0900. 12/17/2012. Seoul National University Hospital, Seoul.

Jonghyun opened his eyes in the hospital surrounded by his teammates. He rubbed his eyes, painfully aware of the splitting headache that was ripping through his brain as the too harsh fluorescent lighting did little to help. The last thing he remembered seeing was the letters on his flooring.

“Where is Taemin?” Jonghyun asked, his voice coming out as little more than a croak. His team members sprung from their various positions in the room from leaning on walls to slumping on chairs.

“Jonghyun! You’re awake!” Oew cried in relief as he watched the profiler push himself up from his bed and look at the IV in his arm. Jonghyun eyed them warily as he asked again for Taemin.

“He’s gone.” Minho said his eyes hardening as he remembered Taemin’s traitorous act. Jonghyun looked at him in confusion.

“Internal affairs has him locked up for poisoning you with the ricin laced letter.” Onew explained, “We’ve been taken off the case.”

“What do you mean he’s been taken? He’s innocent!” Jonghyun protested, panic beginning to rise.

“Jonghyun, they have a video of him putting the letter into your office.” Onew said in a calming tone and Jonghyun looked at him with a steely gaze.

“He’s been framed.” Jonghyun replied.

“What?” Key asked, half relieved that Taemin wasn’t the monster he’d been led to believe and half panicked that Internal Affairs was now keeping his innocent team member under lock and key.

“How do you know?” Onew looked at him with interest.

“The prose was all wrong, the time frame didn’t fit either.” Jonghyun said, “Now who can I explain this to so we can get our hacker genius back?” He looked around disappointed that they had lost faith in a fellow team member so easily.

“He’s not coming back Jonghyun, we’ve been taken off the case.” Minho replied, now seeing the foolishness of his rash accusations. This was exactly what the killer wanted from them.

“Taemin’s a smart kid, he’ll clear his own name.” Onew replied. “Once they find nothing on his computer, he’ll be released. He’ll be suspended for some time, but the time will be good for him, he’ll have time to investigate on his own.”

“In the meantime, how are you? Feeling up to getting back to work?” Key asked Jonghyun. In response, Jonghyun pulled out his IV much to his teammates’ horror and slung on his leather jacket.

“Lemme pick up my keys, you can brief me on the way.” Jonghyun said walking down to the nurse’s station and the rest of SHINee looked at him as if he were a maniac. “So, what do we got team leader?” Jonghyun asked Onew who looked back at him dazed at his rate of recovery.

“It’s starting to snow.” Minho said, rubbing the fogged glass and squinting past the blurry water streaked images outside the Buick’s car window. The snow fell gently, landing on streets, gathering in small filmy sheet as it awaited the arrival of a snow truck.

“Looks like my niece will get her wish.” Onew chuckled. The team’s interest piqued at mention of his family.

“What wish is that?” Jonghyun asked.

“She wanted a white Christmas this year, like the one’s she sees in those western movies.” Onew replied, not taking his eyes off the road. A sad smile captured his warm features as he navigated through the clean white streets.

“I don’t think it’ll stay though.” Jonghyun commented, referring to the above zero temperature.

“Are you going back to visit them?” Minho asked him and Onew’s smile deepened into a frown.

“Unfortunately not. They moved some time ago down South, I haven’t been back to visit them in three years.” Onew replied.

“I see.” Minho said quietly, reminded of the own family he’d left behind. He was never one who felt at home when he was at his parents’ house as he was all too familiar with their disappointment and his own short comings. Still, there was an unspeakable bond between those you share blood and genetics with, being a forensic scientist, Minho saw the kind of raw code that made up a person and it always had intrigued him.

“Well, provided we even get the holidays off.” Jonghyun commented somewhat cynically. He was well aware of the hours he put into his job and how he was whisked away at a phone call. Too many times had he been yanked and uprooted from those he loved to do what he did for a living. The others nodded in silent assent of his all too pragmatic aside.

“Key, is everything alright? You’ve been awfully quiet since we left the hospital.” Onew said, noticing the linguist’s discomfort.

“Oh it’s nothing, I’m just tired is all.” Key explained lamely and Jonghyun pursed his lips at his blatant lie. In reality, Key was surprised that his team members were so quick to forget that one of their team members was in jail. He supposed it was normal, after all, to live with the images that they did and to still go home and be normal people, they needed to have a short memory. Still, Key felt that they could show a bit more remorse than the extent of which they were currently showing. His thoughts were interrupted by a ping from Onew’s cellphone.

“Minho, could you read that to me please?” Onew asked Minho who was sitting in shot gun. Minho grabbed the phone from the cup holder and unlocked the screen.

“We’re looking at two murders of, get this, Santa Claus.” Minho reads from the phone as he scrolled down the screen. “The first victim, Lee Chung Hee was 25, he volunteered as Santa at a Christmas party at the Children’s hospital. That’s where we found the case actually. He was stabbed twice, once in the leg and another in the back. His body was found by a guide dog the next morning. He was still alive when he was found but barely, he succumbed to shock after his body went through severe hypothermia. The second victim, Jung Bae was 38 years old, he was murdered with a stab to the back. The body is still there.”

“What’s the address?” Onew asked.

“About 2km away from here actually.” Minho replied. “He was stabbed outside the COEX mall. I’m hoping they’ve preserved the crime scene well.”

“It’ll be more useful if we visit the crime scene instead of returning to the office.” Onew said, “I’ll have our temporary recruit meet us there.” The other three turned to him in surprise.

“What temporary recruit?” Key asked, narrowing his eyes at this new revelation.

“It was the director’s idea actually. She didn’t like the idea of us being one team member down and another on the mend.” Onew replied.

“Who did they send?” Jonghyun asked.

“You’ll see when we get there, you’ve met him before.” Onew replied as he turned into the driveway. He handed out new leather gloves to his teammates. “You might want these, consider it an early Christmas present.”

“So what do we have here?” Jonghyun asked as they got off the car, their shoes slushing through the melting snow.

“There’s the body.” Minho pointed, towards the figure lying in the snow surrounded by a pool of red.

“Not the body, I mean the rookie.” Jonghyun replied, gesturing to the Kim Jongin who resembled a lost puppy awaiting a claim to ownership by any person who walked by.

“They sent him?” Minho asked, recalling his earlier scolding of the rookie for his overly confident attitude.

“It appears to be so. Are you going to relieve him of his misery or am I?” Jonghyun asked and Minho replied with a sigh.

“Agent Kim Jongin.” Minho called in a stern tone and Jongin’s eyes perked up at the sight of a familiar figure, regardless of if the relations between the two were amicable or not. “Grab a bag and start bagging evidence, don’t tread near the blood soaked snow though and watch for prints.”

“Yes sir.” Jongin replied briskly, grabbing a plastic evidence bag and getting to work immediately.

“Onew, will you give me a hand with this?” Minho asked and Onew nodded. “This killer is smart. We’re dealing with snow here.”

“Which means one day the scene will be here and with the changing weather, the next day it won’t be.” Onew replied, catching Minho’s drift.

“Exactly.” He said handing Onew a tube and a shovel, “There won’t be any splatter patterns to analyze, blood behaves differently in snow. We’re going to shovel the blood soaked snow into these tubes and I’m going to analyze them later.”

“How are you going to lift that print?” Onew asked, pointing the indentation in the snow near the body. Minho looked in the direction in which Onew was pointing and frowned.

“That’ll be more complicated. We’re going to need a plastic mould, clay will be too heavy for the snow.” Minho explained, “Could I get a polymer spray?” Minho called to an assistant that was busy collecting forensic evidence, she promptly nodded and brought him a gray spray can. “Good eye by the way.” Minho said to Onew.

“That covers most of it I think?” Onew said, capping the plastic tube with a small round lid.

“Yes, next we move to the body.” Minho replied.

“A stab in the back right?” Jonghyun said a little ways away from Onew and the crime scene lab team, typing away on his tablet as he took pictures for his personal notes.

“Could the murders be personal?” Key reasoned and Jonghyun pursed his lips.

“It makes sense with the age difference that they would be.” Jonghyun replied, “If only we could figure out if they knew each other somehow.” Jonghyun said, feeling the absence of their favourite techie that was their backbone from behind his monitors.

“We’ll have to run data when we get back to the office, if only Taemin were here, eh?” Key said, echoing Jonghyun’s thoughts exactly. Their melancholic reflections were interrupted by the sloshing of snow as Jongin approached them with a dejected look on his face.

“What’s the problem Agent?” Jonghyun asked.

“They kicked me out of the crime scene, some labby decided that my evidence bagging methods were not up to par and promptly took over.” Jongin replied, heaving a sigh of sorrow. Jonghyun chuckled and laid a hand on his shoulder.

“Leave the evidence processing to the nerds, they’re very particular with the way things are done you know.” Jonghyun said winking to lift the boy’s spirits, “In the meantime, maybe you can lend us some insight on the profile?”

“So the victim was stabbed in the back right?” Jongin asked and Jonghyun nodded. “Could it be symbolic?” Jonghyun nodded, encouraging the rookie’s train of thought. “As in, he was betrayed in some way, perhaps by the people or by the figure Santa Claus himself.” Jonghyun smiled as Jongin voiced the initial profile Jonghyun had begun to build.

“Good job Jongin, you are now up to speed.” Key said, “Your deductions accede our initial profile. It’s good to have confirmation from a third party source as profiles are never more than very informed educational guesses at best.”

“You know, it never occurred to me how dangerous it would be to be Santa Claus himself. After all, the whole naughty-nice thing sets children up for disappointment, it could break trust, build feelings of unworthiness or rejection. It could build years and years of resentment and gives children unreasonable hope.” Jonghyun mused.

“For example, had a kid wished for superhero powers or maybe for absolute domination, things that are out of anyone’s control that could seriously hurt a kid.” Jongin continued, “Of course, it might not change a kid’s entire personality but topped with a bit of psychosis, it’ll only do harm.” Key was impressed by the rookie’s reasoning, it rivalled that of a seasoned profiler.

“At some point, it leads me to question, is the accolade worth it?” Jonghyun asked.

“Or, what if it was about the accolade? What if someone was wishing to gain the kind of recognition that Santa holds?” Key brought up. Jonghyun pondered upon it for a moment before inputting some notes into his tablet.

“All we have are baseless guesses until we get some more information from the scene, tox reports, MO.” Jonghyun replied.

“I actually think I know what the murder weapon is.” Jongin said and the two turned to him in surprise.

“Ice.” Minho finished for him and Jonghyun furrowed his eyebrows at this unfortunate turn of events.