning partway, Myungsoo met the younger boy's concerned gaze, and after a moment of hesitation, Sungjong tentatively pulled up the corners of his lips into a shaky grin. "Hyung," he began quietly, "are you hungry? We should eat something-"

"I'm not hungry," Myungsoo interjected, shrugging off the boy's hand.

Sungjong reached out and snatched his older friend by the wrist. "Are we going to continue like this, Myungsoo?" he asked, the forced cheer in his voice gone. "With you giving me the cold shoulder when I'm just making the effort to restore our friendship? Why are you acting like this now that I'm right in front of you?" Myungsoo tore his gaze away so that Sungjong wouldn't see the unshed tears that brimmed his eyes and threatened to spill down his cheeks. The younger boy, eyes glimmering with the same tears that filled Myungsoo's own, let go of the older boy's wrist. "Why are you acting like this when you were the one who left me behind three years ago?"

"Because," the detective cried out suddenly before realizing how loud his voice was. "Because you were already out of my reach." Sungjong stared up at him, a mixture of sadness and confusion swirling in his eyes. "I couldn't catch up to you no matter how hard I tried to. I realized that since the day we first met. What was I supposed to do when you went away to pursue your dreams? Wait and hope that you would return to me? Watch over you from a distance?"

"What you should have done is stay," Sungjong whispered, voice cracked. "That morning, when I woke up from the hospital, the first person that came to mind was you. The person that I needed by my side was you. Didn't you know, Myungsoo? Besides school, besides writing, I only had you. So that's why . . . you should have stayed."

Before he could find the will to stop himself, Myungsoo grabbed Sungjong by the wrist and pulled him into his arms, crying silently into his younger friend's shoulder to shed all the hurt built up in his tears. They were both clinging onto one another not because they had finally found each other but because they couldn't bring themselves to let go.