Miran’s living-room--kitchen wall was becoming a massive mind map of post-it notes as she tried to organise what she knew about Yerim’s and Sehun’s deaths.  Chanyeol’s first question on popping his head into the apartment that evening was is this some kind of DIY decorating that’s resulted from the war?  It was followed by please don’t kill me for asking, but I brought food and can we cook?

It didn’t take a genius to work out that what he was really asking was “can you cook?”  Miran knew him well enough by that point to understand that he was asking her as one friend to another rather than trying to reinforce misogynistic stereotypes.  It was just a bit unfortunate that neither of them could cook well at all.  On the bright side, Chanyeol’s rations included sugar and butter and Miran had the rest of the ingredients necessary to make pancakes, and they both spent long minutes giggling like a pair of school children as they flicked pancakes at each other and tried to get them off their faces into their mouths rather than conventionally tossing them.

Round about eleven in the evening, Miran was sprawled out on the floor with more post-its and Chanyeol’s long limbs were draped over the sofa as he watched her and attempted to take notes of his own.  Soojung had managed to send through the list of people who’d been clocked into the building the night of Sehun’s death and Miran figured they might as well get cracking on it.

For all his non-helpfulness, Chanyeol was still the first one to spot something interesting.  Miran didn’t know if that was because he was watching what she was attempting to piece together or if it was because his brain really worked that fast on much little data.

“I’ve just noticed something really strange,” he said.  “Out of all the squad leaders, there are only two who were checked out of the building by the time office hours were over, and almost none of the rest seem to have had a good reason to stay.”

“Oh?”  Miran looked up.

“Yeah.”  Chanyeol reluctantly hauled his legs down off the sofa back and sat up, pulling his computer into his lap.  “Do Kyungsoo and Kwon Boa are the only ones, according to this, who officially clocked out.  Kyuhyun, Changmin and Chaerin were supposed to be staying late, and none of the others appear to have clocked out before the machines went bust—”

He suddenly blinked and squinted.  “Weird.  Do Kyungsoo’s name is registered against two different fobs.”

An unpleasant jolt of alarm shot through Miran and she sat bolt upright.  “Wait, what?”

Chanyeol scratched his head.  “Looking at the code on the cards, one was issued... three and a half weeks ago, and the other was issued....”  He frowned.  “Way back.”  He looked up.  “Did Kyungsoo really join that long ago?”

“I think somebody said he’d been there about eight years,” Miran said distractedly.  “But—”

“I’ll look into it,” Chanyeol said.  “You don’t just get reissued when you have an old card and new ones are supposed to override the ability of an old one issued in your name to stop any old body randomly wandering in on a missing or stolen card.”

“How do you know that?”

“I’m already on my third.  Shin Gayoung’s given me that speech one too many times.”  Chanyeol grinned wryly.  “You’ll be seeing Kyungsoo tomorrow, right?  Can you find out where he was the night of Sehun’s death, because this isn’t looking peachy for him.  According to his current card, he clocked out at six, but the old card clocks in shortly before Oh Sehun’s estimated time of death through the underground car park.”  He scratched his head.  “Generators must still have been working there.   We should check if there’s footage.”

“Hospital,” Kyungsoo told Miran as he released her from the submission lock he’d got her in.  “Why?”

Miran sat up and looked anywhere but at him.  “You look well.”

He shrugged and rolled up his right sleeve.  “I was donating blood.  You can still see the marks from the needle because the nurse got it wrong and bruised me.”

Miran was unable to resist looking.  He was right: there was still a fading bruise and something that was obviously a puncture mark.  Come to that, there were three of them: the nurse had screwed up more than once.

“She got it in the wrong arm, as well,” Kyungsoo noted with wry amusement as he began to pull his sleeve down.  Miran swallowed.

“Do you have the medical records for it?”

“Sure.”

Kyungsoo seemed to sense her agitation, because he offered to call it a day and to ring the hospital with her before they both went to shower and change.  Woohyun and Key looked a bit surprised at Miran following Kyungsoo straight into his cubicle in training gear, but she ignored them.  He put her through to the hospital and then set about digging through papers on his desk while Miran waited for the receptionist on the other end of the line to confirm that Kyungsoo had indeed been at the hospital.  The woman grumbled something about incompetent time keepers and apologised.  Miran tuned out her constant “this d*mn war means all the incompetent people get the important jobs while the competent ones are sent off to the front lines” and nodded briefly in thanks to Kyungsoo when he passed her the medical certificate.

“Ah, yes,” the receptionist said eventually.  “There was indeed a Mr Do Kyungsoo here on the evening you’re talking about.  He participated in our blood drive and it says in the medical records that it was a bit of a botch job and he passed out, so he stayed in hospital overnight.”

Miran raised an eyebrow and turned to look at Kyungsoo.  It looked like he’d been able to hear what the woman had said, because his eyebrow twitched in an embarrassed fashion.  Miran looked down at the medical certificate to see what the woman had said confirmed.  Thanking her, she hung up.

“Can I keep this, sir?” she asked Kyungsoo.

He chewed the inside of his cheek.  “How long for?  I need to turn it in on payday.”

Miran shrugged.

He rose to his feet.  “Let me go take a copy of it, then.”

With nothing else to do, Miran tagged along with him to the large booth a little way down for photocopying.  Kyungsoo swiped his fob against the machine to start it up and then turned to lean his back against the wall while he waited for the photocopier to spring to life.  He looked a little preoccupied for a second, but then decided to voice whatever was on his mind.

“You’re investigating me right now, aren’t you?”

Miran was too taken aback to deny it.  “Yes, sir.”

He just nodded.  An awkward silence passed between them, broken by the photocopier announcing it was ready.  Kyungsoo put the medical certificate in the feeder at the top and set the machine running.

“I don’t envy you,” he said quietly, his words almost lost in the noise of the machine’s delighted gurgling.  “Having to suspect colleagues – the feeling of not being able to trust anybody close to me while I was trying to find Yerim was paranoia-inducing and very isolating.  I thought I was going to go insane.”

The photocopier spat out the copy, which Kyungsoo took, and he held out the original to Miran.  “Here.”

He started back for his office, but Miran found the courage to pipe up again.

“Sir?”

Kyungsoo turned back, eyebrows raised expectantly.

“Can I see your fob card?”

Bemused, he took out his wallet and presented her with the card.

“Your other one,” Miran told him without missing a beat.  His confused expression spread.

“I only have one,” he said, before pointing out, “everybody only has one.”

“You got that one three and a half weeks ago,” Miran returned.  “Where’s your old one?”

Kyungsoo’s expression cleared.  “Oh, that?  Yeah, my old one was swiped from my desk about a month ago and I had to spend several days coordinating with Woohyun so that I could get into the building while Gayoung sorted me out with a new one.  It was an absolute nightmare.”

Since she still had a little time on her hands after she’d showered and changed before she was officially supposed to be doing anything else, Miran decided it would be a good idea to check that up with Woohyun and Gayoung too.  Woohyun was taken compl