Chapter Text
Sunday, December 15th, 2030 - 14:55
Dear Sung Gyuvin,
We, the admissions team here at Yale Law School, want to extend our personal congratulations into being one of the select few individuals to be accepted into the Yale Law School class of 2034 due to your exceptional performance entering the field of law. We are excited to offer our best criminal law clinics...
"-and esteemed faculty, blah blah blah. It's all just a bunch of jargon". Gunwook laughed, setting the letter down as Gyuvin kept tossing a basketball up in the air and catching it before repeating the action while laying down on his bed.
"Dude, you got into the Yale Law School and you're not happy about that"?! This caused Gyuvin to glare at Gunwook. "You know, the only reason I'm going is to figure out what happened to my parents, right? This isn't my career path speaking, this is my desire to find whoever killed them in cold blood and show them justice".
"How can you be so sure they're still at Yale? I mean, it has been years since they... you know".
"I do know, that's why I'm more determined than ever to find them. Whoever did this is not getting away with it just like that. No, they have to face me first".
Gunwook looked at Gyuvin sadly. Gunwook was Gyuvin's best friend, always had been, always will be. Their dads used to get along and by extension Gyuvin and Gunwook would to.
"Are you sure you don't want to ask my dad for help? This seems like something you can't do alone, Gyub..", Gunwook placed his hand on Gyuvin's knee, patting it gently. "I told you, Gunwook, I'm sure. Besides, your dad still hasn't gotten over it... I can see it, it affects him every single day.", Gyuvin wouldn't be lying if he said it didn't affect him either- but he was just a kid who lost both of his parents to tragedy, just as Gunwook's dad, Matthew, had lost his best friend that day.
"..Uncle Bin and Hao were great people, Gyuvin. They loved you, so much".
If they truly loved me, why'd they leave me all alone with the burden of their blood. That question was left unsaid by Gyuvin because Gunwook could never truly understand what was going on in Gyuvin's mind. It was up to him to find out what happened to his dads.
His eyes drifted to the picture beside on the wall. It was of Gyuvin’s 16th birthday. He had always wanted just a day with his parents, just at home. He'd wake up really really late with breakfast in bed and excitedly go down to where his parents were, with a cake ready to sing happy birthday. Then they'd go to the backyard and play with the sprinklers and run around, with his dad chasing him and his papa sitting back, sipping on a margarita while watching them play, occasionally taking photos. Once they were both ready, both dad and son, turned on his papa, splashing him with so much water, his papa had gotten a pretty bad cold for the rest of the week. The night then would end with Gyuvin handing out letters, each detailed and beautiful. His heart, or as much as he could fit it, were on that card. Then, he'd open gifts and go to bed, excited for the new journeys being 16 would take him.
It was the best birthday of his life, and, unfortunately, the last birthday his parents would ever celebrate with him.
He would find them. He had to.
Sunday, December 15th, 2030 - 22:15
Later that night, long after Gunwook had gone back to his home with a crap ton of food that Gunwook’s dad had made him so he didn’t starve. Starving was the least of his problems right now. Right now, he had to focus on the facts of the case.
He looked at the board of crazy mess before him, all connected with red string to each other. Most of the story was simple to understand... until it wasn’t.
Zhang Hao and Sung Hanbin were Yale alumni, graduated in 2003. Zhang Hao double majored in Music with a concentration in Violin and High school education. Sung Hanbin majored in architecture and helped his mother out with her café on weekends. Hao was your average overachiever, graduating Valedictorian of his high school class and getting into Yale with a 100% scholarship while Hanbin was your Good Samaritan, being late to class just to help every granny cross the street at the grocery store. They weren't the most compatible of people, in fact, they were the most different people that could exist at Yale.
However, when they met in their Sophomore year of college it was literally “like love at first sight”, as Hao would later describe to an 8 year old Gyuvin after watching Cinderella. After that, the rest was history. They got married in 2006 after everything settled down and then they adopted a one-year-old Gyuvin in 2008. Gyuvin's adoption was hard as, initially, he would be put in the foster system. Eventually, through a lot of legal help from Hao's best friend Kim Taerae, they got full adoption rights to Sung Gyuvin, with the promise of a better life.
15 years later, Gyuvin could not be a happier child. He was always giggly and affectionate, giving out free hugs every other day to the teachers at the high school Zhang Hao worked at. At the same time, he was driven, completing every task given with almost precise perfection, as if he was made for every single task. He had a weird affiliation with the law from a very young age and had learned how to argue and debate from Gunwook, who would constantly drag him to middle school speech and debate clubs. Gyuvin was a perfect mesh of Hao and Hanbin, despite not being blood. But as the saying truly goes, 'The Blood of the Covenant is Thicker Than the Water of the Womb'.
In the year 2023, a week after Gyuvin’s 16th birthday. Gyuvin had been begging to spend the weekend at Gunwook’s house and when an invitation came for Yale’s 20th Reunion for the class of 2003, he urged his parents to go, saying that he’d be fine with Gunwook and they could meet old friends they had for sure missed, like Taerae (who was now a professor of criminal justice) and Jiwoong (who was now a widely successful actor).
Gyuvin chuckled to himself, remembering the events of that day- the day that haunts Gyuvin, like a ball and chain attached to his foot, dragging him back from any happy moment he could get, just to remind him that their death was his fault and he needed to repent. It all started when the letter arrived...
Friday September 1st, 2023 - 23:00
“Dear Sung Hanbin and Zhang Hao, we are pleased to invite you to the 20th Reunion for the Yale Class of 2003! Papa this is perfect!”, a freshly turned 16 year old announced happily to his father, who was grading some papers.
Zhang Hao sighed and smiled, ruffling Gyuvin’s hair gently, “You want to be rid of your papa and dad so bad, hm”? Hao looked at Gyuvin with a kind of fondness that was unique only to him, a mixture between annoyed, incredulous and teasing, with a lot of love mixed into it.
Gyuvin whined, swatting Hao’s hand away, “It’s not like that! Uncle Mashu has tickets to this awesome ass waterpark and it had a huge slide! I’ve been meaning to go with Gunwook since foreverrrrr- ouch!”, Gyuvin winced when he got slapped in the back of his head by his dad.
Hanbin smiled mischievously, “First of all, no cursing in my household. Second of all, hyung, we might as well go. Jiwoong’s coming too. He just sent me an email”. Hanbin and Hao looked at each other, a little warmth spreading through both of them. They were proud of their son for growing up to be such an outgoing person, to have the best circle of friends around him. And besides, Hanbin trusted Matthew with his life.
”Who still uses email to communicate?”, he grumbled before going upstairs to text Gunwook the good news. He couldn't wait for the awesome weekend they were about to have at the kick-ass water park. Yeah, dad can't know he was cursing in his thoughts. Loophole! Gunwook's message came through soon enough, which was a bunch of really weird brain rot GIFs about some weird wolf alpha memes- yeah Gunwook at the ripe age of 15 was beyond saving.
Friday September 7th, 2023 - 11:59
At Matthew's house, Hanbin continued patting Gyuvin down, making sure he had everything for the 20th time while rambling, ”Now remember, don’t injure yourself and make sure you have a lot of fun! Send us pictures okay? Make sure to always keep your phone charged and-“
Gyuvin made his patented ‘you’re talking too much’ motion at his dad and smiled, “Don’t worry dad, I’ll be fine. You and papa enjoy. I’ll see you guys Sunday night! We'll play Clue and have some pizza and papa's stew"!
He hugged both of them goodbye, extra tightly to make up for the hugs they wouldn’t be getting over the weekend. Had he known that he would be seeing police officers instead of his parents, he would've never let them go. If Gyuvin had-
He snapped himself from the thoughts that inevitably creeped in his mind, remembering what his therapist said, “You can’t blame yourself for choices you didn’t make, Gyuvin. Sometimes, there’s nothing you can do”.
She’s probably right, in some aspects. But not this one. He knew he had to do something, he knew he had to make it right. It was his fault. He convinced his parents to go so he could stay with Gunwook. He didn't check on them. If they hadn't gone to that event, maybe they would still be alive with him. This is why he had to repent, he had to find the person that did this and bring them to their knees. For eight whole fucking years he had been crafting his plan to find the person responsible. Now, he had reached Yale. He had completed step one, but something was missing.
He stood up, frustrated, taking one of his plushies and throwing it up against the wall full of pins and string. "This fucking sucks!", he yelled out, pulling his own hair, pacing back and forth like he was insane. He sure felt insane, having been fixated on this one goal for his life. What would he do when he got to Yale? Gunwook could be right, what if the person wasn't even at Yale? What if there were multiple people? What if-?
He stopped when he stepped on something that felt like a piece of paper. Odd, he had definitely pinned everything on here. He bent down to pick up the paper, unfolding it. It was a newspaper article titled, 'Kim Jiwoong, beloved actor and friend has passed away due to homicide at Yale Reunion of '03'.
That's it! This was Gyuvin's silver bullet. This was his next step. Hanbin always talked about Jiwoong and what a wonderful life he led as an actor and would constantly talk about his adoptive son, who Jiwoong had adopted when said son was about 12, having fostered him for a couple of years before that. Gyuvin ran to his dad's old computer, praying that it was still functional. It hadn't been touched after his dad's death, Gyuvin being too sad to part with it, but too emotionally broken to ever open it and access the contents. But today, he was going into it with a mission.
"Thank God they used email", he muttered, entering the username and password for Hanbin's G-mail account. Sure enough, the last email that was sent was a thread between his dad and someone named Kim Jiwoong. "Bingo", he whispered with a triumphant smile, clicking on the email address to see hundreds upon thousands of emails exchanged between the two of them, but again, Gyuvin was friends with Gunwook, who was the laziest hard-worker. He clicked on the search bar, typing up "son", and sure enough, the list narrowed down to about 30 emails.
He then scrolled down to the oldest one, 2008. The year he was adopted, which checked out. Then he read the second oldest email, which was in 2018, and the smile on his face only grew bigger.
"Kim Ricky, huh?"
Monday, December 16th, 2030 - 00:00