“Hi,” a man who was presumably Huang Zitao said, sounding cheerful as he opened his front door after Minseok had rang the doorbell only once. “I didn’t think you’d arrive so early, but come on in.”

He was obviously mistaking them for someone else, but Jongin stepped inside the house anyway, followed by Minseok. A quick look around the room told him that it was a shrine of sorts for a particular girl group. From what he could see, the concentrated decorating wasn’t just limited to the room they were in but extended to the back of the house as well. He probably wouldn’t be too far off the mark in assuming that the place was a museum first and a dwelling second.

After closing the front door, Zitao headed over to the side of the room where a row of lifesize cutouts were put up for display and placed a hand on one of them. “This is the kind of thing that you’ll get. Of course you don’t have to have these beautiful ladies printed on them, although I don’t know why you wouldn’t,” he joked, flashing an obviously practiced grin. “Go ahead and feel how sturdy they are. You can put them outdoors in the middle of a thunderstorm and I can guarantee that they’ll survive in one piece. They might get a bit dirty, but that’s not a problem because you can wipe them down with warm soapy water and they’ll be as good as new.” He paused, waiting for a response. When he didn’t get one, he added, “So what do you think?”

“We’re not here to buy anything,” Minseok said.

“I thought you're here to look at samples?” Zitao said, frowning.

“We’re not.”

Zitao seemed to think that over for a while, before giving the two policemen a stiff polite smile. “Then what are you doing in my house?”

“We’re here to ask you a few questions,” Jongin said.

“If you’re Huang Zitao, that is,” Minseok added.

“That’s me,” he confirmed. “What is this about?”

“We need to talk to you about Kim Joonmyun, or Suho,” Jongin said.

“Suho?” Zitao asked. “What about him?”

“When was the last time you saw him?”

“I don’t usually see him around. I don’t think he’s been online either.”

“On the local forum?”

“Yes,” Zitao said. “I assumed you know about it since you called him Suho.”

Jongin nodded. “What’s your username on that forum?”

“Sone0530. What is this about? Did something happen to Suho?”

“He’s dead,” Jongin said bluntly.

“Oh,” Zitao said, somewhat taken aback. “I see.”

“So when was the last time you met him?” Minseok asked.

“I might have brushed past him around town or something, but the only time I actually planned to meet him was the middle of last week. I think it was Tuesday or Wednesday.”

“Where did you meet him?”

“At the waterfall in the woods. All the members of the forum went. I think it was thornydada’s idea.”

“The outing was his idea?” Jongin asked.

“No, the waterfall,” Zitao said. “We were talking about our plans for the holidays and he said that he wanted to go to the waterfall.”

Jongin scribbled that down in his notepad. “Who planned the outing?”

“It was like a spur of the moment, chain reaction thing. Thornydada was speaking for himself but then someone, I think it was Lilu, said it was a good idea and wanted us to go on a group outing, and Suho set the time and date.”

“So technically the outing was Lilu’s idea.”

“Lilu agreed to everything though. He even agreed with the Fiend’s plan to kill byuntaeng’s girl down at the servo.” Zitao shrugged. “I think he was just bored.”

“The Fiend’s plan to kill byuntaeng’s girl?” Jongin repeated. “I think there are a couple of things we need to address there.”

“The Fiend says a lot of stupid things,” Zitao said dismissively. “I wouldn’t think too much about it.”

“I thought one of the rules of the group is that you have to be single?”

Zitao appeared confused for a moment, before realizing what Jongin meant. “It’s not like byuntaeng walks around making out with his girlfriend or anything. It’s one of those things that we know about but we pretend that we don’t and we don’t talk about it.”

“So if you don’t flaunt it, then it’s alright. That’s a funny way to run a club.”

“That’s how we do everything here.”

“Actually, somebody mentioned that before,” Jongin said, flipping through his notes. “Apparently there are things that you don’t talk about in this town. What kinds of things are those?”

“The things that everybody kind of skirts around and overlooks,” Zitao said. “I call them the town’s major mysteries.”

“Can you give us an example?”

“There are minor things like how Auntie Oh came back looking fresher than ever after she broke her neck trying to save a kitten stuck in a tree. That devil of a kitten casually jumped off after she fell.”

“Well, that’s tragic,” Minseok mumbled.

“And then there are things that I’d really like to find out but apparently nobody else does, like who butchered Aby’s father five years ago,” Zitao continued. “That was an obvious, gruesome murder, but it got swept under the rug and life just went on like nothing happened.”

“He was murdered?” Jongin asked.

“Is there anything related to Suho?” Minseok asked.

“Not that I know of,” Zitao said, shaking his head. “He kept to himself for the most part.”

“What about the Fiend?”

Zitao seemed to give that some thought. “One question that I want to ask him is what does he do with all the milk he steals from the servo?” He chuckled. “He hasn’t really done anything worth noting.”

Minseok nodded. “Can you tell us what you did at the outing to the woods?”

“We got there at noon and had the food that byuntaeng brought for lunch. Then Suho wanted to play a game.”

“What kind of game?”

“A mudslinging match,” Zitao said. “I think that’s what Suho called it. We had to throw insults at one another. It was a one-on-one game and we used a ranking system.”

“Did anything happen during that game?”

“Nothing much. Things got pretty heated for some of us because of the nature of the game.”

“We heard that you weren’t very happy during the game either,” Jongin said.

“1lonewolf was playing dirty.”

“How so?”

“He could’ve insulted me all he wanted, but insulting the goddess was just low.”

“The goddess?”

Zitao stepped over to the lifesize cutout placed in the middle of the row and gestured at it. “The goddess. How can anyone not like her?”

“Who else got angry during the game?” Minseok asked.

“I remember Lilu flipping out when he had his match with Suho.” Zitao shrugged. “But then again, Lilu’s always flipping out so I don’t know if that’s worth noting.”

“What did Suho say?” Jongin asked.

“It wasn’t even that bad. I think he made a crack at what Lilu usually says.”

“What does he usually say?”

“Lilu’s always going on and on about how he’s screwed every girl in town, but they’re so ugly that he has to cover their faces with pillows. So Suho said something like instead of covering their faces, he shoves them into the pillows and, you know, go in through the back door because that was the only way he could get off or something, which really wasn’t all that bad but Lilu’s reaction was epic.” Zitao chuckled. “If it was a competition for over the top reactions, he would’ve won hands down.”

“What did he do?”

“Went on a rant about how he’s going to exterminate every queer there is. Typical Lilu bull.”

Jongin frowned. “Isn’t he close to Abysmal Abyss who, from what we’ve gathered, is openly gay?”

“Yeah, that’s why I said it’s bull,” Zitao said. “We all know those two are screwing anyway.”

Jongin’s frown deepened. “What?”

“But back to what we were talking about, what else happened during the game?” Minseok asked.

“What else?” Zitao paused, thinking that over. “Something else might’ve happened, but I can’t remember off the top of my head. I only remember Lilu because his reaction was so disproportionate.”

“What did you do after playing the game?”

“Oh, that’s right. For the game, whoever lost the round had to submerge themselves in the rock pool. So since most of us were drenched by the end, some of us decided to mess around in the water.”

“Did all of you go into the rock pool?” Jongin asked.

“I didn’t because the water was freezing cold. It was a punishment for a reason. Those who went must’ve been out of their minds.”

“Who else didn’t?”

“Suho didn’t because he won the game. Thornydada didn’t either because he didn’t want to get his doll wet, but Suho snatched the doll from him and threw it in the water.” Zitao chuckled. “That pissed him off but apparently he didn’t care enough about the doll to retrieve it.”

“Did somebody else get it for him?”

“No, he just left it. I think he changes his doll everyday anyway.”

Jongin looked at his notes, frowning. “I thought the doll is supposed his son?”

“I don’t know,” Zitao said, giving an indifferent shrug. “He’s an obvious attention seeker so I don’t really take note of him.”

“Were the three of you the only ones who didn’t go into the rock pool?” Minseok asked.

Zitao nodded. “I’m fairly certain of it.”

“What else did you do at the outing?”

“When the others were done swimming and doing whatever else they did, we gathered around and had what was supposed to be a chat session that quickly turned into a bragging competition.”

“What did you talk about?” Jongin asked.

“Nothing memorable,” Zitao said, shaking his head. “It was like half an hour worth of bull. I stopped listening five minutes in.”

“What else happened?”

“While that crap was going on, Suho pulled us away from the group one by one to have a word with each of us.”

“He spoke to all of you?”

Zitao nodded. “I remember that because he spoke to us in the order that we were sitting in, starting from the person right next to him.”

“What did he say to you?” Jongin asked.

“Well, it’s not really important.”

“We’ll decide if it’s important or not.”

“He said he knew where I got all my money from.”

“And what was he talking about?”

“I overcharge my customers sometimes,” Zitao admitted. “I don’t see how it affected him though. It’s not like he bought anything from me.”

“Was that all?”

“He also said that he was going to spread the word and ruin my business.” Zitao sighed. “He wasn’t the nicest person, I’ll tell you that much.”

“What did you say to him?”

Zitao hesitated. “Well, I’m not proud of my choice of words, but I basically told him to eat and, you know, what he actually did.”

“We heard that he was unpleasant to you online too,” Jongin said.

“Of course he was,” Zitao said. “Was he pleasant to anyone?”

“What happened after he spoke to you?” Minseok asked.

“He spoke to whoever he hadn’t spoken to, and then we went home. I don’t think anyone wanted to be in the woods any longer because it was getting dark.”

“When did you leave?”

“We all left at around the same time. I remember Lilu left early because Suho spoke to him last and apparently managed to piss him off even more.”

“He left by himself?” Jongin asked.

“No, he dragged Aby along with him,” Zitao said. “And then the rest of us just followed suit.”

“Did Suho leave at the same time?”

“I think he did. I didn't really notice.”

“And that was the last time you saw him?”

“I think so.”

“I think that’s all we need to know,” Minseok said. “Thank you for your time.”

“Okay,” Zitao said, heading over to the front door and opening it. “Keep me posted.”

“We’ll contact you if we have anymore questions to ask.”

“Sure,” Zitao said and closed his front door when both policemen had stepped out of his house.

“We really do need to have another chat with the people we’ve talked to,” Jongin said to Minseok as they walked towards their car.

“We will after we’ve talked to the last person,” Minseok said. “You should forget about the things that doesn’t concern this case though.”

“About Do Kyungsoo’s father’s murder?” Jongin asked, almost in a groan. “Just when I’m starting to get used to this town, I find out that this isn’t the first time a murder’s been hushed up.”

“It doesn’t matter. Just focus on what we have on hand.”

“What if it’s the same killer?” Jongin asked.

Minseok frowned at him. “You think some killer who’s never been caught is suddenly coming out of hiding after five years?”

“I don’t know. Anything’s possible.”

“Let’s go talk to the last person and then we’ll decide,” Minseok said, before opening the car door and entering. “Who are we seeing next?”

“Kim Jongdae,” Jongin said, settling into the passenger seat. “Otherwise known as 1lonewolf.”