Emptiness has to be filled, darkness has to be felt.

Minji stood at the doorway, observing the scene with interest.

Dr. Ok Taecyeon, lolled back on the high swivel chair he sat on while talking to patients, a line of deep red blood crossing down from the right side of his forehead, up to his jaw bone – she had someone else to thank for that - the center of his high forehead riddled with a single bullet, her handiwork.

When she had first looked into the room, she’d found Chanyeol standing in front of the doctor, shaking badly. She had peeked in, ensuring Chanyeol hadn’t seen her. The doctor had been bleeding from the forehead, courtesy of Chanyeol, who’d thrown a paperweight at him. Then he ran out of the room, dropping his gun on the way, no doubt unable to commit the crime he had planned to. Minji hadn’t wasted a second. The plain-clothed policeman, who was waiting outside, would see Chanyeol rushing out. Putting on the glove, she’d picked up Chanyeol’s gun. One shot – that was what it took. Her aim was impeccable.

It was perfect. She would have accomplished it anyway, but she hadn’t known that it would be so easy, so clean; she had one person to thank – Lee Chanyeol. He had left everything perfectly and left in the best possible way; there would be no doubt the murder had been his work.

Taking a few steps into the room, she dropped the gun she had been holding, the one Chanyeol had dropped on his way out.

Luck is on my side, she thought, satisfied.

 Back-up would be here anytime soon, she still had a task to complete. Two, actually.

But first things first.

She pulled out her cellphone, pressing a key, her hand shaking slightly from the excitement. The call connected immediately.

“Yes?” The voice she was dying to hear, it was a shame he spoke so sparingly.

“Good news,” she relayed, not being able to hide the exhilaration that jolted through her body as she heard his voice. “It’s done.”

“And if you get found out?”

She had been expecting a word of appreciation, maybe even well done, or good job, but he rarely wasted words. She should just stop expecting. He was a cold man, he wasn’t used to small talk.

“You know I’ll never betray you, not even if my life depended on it.”

The call was disconnected, he had hung up. She felt tears stinging her eyes. For a moment, she had the urge to run away, far away from everything, to a mountain or something. Or maybe to a crowded place, filled with people, laughter, and noise, where she could forget herself. She just wanted to stop asking questions, the answers of which would only hurt her.

But she had always been an inquisitive child. Adventurous and curious, she had experimented for the better part of her life. A rebel child, one her parents got tired of, she was thus left to her own devices. Independence had suited her.

She hadn’t had a boyfriend until she met Myungsoo, a senior in her high school and asked him out. For the first term in her life, the crush had grown into something bigger. Her adolescent heart had felt something more than just butterflies. She thought they had a good relationship, although Myungsoo seemed hesitant for some reason. But she went as far to tell him that she loved him. He only smiled politely and the teenager Minji hadn’t thought of it as a weird reaction, hadn’t asked to hear it back. She had taken it for granted. But then Myungsoo had left without a word or goodbye, ending nothing, destroying everything.

It was cruel and Minji lost her confidence, her faith in life. She had nothing planned out for the future – maybe she’d be a wanderer with no fixed job but Myungsoo’s leaving made an impression on her. Life was uncertain - she didn't need to add to its uncertainty. She filled in the first form her guidance counsellor had suggested. She had been athletic, she wanted to do something active, so she joined the police force.

She still remembered the first mistake she had made in the job, as a constable. He was definitely up to something fishy, the smoke wafting out from whatever he was holding told her that he was up to no good. The smell was vaguely familiar - drugs. Someone, maybe another police officer, had radioed her to stop a young man, he described him to her - it was him, standing right in front of her. She could make out his face briefly under the streetlight; she raised her gun. “This once,” he had said, but it was more of an order than an appeal. His eyes were like burning coal under the light of the lamp. She had let him go.

The noise of the police siren outside alerted her of the situation. The back-up was here. She ran to the open window behind the chair. Through it, she saw Hana and Sungyeol getting down from their car, followed by people from the CSU and the morgue. She was supposed to go through the doctor’s items, search for a particular something. But she didn’t have time. She reckoned that it would take thirty seconds for Hana and Sungyeol to enter the room. Running to the large desk that Dr. Ok had sat at, and still was, except that he wasn’t Dr. Ok anymore but just a corpse, she eyed the objects littering the surface. There was a second gun, placed carelessly on the table, along with a black jacket. She used her gloved hand to pick it up and spread it, confirming the design. Crystals and spikes were splashed across the front fashionably. She found dried blood on the back, almost black now, an ugly splotch on the obviously expensive jacket.

She hadn’t expected to find it. Even he thought that Dr. Ok would have destroyed it. But here it was, along with the gun – one that had once belonged to Detective inspector Kim Sunggyu, and then it had been used to murder Kris. She didn’t think it would be so easy to find them; it was as if Dr. Ok had known she’d come for them, and he’d laid them out on his table.

“Minji?”

Hana strode into the room, watching the scene unfold in front of her.

“Have you taken his pulse?” she asked, even as she stared at the still open eyes of the corpse.

I didn’t have to, I made sure he was dead.

“Was it Chanyeol?” Sungyeol had joined them at the desk, his eyes roving around the room, and fixing on the jacket Minji had been holding.

“I saw him running out of the room,” Minji replied honestly.

“What’s that?” Sungyeol asked, pointing at the jacket.

“If I’m not mistaken, this is the jacket Kris wore to his death, and this was the weapon used to bring about his death.” Minji motioned toward the revolver on the table.

Hana frowned as she pulled on her gloves.

“Why the hell does Dr. Ok have them?”

“Good question. But judging by Chanyeol’s description of the man who had murdered Kris -”

“Oh my God,” Minji slapped a hand over her face. “Was Chanyeol talking about Dr. Ok? Did he have Kris’ jacket on that night?”

A chilling silence settled over the three of them, punctuated by the clicks of the camera as the photographers and CSU people busied themselves around the dead body.

“So Myungsoo was right, Chanyeol had actually recognized the killer. That’s why he bought the gun, and came here today to finish him off, revenge.” Hana nodded gravely. “Why hadn’t he just told us?”

“It happens, when you lose someone dear, you feel like the only way you can avenge them is by doing something actively. It’s not enough for the police to arrest the murderer,” Minji said quietly, running her hand through her hair. She was satisfied by her performance. Hana and Sungyeol looked convinced. In fact, Sungyeol had just radioed the news that Chanyeol had killed Dr. Ok, he was wanted for murder. It didn’t matter what Chanyeol said, no one would believe him. The gun would have his finger prints, so would the paperweight which he threw at him. There was no way Chanyeol was wriggling out of this.

“How did Chanyeol recognize Dr. Ok though?” Hana asked to no one in particular. She had her hands behind her, her eyes were narrowed.

“This is how,” Sungyeol said. He was holding up a file from the doctor’s desk. Kris Wu Yifan was stamped across it. “It’s a patient file. And according to this, Kris had had regular appointments with him since his release from the rehab until three months ago. There were appointments, but Kris failed to show up. And Chanyeol had accompanied him on several occasions,” Sungyeol offered, skimming through the file.

“I don’t understand,” Minji said. “Dr. Ok was Kris’ shrink, and then he killed him just because he stopped coming to him?”

“It’s not that simple,” Hana replied, shaking her head. “It has got to do something with the drugs – maybe the doctor found out that Kris had gone into the business again.”

“And then what?” Sungyeol asked. “He confronted him, there was a fight, and Dr. Ok had killed him while trying to defend himself? Then why didn’t he come to the police? Why was the murder scene so clean? Why did he take all those precautions so that he wouldn’t be found out? Last time I checked, self-defense isn’t a crime.”

“People do all sorts of things when they get scared,” Hana reasoned.

Dongwoo, who had been examining the dead body carefully, now walked toward them.

“Sungyeol!” he said in a booming voice, causing some of the other people in the room to look around to find the source of the noise. He high-fived Sungyeol, nodding at Hana happily. “And who is this?” He jerked his head toward Minji.

“This is Gong Minji, a talented addition to our team,” Sungyeol said, somewhat proudly, as if he was in charge of showing the new recruit off. Hana made a noise, between a scoff and laugh.

Dongwoo was oblivious to either of their reaction. He extended his hand toward Minji, offering her a wide smile.

“I’m Jang Dongwoo, the forensic pathologist. Even though I spend more time with dead people, I like living people.”

“Oh –er…” Minji didn’t know how to reply to that.

“What did you find, Dongwoo?” Hana asked irately.

Shrugging his shoulders, Dongwoo said, “Not much. You know the time of death better than me, I hear,” he directed at Minji. “The wound on the side of his forehead was from a paperweight, thrown from a short distance, not enough to even knock him out. The gun wound was what killed him. That’s all really. And the gun you found on the scene, it’s probably the one that killed him.”

After a few small talk, he left and they turned their attention back to the case.

“So Scream is Dr. Ok?” Minji suggested timorously.

“What?” Hana said, distracted. She was biting her lips, looking out of the window. “No, no, that’s not possible. Scream is definitely related to the drug gang, the threats are obvious proofs.”

“And it’s almost certain that Kris had gone to talk to Scream that night, finish him off for good,” Sungyeol added.

“Right,” Minji said slowly. “But Dr. Ok might be related to the drug gang, I mean just because he’s a doctor -”

“Doesn’t mean he can’t be a drug lord,” Sungyeol finished, punching the air triumphantly. “You’re right, Minji, absolutely right! If Lee Taemin can be a drug lord, so can Ok Taecyeon.”

“I thought we had established Taemin is Scream,” Hana said, glaring at Sungyeol’s enthusiasm. She didn’t look too pleased that Sungyeol had taken Minji’s word for it.

Even though Minji had been working with them for a few days only, she had detected an almost palpable adoration for Sungyeol in Hana, just as the tangible tension shared between Sungyeol and Woohyun. It didn’t matter to Minji of course, these relationships meant nothing to her. She was lost in her own world of unreciprocated affection.

“We had, but considering the evidence -”

“Can I go back to the precinct?” Minji interrupted. There was no fun watching two people bicker, especially when her mind was occupied by other things. “Myungsoo-ssi had asked me to do something…”

Hana looked torn. It was her duty to train Minji, so it would be the right thing to keep her around, take her through the crime scene, but she wasn’t fond of the fact that Sungyeol was getting close to her. In the end, she dismissed her.

Minji didn’t waste time. She drove to the precinct in her commissioned car, retrieved the signed papers from Myungsoo’s desk, and went straight to the Crime Archives of the Police Department. It didn’t take long to process the request, and when they asked why Kim Sunggyu had not come himself to pick up the files, she told them that he was ill at the moment.

Which is not so far from the truth really.

She realized how powerful Kim Sunggyu must have been, to be able to command the release of top-secret files even when he had been discharged. She didn’t remember much about working with him; he had always kept her at the periphery. Her knowledge about the case was vague and incomplete. The precinct she had worked at was full of distrust, and the other officers, on Sunggyu’s orders, had not trusted her. Thus, she had worked the case blindly, not knowing what she was actually contributing to. She remembered the day well, the last time she had seen Sunggyu on his feet. They had been briefed by him, the plan, it seemed at that time, was perfect.

Minji had been restless that day, not because it was going to be her first big raid, but because he was in her mind. They had met only a few days earlier – he was different from the night she had seen him first, under the streetlight, carrying that smoky substance. He hadn’t talked much, just as now, asked her if she would do him a favor.

“Anything for you,” she was quick to reply.

He had explained curtly. It hadn’t seemed much back then. She disobeyed an order, ran into the warehouse – Sunggyu had followed her in. And that had been his fatal mistake.

Later, at the inquisition, Minji swore she heard a gun being fired inside. She was in the right to have run in. The other members of the squad agreed, hesitatingly. Truth was, they couldn’t have remembered, not after the explosion. It had warbled the memory, all the more suitable for Minji.

She wasn’t there though, when Sunggyu was being tortured. She heard from the next room –the blood-curdling screams. She hated it, she wanted to see him. But he wasn’t there. Maybe he was in the next room, overseeing the torture, giving the orders. She hadn’t seen him that day, not for a long time. Then one day, he had called her. She had been overjoyed. He needed a favor, a job that needs doing, and she was the best one for it. Of course she couldn’t deny him, she never could.

The file was in her hands now, the Sunggyu had denied her when she had been a junior detective to him. She turned the pages lazily; it was almost sacred - the files – everything that had to be done to acquire it. It probably contained Kim Sunggyu’s life’s work – the things he had unearthed, the names he had obtained, the places he had marked with red.

There was one little thing that was bothering her though – he had told her to find the burner phone among Dr. Ok’s things, he apparently had it. But the others had arrived before she could get her hands on it, or even look for it. If only she hadn’t dwindled after killing the doctor…

She’d have to get her hands on it later, after the CSU was done with.

But by then, it may be too late.

She stood up, putting her coat on. She would risk it, risk being exposed, he wouldn’t have told her to find the phone if it had not been important. She had already pledged her life to him.

I have nothing to lose.