Chapter Text
Book One
She did not know that the wolf was a wicked sort of animal, and she was not afraid of him.
JISUNG WAS DESCENDING TOWARD THE alley behind the Rieux Tavern when his portscreen chimed from the passenger seat, followed by an automated voice: “Comm received for Monsieur Jisung Han from the Toulouse Law Enforcement Department of Missing Persons.”
Heart jumping, he swerved just in time to keep the ship’s starboard side from skidding against the stone wall, and threw down the brakes before reaching a complete stop. Jisung killed the engine, already grabbing for the discarded portscreen. Its pale blue light glinted off the cockpit’s controls.
They’d found something.
The Toulouse police must have found something.
“Accept!” he yelled, practically choking the port in his fingers.
He expected a vidlink from the detective assigned to his halmeoni’s case, but all he got was a stream of unembellished text.
28 AUG 126 T.E.
RE: CASE ID #AIG00155819, FILED ON 11 AUG 126 T.E.
THIS COMMUNICATION IS TO INFORM JISUNG HAN OF RIEUX, FRANCE, EF, THAT AS OF 15:42 ON 28 AUG 126 THE CASE OF MISSING PERSON(S) MICHELLE HAN OF RIEUX, FRANCE, EF, HAS BEEN DISMISSED DUE TO LACK OF SUFFICIENT EVIDENCE OF VIOLENCE OR NONSPECIFIC FOUL PLAY. CONJECTURE: PERSON(S) LEFT OF OWN FREE WILL AND/OR SUICIDE.
CASE CLOSED.
WE THANK YOU FOR YOUR PATRONAGE OF OUR DETECTIVE SERVICES.
The comm was followed by a video ad from the police, reminding all delivery ship pilots to be safe and wear their harnesses while engines were running.
Jisung stared at the small screen until the words turned into a screaming blur of white and black and the ground seemed to drop out from beneath the ship. The plastic panel on the back of the screen crunched in his tightening grip.
“Idiots,” he hissed to the empty ship.
The words CASE CLOSED laughed back up at him.
He released a guttural yell and slammed the port down on the ship’s control panel, hoping to shatter it into pieces of plastic and metal and wire. After three solid whaps, the screen only flickered in mild irritation. “You idiots!” He threw the port at the floorboards in front of the passenger seat and slumped back, stringing his hair through his fingers.
His harness cut into his chest, suddenly strangling, and he released the buckle and kicked open his door at the same time, half falling into the alley’s shadows. The grease and whiskey scent from the tavern nearly choked him as he swallowed his breaths, trying to rationalize his way out of the anger.
He would go to the police station. It was too late to go now—tomorrow, then. First thing in the morning. He would be calm and logical and he would explain to them why their assumptions were wrong. He would make them reopen the case.
Jisung swiped his wrist over the scanner beside the ship’s hatch and yanked it up harder than the hydraulics wanted to let it go.
He would tell the detective that he had to keep searching. He would make him listen. He would make him understand that his halmeoni hadn’t left of her own free will, and that she most certainly had not killed herself.
Half a dozen plastic crates filled with garden vegetables were crammed into the back of the ship, but Jisung hardly saw them. He was miles away, in Toulouse, planning the conversation in his head. Calling on every last persuasion, every ounce of reasoning power he had.
Something had happened to his halmeoni. Something was wrong and if the police didn’t keep looking, Jisung was going to take it to court and see that every one of their turnip-head detectives was disbarred and would never work again and—
He snatched a gleaming red tomato in each fist, spun on his heels, and pummeled the stone wall with them. The tomatoes splattered, juice and seeds spraying across the piles of garbage that were waiting to go into the compactor.
It felt good. Jisung grabbed another, imagining the detective’s doubt when he’d tried to explain to him that up and disappearing was not normal behavior for his halmeoni. He pictured the tomatoes bursting all over his smug little—
A door swung open just as a fourth tomato was obliterated. Jisung froze, already reaching for another, as the tavern’s owner draped himself against the door frame. Gilles’s narrow face was glistening as he took in the slushy orange mess Jisung had made on the side of his building.
“Those better not be my tomatoes.”
Jisung withdrew his hand from the bin and wiped it down on his dirt-stained jeans. He could feel heat emanating from his face, the erratic thumping of his pulse.
Gilles wiped the sweat off his almost-bald head and glared, his default expression. “Well?”
“They weren’t yours,” he pouted. Which was true—they were technically his until Gilles paid him for them.
He grunted. “Then I’ll only dock three univs for having to clean off the mess. Now, if you’re done with target practice, maybe you could deign to bring some of that in here. I’ve been serving wilted lettuce for two days.”
He popped back into the restaurant, leaving the door open. The noise of dishes and laughter spilled out into the alley, bizarre in its normality.
Jisung’s world was crashing down around him and nobody noticed. His halmeoni was missing and nobody cared.
He turned back to the hatch and gripped the edges of the tomato crate, waiting for his heart to stop hammering behind his sternum. The words from the comm still bombarded his thoughts, but they were beginning to clear. The first wave of aggression was left to rot with the smashed tomatoes.
When he could take in a breath without his lungs convulsing, he stacked the crate on top of the russet potatoes and heaved them out of the ship.
The line cooks ignored Jisung as he dodged their spitting skillets, making his way to the cool storage room. He placed the bins onto the shelves that had been labeled in marker, scratched out, and labeled again a dozen times over the years.
“Bonjour, Scarlet!”
Jisung turned around, blowing at a stray strand of red hair that moved to cover his forehead. He’d earned the nickname after years of dying his hair the distinctly red color.
Yuna was beaming in the doorway, eyes sparkling with a secret, but she pulled back when she saw Jisung’s expression. “What—”
“I don’t want to talk about it.” Slipping past the waitress, he headed back through the kitchen, but Yuna made a dismissive noise in the back of her throat and trotted after him.
“Then don’t talk. I’m just glad you’re here,” she said, latching on to Jisung’s elbow as they ducked back into the alleyway. “Because he’s back.” Despite the angelic blond hair and face, Yuna’s grin suggested very devilish thoughts.
Jisung pulled away and grabbed a bin of parsnips and radishes, passing them to the waitress. He didn’t respond, incapable of caring who he was and why it mattered that he was back. “That’s great,” he said, loading a basket with papery red onions.
“You don’t remember, do you? Come now, Scarlet, the street fighter I was telling you about the other … oh, maybe that was Lia.”
“The street fighter?” Jisung squeezed his eyes shut as a headache started to throb against his forehead. “Really, Yuna?”
“Don’t be like that. He’s sweet! And he’s been here almost every day this week and he keeps sitting in my section, which definitely means something, don’t you think?” When Jisung said nothing, the waitress set the bin down and fished a pack of gum from her apron pocket. “He’s always really quiet, not like Roland and his crowd. I think he’s shy … and lonely.” She popped a stick into her mouth and offered another to Jisung.
“A street fighter who seems shy?” Jisung waved the gum away. “Are you listening to yourself?”
“You have to see him to understand. He has these eyes that just…” Yuna fanned her fingers against her brow, feigning heatstroke.
“Yuna!” Gilles appeared at the door again. “Stop flapping those lips and get in here. Table four wants you.” He cast a glare at Jisung, a silent warning that he’d be docking more univs from his fee if he didn’t stop distracting his employees, then pulled back inside without waiting for a response. Yuna stuck her tongue out after the middle aged man.
Settling the basket of onions against his hip, Jisung shut the hatch and brushed past the waitress. “Is table four him?”
“No, he’s at nine,” Yuna grumbled, scooping up the load of root vegetables. As they passed back through the steamy kitchen, Yuna gasped. “Oh, I’m so daft! I’ve been meaning to comm and ask about your halmeoni all week. Have you heard anything new?”
Jisung clenched his jaw, the words of the comm buzzing like hornets in her head. Case closed.
“Nothing new,” he said, then let their conversation get lost in the chaos of the cooks screaming at each other across the line.
Yuna followed him as far as the storeroom and dropped off his load. Jisung busied himself rearranging the baskets before the waitress could say something optimistic. Yuna attempted the requisite “Try not to worry, Sung. She’ll be back” before backing away into the tavern.
Jisung’s jaw was starting to ache from grinding his teeth. Everyone talked about his halmeoni's disappearance as if she were a stray cat who would meander back home when she got hungry. Don’t worry. She’ll be back.
But she’d been gone for over two weeks. Just disappeared without sending a comm, without a good-bye, without any warning. She’d even asked Jisung what kind of cake he’d want for his birthday coming up– cheesecake of course.
None of the farmhands had seen her go. None of the worker androids had recorded anything suspicious. Her portscreen had been left behind, though it offered no clues in its stored comms, calendar, or net history. Her leaving without it was suspicious enough. No one went anywhere without their ports.
But that wasn’t the worst of it. Not the abandoned portscreen or the cheesecake to never be.
Jisung had also found his halmeoni’s ID chip.
Her ID chip. Wrapped in cheesecloth spotted red from her blood and left like a tiny package on the kitchen counter.
The detective said that’s what people did when they ran away and didn’t want to be found—they cut out their ID chips. He’d said it like he’d just solved the mystery, but Jisung figured most kidnappers probably knew that trick too.