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Min Jieun runs up the stairs and is hit by a flying wrench, yes, but when she falls this time, she is not helpless. Woozy, maybe, but pain has not just flown up her neck and wracked her naked body. She rolls over, makes out the silhouette of Oh Sangwoo coming towards her, and manages to grab the wrench that fell with her.
He pauses, almost a meter away, and puts his hands up in what is clearly a placating motion.
It’s too late for that.
Her vision has cleared, and Jieun scowls fiercely, the heart on her cheek disfigured in the ugly expression. One statement leaves her mouth before she slings the wrench in Sangwoo’s face: “Eat shit.”
As he crumples to the ground, she flies up the basement stairs with no mind to propriety, sprints out into the street and down the road as naked as the day she was born, screaming for someone to save her, save her, please.
Save her.
The cameras begin going off the instant Seungbae steps outside, and he stifles the instinct to cringe away from them. It’s a barrage of shutter clicks and too-bright flashes, media weapons in waging this sensational war.
“Seungbae-ssi, can you expand on the details of the case, more from yesterday’s press conference?”
“Are there any new developments in the trial, Seungbae-ssi?”
“What is the fate of the young woman Min Jieun?”
“What is the fate of one of the victims in this case, Yoon Bum?”
It’s only at the last question that Seungbae looks away from the car he had been determinedly making his way towards. He shifts his gaze back to the crowd of reporters and calls out in the most composed voice he can muster, “There will be another press conference as soon as the verdict of the trial is determined. I apologize, but those are all the details I am at liberty to discuss right now. Min Jieun and Yoon Bum are both safe in the care of the province, and it will stay that way for the foreseeable future. Thank you for coming, and again, my apologies…”
His voice cracks and dies on the last words when he sees something just behind the crowd of distracted media: the two witnesses of the case are being led away, exiting through a side door. There’s Min Jieun herself, long hair tucked up in a knitted cap and face twisted in a grimace devoid of makeup. There behind her, the person she is guiding by the wrist, is the other star of the show. Yoon Bum is small and slender, positively shrunken in the confines of a puffy wool coat, raven-dark hair stark against unhealthily pale skin, with dark eyes too big in his gaunt face. He’s got a heartbreaking sort of beauty to him, Seungbae supposes, just as Jieun’s good looks are sharp, in-your-face, and viperlike, a more aggressive beauty.
Just as the thought crosses Seungbae’s mind, she jerks Yoon Bum’s wrist sharply, making the boy—no, man, Seungbae has to remember that Bum’s closer to his own age—trip towards their government-issued car. Even from over here, Seungbae can practically see the choice words flashing on her tongue, and he feels his lips pull into a frown. But then there’s his older sister, the prosecutor in charge of this case, taking Yoon Bum gently by the shoulders and lowering him into the leather seat. At the same time, Seungbae takes some pleasure in watching the rebuke to Jieun on his sister’s lips.
But there, right as the girls (clearly unhappy with each other) shut the door behind Yoon Bum, the other male makes eye contact with him.
Seungbae’s so surprised that his eyebrows jump above the frames of his glasses. His own eyes are ink black (the same color as the defendant of these proceedings), but Yoon Bum’s are haze grey. They’re as hopeless and crushed-looking as concrete, visible even across the many meters and bodies between them.
The thought of “bodies” brings Seungbae painfully back to reality. There are many bodies between Yang Seungbae and Yoon Bum, both literal and figurative, and not a one of them is attractive.
The door shuts, closing Yoon Bum off from him, and the moment is finished. He blinks, now fully back to the environment around him, all the gaping mouths slavering for some juicy bit of news.
He is quite suddenly disgusted.
They treat this thing as if it is not a great human tragedy. They only see it as something else to entice viewers, readership. With this fresh wave of distaste in his heart, Seungbae practically growls out, “The way I see it, this trial will be concluding very soon.”
As expected, that prompts a fresh barrage of flashes and clicks and shrieks from the press, but Seungbae’s door has closed and he buries his face in his hands.
He’ll surely get hell for that back at headquarters, head of the case or not.
He does.
“What the hell was that supposed to mean? The way you see things?”
“Look, I just—” Seungbae leans forward in his chair, right hand coming up to gesture and emphasize his point, although his boss is already cutting him off.
“You’re not ‘just’ anything, Yang Seungbae, you are at the fucking top of this pile of utter shit and you are in charge of picking it up, do you hear me?”
“...Yes sir.”
“Do you remember why you have been put in charge of such an important case? Why it has not been handed off to some other, more experienced, and infinitely more competent member of this department?”
Seungbae knows exactly why.
“Remind me sir.”
“Because—” His boss is red in the face and practically laying across his desk to jam a finger at Seungbae’s nose. “Because you came forward with not only one of the most crucial pieces of evidence the prosecution has seen so far besides the defendant’s apartment itself, but . You also produced key eyewitness testimony of your own. Not to mention that once your sister caught on that you were the supplier of such evidence, she specially requested that you be put on the case! And then …” The older man suddenly sucks in another deep breath and returns to his seat. The chair makes an alarming cracking noise when he takes a deep breath and closes his eyes, as if bracing himself. “For some… inexplicable reason that will forever defeat me, each and every other key player in this case also requested that you be in charge of it.” The boss’s eyes spring open, sudden, near-psychotic, heavy on Seungbae. “Including the defendant himself, that fucking murderer. Now normally we would dismiss you for that exact reason, as rumors of foul play and you two collaborating could be spread, but isn’t it lucky for you that the prosecution's key witnesses also really, really liked you for some reason?”
Seungbae stays silent. But then his boss quirks an eyebrow at him. Ah, the question wasn’t rhetorical.
“Yes it was, sir. I was very lucky.”
But Seungbae knows that for at least one “key player”, the reason they took such a shine to him had nothing to do with luck at all.
“Seungbae-oppa, what are you going to order?”
Seungbae startles out of his thoughts at the high, sweet voice next to him, and turns his gaze with a slight jump to the young woman from whose lips it came from. He inwardly recoils at the wide, faux innocence of Jieun’s eyes.
He knows her game, remembers a discussion with his sister about the girl in question:
“Would you say she has a… voracious sexual appetite?”
A snort from his sister. “Maybe when it comes to you, dongsaeng, but not very many others.” The look of amusement falls away at her next sentence. “Hard to tell though. She’s got a personality that’s difficult to pin down. It could be sweet and genuine, a cute laugh and an easy smile one moment, then belligerent and argumentative and downright vicious the next. The girl can spit some vitriol when she wants to.”
Now, Seungbae’s expression darkens at the thought of such a tonguelashing being turned on Yoon Bum. It’s an occurrence he was no doubt a witness to (ha) at the courthouse the other day, and, according to his sister, apparently a fairly common one when it came to Jieun’s interactions with Yoon Bum in general:
“I hate to say it, but that extreme sugar-and-spice attitude applies to Yoon Bum most of all.”
“What? How so?”
“It’s just… odd. I think it has something to do with their similar relations to the defendant. One moment she’s fawning all over that boy, clucking and worrying over him like a mother hen. Then the next thing you know, she’s ice-cold and straight up bitchy to him. She’s just—it’s just—all really weird.”
Seungbae coughs and turns away from Jieun’s imploring doe eyes. He can’t let her see how much he dislikes her at the moment. She, and all girls of her ilk, have always turned him off, but he can’t help but feel repulsed by her and how she treats poor souls like Yoon Bum.
Yet at the same time, she’s the one who’s solely responsible for Bum’s current freedom.
He sighs at the realization and defers back to the woman (which he's learned you should always do when in doubt). “I’m not quite sure yet, what do you think you’ll get?”
“Oh oppa, will you get the same thing as me?” She titters as if in utter delight, and Seungbae’s teeth clench.
Fortunately, his dates with Yoon Bum always go much better.
Or, he’d hesitate to call them dates, but the… outings (yes, outings is a good word) they go on together are always much more pleasant than the ones he goes on with Jieun.
Here he is on the doorstep of the safehouse Yoon Bum is being housed at. Indeed, Bum and Jieun both are in the protection of the province, in places where the public can’t get to them, but Seungbae knows that leads to crippling boredom and cabin fever. So he’s taken it upon himself to visit both witnesses and take them individually out of town, to alleviate the monotony at least a little bit.
When it comes to Bum though, he always—
“... Officer Seungbae-ssi?” There he is: Yoon Bum is half-hidden behind the door, face still wary, ever fearful, and partially obscured.
“Y-Yoon Bum. You know you don’t have to address me like that.” Seungbae tries a smile. Instead, he can feel the struggle in his facial muscles because there’s something twisting his gut, empathy, pain for this boy, who’s suffered so much, been through horrors and tortures no one should have to experience—
And even now, Seungbae has to remind himself that Yoon Bum is a fellow man. He isn’t some frightened, helpless child, despite how appearances may seem. He is a man, an anxious, traumatized man, but a man nonetheless. He and Seungbae are close in age, both have done their military tours and graduated from college.
They’re men. Grown-ass adults.
Seungbae’s voice seems to forget this though, as he thrusts out his left hand, two tickets crumpled tightly between his fingers. “I-I was wondering if a theater date would be okay for today.” Cue laughter that definitely doesn’t sound slightly hysterical at all. “I mean, Hyun Ryu’s latest play? The tickets… Well, I already have the tickets, so I guess we’re going either way, huh…?”
Yoon Bum stays behind the door for a few heartbeats longer, before opening it all the way. His eyebrows are raised in such a way that isn’t a smile, but they indicate a kind of bemused confusion that says Bum would smile if he was given one last push.
Alas, Seungbae has never exhibited the gift of comedy, so that last push isn’t possible.
Yoon Bum does, however, at last make eye contact with the policeman, and stutters, “A theater… date is fine today.”
Seungbae’s heart leaps.
It does the exact opposite whenever he’s with Oh Sangwoo.
A serial killer, master emotional manipulator, and physical abuser is hard to smile around.
These interviews are, unfortunately, mandatory, not that Seungbae really believes that they’re fruitful in the least. “Do you have anything new to say about what we found upstairs?”
The other man’s eyes, previously turned to the side and obviously distracted, finally flicker to Seungbae with a flash of interest. He smiles—the smile that lured in countless men and women alike, the smile that fooled the authorities for far too long. “My little collection? No, not since the last time you or Prosecutor Soo-Ae asked. I hope it’s being taken care of…” Sangwoo turns away again with a wistful sigh.
Seungbae’s jaw twitches. Such a disgusting… collection as this fiend referred to it as, and he expects it to be taken care of. “Its value lies in nothing but its status as evidence.”
At that, Sangwoo genuinely pouts , cheeks puffing out in an almost charming way. It would be charming, if Seungbae hadn’t known there was anything but a black hole, a void, behind it. “Well, how’s Bum?”
Seungbae can hardly contain the words of “You don’t deserve to ask about him, to know anything about either of them.” Instead what comes out is, “He and Min Jieun are well. You’ll see them in the courtroom again before the trial is over.”
One of Sangwoo’s eyebrows shoots skywards. “But you won’t let Bum testify on my behalf? Not for my attorney?”
Seungbae feels his mood sour even further. “Of course not. The clinical psychologist diagnosed him with severe Stockholm syndrome. He’s not mentally well enough to give accurate testimony about you.”
Sangwoo leans towards him. The cuffs at his wrists, attached to the table between them, have reached their limit, and his smile has dimmed to something much darker. “But he’s well enough to testify for the prosecution.”
At that, Seungbae finds himself smiling, arms crossing his chest in an ego-swelling, confident motion. “Yes. Even if he tries to justify your actions, he can’t disguise the atrocity of them.”
Sangwoo holds his gaze, saying nothing, for a very long time. The fact that their eyes are the same color gets to Seungbae—both night-black, but Seungbae hopes that, surely, his own eyes aren’t the depthless, soulless pools of shadows that Sangwoo’s eyes are. The dark circles below them only amplify the effect, and remind Seungbae of the other male in question—Bum.
But Bum’s dark circles have always been more reminiscent of bruises .
At that thought, Seungbae stands abruptly. He can’t be around the prisoner anymore.
“Thank you for your time.”
He’s clearing up his things and walking out when Sangwoo says one last thing: “You and your sister make a pretty ineffective team. You ask the same questions about the same things.”
Seungbae stops, still facing away from Sangwoo. “Who’s my sister?”
“Prosecutor Yang Soo-Ae of course. Your family name is the same, and you look so similar that I doubt you’re married. Are you twins?”
Seungbae turns his chin over his shoulder so Sangwoo can hear him better, but he doesn’t look at the murderer with the dyed hair and pop idol good looks. “No. We’re not.”
“Huh… but you graduated at the same time. I saw it on her phone’s lockscreen.”
Seungbae leaves the room and doesn’t reply.
“The scary thing is, I knew exactly what picture he was talking about! That one, right?” He gestures at said picture, framed on the desk in Soo-Ae’s office.
All she does is hum louder and bob the pen faster between her teeth.
Seungbae paces faster in return, unhappy with the reaction, and the topic that led to it. It’s a nice picture of the two of them; in it, he’s just graduated from the police academy and she just got her law degree. They’re embracing and smiling at the camera with their respective diplomas in their hands. The way things worked out, since he was younger, she had received an undergraduate in psychology already by the time he entered the police academy. Then the timing was such that she got her law degree right as the academy certified him.
And then he fucked up royally.
He messed with the wrong person, even though he knew he was right , just like he was right this time, so long ago, about Oh Sangwoo. But it had been an older man in a very high position of power, and it had been Seoul, and it was the wrong place and the wrong time and Seungbae should’ve waited to place accusations on the man because of pure gut instinct with no concrete proof to back it up.
He’d been sent here anyways. Not that that hadn’t got him where he is now, which is pretty good, but even that’s mostly thanks to his sister.
He flops down in a chair and glares at her. “This whole case. It’s ruined me.”
Soo-ae cocks an eyebrow at him. “It’s ruined a lot of people, dongsaeng. In my opinion, you’ve suffered the least.” The pen is out of her mouth, now spinning between her fingers instead.
Seungbae looks away at that, chastened. She’s right. If anything, he has nothing to complain about at all, in relative terms. Yoon Bum… Yoon Bum has it way worse. He looks down at his pants, legs crossed.
Legs safe. Legs intact.
“Bum’s still… Bum’s still going through physical therapy, right?”
The pen stops spinning. “Yes. why?”
It’s just…
It’s just that he remembers. The theater date, he remembers sticking so close to Bum because of the limp.
“Are you doing alright?”
Bum’s eyes, turning up to him. They’re apologetic, and the corners of Seungbae’s mouth pinch. Yoon Bum must misread it as a sign of disgust, or something else completely wrong, because he quickly glances away and mumbles, “Uh-huh… you don’t have to stand so close,” and attempts to limp towards their seats faster.
Seungbae trots after him, his steps brisk to catch up, and he grasps Bum’s elbow in as gentle and non-threatening a grip as he thinks is possible while still steadying him. “Are you sure?” Seungbae glances briefly at the red velvet seats Bum has just about fallen into. “You look like you almost fell.”
Yoon Bum keeps his eyes on Seungbae’s shoes. “I’m okay.”
Seungbae takes his own seat on the end. This way, he can look up into Yoon Bum’s face. “I’m here to help, you know.”
When Seungbae attempts eye contact, Bum’s chin lurches in the other direction so fast that it’s as if he’s been slapped. Seungbae reaches up towards him. The reactions of both men are immediate, visceral. “... I know… Officer. Thank you.”
“What’s wrong? You look absolutely miserable.”
Soo-Ae’s voice wakes him from his reverie, and Seungbae looks back up at her. “Nothing.” He tilts his head though, a thought occurring to him. “Why’d you ask for me to be put on this case?”
She laughs, tilting her own head at him in an amused mirror movement. “Why wouldn’t I?”
Seungbae rolls his eyes and she laughs some more, but he’s thankful for her. He doesn’t think he would’ve made it when he was younger without her. Their father's absence, along with his simultaneous distrust of both of the children, surely would have taken a dark toll on Seungbae if it weren't for Soo-Ae. Her steel spine and iron will were the only things that brought him through any of it, her relentless teasing and tough love what shaped him to be the man he is today, much more so than any markedly older authority figure in his life.
The age gap between them is considerable, but they look so similar that they’re mistaken for twins all the time. Seungbae bites his lip, remembering Sangwoo’s mistake of thinking as such. He supposes he and his sister do share the same type of beauty: subtle, sepia.
She flicks him between the eyes. “Stop looking like you’re deep in thought. What’s up?”
He rears back, the playful touch prompting him to glower at Soo-Ae even more. “Nothing. Just my latest interrogation of Sangwoo.”
“Dongsaeng. They’re not interrogations, they’re intervi—”
“They’re bullshit.” His look is frank and challenging when he raises his eyebrows at her. “He said you and I are a poor team. That we ask the same questions about the same things, and personally, I’ve thought the same. What’s the point of asking about all this again?” He tosses his hands in the air. There really isn’t any point. Hell, while he’s at it: “You told me the severe Stockholm syndrome diagnosis was bullshit in your opinion anyways. Why don’t we just let Bum testify in favor of the defense?”
“Seungbae.” Soo-Ae’s expression is devoid of any humor now. “I told you I thought it was bull because that boy is very much in actual love with his captor. You told me you’d seen him getting into Oh Sangwoo’s apartment some time before all this went down, yes?”
Seungbae blinks at her. He did tell her about how he’d talked to Bum before he snuck into the apartment. Ha. At the time, he’d claimed to be a visiting cousin.
“You did. So poor, pathetic Yoon Bum has clearly been in love for a while now. It wasn’t stress-induced, nor in any part thanks to the high pressure circumstances of his capture. No. Seungbae, it was all in his head. It still is.” Soo-Ae licks her lips, something he hasn’t seen her do in a while. It’s the same action she makes in the courtroom when things are tense, when there’s nothing to do but pray and fight. “If he testifies in favor of Oh Sangwoo and the defense, I’m afraid that it’ll only further his toxic infatuation. You know, only strengthen the rose-colored glasses he’s wearing when it comes to that psychopath.”
“Officer Seungbae-ssi? Are you… working?”
Seungbae looks up from his work in the dim theater. Yoon Bum’s voice is soft and raspy as he tries to keep it pitched low. Indeed, Seungbae has dragged the case file into a public area where any member of the press could see it, and he is attempting to go over it for the umpteenth time during a play performance, but. He’s not. He isn’t…
“Yeah. Yeah, I’m sorry Yoon Bum, I brought my work.”
The theater’s too dark for him to make out the other male’s facial features in any clear array. The voice though, still hushed, a hesitant, unreadable whisper, is doing funny things to Seungbae.
“Well, why don’t you just…”
The officer is already starting to slide the case file back towards his bag.
“... You can just enjoy our date, right?”
“It would.” Seungbae pushes back from her desk. “It really would. That was good of you to let the diagnosis stick then.”
She sighs. Her fingers prop her chin up, tilting her own face from side-to-side. “Thank you. I do care about him. He deserves a lot.
“You’re really into Bum, aren’t you.”
“What?” Seungbae has been rearranging his papers for the fifth and final time in the interrogation, just about ready to go, when Sangwoo springs the statement on him. And it is exactly that, a statement and not a question. “Sorry, I didn’t catch that?” (Then he bites his tongue for apologizing to such a morality-lacking shithead).
“If you fuck him, I’ll kill you.”
Sangwoo’s fists may be clenched on the desk, but Seungbae still leans towards him in a panic, looking around like a trapped animal at the countless - countless! - speakers and panes of one-way glass around them. “Oh Sangwoo, do you even realize-”
“I know they’re listening.” The killer’s eyes are pitch-dark and sun-bright at the same time. Instead of a pool of shadows, now they remind Seungbae more of a glittering black pond in the middle of the country—full of secrets and threateningly dazzling, daring you to jump in. “And I’m telling you if you fuck your witness, I swear I’ll kill—”
Seungbae finds himself standing, a wicked smile on his face. His files tucked safely under his arm, he leans in only inches from those eyes .
He can see his reflection in them.
“Whose business is it who I fuck? Who your ex sleeps with? You’ll be in jail before the week is through.”
Seungbae walks away and doesn’t look back even when he can hear the angry rattle of Sangwoo’s handcuffs, the shiver of pure fury in the steel links.
Less than a week later, he’s managed to piss off another “key player” in the case, the one who is responsible for his high standing in the trial only because of her own sexual attraction towards him.
“You don’t want me?” Her voice is shrill and indignant, and Seungbae winces. Just seconds ago, before she exited the car, she’d slid her hand up the back of his neck and attempted to kiss him. Seungbae turned away and she got to kiss his jawline instead.
“Jieun, you’re a very pretty girl, and I’m sure—”
“You don’t want me!” She shrieks, and throws herself back against the passenger side door sobbing. “Why is it, oppa, that the ones I want never want me back?” Suddenly, her eyes turn fierce, glittering with fury. “The last one I liked turned out to be a psycho. Are you a psycho too, officer?”
Jieun jumps out of the car then and slams the door unnecessarily hard. Seungbae can only groan and rest his forehead on the steering wheel.
And then, another week later, he pisses off his sister.
“I don’t know! Noona, I’m just a little bit worried. Should I have kissed her? I mean, I don’t want her messing up the trial for you because of something I did… What?”
Soo-Ae’s gaze is critical on Seungbae, squinting almost.
“What is it?”
She turns away from her little brother with what nearly comes off as a disgusted shake of the head. “Nothing. It’s just that I know who you want.”
Seungbae sputters. “Sangwoo claimed that I—”
She gives him a disappointed look, narrowing her eyes and pursing her lips briefly. “You are an idiot. Of course I know what Sangwoo said. He warned me as well.” An exasperated laugh. “And for once, I agree with the prisoner. You’re denying your own feelings, and that boy needs help. He could so clearly use some genuine love. And you’re the one withholding it.”
Seungbae doesn’t have anything to say to that.
“Bum.” Seungbae’s voice is strangled with happy tears, exhilaration at their victory. They won.
Yoon Bum’s eyes are clear now. They used to be so darkly tinted by his ever-present terror, his pain, always reminding Seungbae of stormclouds, rain, smoke, but now… they remind him more of iron, raw steel, strong and solid.
“Seungbae.”
It’s the first time Bum’s ever said his name without the -ssi suffix, or “officer” tacked on. Seungbae sweeps the smaller man into his arms, burying his face in his hair. “I think… I think you’re safe.”
Yoon Bum’s face turns upwards in Seungbae’s hold, and Seungbae’s just turning his chin down to look at him, when a pair of lips meet his own. Seungbae’s frozen when Yoon Bum pulls back. Bum looks away, and that’s a habit they’ll have to break together, but right now, it’s okay, because it’s accompanied by a “I… as long as you take care of me. I think so too.”