A woman, light blonde hair, 5’ 2” sits at her desk chatting cheerfully away on her phone. She was of small stature and had attractive facial features and a well-defined nose.

“What did you say the list price was?” She asks him again.

“$150 000.” The man replies and she kicks her feet happily.

“Why such a low price? I mean, it’s a decent sized condo and the pictures of the interior seem quite nice.” The woman says.

“Well the owner recently died and his nephew decided to sell it because he had no use for it.” The man replies and the woman took the answer happily

“Alright, I’ll meet you this afternoon for an open house right?” She asks.

“Yes my dear, I just need your name for my secretary.” The man purrs into the phone and the woman blushes slightly.

“My name is Kim Taeyeon.” She says and she hears the noise of pen scratching in the background.

“One more question. Do you like horror films Taeyeon?” The man asks and Taeyeon is taken aback at his random questions.

“Yes, indeed I do.” Taeyeon says shiftily and the man chuckles darkly. The sound sends shivers down Taeyeon’s spine.

“Alright Taeyeon-sshi, I will see you tonight at 6:00 p.m., don’t be late my dear.” The man says flirtatiously into the phone and Taeyeon giggles before uttering a quick greeting and hanging up the phone. She checks her phone and sees that it’s 4:30 p.m. She decides that she wants to look nice for this man that seemed to have such an appealing voice.

She looks out her window at the For Sale sign on her front lawn. She sighs, looking forward to the fresh start she would have at her new job in Myeondong in the fall. She went out of her house and got in her car, she had a long drive to the country side where she would meet the man to sell her the house.

She turns on her radio and watches as it begins to get dark outside, she sings along to one of her favorite R&B disks. As she turns down a narrow winding path, the fog starts to creep from outside and she realizes how dark it’s gotten. She shudders, wondering why on earth he would want to meet at such a place. He’d told her the night before that he had to close a deal here and that it simply would be easier.

Under such strange circumstances, Taeyeon would have refused the offer to go with him, but Taeyeon was desperate to get her hands on that house. You see, her mother recently underwent a long and expensive surgery to correct her epilepsy which required cutting her brain into two parts. The surgery was incredibly risky which meant the insurance company refused to cover it. That left Taeyeon sinking in hospital bills. There was no way Taeyeon would have been able to afford another house, she needed this deal.

And he was counting on that.

“So what kind of a case do we have here?” Onew asks, sitting at the end of a large round table. The other members were seated beside him and it seems each of them had gone home and marked certain parts of the case that stuck out to them.

“Well, as Taemin has already pointed out, it’s a cold case.” Jonghyun says, rifling through the papers and quickly removing one of the sheets. “Three victims, Kim Taeyeon, Hwang Mi Young and Kwon Yuri.” He slides the sheet over to Onew.

“The first two murders happened within weeks of each other in opposite ends of Korea. Due to lack of coordination between the police departments, this case was dropped completely and simply filed under cold cases.” Key reports smugly, having done his homework.

“I don’t understand. How would they have linked these two cases together?” Onew questions.

“I believe I can answer that.” Taemin says, bringing up an image on each of their tablets. “I did some digging into the case files and it turns out the cause of death for both women was strangling by film.”

“A very unique M.O.” Jonghyun comments, already the gears in his brain were turning to profile the killer at large.

“The exterior wounds were inflicted post-mortem. To Kim Taeyeon, several large stab wounds. There were large traces of carbonate and bicarbonate, sodium chloride, fluorine and nitrate. It’s safe to assume that tap water had flushed into her wounds, leaving the residual minerals behind.” Minho says, analyzing the lab results. Onew grabs the sheets and starts pinning them to a corkboard behind him.

“Hwang Mi Young, on the other hand was first strangled and then she was stabbed in the heart by a large kitchen knife. There were bruises on her face and around which showed signs of a struggle.” Minho reports, sliding another photo of the victim to him and Onew proceeds to post it on the board.

“If I remember correctly, there were three victims in our file, why have we focused only on the first two?” Onew asks.

“Well you see this third victim was the turning point. Kwon Yuri. She was a famous actress in the drama ‘Fashion King’. After her death, there was a vicious reply from the media and her fans; it made it almost impossible to continue the case. The first two detectives who’d worked on the case prior to the actress’ death had no way of obtaining to communicating the information to the detective working on Yuri’s case.” Taemin says.

“What was different about Yuri was that she was first killed with an axe and then strangled.” Minho says.

“Why the sudden change in M.O.?” Onew asks.

“Well, for the unknown subject, this could have been the breaking point. Maybe the two women before that were his practice subjects and this one was his goal.” Key muses.

“There was a lot less control in this murder, he was angry. He axed her body over 20 times before he proceeded to strangle her.” Minho says.

“Not only that, but all three women were ually assaulted before they were murdered.” Taemin says.

“The case was completely buried after the police were unable to find a single lead for three weeks.” Onew reads from a file. “Have there been any other killings?”

“No, Kwon Yuri was his last victim.” Jonghyun says.

“Well, the press would’ve made it difficult for him to kill another woman, especially with the extra attention.” Onew remarks.

“Sure, but our killer is meticulous. He plans and stalks the women in advance. He lures them away from their house and kills them. He would’ve been capable of planning around the publicity and using it to his advantage.” Jonghyun says.

“Maybe we’ll be able to find out more when we visit the old crime scenes. Taemin, by the time we get back, I need to know every single possible person the victims came into contact with before their death. Thank you.” Onew says, “We leave in 15 minutes, Key and Minho, you two visit the site of Mi Young’s death, Jonghyun and I will visit where Taeyeon died.”

“Good luck.” Taemin says collecting the extra case files and bringing them into his work room. He cracked his fingers and got to work on what he did best, cracking down codes. He started off by looking into the credit card transactions, phone calls and websites frequented on the internet by each victim. He sighed as he waited for his computer to process the information, taking a look at the cork board.