“This is bull,” Jongin says out loud to himself. It’s a Thursday night, about time for him to call it a day and head home, but he’s still sitting at his desk, poring through hundreds of ‘witness accounts’ that had been taken down in the months following Kyungsoo’s disappearance.

At first he’d been really excited about getting to go through them, thinking that he’ll certainly find something important in them, something that the initial investigators missed. Only know he’s not quite so sure. Maybe the original investigation team didn’t find anything because there was nothing to find. He’s starting to think that these witness statements are a bunch of garbage.

In them, people report to have seen Kyungsoo all over Korea, China, and Japan. There are even quite a few claiming to have spotted the missing boy in Russia, even as far as Europe and the Americas. There are so many claims to have seen Kyungsoo that it’s impossible to pick out which ones might be real and which ones are pure baloney.

Jongin groans and lets his head fall forward onto his desk.

He’s still sitting like that when the door opens. “Hey Jongin,” Sehun says, coming in and shrugging into his jacket at the same time. “Have you seen-” He stops when he sees how Jongin panics and quickly tries to cover the plethora of papers strewn across his cluttered desk. Sehun crosses his arms over his uniform and gives Jongin a flat stare. “Okay, what are you up to?”

“Nothing,” Jongin lies quickly, practically lying on top of his desk to try and hide the many documents.

Sehun’s expression is not amused.

Jongin sighs. “I’m working on a cold case,” he admits. “I don’t technically have permission to access these files, so I’d really appreciate it if you didn’t mention anything about this to anyone.”

“Ah, so that’s why Victoria has been sneaking around the past couple weeks,” Sehun muses. “She’s good at hiding things from most people, but not from me. I knew she was up to something sneaky.” He comes over to the desk. “What case are you working on?”

Jongin reluctantly moves his arms so Sehun can see what he’s working on.

“Ah, yeah. I remember this case,” the younger says, nodding. “I remember it being on the news and everything. But didn’t they solve this several years back? Unofficially at least.”

“No, they didn’t,” Jongin says vehemently.

Sehun purses his lips thoughtfully. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure they did. I remember everyone talking about it. They found a body not that far from where the kid disappeared. They could never fully identify it since the body was missing all of the teeth so they couldn’t match dental records and the parents refused to do a DNA test since they didn’t want to believe their son was dead, but everyone was pretty positive it was this Do kid.”

“It wasn’t him,” Jongin repeats, and the intensity in his voice startles even him.

Sehun blinks at him suspiciously. “How do you know that?”

Jongin sighs. He’s already ousted himself. “Because this is an x-ray of the body they found and loosely identified as Do Kyungsoo.” He slides the image across the desk.

Sehun picks it up and looks it over. “Yeah, so?” he demands.

“This can’t be Kyungsoo,” Jongin replies. “The guy in this x-ray never broke a bone.”

Sehun doesn’t follow. “Yeah, so? That’s one of the reasons the investigators thought it was Kyungsoo. Because Kyungsoo had never broken a bone either.”

Jongin sighs. “That’s not exactly true.”

“What?” Sehun puts the x-ray down.

Jongin takes a deep breath and plows on. “Kyungsoo actually did have a broken bone before he disappeared. In fact, he broke his arm the same day he disappeared.”

Sehun is infinitely confused. “That was never in the file,” he points out.

“That’s because I never told anyone,” Jongin admits in a quiet little voice.

Sehun stares at him for a long moment, arms folded across his chest. Finally he speaks. “You and I need to have a little chat,” he says.   

omg so short but I feel like a lot was sort of revealed in this chapter and yet not a lot at the same time OTL

I'll try to update again really soon to make up for the short chapter!