Chapter 1

Tale of Two Sisters – Part I

Sunday

9.54pm

The wineglasses she was carrying clinked as they came into contact with each other, immediately alerting her younger sister of her entrance into the bedroom of the presidential suite. Peeking out from behind the fashion magazine she was engrossed in, the latter gave a warm smile as she beckoned her older sister to join her on the bed.

“So, I guess he finally let you off, unni? This calls for a celebration, right?” the younger one grinned, the slightest hint of a smirk crossing her face as she nodded towards the two glasses of wine.

“Here, have one, it’s vintage,” she offered as she sat on the edge of the king-sized bed. “A reward for everything we’ve been through. Let’s have a toast, shall we?”

It began no sooner after they took several sips of the wine. Each of them was sputtering blood, letting their wineglasses land on the carpeted floor with a muffled thud. As they clasped hopelessly at their throats, her younger sister shot her a bewildered look.

But it was too late.

In the span of several minutes, more blood rose up , choking her – her entire world slowly but steadily engulfed in a sea of eternal darkness. Her sister was already motionless, sprawled on the bed now stained a deep crimson hue.

This wasn’t supposed to happen.

Nobody was supposed to die.

Before she fully realised it, the poison had finally spread through her entire body, causing her to convulse uncontrollably. Within seconds, the light diminished from her eyes.

-

Monday

11.27am

“This is a prime example of how authority, connections and most importantly – money – can do wonders,” Chaerin declared as several members from their unit stepped out of the lift on the highest floor of Zeus Hotel. “They want this investigation to go undetected by the media, so the higher-ups have assigned us to this case.”

Kris briefly nodded in acknowledgement before continuing to march down the corridor beside her. “Well, if I were Choi Young Do, I’ll probably do the same; after all he’s only been the CEO for a mere five months before this has to occur in his hotel.”

“Wow, how ironic, coming from someone who just transferred from the anti-corruption unit,” she chuckled. He simply ignored her remark while the other members accompanying them stifled their laughter. Upon reaching the front door of the presidential suite, Chaerin paused and turned to face her team.
 

“Alright, all of you have seen the floor plan of the suite back in the office. Jongin and Kyungsoo will examine the living room, whereas Suho and Jongdae will comb the other areas.”

“What about me?” Kris interjected when his name was not included.

“Ah, you’ll be following me to where the bodies are, to learn the ropes. I suppose sitting at a desk for the bulk of your working hours isn’t enough preparation for fieldwork,” she tauntingly replied. “You’re the newbie in our eyes, so prove yourself worthy of joining this team.”

With that, she slid the key card into the slot and allowed her team to enter the crime scene.

The presidential suite was regal in every sense, its furniture painstakingly selected and imported from overseas. The gold lined wallpaper further signified the sense of luxury within one of Seoul’s most renowned hotels.

Chaerin approached the bedroom where the bodies were discovered with Kris trailing behind carefully as he mentally prepared himself for whatever he was about to see. Sure enough, it was a grotesque sight that welcomed him. Both bodies were on the bed, the limbs twisted and bent awkwardly. Picking up the courage to glance at their faces, he was slightly horrified to notice the agonised look that was permanently etched on them. Within the next few seconds, he felt his stomach churning and was about to throw up when the leader cut in.

“Don’t puke here, you’ll ruin the crime scene, newbie,” she barked. “Learn to be a little bit tougher, will you?”

“Stop calling me that!” he burst out as he took a step forward.

Chaerin scoffed before replying, “Only when you’ve solved the case.”   

-

10.19pm

The entire unit had gathered back in their office after collecting all the evidence and interviewing the eyewitnesses to the case. After scanning the meeting room for the umpteenth time, she began to speak.

“Alright, starting off with the basic information of the case…” her voice echoed in the silent room. “We know that the victims, Park Hye In and Park Hye Mi were sisters – the former being the older one. They checked into their suite on Sunday morning and Hye In headed out soon afterwards. She was last seen entering the lobby at 9.42pm based on the security footage. Earlier today at 9.16am, the housekeeper discovered the bodies and promptly informed the management of her find.”

She waited for her team to nod in agreement before proceeding. “We’ll share our primary findings now, going clockwise around the table. Let’s start with Jongin.”

“I worked together with Kyungsoo, Suho and Jongdae to examine the suite earlier. It was essentially spotless, and comparing it with the photos provided by the hotel management, nothing was missing or out of place. We did, however, find a paper bag and an opened wine bottle on the counter, as well as two wineglasses missing from one of the pantry cabinets. We’re currently running lab tests on the contents of the wine and should be getting the result tomorrow morning at 10am.”

The team wordlessly nodded as they browsed through the carefully-prepared document complete with pictures of the evidence gathered.

“What about you, newbie?” she asked, shifting the attention to Kris.

“Well, I was with you – I mean, Chaerin-ssi where the bodies were and retrieved two wineglasses identical to the other ones in the cabinet. We’re also testing if both the wine they ingested and the wine found on the countertop are a match. It’s highly likely that their cause of death was poisoning, as there were no wounds found on both their bodies.”

“The detectives that first arrived on site classified this case as suicide –do we have anything to prove otherwise?” Luhan asked from the other end of the table.

Dara cleared , signalling the attention of the team to her.

“Earlier, I did a background check on our two victims together with Chanyeol and managed to retrieve some interesting bits of info,” she stated while her partner handed out their research to the other members. “Hye In is an up-and-coming starlet, entering the showbiz only two years ago. However, within this period of time, she’s managed to land several lead roles in most of her projects. There were rumours of her having a wealthy sponsor to back her career.”

“They’re just rumours, so what does this have to do with the case?” Minseok queried as he skimmed through the file.

“Hyung, don’t be too fast to judge - this is where things start getting complicated,” Chanyeol piped up as he stood up and moved to take center stage. “I trawled the net and found numerous articles with sufficient evidence that she indeed had a sponsor. Take a look on the screen - that’s Yoon Shik, the Chairman of N&J Corporate Holdings, a conglomerate which has been responsible for capital development all over South Korea. They’ve been spotted out and about on numerous occasions already.”

The screen showed several articles and photographs of Hye In with a significantly older man looking intimate as they entered a huge mansion.

He paused briefly before moving on to the next slide. “Hye In also had several sasaengs who routinely followed her every move. We came across this blog post made by one of them earlier today. To summarise, this sasaeng saw her leave Yoon Shik’s residence in Cheongdam-dong at about 9pm and provided several blurry pictures in her blog entry. In all of them, you can spot the paper bag that she carried the wine bottle in.”

“Alright, I’ll prepare the arrest warrant now and call him in for questioning tomorrow morning if the results are a match. All of you can head back home to rest after this, it’s been a long day.” their leader announced, much to the relief of her members.

As Chaerin watched them file out of the meeting room one by one, she eyed Kris, who was the last to leave the room. Catching him by the wrist, she icily hissed at him to return to his seat. A moment later, she promptly locked the door of the meeting room and strode towards him.

“What’s this about? Just because I’m the supposed newbie, I’m treated differently? Last time I checked, ther-“

Kris’ voice was cut off by the swift motion of Chaerin unholstering her gun and aiming it right on his head.

“Don’t think I didn’t notice you rummaging through Seunghyun’s drawers when the rest of us were out for dinner.” Currently, everything about her emanated a deadly aura.

He remained stoically silent, pursing his lips as she minimised the space between them, heightening the tension in the meeting room. Eventually, the gun came into contact with his forehead, the cold metal grazing his skin.

“So tell me, Kris – who exactly are you?”

“He said you’ll know if I said the word, but I don’t appreciate having a gun pointed at me right now, Chaerin-ssi.” his retorted.

“Cut the bulls***. What’s going on?”

“Ciel, he said I could trust you.” Kris looked her straight in the eye as he said the last statement.

That sounds familiar, she thought, matching his gaze with her own piercing glare. A chill ran down her back as she realised where she had heard that word before.

It was one of Seunghyun’s last words.

-

A/N and…chapter one is finally done. I’m sorry for the long wait but I was busy these few days but actually wrote another version prior to this,only to delete it afterwards because I realised that it wasn’t really what I had in mind (it had kris being a complete klutz and puking on chaerin’s shoes and accidentally cancelling an ongoing DNA search lol). I wrote this half asleep because school has begun and I’m slowly losing my soul to schoolwork again. Almost 1,700 words and I haven’t really read it through again so apologies in advance!

PS I wrote this a couple days ago at 1am, went to sleep, woke up completely forgetting about this and only remembered about it now. I promise there’ll be more interactions in upcoming chapters and possible romance. Jk I may end up killing off all the characters muahaha.

PPS yay for heirs reference although to be honest I only watched it for kim woo bin. And also hooray for new poster, thank photoshop for not crashing on me…

i'm really tired x.x