Chapter Text
Yang Seungbae looked over the victim’s files once more with a sort of detached interest he’d grown akin to during his years on the force. This case, in the end, was no different to any others. There was a conclusion, a victim and an accused suspect that had been guilty from the very soles of his feet.
Whether he’d obsessed over the case or not, it no longer mattered. It was all over.
Getting any answers from Oh Sangwoo now would have met him with cool, breathless silence. A cold, clinical quiet that was just as unsatisfying as it sounded. Good riddance, nevertheless.
And now, with the only live victim lying right before him- indefinitely unconscious, lying- strapped to dozens of machines on a hospital bed. He felt like that he’d achieved nothing. Nothing solid, anyway. No answers. No nothing.
A quick glance at the sheet in his hands shows that he won’t be waking up any time soon either.
Seungbae clicks his tongue. Head trauma, malnutrition, asphyxiation, broken limbs, poison, sexual assault- was there anything that hadn’t been done to him?
As he looks down at the figure on the bed- he’s for the first time unsure of himself.
Will he actually wake up?
He looks like a corpse. Pale as a ghost with cheekbones dipping far too deep on his face to be healthy. Dark black hair lying limp by his ears, not even moving with the air of the fan. He’s got bandages everywhere, splotches of red some places- darker than others. Seungbae can only see him from the neck up and even then it makes his insides curdle.
It shouldn’t. He knows it. He’s a cop. He deals with this all the time.
But this- This was new.
He’d never had to visit the victim after the case was over. He’d arrest the perpetrator, take one last look- and he’d never really see anyone again. Just fill out some files, make a statement to the courts. He’d be done. Welcome to move on to the next atrocity of humanity.
He didn’t have to deal with it. The aftermath.
It felt so much more personal like this.
This… person. He was a victim.
But he was also guilty. Of murder-
No- Seungbae shakes his head.
Self defense.
From the evidence riddling his body, this could have only been self defense. Breaking into Sangwoo’s house. Seeing the basement. The instruments he held there.
There was no doubt about it.
“Yoon Bum…” Seungbae says the name out loud. Wondering why it doesn’t feel right. Wondering why everything in this whole case feels so wrong.
He’d won- he’d solved it in the end. He was right!
So why did it feel like he’d lost?
Why is it that when he looked down at this shell of a man, all he felt was the bitter taste of failure? As if he had been the one who wronged him. As if he had been the one who put him there.
Why did he feel so much guilt?
In his heart he knew.
He should have moved faster, pressed harder. He should have taken him away the moment they’d met out the front of the Sangwoo residence. The man was suspicious, shaky- it was perfectly reasonable to assume-
What?
That he was a stalker? A weirdo?
Seungbae bites his lip.
Yoon’s case file hadn’t been the most assuring. He was certainly no angel when it came to the law.
Nor was he completely to blame. But Seungbae couldn’t help but feel like he was greatly intruding on Yoon’s life just looking at his arrest files like that. Even if it were for the case-
No, despite the history he had with the law. He was still a victim.
A victim that had all the answers. The only person that had them.
The only person alive.
And now he wouldn’t wake up.
“You know, don’t you? Who Oh Sangwoo really was behind closed doors. You were there, you saw it all. You have the answers and you-“
Seungbae clenches his fists. He feels his nose twitch.
“And you won’t wake up.”
Adjusting his glasses on the top of his nose, he takes a deep breath. “And now I’m just talking to you as if you can hear me.”
Maybe it’s because of something his father had said to him once. Something about people in comas being able to hear the things around them. It was almost certainly fake. And yet-
He couldn’t help himself from trying.
“I want you to know that I’m sorry for taking so long. I’m sure you didn’t deserve this.” He says quietly, a slip of regret passing through his stern voice. It sets his true feelings alight and it makes him bite the inside of his cheek until he can taste coppery metal. “Or maybe you did. I haven’t figured you out yet.”
Head in his hands, he placed the doctor’s report back by the end of Yoon’s bed. “I just can’t seem to figure you out. You’ve been gone- kidnapped for months and yet- no one is here to see you. To claim you, no friends, family- Not even a card or some flowers. No one filed a missing persons report- nothing!”
He doesn’t mean for the words to sound cruel but he winces nevertheless. He had always been told he was born without tact. It had never bothered him before now.
But as he stands alone in this room, he feels bad. Seungbae isn’t all that sure why- after all, who was there to hear him?
And he wasn’t wrong…
“Though I suppose if I were in your situation I would be practically the same. Completely bare, collecting dust…” He admits, more to himself than anyone, bitterly. Looking down at the cool linoleum floor, squeaky clean with the smell of disinfectant. He feels a strong sense of loneliness. Like he wants more than anything for Yoon Bum to reply to him. To say something in a voice of his that he’d only heard in whispers and screams.
“You can’t leave me hanging with no answers.” He declares decisively. Turning on his heel to forward out of the room- back to the station. To clear his thoughts, his mind, his head of this person in the hospital bed.
“I’ll be back.”
Seungbae turns when he says it. Gazing at the man, still, with his eyes closed- in a deep sleep on the white sheets of the hospital cot. Almost as if he was still waiting.
He would be back.
He needed answers.
The lack of flowers or anything personal in the room plagues Seungbae for the rest of the day.