“I mean, you’ve got no logical reason to think that this kid might still be alive.”

It’s a Thursday morning and Jongin has let himself get roped into going to Club Espresso, their favorite coffee shop, with Sehun and Luhan. While they sip their overpriced cups of steaming coffee, the two try to figure out why Jongin believes so firmly that Kyungsoo is still alive.

“I know,” Jongin agrees, running his fingers through his hair wearily. “I guess all the evidence points to him being dead. But, I don’t know. I just can’t accept that. He’s not the sort of person that would have given up so easily.”

“You don’t know that it was easy,” Sehun says flatly. “Maybe he put up a fight or something before-” But a sharp look from Luhan cuts him off.

Luhan reaches across the table and gives Jongin’s hand a reassuring pat. “Sometimes people just don’t have a choice, Jongin. There are an awful lot of bad people out there who prey on those younger or weaker or smaller than them. Sometimes, as much as you hate it, bad things happen to good people.”

Jongin knows this. He may not be that experienced as a cop, but he’s studied more cases than he can count of innocent victims meeting horrible ends at the hands of whackos and nut-jobs. But this is different. He just…he can’t believe that Kyungsoo – lively, bright, and intelligent Kyungsoo – is dead, his bones bleaching in the sun somewhere or rotting at the bottom of a lake. He can’t believe that. He won’t.

“He’s not dead,” Jongin says assertively, sipping at his coffee despite the scalding temperature. “I just feel it.”

Sehun and Luhan exchange knowing looks, like they’re telepathically agreeing that Jongin is in denial, but they don’t say anything.

“What about that house in the woods?” Sehun asks, leaning back in the booth and stretching his long legs out underneath the table.

Jongin blinks at him. “What?”

Sehun rolls his eyes like he’s annoyed at Jongin’s stupidity. “The house in the woods,” he repeats. “You know, the one where you and Kyungsoo-”

“What about that house?” Jongin interrupts him quickly, his face turning a million shades of red in a matter of seconds.

Sehun smirks at that but continues. “Did you go back there? Check for clues or anything?”

“What sort of clues would be there?” Jongin demands.

Luhan purses his lips. “Sehun’s got a point. If we assume that Kyungsoo ran away instead of getting kidnapped, maybe he went to the house in the woods. It’s a logical assumption to make if that place holds as many serious memories as you say it does.”

“He didn’t run away,” Jongin asserts through gritted teeth. “He would never have done that. Not to his parents. Not to me.”

Luhan pats him on the hand again. “For the sake of exploring all our options, let’s pretend like it’s a possibility. If he ran away, it’s safe to say that he might have stopped by the house in the woods, right?”

“Right,” Jongin agrees begrudgingly.

“So let’s go check it out,” Sehun says. “We can go this weekend. None of us are on duty, right?”

Jongin feels a little weird about it, about having his friends go with him to a place that is practically sacred, but it can’t hurt. “Fine,” he gives in. 

“Great,” Luhan says. “At least it’s a place to start, right? Now come on. We better get back to the station before the Chief has a heart attack.”

“Hold on, there’s something I’ve got to do before we leave,” Sehun says as they walk towards the entrance. While Luhan and Jongin wait by the door, Sehun stops at the counter, where the rosy-cheeked barista with the affinity for books and cats, Baekhyun, is flipping through a literary magazine. They can’t hear what Sehun says to him, but they do see the way Baekhyun blushes crimson and tries not to smile.

“What was that all about?” Luhan demands when Sehun rejoins him and Jongin.

Sehun smirks. “Just giving a little push. Chanyeol better ing thank me. God knows he’d never get a date if it weren’t for me.”

Jongin makes up an excuse to Sunyoung when he leaves on Saturday, something about having to work overtime to get on the Chief’s good side. He doesn’t like lying to Sunyoung, but he knows he can’t share this with her.

She knows about Kyungsoo. Though Jongin never would have told her, she’d come across some old photographs in an album Jongin keeps hidden away and, when he’d refused to talk to her about it, she’d gone to his mother and gotten the story. As much of the story as Jongin’s mother knew, at any rate. So she knows that Kyungsoo had been a special friend of Jongin’s and that Jongin had been understandably devastated by the loss, but she wouldn’t understand why he’s still obsessed with it ten years later. Most people would have moved on by now. Jongin can’t tell her that he hasn’t.

So he lies and says something about working overtime and trusting, naïve Sunyoung believes him, kissing him goodbye with well-wishes. Jongin feels like for lying to her, but all thoughts of Sunyoung disappear from his mind when he meets up with his friends.

Luhan and Sehun are there, with Chanyeol in tow. Though Jongin hasn’t expressly told Chanyeol what’s going on and why he’s looking into the case, he knows he can trust the jolly giant to keep a secret and he doesn’t mind having an extra pair of eye on hand.

“He owes me for getting him in good with Baekhyun,” Sehun whispers loudly to Jongin.

Chanyeol turns the shade of a ripe tomato. “I would’ve asked him on a date myself if you’d just given me the time.”

“Pinocchio, your nose is growing!” Sehun calls.

While his friends are lively on the car ride over – mostly teasing an increasingly agitated Chanyeol about the barista – Jongin sits quietly, nervous. It’s been ten years since he’s been out to these woods, to this house. Will it have changed? Will he even recognize it? What if the house has fallen down by now and they’re making this trip for nothing?

All too soon, Luhan is parking the car at the edge of the woods and they all climb out, suddenly solemn.

Luhan glances at Jongin. “Lead the way,” he says.

Jongin’s heart is pounding so loud it’s almost deafening as he leads the way into the path. It’s still well worn, a familiar track leading through the underbrush. The trees overhead sway in the breeze with a soft, whispering noise that sounds like the ghosts of Jongin’s past. He’s sweating buckets by the time they reach the clearing, even though it’s not that hot out and the hike isn’t exactly strenuous.

The house is still there. It’s a little worse for wear after ten extra years of weathering, but it’s still standing. The paint has peeled even more and one whole wall has collapsed in on itself, but other than that the structure seems almost the same as the last time Jongin had come with Kyungsoo on that fateful day that started – and ended – everything.

“Is this it?” Luhan asks softly.

Jongin swallows the lump in his throat and nods. It feels like he can see a young Kyungsoo dancing just in his peripheral vision, smiling, laughing, calling to him.

The others wait for Jongin to move, deferring to him in silent recognition of how important this place had once been, and it’s not until he’s walking through the hole that had once been the front door that the others follow.

Most everything is still the same. The hole in the ceiling that Kyungsoo had fallen through when he’d broken his arm. The old mattress on the floor in the one bedroom protected from the elements, all moldy and full of holes by this point. Even the old radio still sits in the corner, long dead, its cord chewed through by rats or other rodents.

“Alright, spread out and look for anything that might help us,” Chanyeol orders the others.

Sehun makes a face. “Who died and made you king?” he demands, but this only earns him a whack upside the head.

While his friends are methodically searching the ruins of the house for anything that might give them a clue as to what happened to Kyungsoo, Jongin climbs the ladder up to the loft. He knows it’s dangerous, particularly when thinking about the fact that the floorboards were so rotted ten years ago that Kyungsoo, who weighed practically nothing, had fallen through. But he needs to go. He needs to see.

The loft looks exactly as he remembers it, the way he sees it in the dreams that so often plague him. The wall is missing, revealing the forest outside. Today the scene is a little cloudy, but he remembers the last time he was here, when there was an unusual sunstorm and they’d been soaked from the rain. He remembers laying Kyungsoo down on the floor, of making love to him, of holding Kyungsoo in his arms afterwards. And he remembers the hateful words his cowardly younger self had uttered, perhaps the words that set this whole thing in motion.

He shakes his head, wiping away unwanted tears. He quickly scurries back down the ladder.

“I can’t find anything,” Chanyeol complains when they meet up again in the main room. “It doesn’t look like anybody has been here in ages.”

“What do you think, Jongin?” Luhan asks solemnly. “Do you think Kyungsoo came here?”

Jongin shakes his head. He’s almost been hoping to find something, as at least it would indicate that Kyungsoo had been alive for some time after his disappearance, but nothing in the old house is out of place. “It’s exactly the same as it was the last time I was here,” he says dejectedly. “Nothing has changed.”

“A dead end then,” Sehun says glumly, and they have no choice but to traipse back to the car.

Jongin is incredibly disheartened by their lack of any real headway in the case. He’s starting to think that he might as well just give up when Victoria shows up in his office with a thin manila envelope.

“I thought this might help you,” she says in a sing-song voice, waving the envelope around.

Jongin narrows his eyes at her. “What is that?”

“These are evidence photos from that cold case you’ve been looking into,” she says, still waving the packet around. “They were mis-filed, so I didn’t find them when I went looking for the case files before. I was looking for something completely unrelated just now and I found them.”

Evidence photos? But Jongin thought there hadn’t been any evidence. He shoots across the office and grabs the envelope from her.

“Hey, a thank you would be nice,” she grumbles.

“Thank you,” Jongin says sincerely. “Thank you so much! God, Victoria, if I didn’t have a girlfriend, I would kiss you.”

“Thanks but no thanks,” Victoria laughs. “You’re too pretty for me. I’d hate to date someone prettier than me.”

“I don’t even care if that was a compliment or not,” Jongin says, hardly daring to gets his hopes up. Victoria just laughs and leaves the office.

His hands are trembling as he opens the envelope. There’s not much inside, just photographs of Kyungsoo’s room right after his disappearance, of anything the cops thought might’ve been important. None of it is. That is, until he comes to the last photograph. It’s of a key, a small, silver, nondescript key that could probably fit a dozen different locks.

He reads the description handwritten beneath the photograph. According to the notes, the key had been found in Kyungsoo’s bedroom. His parents hadn’t recognized it, insisting that it didn’t belong to their son, and so the investigators had hoped it would lead them to Kyungsoo’s abductor. Nothing had ever come of it, however. They had never figured out what the key went to.

Jongin’s heart is suddenly lodged somewhere in his throat.

Unlike the investigators, he knows exactly what this key goes to. 

Oh god oh god oh god! We're getting somewhere!

What do you think the key leads to? I'm curious what you guys think ^^