It took me several minutes to understand what Woohyun was saying, but it felt likes months. I was sat on my chair, lost in a daze. Woohyun’s words registered very slowly in my brain. Even when I was sure I had heard him right, I couldn’t believe it.

“That can’t be right,” I finally said, my throat dry. “Are you sure it’s -”

Woohyun extended the file he was holding in his hand toward me.

“Yes, the bullet came from a very specific gun. A .48 mm gun registered to ex Detective Kim Sunggyu.”

The words sent another chill down my spine. My brother’s gun, the gun he had used to capture criminals, had been used to kill a person?

“Is it true? Is it true that ballistics identified the gun as Myungsoo’s brother’s…” Sungyeol, who had run into my office, stopped short. Maybe he saw the expressions on our faces and knew better than to continue.

Hana had followed him and was now standing a little behind him, looking at us with a questioning glance.

“It’s true,” Woohyun said, taking charge of the situation. No doubt that this little piece of information had caused quite a stir in our small precinct. The fact that an ex-cop’s weapon had been used to commit a murder was already big, but the fact that the ex-cop also happened to be my brother made it huge.

I didn’t know how I felt. I wasn’t exactly ashamed, but I wasn’t completely composed either.

“How did his gun…” It was Youngjae; I could hear the hesitation in his voice. He and Minji had joined everyone else in my office. I always thought my office was adequate but suddenly, the space seemed too small to hold everyone.

Woohyun glanced at me to check if I was okay before answering.

“Sunggyu lost it during – well, he was in no condition to look after his weapon,” Woohyun cleared his throat. I knew it was difficult for him to talk about it, if not more than me, then just as much. I felt guilty, making him talk about it, so I chipped in.

“It was his last mission ever; he got injured badly, they never recovered his weapon.”

I avoided eye contact with my partner. He would probably have lengthened the story, stressing on how it wasn’t Sunggyu’s fault that he lost his gun and how the fact that the same weapon had been used to murder someone was in no way his responsibility. No one would think that way of course, but Woohyun had this sense of duty to protect Sunggyu, even his memory as a police officer.

“So whoever he was trying to arrest had it?” Youngjae asked tentatively.

Sighing, I answered. “We don’t know. Anyone from the gang he was trying to apprehend might have found it. They might have sold it to someone on the black market – it could be anyone. So it doesn’t really narrow down the pool of suspects.”

Minji, who looked like she wanted to say something, nudged Youngjae. When he nodded at her, as if to give permission, she said, “Kim Sunggyu-ssi worked in Narcotics, so he was trying to capture a drug gang; Kris was definitely mixed up with a drug gang – is that just coincidence? It could be the same gang.”

Woohyun’s head snapped up. He looked at Minji for a while before muttering, “It’s possible, it is indeed possible…the same gang.”

Truthfully, I didn’t know much about Sunggyu hyung’s last mission. In fact, I didn’t know about his work life at all. He had liked to keep me in the dark; I never asked as well. It was all live and let live, and that was the lifestyle I had grown accustomed to.

I knew for a fact that Woohyun had tried tracing down the gang, picked up where hyung had left off. Like everything else, he felt that he had a duty to finish whatever hyung had started. But I knew it was not just to finish hyung’s incomplete work but also for revenge.

That period of time, when hyung was in the hospital, struggling with death, Woohyun had hurt the most. He had spent sleepless nights tracking the gang. In the end though, he had given up when nothing had come out of it, and changed to the Violent Crimes department, where he could be with me. He told me later that he had realised that instead of trying to get revenge, he just wanted to take care of the people who mattered to him. That would be hyung, and me, because I was the only family hyung had.

Woohyun had always cared for me like a brother. I liked him too, but the only place where we didn’t match was Sunggyu hyung – he believed my hyung loved me; I knew for a fact he didn’t. He had had little tolerance for our mother and I and he had probably been glad the day she had been taken away from us.

I still remembered the day: I was crying and clawing against the window of the car while the women from the child protection services drove me away from where my mother stood, bouncing from toe to toe tipsily, too drunk to realise that her children were being taken away. Sunggyu hyung held onto my shoulder, not bothering to turn his head to look at our mother one last time; as far as he was concerned, we were being saved, as if our mother was some horrible monster. He had relished every moment he spent at the foster home as much as I had hated it.

It was the last time because we never saw her again; she died weeks later at the rehab she had been forced into, and wasn’t judged as fit to meet her sons one last time. Hyung hadn’t shed a single tear when he heard the news, and vituperated me when I had. He had looked at me as if I was weak and childish. “I detest such kind,” he had told me when I was ten. He hadn’t ever directly told me that he hated me, but to me, it was the same thing. That was why when I had told him that I wanted to be a photographer and go to an Arts University, he had scorned me and put his foot down. “I’m not going to pay for my brother to become a clown,” he had said with finality.

So I had become what he wanted me to be - a police officer just like him, manly and strong.

Now I didn’t hate my job, in fact, I loved it. But that didn’t change the fact I loved photography more.

“Do you want me to look into it? The drug gang?” Minji asked timidly, but it was enough to jerk me away from my thoughts.

I looked at her - she had been in Narcotics, she would probably be the quickest in looking up the details of Sunggyu hyung’s last case. So I nodded. If we could find something about the gang, we could maybe link it to the gang Kris was associated with.

Maybe we could finally apprehend the gang – the reason why Sunggyu hyung was like this. Without realising it, I had made the gang the murderer in my mind. Why had I done that? Did I want revenge too, just like Woohyun?

I had asked myself countless times how much I actually cared about my hyung. At times, I didn’t feel anything for him and this helpless, mindless self hyung had been reduced to gave me savage pleasure, as if the world had taken revenge for the seven year old boy who’d never won his brother’s affection. There were times though when I pitied my brother, when I felt bad for him. And there were times like this, when, without even knowing, I pledged to take revenge for all those who had taken away his life, his career, his loved one from him.

Everyone else but Minji was still standing in my office. It seemed that none of us knew how to break this situation. As I knew he would, Woohyun took charge.

“So did you guys get anything on Scream? It could be a code for something.”

Hana straightened up.

“I didn’t find anything. There was no mention of it anywhere else. It seems like it was a code for his drug-related activity. And we know for sure he wasn’t taking the drugs because Dongwoo found nothing on autopsy.”

“The guy Kris was arguing with, Lee Chanyeol, he had been identified by one of Kris’ neighbor. Apparently, he had come to the apartment once or twice. I have some people down there, in case he comes back. He doesn’t have any record, so he’s not in the database,” Sungyeol added, looking at Woohyun.

Minji peeked in.

“They got Chanyeol. They’re going down to search his apartment now. I told them to bring him down to the precinct.”

Our faces changed. Chanyeol was, till now, our best suspect.

 “Okay, guys get back to work. We will talk to Chnayeol when he arrives. Good job, Minji.” Woohyun said, dismissing everyone. Sungyeol’s face turned purple – it was too obvious how Woohyun had ignored his contribution and praised Minji. I would have glared at my partner reproachfully for being so tactless, had it not been for the frowns on his forehead.

“What are you thinking?” I asked him when it was only the two of us.

He shook his head morosely.

“If it’s the same gang…Sunggyu was so close to getting them…”

Of course he was still thinking about Sunggyu. Who knows, maybe the old fire of revenge had sprung up in him.

“It’s a big gang, isn’t it?” I asked carefully. Woohyun wouldn’t exactly be approving if he got to know how less I knew about Sunggyu’s cases, especially his last case.

“The biggest in our country, if I’m not wrong.” He sighed. “It’s a dangerous gang, their business is widespread. They wouldn’t hesitate to murder anyone.”

We had been talking for about twenty minutes, when Youngjae knocked on the door and let us know that Chanyeol had been brought in.

“He’s in the interrogation room, all yours.”

I looked at Woohyun, who stood up with a sigh.

“Well, let’s do this. With luck, he’d be able to tell us more about his gang.”

I was surprised by how easily Woohyun had seemed to assume that Chanyeol was the murderer and was related to the drug gang somehow. He wasn’t the type to judge too quickly, but maybe in the heat of the moment, he was going to make mistake.

“Woohyun.” I held him back by the shoulder. He glanced at me curiously. “Just, let’s focus on the murder and not the gang.”

He understood. He obviously did. He thumped my back reassuringly, and I could tell he’d do his best to keep his focus where it was due.

The small, square interrogation room was toward the back of the precinct. It was bare, except for the rectangular table at the center and three chairs, two facing one on either side of the table. There were no visible windows but one side of the wall, which was connected to the viewing room that received audio feed from the interrogation room, was made of black glass so that anyone from the viewing room could see what was going on inside the interrogation room, but not the other way round.

We found Sungyeol standing at the door of the interrogation room.

“The Captain’s here,” he motioned inside the viewing room, handing me the file on Lee Chanyeol.

“Oh, why?” I asked, slightly surprised. The Captain didn’t usually sit through interrogations, definitely not this early in the case.

“He thinks this is our murderer.”

“Why?” Woohyun asked, looking at the door in front of us rather than Sungyeol. My associate scratched his head.

“I might have given him the idea,” he said slowly.

“Typical,” Woohyun muttered, then told me, “Ready when you are.”

“It’s okay, Sungyeol,” I said to the evidently crestfallen detective. I turned the doorknob and entered the room, Woohyun following closely behind.

The man sitting across the table from us looked very much like the one we had seen on the CCTV footage. He was tall, fair, and maybe even good looking but currently his sharp features were thrown into distress. His hair and clothes were disheveled, which meant he had resisted arrest.

The moment we entered the room, he looked up, his face a mask of anguish.

“I didn’t do it, I didn’t kill Kris. I – I loved him!”