“Is it just me,” said Yixing, staring at the thumbnail-sized glass ball he was rolling between his thumb and forefinger, “or does Siwon seem to be losing his marbles these days?”

“These days?” Jongdae demanded, tapping his thumbs against the steering wheel of the police cruiser as he waited for the traffic light to turn green.  “I don’t think he’s ever actually been sane.”

“Because I’m pretty sure this is the fourth one of these I’ve found this week,” Yixing went on.  “And I don’t even know what he was doing in our car.”

“His had a punctured tire; he borrowed it when he was on patrol two days ago.”

“Oh.”  Yixing fell silent.  He popped the marble into his pocket.

It wasn’t until they pulled through the forbidding gates of the prison that Yixing spoke again.

“This is making me nervous.”

“We are meeting somebody who used to be heavily involved in the mafia,” Jongdae reminded him, casting him a quick glance.  “But there’ll be security and everything.”

“That makes me nervous too,” Yixing admitted, “but I was actually talking about Siwon’s marbles.  If he finds out some are missing when he goes to count them up at the end of the month, there’s going to be a sh*tstorm.”

“You are so weird,” Jongdae muttered, parking the car by the main entrance to the prison building and yanking on the handbrake.

“But it’s true,” Yixing pointed out, making him grimace.

They had to hand over their firearms and other weapons and show their ID a few times before they were finally taken through to a private investigation room, where they were joined by a prison warden who introduced himself as Heechul.

“Siwon must be nuts,” Heechul grumbled as he fussed around the room, setting up the chairs and checking the security camera was in working order.  “Do you want the microphone?  No?  I’ll remove it….”

He returned seconds later, brushing his long hair out of his eyes with his hands.  “He’s coming up.  But really, what about keeping the girl out of the country?  Plastic surgery?  False identity?  Disguising her as a boy?”

“All tried,” said Jongdae with a sigh.  “Luhan’s either got men in the police or scarily good informants all over the place.  Most likely both.  It’s an absolute miracle he doesn’t seem to know Semi’s brother exists at the moment.”

Heechul pursed his lips.  “What about faking her death?”

“I suggested that,” put in Yixing.  “But Siwon says if Semi’s going to be in the country, she might as well be visibly alive because it might draw Luhan out.”

“But she could just fake her death in a different country,” Heechul pointed out.

Yixing considered, tilting his head to one side.  “Nah, Siwon still wants to see if it’s possible she could be bait of some kind.”

“Luhan probably wouldn’t believe it anyway and he’d send people to investigate.”  Jongdae took a seat in front of the metal table.

“Yeah, he’s kind of like a mouse that would send another mouse to the mousetrap to see whether or not the cheese was poisoned before stealing it over the first mouse’s dead body when the first one got caught in the trap.”

Heechul blinked.  Jongdae twisted around in his seat to look at Yixing.

“I’m not totally sure how accurate that analogy is,” he said.

“I mean he’s careful,” Yixing explained in human terms.

“I… personally wouldn’t compare him to a mouse, either,” said Heechul.

“Really?”  Yixing looked a little put out.  “But he seems kind of like one, don’t you think?  Has this totally innocent appearance but is actually a rodent.  Sort of like a squirrel, I suppose.  I mean, they’re dead fast and they’re even cuter than actual mice because they have fluffy tails—”

Jongdae was beginning to wish he had his makeshift dartboard with him so he could vent some of the frustration his co-worker was giving him.  “You said he looked like a deer the first time you saw a photo of him.”

“He does look like a deer, though—”

“Wait.”  Heechul held up a hand.  “There’s a photo of him now?  An actual confirmed photo?  I thought nobody knew what he looked like.”

Jongdae nodded.  “Oh Semi got a beautiful mug shot of him when she filmed the murder.  It’s one of the reasons Luhan’s so keen to get his hands on her.”

Heechul whistled.  “I can’t work out if that girl is insane, stupid, or very, very brave.”

“Probably all three,” said Yixing.  “No, seriously, though, what high school student who’s just about to graduate films some blatantly dangerous guys beating somebody to death in a dark alleyway?”

The shrug came from Jongdae.  “Oh Semi, apparently.”

“You know.”  Yixing was back to musing.  “I did actually suggest the possibility of locking her away in a high security prison to Siwon.  Luhan has failed trying to break Xiumin out of here five times, after all.  But he said it’s much easier to break into a prison to kill somebody than it is to break somebody out, so it probably wouldn’t have worked out.”

This time, Heechul raised his eyebrows.  “He wouldn’t even need to send somebody in after her – the inmates would probably kill her themselves.  Speaking of, I need to go down to the cells.  It’s their exercise time and they get rowdy when there’s nobody about to let them out into the yard.”

Heechul hadn’t been gone long before Xiumin appeared in neon orange prison overalls, accompanied by two guards and barefoot.

“This is nice and spacious,” the convict observed as he slid into the chair opposite Jongdae and looked around.  Jongda