Jongin wakes up drenched in cold sweat, an all too familiar face imprinted on the insides of his eyelids. It’s early, before their alarm has gone off. Sunyoung is still snoozing happily in the bed beside him, all scrunched up on her side with her arm tucked under her head. Her expression is peaceful, a lock of dark hair tumbling across her pale forehead.

Jongin sits up, resting his head between his bent knees as he tries to calm his racing heart. Sweat drips in cool rivulets down the curve of his spine, settling uncomfortably in the little hollow of his back.

He doesn’t know why he still wakes up in a panic; he’s had this same dream enough times that he’s got it memorized.

It always starts the same way, with a dilapidated little house in the woods. It’s light when the dream begins, afternoon sunlight streaming through branches thick with summer foliage. Everything is green and sparkling with the promise that summer always brings. He’s there of course, or at least his younger self. It’s the self he sometimes wishes he could return to, all fresh-faced and light-hearted, with no cares and no worries other than what video game he’s going to play when he gets home. He’s not alone in the dream, of course. He is there. He’s always there, of course. He’s wearing the same uniform as the past-Jongin, smiling so brightly that his eyes have crumpled into nothing more than crescents. He always did have the nicest smile of anyone Jongin has ever met.

Somewhere in the course of the dream, the sunlight disappears and the forest becomes something to be feared, not to explore. And somehow, even though the present-Jongin is screaming it at the top of his lungs, the past-Jongin just doesn’t understand that this is the last time things will ever be this way.

“Babe?” Sunyoung’s sleepy voice interrupts Jongin’s minute play-by-play of the dream still flashing across his brain like a home movie. Jongin looks down at her; she’s still half-asleep, her too-big shirt falling off one shoulder. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” he assures her, leaning down to peck her on the lips. “Just a bad dream. Go back to sleep.”

She yawns and does as she’s told, and Jongin slips off to take a shower and try to forget about the dream he’s been having for the past ten years.

He’d like to say that he’s gotten past the unsolved disappearance of his best friend all those years ago, but that would be a bold-faced lie. The truth is, not a day has gone by that Jongin hasn’t thought about him. He thinks about his wavy dark hair, his big owl eyes, his brilliant smile. He groans and lets his head rest against the cool wall of the shower. Maybe it’s time to finally gain some closure.

He’s been working at the precinct for nearly a month now, long enough that the Chief is starting to trust him with actual assignments rather than just busy work. He’s settled in nicely, made friends, and has turned his shabby little office into something of a safe haven for himself. So he thinks that it’s high time he looks into the disappearance of his best friend ten years ago. 

As a special forces detective, he has access to more private files than, say, Chanyeol or Sehun. Still, when he pulls up the search bar and types the familiar name in, his computer beeps and a pop-up notification informs him that there are no electronic files for the person he’d searched. He groans. Technology in the precinct had changed a lot in the past ten years, and so he doubts anyone has ever taken the time to transcribe the hard copies of the files to the computer. It looks like he’s going to have to do this the hard way.

All the cold case files are kept in a locked storage area near the Chief’s office, with a peeling sign on the frosted glass door declaring the room private. He’s passed this room a hundred times since coming to precinct 95, but this is the first time he’s actually had a desire to get inside.

He paces in front of the door for a while, running scared every time he hears someone coming. He’s fairly certain that what he’s doing is, if not downright illegal, expressly against the Chief’s rules. So every time somebody comes by, he runs and hides.

“What are you doing, bro?” Sehun demands after the third time he’s come across Jongin in that particular hallway. “Did you lose something?”

Jongin blushes and scratches the back of his neck awkwardly. “Ah, sort of…” he mumbles. “Anyway, it’s not important.” And he rushes back to his office.

Eventually he works up the courage to try the knob of the door. Of course it’s locked, and Jongin has never been particularly good at picking locks. Besides, there are security camera in the building and he’d probably look pretty damn suspicious breaking into an off-limits storage room.

“You can’t get in there,” Sehun says when he catches Jongin trying the knob for the billionth time, hoping that just maybe someone would have unlocked it since the last time he tried. “It’s locked.”

“Yeah, I’d noticed,” Jongin says dryly, quickly dropping his hand to his side.

Sehun’s look is flat. “Then why are you still trying?”

Jongin shrugs noncommittally. He’s fairly certain that Sehun won’t report him, but he doesn’t exactly want to go around airing his dirty laundry.

Sehun his head to the side, and it’s almost – but not quite – like he’s smirking. “If you want in that room, you should talk to Victoria.” And then he heads off down the hallway, whistling to himself and sipping his coffee.

It takes Jongin another few days to work up the courage to talk to Victoria. He’s not intimidated by her beauty – which is incredible, he has to admit – but he is intimidated by how she seems to know everything that goes on at the station. She’s like a walking security camera.

In fact, when Jongin drops by her desk one morning, she’s ready for him. “Sehun says you need help getting a file out of storage?” she asks with an innocent little smile.

Jongin blushes crimson, leaning against the counter of her desk. “Ah, yeah. That’s…well…”

“Why do you need it?” Victoria asks bluntly, still painting her nails a violent shade of crimson even as she looks right at him. “You’re not doing anything bad, are you? You don’t look like a bad guy.”

Jongin blushes even more. “No, no I’m not doing anything bad. I just wanted to look over a case that’s gone cold. I’m interested in it and so I just wanted to look over it.”

Victoria purses her lips as though she’s thinking quite hard about it. Then she shrugs. “Okay, but if anything happens, I’m saying that you broke in on your own.”

“Fair enough,” Jongin agrees, relieved that she’s going to help him. “You can really get into the storage room?”

Victoria scoffs at him. “Please, I can get anywhere in this place, Jongin. Anywhere. It’ll take me a few days to get the keys, though. Let me know what file it is you’re looking for and I’ll bring it to you once I’ve gotten it.”

Jongin’s hand is trembling as he writes the familiar name down on a plain yellow post-in note and hands it to Victoria. She glances at it briefly before sticking it to the edge of her computer screen with half a dozen other post-it notes.

Jongin feels strange as he returns to his office at the end of the hall. Part of him is excited, thrilled, at finally beginning the search he should have started ten years ago, when he was just fourteen years old. But another part of him dreads what he might find. What if he doesn’t like where his search leads?

“Oh, and Jongin?” Victoria calls before he can get too far.

He turns around, already disoriented at all the conflicting thoughts rolling around in his head. “Yeah?”

Victoria is smirking. “If I do this for you, you know that you owe me, right?”

Jongin can’t help but chuckle. “Yeah, I figured. Thanks, Victoria.”

“No problem, love.” 

Sorry this chapter is so short, but it's sort of neccessary. The search for Kyungsoo is actively happening! Yay! Plus, now Jongin owes Victoria ^^

Also, a lot of you mentioned that you hoped Kyungsoo would show up in the next chapter or so. Um, guys? This entire story is about Kyungsoo being missing and Jongin looking for him. He's not just going to show up in chapter three. Just saying. ^^