The next day, Jisu woke up with a jolt. She hurriedly grabbed her phone and looked at the time. Her eyes widened when she saw that she was an hour late, and on top of that, she had 9 missed calls and 5 texts from Shi Yoon. She quickly read through the texts, all consisting of his warning about how pissed off the chief was. She messed her hair in frustration and ran out the bedroom. Then, she realized she wasn’t even in her own house.

Her aunt made her sleep in her apartment for the night, to which she didn’t decline. Now, she regretted it because she didn’t have her alarm clock with her.

No one was in the house at the time. Kai had gone to school and her aunt had gone to God knows where. She grabbed her jacket but paused. How was she going to lock the door, now? She didn’t have the key to the apartment.

She closed the door and ran downstairs. It was only one flight of stairs anyways. then, she stopped in front of the security office. “Good morning!” the security greeted.

“Apartment 11’s door isn’t locked. Can you go up there and lock it for me?”

“Don’t you have a key?”

“No. I slept over and no one is home. I am an hour late for work, and I can’t afford to be late any longer.” The security guard glanced at her messy hair and her ped jacket. He believed her. “Okay, go on ahead. I’ll lock it for you.”

Jisu thanked him and ran outside, only to stop in her tracks. The road was covered in snow, and it was still snowing. She cursed out loud. How could she go to work in this snowy condition? The taxi will take at least half an hour to get there, and she would have to wait for another half hour to arrive at the station. The bus wasn’t going to be any faster.

She zipped her jacket up all the way and placed her hood over her head. She had forgotten her mittens and scarf back in the apartment and she was not going back up there to get them. Then, she trudged through the snow to get to work. She was going to walk all the way there. It wasn’t like it was her first time walking to work.

Suddenly, a car honked beside her. She turned and saw a familiar black car. The window rolled down. “Get in!” he called.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“You don’t remember me? I was the one who you have a speeding ticket to.” She didn’t recognize him. “The heir of SKY universities.” She scowled and continued to walk away. The sidewalk wasn’t cleared from snow and she wasn’t wearing her boots, so the cold snow was seeping into her shoe and socks. “Get in!” Soohyun called again. “It’ll be faster if you get in.”

She ignored him and continued her mission to get to work. “Fine, if you don’t want to get in, it’s your loss.” The window rolled up and he drove away. She stopped and scoffed as the car drove away. It wasn’t fast, but it was faster than the speed she was going. “You’re supposed to insist until the girl tells you to get lost,” she mumbled.

To her surprise, the car stopped. It just stopped. Jisu didn’t want to waste her time, so she continued to walk. Eventually, she reached the black car. When she was close, Soohyun got out of his seat and ran to the other side and opened the passenger door. “Get in. I won’t tell you a fourth time.”

Jisu stopped and examined him. He didn’t look like the cocky rich man yesterday. Today, he seemed like a caring gentleman. And she hated it. She hated bipolar people. Even though she hated bipolar people, she got in. She couldn’t feel her face, or her feet anymore and she didn’t want to get sick because she was trying to walk in this horrible weather. Soohyun closed the door and ran back to his side. He shook the snow off his body before he got in. He glanced at Jisu who was busy getting the snow out of her shoes. “Hey, you’re getting snow all over my leather!”

She turned her head towards him. “You should have told me to brush off the snow before I got into your car. It’s too late for that now, isn’t it?” She continued to dump out the snow inside her shoe and he grimaced. For someone who had help, she wasn’t too grateful.

Soohyun cranked up the heat and he drove off. He kept glancing at Jisu and noticed that she wasn’t dressed very warm. “Did you check the weather before you left the house?”

She leaned back on his leather seat, tired from dumping the snow out of her shoes. “If I did, I wouldn’t be like this, would I?”

He stayed silent. She had a point. “Then what about your dress code? Where’s that thick scarf and glove you had yesterday? I think you were expecting for leaves to fall, instead of snow.”

Jisu glared at him and he could feel it in the corner of his eye while he was concentrating on the road. “I woke up late,” she said. “I wasn’t in my own apartment, so I didn’t have my alarm clock on.” Soohyun was disappointed yet relieved at the same time. He was disappointed that she wasn’t in the same apartment building as he was. It would have made his objective in getting closer to her more difficult. He was relieved that he stopped himself before he could go knocking on every door on the first floor. He would have made an embarrassment of himself.

“Sleep over? With who? Your boyfriend?”

She sighed. “Why are you asking? Don’t forget I’m still on your tail. If you get into any more trouble, I won’t let you go. So don’t even think about bringing another briefcase of money. You’re going to be someone I’ll have my finger around.” He liked the sound of that. It just makes his own investigation much easier.

After what felt like an eternity to Jisu and only five minutes to Soohyun, they finally arrived at the police station. They wondered where the snow plows were. It was difficult to get anywhere. He stopped in front of the building. Jisu put her wet shoe back on and groaned. She hated wet socks. She turned to Soohyun. “Thanks for the ride. Don’t think that I’m letting off the hook though.”

He saluted. “I won’t. Have a warm day at work, Officer Kwon.”

Jisu almost smiled. It had been a while since anyone told her to have a nice day at work. She rolled her eyes at him and got out of the car. Once Soohyun watched her go into the building, he drove off but then, he saw something on his leather seat where Jisu was sitting. He picked it up and examined it. It seemed to be a phone charm. He smiled and put it in his jacket. She wasn't as bad as yesterday. It was probably because he didn't have a briefcase with him. With that phone charm, he has another excuse to see her, in hopes she'll accept his reinvestigation request.

When Jisu walked into the building, Shi Yoon noticed her right away. He got up and pulled her behind the counter. He sat her down and whispered harshly, “Where have you been? Do you know you’re two hours late for work?”

“Where’s the chief?” she asked, ignoring his question.

Shi Yoon glanced behind him. “In his office. He has a visitor. It’s a good thing, too. If not, the chief will have your head. He hates tardy people.” She glanced up but when she did, the chief had just come out from the back. Her eyes widened, thinking she would be dead meat but then her eyes traveled to the man behind him.

Jisu immediately stood up, startling Shi Yoon. She saluted and said, “Detective Woo!”

The man behind the chief chuckled and saluted. “At ease.” Jisu loosened up and smiled.  She approached him and bowed. “How are you, Detective Woo?”

“I’m fine. What about you, Detective Kwon?” he looked down at her feet and chuckled. “It looked like it was a mission coming to the station.”

She laughed sheepishly. “It was, kind of. But what are you doing here?”

“I came to check up on Chief Park, here.”

She gawked at him. “Him? Not me? Detective! You’re so mean!” He laughed loudly. “Of course I have to check up on your chief. I wanted to ask him if you were causing him any trouble.”

“Oh, no. Of course not! Officer Kwon is the best officer I ever had!” the chief said and Jisu tried her best to not roll her eyes at his obvious lie. “That’s good. Detective, I have to talk to you about something.” The two went to the coffee room. Jisu brewed him a cup of coffee and sat across from him on the table. “You have been working on it, right detective?” Jisu asked.

He nodded. “Yes, I am. But it’s difficult. We have no other leads. Yours was the best we’ve got.”

Jisu shut her eyes in frustration. “If only I hadn’t done that. If only my anger hadn’t gotten the best of me, that witness would have been our only answer.” The older man held her hand and patted it. “Don’t worry about it. We’ll get to the bottom of this. Me and you.”

“You mean, you,” she corrected. “I’m an officer now.” He smiled. “I trust you, detective. I know you’ll find out who killed Detective Kim.”

“And I promise you that I will. Detective Kim is an important person to me, as he is to you but it’ll be hard since it’s a closed case, but I will keep investigating. We’ve been on this case for too many years. I won’t give up so easily.”

She got teary-eyed just talking about it. “Thank you. Also, I’m sorry I can’t help you as much as I want to. If we catch the culprit, I swear I won’t let him get away. Not the second time.”

Once Detective Woo left, Jisu changed into her uniform and went back to the front desk, with Shi Yoon. He wheeled his chair over to her. “Is he the man you said you had a connection with? The man that prevents the chief from firing you?” She nodded. “Wow, that’s just amazing. You’re the best police officer he ever had? Ha! That’s hilarious!” She glared at him and his laughter died down. “Not that you aren’t…” She rolled her eyes and shook her head and then the two went back to their computers.

Two hours passed since Jisu started working. She stopped working for a bit and looked away from her computer screen to take a look outside the window. The snow kept falling and falling. It didn't look to her the snow was going to stop anytime soon. The weather was like this when Detective Kim died. She could remember the day vividly. She was on a taxi to the crime scene but the snow was so heavy, the taxi couldn't go any faster. Her anxiousness didn't allow her to sit in the taxi for long and she ran out the vehicle and arrived at the crime scene on foot. It was surprising how her health didn't deteriorate because of the weather. It was because of heart break.

Her phone vibrated on her desk. Detective Woo was calling her. She picked her phone up right away, wondering why he called her. When she answered, it wasn’t the detective who answered. “Hello? Is this Detective Kwon?”

She furrowed her eyebrows in confusion and lifted the phone away from her ear. It was definitely Detective Woo who called her. “Yes, that’s me. Who is this?”

“This is the police. You were the most recent person he contacted.” Jisu’s world stopped and became silent. Her whole body became numb. The only thing she heard was her loud and fast heartbeat. Her mind replayed the officer’s words. “Woo Taewoon’s car crashed into the rails on the highway.”