14 Years Later – Youngjae 19 years old and Daehyun 20 years old.

        Youngjae stood there, staring at his parents’ caskets. He didn’t feel anything. He was physically there, but not mentally. He could hear the people crying, he could feel the warm sun on his face, and he could see those two brown caskets in front of him. However, in his mind, Youngjae was still at the scene of the murder.

-O-

        It had started as a regular day. Youngjae’s parents had seemed on edge that week, but he figured that they were just stressed about the business that they owned. His father was the president and founder of Yoo Pharmaceuticals, one of the largest prescription drug companies in Seoul. Youngjae’s father often confided in his mother for help with the company. She had contributed more to the business in its earlier days, and although she was no longer involved in it, she still offered a lot of good advice.

        Youngjae’s parents always tried to hide their worries from him. They always smiled when he would come downstairs for breakfast. His mother would give him a peck on his cheek and his father would give him a pat on his back when he would sit down at the table. He would eat his breakfast as his father read the news and his mother would be going through the day’s mail.

        Everything went as usual that day. Youngjae studied for his university entrance exams all day as his parents were doing business downstairs. His mother had home schooled him during all of his school years, so he was both nervous and excited to be going off to study.

        That night was when things changed.

        He was awoken by his mother around midnight. Her face was painted with fear and her tone of voice was urgent.

        “Youngjae! Youngjae! You have to get up!”

        “Why, what’s wrong?”

        “There is no time to explain. Follow me.”

        Youngjae’s mother grabbed him by the wrist and dragged him downstairs. When they reached the front door of their apartment, she put a key in his right hand.

        “I need you to run over to the office at the company’s building and find the gray box that’s in the book case. You remember where that is, right?”

        It took Youngjae a few seconds to think where and what she was talking about. Inside the bookcase on the back wall of his father’s office was a little, metal, gray, box. Youngjae remembered when he was little, he had found it and asked if he could look inside. His father had just smiled and denied him access to the mysterious box.

        “Yeah, I remember,” nodded Youngjae.

        “I need you to get something out of it. Inside the box is a brown book. It’s the only thing that’s in there. It’s very important and you must keep it and not let anyone find it. It has important information about the company that only your eyes should see,” his mother said sternly.

        “Why do you need this book? Why now?” Youngjae questioned.

        “I wish I could tell you so much more, but we don’t have the time. I need you to go get this book for me and I need you to stay away from the apartment for a while, okay? Please, just trust your mother and do what I say.”

        A tear ran down her cheek. Her eyes pleaded Youngjae to not ask any more questions and all he could do was nod at his mother’s request.

       He grabbed his lightweight jacket that was by the door and put on his sneakers. Before leaving, Youngjae hugged his mother, and then left the apartment. Living on the top floor of the high-rise building, he took the elevator to the bottom floor and once outside, ran to his father’s office.

       The company’s office was in a building only about two miles (3.2 kilometers) from where they lived. It was a suite that consisted of the three top floors of another high-rise in Seoul. Youngjae ran all the way to the building. All of the windows were black except for the bottom floor where the lobby was. He stepped inside the glass doors and ran across the marble floors, dodging the big, leather couches that sat in the middle of the large room. Youngjae had never seen anyone sit on them. They seemed to be just as useful as the large paintings of fruit and flowers that hung in gold colored frames on the burgundy walls.

       He reached the hallway that held six elevators, three on each side. He looked at the digital screens above each of them to see which one was resting on the bottom floor. He went over to the first elevator on his right and pushed the up arrow. Immediately the doors opened and Youngjae stepped inside the box.

       As Youngjae rode up to the top floor of the building, he stared at himself in the mirrored walls of the elevator. His hair stood on end and his eyes had dark circles around them. He had been up late studying and had only gotten an hour’s worth of sleep before his mother awaked him. His face was red from the cold air as he ran to the building, and his chest heaved in and out as he tried to catch his breath. Youngjae thought to himself that he must have looked like a crazy person running down the streets of Seoul in his pajamas in the middle of the night.

       When the elevator reached the top floor, Youngjae pulled the hood of his jacket over his head to defend himself from the oppressive silence of the office. He walked to glass doors that had Yoo Pharmaceuticals written on them in frosted letters. To the right was a keypad that unlocked the doors, but it had been tampered with. The top of the pad had been taken off, and wires removed from the inside. Youngjae’s heart started to race. Someone was inside the office who didn’t belong there.

       With a little push, the door opened and Youngjae stepped inside. In front of him was the receptionist’s desk. It was a built in, semi-circle piece of furniture with a bamboo front and a green recycled glass top. Youngjae’s father had always been one to be eco friendly and he incorporated that into the décor of the office space. Youngjae walked down the corridor off to the right of the desk toward the back of the suite. At the end of the hallway was his father’s office, where he could see a small light coming out of the windows that surrounded the doors.

       As Youngjae neared the office, he could see the silhouette of a person. They were bent down, looking through his father’s antique desk. Youngjae took a few steps back. A million thoughts were racing through his head. He didn’t know whether he should run away or if he should confront the thief.

       Then Youngjae remembered how panicked his mother looked before he left. Maybe this thief was looking for this book he was sent to get. Youngjae looked around for something that he could possibly use to knock the person out. He stepped in the office closest to him to see if there was anything that he could re-appropriate. After searching the smaller office, he quickly found a large paperweight on top of the glass desk. It was solid glass with a picture of the office worker’s family inside of it. Before removing the paperweight from the office, Youngjae took the picture from the inside. He felt that it would be wrong to bludgeon someone with the smiling faces of people he didn’t know.

       Youngjae stepped slowly out of the worker’s office and started towards his father’s. He felt his hands getting sweaty and hoped that the paperweight wouldn’t slip from his grasp. Luckily the thief had his back turned to the door as he searched the bookcase behind the desk. Youngjae grabbed onto the cold door handle and slowly pushed it open. His heart was beating faster with each step he took, holding his breath so that he wouldn’t make a noise that would even slightly alert the man in front of him.

       As Youngjae neared the thief, he could hear him muttering something about needing to hurry and complaining about not being able to find what he was looking for. The man’s fingers were quickly rifling through the books on the shelf, hoping to find the one book that had the information that he needed.

       Youngjae tiptoed around the corner of the antique desk and raised the paperweight. The unsuspecting thief fell to the ground almost immediately after Youngjae lobbed the object at his head. The heavy piece of glass hit the back of the man’s skull square on. As the thief lay on the floor, Youngjae could see a little blood start to seep from his scalp. He waited for a few moments and watched the man’s chest to see if he was breathing. He was.

       For a few moments Youngjae just stood there. He couldn’t move. After what seemed like forever, he finally took a breath, not realizing that he had been holding it for so long. He stepped closer toward the large bookcase. It stretched the length of the room and was made from a dark walnut wood. It was lined with a variety of books, from personal reads that his father liked to books on business and law. None of these were the books that he was looking for. Behind some large law books, on the top shelf, was a small gray box.

       Youngjae pulled the small key that his mother had handed to him before he left out of the pocket of his jacket.  He set the box on the desk and inserted the key into the keyhole in the front. With a turn of the key, he heard a click and slowly started to open the box. Inside was a little, brown, leather book. It had been tied closed with a red ribbon that was tattered at the edges, showing that it had been used to keep the book closed for many years.

       Youngjae slowly unraveled the ribbon and laid it inside the box. He opened the book to see why it was so important. Inside, written in his father’s handwriting, were names of what Youngjae assumed were companies. Next to them were what seemed to be amounts of products that were sold to them. He hadn’t heard of any of these companies before, and Youngjae knew of all of the pharmaceutical corporations in Korea. Why would his father be selling these products to these companies? Why did this man, lying on the floor, want this book so badly?

       A thought then entered Youngjae’s mind that made him slam the book shut, grab the tattered ribbon, and run out of the office. If someone was sent to the business’s headquarters to find the book, then someone must have also been sent to their apartment to see if it was there as well.

       As Youngjae ran out of the office, he tied the ribbon around the book to ensure it wouldn’t open in the pocket of his jacket. Youngjae bounded towards the apartment building, feeling the rain sting against his exposed skin, the pavement dark as the clouds that loomed overhead.

       He reached the doors of the building and flung them open. Youngjae ran across the foyer and pushed the elevator button madly. As he waited for the doors to open, Youngjae tried to keep himself calm. He was probably overreacting anyway. Plus, if someone did try to break into the apartment, his father could fend off the intruder and they would be okay.

       The elevator door finally opened and Youngjae quickly stepped inside. He pushed the button for the top floor. The one-minute trip seemed like it took ten. Youngjae breathed a sigh of relief as he neared his floor, but the feeling wasn’t going to last.

       When the elevator doors sluggishly parted, they revealed the doorway to his apartment, the door carelessly left ajar. Youngjae tried to think if he had left the door open when he went in search of the book, but was sure that his mother had closed it behind him.

       Youngjae stepped inside, not even taking off his damp shoes, and called out to his mother to see if he would get a response. He waited a minute, but there was only an unsettling silence. He searched around the apartment until he saw something out of the corner of his eye coming out of his father’s office. It was his father’s black fedora that he always wore. The hat was worn in spots and the brim of it was bent in the front. Around the base of the hat was a dark green ribbon that held a small peacock feather in it. The vibrant blue and green of the feather popped out against the contrast of the dark black.

       He picked it up from the floor and dusted off the bottom of the brim. While focusing on the hat, he turned toward the open door of the office and quickly forgot about the hat that was in his hands.

       His parents’ bodies lay before him. His eyes first came upon his mother, her limp body resting in a pool of blood against the leg on his father’s desk. He stood motionless in the doorway, but his eyes were restless. Across the room, over by the bookcase, lay his father. He immediately focused on the bullet wound in his father’s chest. His white shirt was soaked with blood around the small entry wound. One of his hands was resting on his chest and the other loosely clenched on the floor.

       Youngjae took a step inside the room, but fell against the wall as his legs gave out underneath him. His hands shook as he reached for the cell phone in the pocket of his jeans. His fingers trembled as he struggled to dial the number for the police. The whole time, his eyes were transfixed on his parents’ lifeless bodies.

-O-

       Youngjae was pulled from his thoughts when a warm hand rested upon his shoulder.

        I hope you guys liked the chapter! I was really excited to post it! Please leave feedback in the comments! Also, you don't need to ask me to update the story. I will always update every other Thursday, so the next time I update will be on February 28th (My birthday!). This schedule will not change unless something happens, which I will then inform you through the story feed. (^_^)