A Bloody Affair
A BLOODY AFFAIR (EXO Cheese Challenge Day 4)
XiuRis
PG | 480 words
Jongdae tells me that the only personal effects on him were four ID cards. For four different countries.
Yifan. Jiaheng. Kris. Kevin.
The death of the man with many names is a hot topic at the station, he tells me. Not that I would know, always stuck in this basement lab.
There's something in the man's face that reminds me of someone I could or might have known. I can't place how this is possible, but there doesn't have to be a logic to this. It just is.
I move his head toward the right and see the fatal wound. The bullet went straight through. He probably didn't feel any pain.
In another world, could we have been partners? Discussing cases over coffee or tea, looking over test after test?
I wonder what he must have been like, and why he had four different names. Was he a hitman? Part of the mafia? I'm sure Jongdae and Yixing are going all over the place to find the answers.
I think about what dreams he could have had, or what his bad habits were. His nails looked like they were chewed on often, so there's one.
Was he at the wrong place at the wrong time? Or was he the perpetrator? Did he feel guilty about something and commit suicide? The detectives still can't rule it out.
I want to hear his laugh, even though I'm sawing his abdomen open to examine his insides. I have a feeling that it'd be deep, but crisp and warm. However that works.
I want to hear him talk about himself, even as I'm preparing to break his ribs. Could he really be part of the mafia, as Jongdae suggests? Is he the type of person who listens instead? Would he hold your gaze as you talked about a crappy day, and never even bring up how bad his day was?
I could analyze what he ate, whether he did drugs or not. Even though he's dead, I still hoped that he wasn't an addict. Well, not only because of the disgusting kidneys and lungs I'd have to look at, but I just didn't want him to be a bad guy.
The worst thing about this all is that I could grab onto his heart, know every nook and cranny from inside and out, and still not know a single thing about the man it beat for. I can dig through his head, look at the wrinkles of his brain and the only thing I can learn from it is the bullet's projection when it penetrated straight through.
As I finish up my daily report for the detectives, I look at the man with many names, laying cold, naked, and dead on the examination table.
He wasn't the first, and he definitely won't be the last one to be laying there.
Who are you really?