Minji was following the conversation with rapt attention. Any hope of her first day being easy had vanished the moment a murder file had turned up. Hana had told her that as long as the murder wasn’t solved, everyone at the precinct would work around the clock and there was no real free time. Sometimes, they even had to pull an all-nighter.

She liked Hana – she gave out a motherly feeling that made her feel safe and comfortable. Minji had never known her mom but she had a middle school teacher who'd adored her. She was kind of like Hana – intellectual and considerate. Hana was probably not too pleased to see her; no one liked new recruits but she still made her feel welcome in the short time they had known each other. She was already feeling good about her decision.

Working Homicide was the right thing.

Everyone else seemed pleasant too. The Captain was strict, but then again, all Captains were. Her last Captain had been more fatherly though, but Lee Howon was not made out of compassion.

I can live with that.

Woohyun was of course pleased to see her. She used to be his protégé, back at Narcotics, and she also had a lot of respect and admiration for him. He was kind and genuine, and very wise – in short, all the qualities Minji adored in men. Three years previously, she had almost wished something to have happened between her and Woohyun, but he had smiled his kind smile a bit too pointedly once, which told her that there was a thick line between them that neither could cross.

I can live with that as well.

What had hurt her the most was Myungsoo’s attitude. In her life, she had been attracted to good looking men, the pretty boy types, and Myungsoo had been the epitome. He had been his first high school crush, and the last too. His departure without a word had filled her last few school years with depression. She had recovered, but meeting him now after so many years still gave her palpitation. But her fast heartbeats had subsided soon, when she found that Myungsoo didn’t really care about her and the fact that they had went out was a little more than a joke to him.

As for Youngjae, he was alright, except that on the ride to the Star Destiny Company, Youngjae had told her all about the successes of their precinct, and how he was at the center of all of them. She had no doubts that Youngjae could do his job but he could do without the ‘I-am-the-brain’ complex.

Oh shoot, I’m supposed to be concentrating.

She forced herself back to the conversation she was witnessing. Youngjae had told her to listen in and take notes while he interviewed the staff and employees of Star Destiny. Right now, they were talking to Jinwoon, one of the models the company hired and who had been involved in a brawl with Kris a week ago. Jinwoon was however denying even knowing Kris, and the reason for the brawl completely absurd.

“-shouting something about stop those threats or I’ll go to the police,” Jinwoon said in a bored voice.

They were sitting in a small room with glass paneled walls, but the shutters were drawn over the panels, increasing the privacy. There was a rectangular table at the center and six chairs around it. They had drawn three chairs to one side, two facing the last, creating a makeshift interrogation area. Youngjae and Minji were sitting side by side, while Jinwoon faced them, his legs crossed.

He was dressed in expensive clothes, a gray suit, and his legs were a clue to how tall he was. He had a handsome face and Minji remembered seeing him in a few magazines. He looked calm, unlike the others they had interviewed before him. People usually were nervous around members of law enforcement and most of the ones they had interviewed had been anxious. Most of them had also pretended to be heartbroken by the news of Kris’ death, although on careful inspection it was obvious they didn’t really know Kris well.

Jinwoon however wasn’t trying to associate himself with the victim. That was actually true because some of the other people who they had talked to had said that they had never seen Jinwoon and Kris speaking with each other, or even in the same room. But that was true for a lot of other models. The staffs had implied, and some had even directly said, that the models didn’t really make friends with one another; as far as they were concerned, they were all competitors.

“How am I supposed to know?” Jinwoon scowled and his handsome face looked momentarily ugly. Youngjae had just asked him what threats Kris had been talking about. “I have no idea what that crazy a- I mean whatever.” He looked embarrassed. He probably had just realized Kris was indeed dead and speaking about him in a disrespectful way wasn’t probably the best thing he could do right now.

“Look,” he sighed, the scowl erasing from his face and reverting it back to its beautiful form, “I have no idea what he was talking about, and I told him that much. But he attacked me! You can check the CCTV or whatever, he lunged at me first, I couldn’t just sit back. It was annoying enough to be accused of threatening a lowly model, and then when he raised his fist…”

Youngjae cracked a small smile, Minji had no idea why. Then she realized she had forgotten to note down what Jinwoon had been saying, so she looked down on her notebook hurriedly, trying to recollect the exact words he had said. Meanwhile, Youngjae had already asked him a question she had missed, but judging by the answer, it was about his whereabouts yesterday.

“I went to the company dinner,” Jinwoon said in a bored voice. “I was there until about 2-ish, then I – I had some other business.”

He clamped his jaws together, as if he had made up his mind not to say another word. Youngaje of course asked what the business was. He glared at the detective.

“It’s private, none of your business,” he declared, a bit too strongly.

“Unfortunately, it is, because you left the dinner at 2 and the murder took place around 3, so you had plenty of time to -”

Jinwoon sprang to his feet. He was visibly seething.

“How dare you – are you saying I murdered Kris?” he spat at Youngjae, his broad chest heaving.

Minji liked how tall he was standing, how his muscles became more prominent when he puffed out his chest.

He’s a beauty…

“Of course not, unless you give me a proper alibi,” Youngjae said calmly, looking up at him like nothing had happened.

Jinwoon seemed to think. His eyes darted between Youngjae and the door. Sliding down into his chair, he said quietly, “I was er – in Room 278, at the hotel, Radisson. I was er with – umm, Hara.”

Youngjae raised an eyebrow.

“Koo Hara,” Jinwoon said. Minji could swear she had seen him gulp. “She works as a receptionist here, you can check with her.”

“That we will.”

Minji wasn’t sure why she felt disappointed. But Jinwoon looked afraid.

“Can you please not mention it to anyone? We have a strict dating policy here…”

Youngjae smiled again, thanked him for his time and jerked his head toward the door. Jinwoon got the clue, and standing up and filling the room with his height once, again, he walked out of the door, his gait steady and definitely model-like.

Minji breathed out through her lips and it almost sounded like a whistle. Youngjae chuckled beside her.

“What?” she asked her colleague.

Youngjae shook his head, and then said, “You obviously were taken by him.”

She hadn’t known she had been that obvious.

“Well, he is a model,” she defended herself. Models were supposed to mesmerize you – which meant Jinwoon was a good one. But honestly, she thought he was much more impressive in person than in magazines.

“Ah Jinwoon – ‘lowly model’, that’s what he called Kris. Which means he doesn’t think of him as a competition. But if he is right, that means Kris was receiving threats from someone, and for some reason he thought that it was Jinwoon. Why?”

A fine frown appeared between Youngjae’s eyebrows. He was probably thinking about the case, trying to find an acceptable answer as quickly as possible. She had felt that he had been trying to impress her all day.

This is flattering. A tiny bit.

“That’s all I think.”

Taemin had appeared in the room silently. He was the one who had been helping them to conduct interviews all day and they had been asked to tell him if they needed anything. He was efficient and bright, understood instructions readily, and was cute. Minji wondered what it would be like to work in this company, with all these cute boys running around. Taemin, out of all people, had aceepted her flirtatious smiles and glances gracefully, reciprocating even.

Now as he met her glance, he gave her a half-wink. Youngjae cleared his throat loudly.

“We need to talk to Koo Hara,” he told Taemin, not smiling at all.

Taemin looked surprised.

“She didn’t know Kris -”

“We need to speak to her,” Youngjae said curtly.

Taemin nodded, and brought his smartphone out of his pocket. That was how he controlled everything in the building. The company system software was installed into it and using it, he could keep an eye on all nine floors from the tenth, which he occupied. He could even use it to summon whoever he wanted to from one of those floors. All of this he had told Minji, supposedly to impress her, while they had been waiting for the staffs to arrive for interrogation.

Biting his bottom lip, he pushed a few buttons and swiped his finger across the screen.

“She’s gone. I mean she’s gone out for lunch and she has the afternoon off. Do you want me to give you her contact number?”

“Yes, please,” Minji said, before Youngjae could get mad at him for letting her go when he very well knew an investigation was ongoing. Youngjae couldn’t stand Taemin for some reason.

Noting down the number, she smiled at him again.

“Fine then, we’ll talk to you now,” Youngjae declared, looking grim. He motioned toward the chair in front of him and Taemin, who suddenly looked fearful as he glanced at the chair, obliged.

If Minji could, she’d have told Youngjae to go easy on him but she knew that that would fuel his anger even more. Youngjae seemed to be prone to frequent mood swings.

“Where you yesterday between 2 and 4 am?” he started viciously.

“I was the last to leave the dinner, around 4.15 am. Mr. Kibum left early, handing me the host duties.” Taemin’s voice quivered slightly.

“And were you at the dinner all the time? Did you leave at any point?”

“Once, to see off Mr. Kibum,” Taemin said quietly. Then he added, “And another time. I just needed some fresh air.”

“Fresh air?” Youngjae asked derisively, as if it was a crime to crave fresh air.

“Y-yeah” Taemin unconsciously had taken off the cover of his smartphone and was now twiddling it in his fingers.

“Did you know Kris well?”

Taemin gulped.

“No. Well - a bit yes. He’s an employee after all.”

“Did you know about his association with drugs?” Youngjae almost growled. Minji wanted to kick him under his chair.

He’s practically terrorizing him.

“Yes.” Taemin wiped the sweat gathering on his forehead with a tissue from his pocket.

“Mr. Taemin, I had looked up this company. Seventeen of your models had been charged or convicted with drug abuse, dealing, and trafficking over the last five years. What’s your take on this?”

The PA to the CEO looked on the edge. Blowing air out of his mouth, he his lips and then said in a soft voice, “This is a stressful job, Detective. It’s not only our company, but all other modeling agencies have to deal with the same thing. But let me assure we do not condone drug abuse, we have strict policies against it.”

Youngjae glared at him as if he had given the wrong answer.

“Then why have you re-hired 12 out of these 17 people?”

Taemin leaned back in his chair, as if defeated. After a long pause, during which Youngjae kept shooting him dirty looks, he started speaking.

“We don’t condone it, but we can’t deny that it gives our models publicity. There’s no such thing as bad press, we like to say. After the scandals, our models just seem to sell more so we rehire them. It’s a business, Detective,” he pressed, sitting forward again. Minji tried to send him an encouraging smile, but he wasn’t looking at her. “It’s a cutthroat business and we just have to do our best.”

“So in other words, you exploit the fact that some of your models are substance abusers?”

Youngjae asked scathingly. Minji couldn’t take it anymore.

“That’s not what he said,” she stated defiantly.

Her colleague turned to her with a look of surprise on his face. Biting back what would have obviously been a heated response, Youngjae snapped, “That’s all Mr. Taemin. Have the CCTV footages sent to our precinct by today.”