one blind mouse (and two that can see) {yoona/hyoyeon/sooyoung}
Title: One Blind Mouse (and two that can see) pt. 2
Fandoms: Girl's Generation with DBSK, Super Junior, CSJH and SHINee
Pairing: HyoSooNa
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: mentions of sex, death, murder, bad language
Genre: Cop!AU, Supernatural!AU
A/N: my big bang submission for troisbang!
Word Count: 11,416 words
Summary: Yoona can see when people will die, Hyoyeon can see how, and Sooyoung where. Haunted with this curse and gift, they all end up at the same place, solving the same crime.
part one
She couldn’t breathe. That was something she remembered. She couldn’t open her eyes because it stung. She smelled the chlorine and other chemicals that brought her an image of a hospital. She could barely see through the thick force, but she could see tiles, and her ankle hurt. It hurt a lot. Xiaoyuan decides that she must have been drowning. And Ryeowook saved her. She looks up to meet his eyes and he smiles and lets out the breath that he must have been keeping in since she had fallen to the sidewalk.
“Thank you oppa,” she mumbles, her fingernails tapping against the glass. Ryeowook nods and goes up to her room, leaving her by the front window. Their parents will be home soon and Lixu will tell them exactly what happened. Maybe it was just one of those things. But she was sure that when she heard Ryeowook say those words, “We should swim sometime this summer, dongsaeng,” that she was brought to a pool. Was she insane? She hoped not.
Ever since then, she took swimming lessons. She finds it to be a good cross-training for her track and field, and she enjoys learning any new skill. Plus, she tells herself, she’ll need it sooner or later. Lixu raises his eyebrow-she never jumps automatically to something-but he knows that she loves any kind of sport, so he does end up cheering her on when she has swim meets, because by the time she knows how to swim well, she wants to compete.
Xiaoyuan ends up passing school, but barely. Realistically, she would have probably failed without the help of another Korean named Kwon Yuri. She knows less Chinese than Hyoyeon, but because they both speak Korean really well, they get along quite well. She’s the one that gets her into dancing, as Yuri makes up an after-school dancing club that fits well with all the other teams that she happens to be part of. Not only that, but she has a great learning ethic.
“If you’re not going to learn, drop out,” Yuri tells her when they’re studying for a science test. Hyoyeon opens her eyes wide-who would give someone advice like that? Xiaoyuan realizes that it’s only Yuri that gives out advice like this, because she’s really blunt and blatantly speaks her mind, and one topic she loves returning to is Hyoyeon’s study habits. Yuri’s a nice girl when it comes to dancing, but school-not so much.
Hyoyeon laughs and tries tackling the math homework again. She isn’t so good with numbers. The only thing she really is good at is biology and literature, apart from Physical Education, of course. She loves the stories in literature, and unlike everybody’s paraphrasing answers, she speaks out, startling many of the other students. And biology is a lot more interesting than any of her other classes-and this is where Yuri comes in. Because even if biology is really fun, Hyoyeon can never remember a single detail right before the test.
“I am learning!” Xiaoyuan replies in Chinese-this always angers Yuri because she’s only learned a little after moving here. Yuri rolls her eyes and bites down on her lip. Hyoyeon laughs and punches her arm, asking for another repetition of what they had learned on the heart, because out of all the organs in the body, Hyoyeon found that to be the hardest one.
“You’re useless,” Yuri mumbled, turning through her notes to find the right pages, “You’re gonna get shot this test, I promise you.” Hyoyeon laughed, but felt the air getting sucked from her lungs.
It was a similar experience to with Ryeowook-a feeling that you were being crushed by a mass that surrounded you. She felt something ripping her skin, like someone had found a small hole in her skin and had begun opening it up, inch by inch, until she felt like her skin was on fire. This was repeated six times-six holes being open, six holes aching, deserving the attention that it was getting. She felt her body being smashed against something, her back sore from the sudden impact. Another hole was opened-that made seven, now.
“Fuck you, Kwon Yuri,” a man whispered, forcing Hyoyeon’s eyes open. She could see the disgusting smirk on the guy’s face and the tar between his teeth-he was a long-time smoker. His breath stank as he leaned in and smelled her skin, the skin that was covered by goose bumps because of the proximity of the man. He laughed and pushed her to what Hyoyeon guessed was a wall, their eyes never parting.
She feels a shaking on her shoulder and she lifts her head to see Yuri staring at her, eyes filled with a worry that Hyoyeon hasn’t seen before from her. She sighs and helps Hyoyeon up. “You had me there,” she swore soon later, massaging her bottom lip between her teeth. “When I called your brother…he had said that this had happened before.”
Hyoyeon sighed-she shouldn’t have made Ryeowook worried, but now she guessed that he was worried and on his way here. Yuri helped her back onto the bed and gave her some time to calm down before asking. “What the hell happened? I didn’t see you do anything like that before. What’s wrong?” Hyoyeon looks down at her fingers, the tips red and her nails cracked, and she wished she was anywhere but here, under Yuri’s watchful gaze.
“It happens to me, but I don’t know why. When I was with my brother once, I predicted myself drowning. When I was with you-I felt like… like I was being shot,” she admitted, “It’s a weird experience but I keep on having this feeling that I’ll never get out of it. That I’ll end up dying or something. And then someone knocks me out of it.”
“That’s why you joined the swim team-because you felt like you were drowning,” Yuri thought aloud, and Xiaoyuan noticed how concentrated her eyes seemed to be on her lap, as if she was thinking really hard. She looked up so that their eyes met. “If this ever happens again, I want to know about it, okay? I’m trying to figure this out, Hyoyeon-unnie, but I’ll need more information.”
Hyoyeon sighed but nodded. “Okay.”
They’re about to go to the same university, majoring in biology, when Ryeowook decides to host a graduation party at his and his boyfriend Kuixian’s place. Because Hyoyeon loves her older brother too much to say no, she brings Yuri along and has a great time, and even shows off some of her swimming skills to the guests in the big, blue pool that sits in the middle of the backyard.
Hyoyeon is in the house with Yuri when screaming can be heard. The two rush out to the backyard to see Kuixian running around, panicked, and many people pointing at a dark figure in the water. It takes Hyoyeon two seconds to figure out that it’s Lixu, and she jumps into the water three seconds later. She tries to pull him up out of the bottom of the pool, but she realizes that his ankle is stuck in what seems like a grate. She pulls and pulls but Ryeowook screams out-bubbles escaping from his open mouth.
His ankle is stuck in too deep and she’s running out of air. She tries to go down to free his ankle, but he pushes her away, shaking his head when she looks at him. She sees him mouth ‘saranghae’ before she has to get out of the water from the lack of oxygen. They empty the pool soon later and carry the body away.
Hyoyeon decides to leave the country two weeks later because she decides that there’s nothing in China to keep her there. Yuri doesn’t allow her to move back to Seoul alone, so they use all their money to buy a flat and share it together. Hyoyeon doesn’t realize how important Yuri is to her until they have their lips together and they’re doing a strong job and battling for dominance over another, Yuri’s tanned skin underneath her’s when it’s all over with.
Yuri becomes a police officer because Hyoyeon becomes a private investigator-just so that they can work together on cases. Hyoyeon walks into the office one day to see Yoona and a crying girl who she learns is named Choi Sooyoung.
And this is where the rollercoaster begins.
**
“She’s blind,” Yuri tells her as they enter the building that morning, her shades on her head and her gun on her belt-a typical look for detective Miss Kwon. “We found her at the doors at five this morning, and we told her to leave, but she refused to leave. A man was with her-Shim Changmin is his name. She supposedly has information on the disappearance of Choi Siwon.” Yoona nods-thanking God that Yuri had two cups of coffee for the two of them, because it was way too early for this.
Yoona has done a good job at not looking at people’s numbers, averting her eyes and deciding to look into their eyes instead of looking above their heads. And the forensic anthropologist has done well in Seoul’s detective agency. The clocks help her-she doesn’t need to look deep at the body to figure out when they’ve been dead, because she’s been able to draw up their clocks from the dead. They always show the negative minutes-how long they’ve been dead. She just adds up after that, it’s easy.
Yuri happens to be one of her closest friends, even if she’s just a police officer and she rarely actually pops up at the office unless it’s to see Miss Kim, who runs the detective force, but has a habit to not wake up as early as Miss Kwon. They’ve been out drinking, the three of them, and Yoona always wants to ask Joohyun if she’d like to come, too, but the journalist is always running around, working or editing so much that her hands are raw and numb and red to the point of bleeding, and her knees are dirty from some even dirty work she does to get this information.
Yoona sighs at the thought of her-she wished that Joohyun could have chosen an easier life. But every time Yoona asks her, Joohyun smiles one of her perfect smiles and shakes her head. “No Yoongie, I’m fine the way I am now. Now, please sleep.” The reassuring thing is that Joohyun never asks when she’s about to die, so Yoona never looks, and whenever she’s near her, she gets this feeling as if Joohyun will be there forever.
Her birthday’s coming up, she thinks; I must get her something special.
“Is Detective Kim here yet?” Yoona asks Yuri when they pass through security and drinks almost half of the coffee. Yuri laughs and shakes her head-they’re roommates, but Yuri never wakes her up. She doesn’t know if that means she’s a good friend, or if Detective Kim is just a really strong sleeper and hates being woken up.
“She’ll be here soon. Our plumbing wasn’t working and she didn’t trust someone in our apartment. She’s very personal about her stuff-all those trophies and stuff.” Yuri takes a sip of her lukewarm coffee and nods. “If you need me, I’ll be at my office. Have fun, Detective Im.” She sends her a wink before waving, strutting off to her office, her pencil skirt revealing her nice and toned legs-strong from running around all day long when she first entered the business.
Yoona walks up to her office, where the blind girl named Choi Sooyoung is waiting. Shim Changmin doesn’t seem to be there. She can’t help it-she looks at her number. It has maybe three weeks to live-unless a dramatic event changes that, of course. She walks over to her desk, her heels clinking against the wooden floors, and she makes as much noise to make sure that Sooyoung knows that she’s there. She puts a hand on her shoulder and almost shivers by the coolness of her skin.
“I’m Im Yoona. I hear you might have a lead to your brother’s disappearance.” She sits down on her desk, her legs swinging off. Sooyoung’s eyes are closed but she turns to the sound of Yoona’s voice and she slumps forward. Yoona knows that her voice is calming-she’s interviewed thousands by now, so she’s used to the calm, cool composure she must hold for the nervous ones, and the harsh, demanding one she must hold for the cocky ones.
The blind woman nods and asks for a blank piece of paper. She looks up and sees Hyoyeon at her door, and the blond seems to get the message, for she goes to get the piece of paper. Hyoyeon might be two years older than her, but Yoona joined the business before her, so she knows the lay of the land better than she does. But Hyoyeon’s tough and reckless-and she’s a good runner. She wears pants to work but if she wore a skirt, Yoona bets that her legs would be strong and powerful, because she can run so much faster than many of the policemen and women on the other side of the building.
Yoona likes Hyoyeon. At work, she holds a dead serious attitude, and if Yoona isn’t able to get something out of someone, Hyoyeon usually is. They work together on most cases-and it was like that since the first day the blonde had arrived in the office. When an older detective left for retirement, Hyoyeon fought so that Yoona could help her in the private investigations and not only the forensic. Taeyeon, the other forensic investigator, worked better alone anyways, so Yoona only did forensic when Taeyeon went on her week-long vacations to Bora Bora with husband Jung Yunho.
Hyoyeon comes back with a blank piece of paper and hands it to Sooyoung, who thanks her. Yoona doesn’t need to look at her clock-she’s already seen it many times before. It never changes, even with every new case; it’s always the same number falling down each day, only to restart. It’s like God’s giving her another life each day, and telling her that she better live it right. Every day, when Yoona checks her number, it’s thirty-seven hours. No more, no less.
Sooyoung smiles and lays the piece of paper on her lap, and Yoona wonders what she plans to do, when the girl starts drawing. For someone whose blind-she draws expertly with quick, sudden strokes, and Yoona’s caught up in her drawing that’s he doesn’t realize that it’s done and Hyoyeon’s talking again. She’s caught up in the blind girl’s hands, lap, everything. It’s weird-because Sooyoung is beautiful, but she’ll never get to see her own reflection.
She has chestnut hair and tanned skin with long legs that made you jealous.
Yoona admires the drawing that now sits on her lap. She recognizes it immediately. It was a lake in the middle of a national park that Yoona had remembered swimming in butt-naked with a less-than-willing Seo Joohyun when they were drunk and younger. She doesn’t even look at Hyoyeon, keeping her eyes on Sooyoung. “I know where this is. Get the group ready to leave and go investigate.” She doesn’t realize that her voice is that commanding, but Hyoyeon barks out orders to everyone.
She gets onto her feet and is about to run away when she looks back and smiles at the blind girl. “He’ll be fine, I promise.” Sooyoung smiles back and nods. “Do you want to come?” Yoona asks-because they could have her in the car or something, she’s sure that Hyoyeon wouldn’t mind that much, but Sooyoung shakes her head politely.
“No, I’ll wait here. I’m used to waiting. Just bring my brother back,” Sooyoung replies, and Yoona half-wishes that she could see her eyes, and wonder how they twinkle and move. Hyoyeon grabs Yoona’s arm, half-questioning her where this lake is, and half-demanding her to get her ass in gear because “there’s about to be more cases by the end of the night and we shouldn’t be stuck finishing this one.”
Yoona laughs and follows Hyoyeon because she has to admit-she doesn’t want to be working on this Choi Siwon disappearance case for any longer. It’s been a silly chase, just a rich kid from the south who got a little too drunk and then disappeared. Hyoyeon had passed it to Yoona because she was busy with a case involving two shots to the face, but she had finished it yesterday, so they now shared it. It wasn’t a very interesting case (and they’ve had interesting cases before), but it’s their job to keep their people safe, so if someone goes missing, they must find said person.
Yoona holds the slip of paper in her perfectly manicured fingers, watching the landscape rush past her like watercolours on a canvas. She smiles-it has been awhile since she’s gone to the country. Of course, there has always been something with the country-Joohyun hates bugs, for one-and she came from the country, so there will always been grueling thoughts of her grandmother dying in the beds of flowers that lay in fields that rush by.
“You seem distracted,” Hyoyeon comments, tapping her knee. Yoona fakes a smile and leans back into the van’s seat, feeling it bump underneath her as they drive onto a gravel road. They’ll be here soon, Yoona knows, and for some strange reason, she doesn’t feel like going. She doesn’t want to have to deal with whatever’s going to be there. The fact that Choi Sooyoung had drawn up that doodle in the first place was grueling-how could someone that couldn’t see be able to draw so well? Was it a picture that was fragmented into her skull, was it the last thing she saw before she died? These questions haunted Yoona’s thoughts as they pulled to a complete stop.
Hyoyeon’s humming brought her out of her thoughts as they jumped out of the car, resting on the dew-sprinkled grass.
“Hey! Look, over there!” One of the cops (Mr. Kim-is that his name?) cries, pointing to the other side of the large lake that separated the investigators from two or three lumps that lay on the ground, motionless. The faster of them (Hyoyeon and some of the rookies) reach the bodies and start doing work on them. Yoona takes her time, because who really wants to see a body at ten in the morning?
She kneels down beside the body and slips on her gloves. Taeyeon starts working on the other one. A small touch to their necks approves their notion-they’re dead. After a few minutes, they’re able to decide how they died. One must have fallen in the water, explaining the wet clothes, and drowned before the others could save him. Because the other two didn’t save him on time, it seemed that they had lost energy and collapsed because of their alcohol levels.
“But that doesn’t explain the bullet,” Hyoyeon pointed out, rolling the bulkier of the three and pointing to the hole in his head. Taeyeon shrugged, slipping the latex gloves off of her hands and brushing her dyed blonde hair from her face, her lipstick shining in the early morning sun.
“Well, that’s obviously what you two need to find out. Until then-we’re keeping with this idea until we can find a better solution. We’ll bring the three bodies in and bring in Miss Choi’s parents-it’s obvious that she won’t be able to pick out who is who. I’ll have Yunho or Yoochun tell Miss Choi and her family the news. They’re always better with the criers.” Hyoyeon hums in approval, threading her fingers in Yoona’s and resting her head on her shoulder.
“Yoong,” Hyoyeon whispers, sighing, “Why didn’t I force Yuri to get me coffee this morning?”
“She gave me yours.” Hyoyeon looks up from Yoona’s shoulder and sizes her up, her lips turning into a thin, straight line. Yoona laughs and pats her shoulder, pushing her back into the van that they arrived in. “Come on unnie, I’ll buy you a coffee when we get back to Seoul, okay? And then we’ll deal with this new case, okay?”
Hyoyeon sighs and grabs onto Yoona’s arm affectionately, letting Yoona drag her to the van, her eyes closing slowly. Yoona smiles, opening her phone and texting Yunho and Yoochun the news, and that they should probably start working on it so that they can figure out who this ‘Choi Siwon’ guy was. Yunho replies (Yoochun never texts back, Yoona already knows that by now) and says he’ll get started on finances and calls while forcing Yoochun to find out what went wrong a few days ago.
She’s about to close her phone when she checks her wallpaper-it’s Joohyun and her, on their way to Seoul for the first time. She smiles to herself, opening up her messages and sending Joohyun a small text.
It’s only ten and we’ve already got a murder, Joohyunnie! T-T Why is my job so hard?
A few minutes later, Joohyun texts back:
If you come home early, I’ll cook, unnie! Keep hard and find the killer! You can do it! Fighting!
She shuts her phone, lying back against the headrest, slowly closing her eyes to the sounds of the cars outside, driving past them on the freeway, as she wonders if she’ll actually be coming home early that night, or doing another all-nighter. Probably the latter.
**
Sooyoung swallows slowly, dropping her head down, twirling her thumbs. She can hear her mother crying and her father’s gruff, low voice. She knows that they’ll start screaming at her next, once her mother can finally pick herself up from the floor and realizes that her daughter had run away from the family, with some guy that she didn’t really know, to Seoul, one of the craziest towns in the world. In sum, it didn’t look so good for Choi Sooyoung.
She sometimes hated the fact that she could cry, even if she was blind. It stung her eyes and all she wanted to do was to tell her body to stop-that it was stupid to cry. But how could she stop? Siwon had been the only person to really dig deep into her heart and find out what was living in there, the only one that didn’t look at her to be a blind person, but rather a super talented girl that deserved so much more than what was bestowed upon her. Whenever she stopped thinking about his laughter or his soothing voice, though, she would imagine his lake.
The very lake that he was found dead at. Soonkyu’s face comes back into her thoughts and she screams-screams at whoever is listening.
“Sooyoung-sshi,” she hears, and she imagines a pretty, beautiful house with a nicely-cut lawn and annuals sitting on flowerbeds. It’s Kim Hyoyeon-Im Yoona’s partner. She looks up, salty tears slipping between the cracks of her lips, and she tries to smile, but she can’t force her lips to turn up. She hears something scraping against the floor and she guesses that it is a chair or something. “I know that things can be tough when you lose someone-”
“Let me join the case,” Sooyoung blurts out, unsure of what came over.
Hyoyeon gasps and Sooyoung guesses that her eyes have widened. She listens, admiring the silence that has fallen, yet feeling extremely self-conscious throughout-because what happens if Hyoyeon just says no and leaves her to fend for herself-and her mother is a tricky business partner. She hums, and Sooyoung realizes that this must be a habit, for she does often. “Yeah, I guess you’d work well with the case. I’d have to ask Yoong, but it wouldn’t be that big of a hassle, I suppose.”
Sooyoung’s heart leaps out of her chest and she jumps up, leaving her arms out, begging for a hug. She can hear Hyoyeon chuckle-but it’s light-hearted and Sooyoung feels her heart pound even harder. Her voice reminds her of Siwon-it’s strong but it doesn’t harm her. She can somehow be confident but yet kind at the same time. Sooyoung squeezes her in the hug, mumbling a ‘thank you’ as they part.
“I’ll be useful,” Sooyoung says, and Hyoyeon pecks her cheek, tapping her thigh before standing up, putting the chair away.
“I’m sure you will be. Now, I need to talk to your mother,” Hyoyeon says, opening the door behind her and entering, closing off the crying noises from her mother and the soothing sounds that she used to know.
**
Sooyoung sits in the room, listening to everyone as they settle down. She knows that they’re going over the information before they divide everything up. She believes that it’s three in the afternoon-there’s still so much work to be done, and she doesn’t even know what there could possibly found from just a few hours. But she likes being in the middle, and she feels Hyoyeon’s thigh brush up against her thigh, and that gives her a sense of satisfaction.
“This is Choi Sooyoung. She’s one of the victim’s sisters, and so she’s willing to give any information about the attitudes of the boys. Keep in mind that she is blind and that she won’t be able to give you any visual clues, but she has a great drawing skill if necessary. She has a lot of insight and she is very intelligent. But don’t push her around too much. Detective Kwon has assigned Im and me to lead the case, seeing as we found the bodies, and we would appreciate Yoochun. Taeyeon and Yoochun’s help in the case to find out what killed these three, young men.”
She hears high heels and some girl that she hasn’t heard yet starts talking. “I looked at the first body-Choi Siwon’s-further upon return. He was the one that got the bullet to the back of the skull. It seems like the gun used was a very small pocket one, so the shot couldn’t have killed him, as the shot only went a few inches into his skull, not actually getting into the bone and hitting the nervous system. There seems to be many bruises on his arms and legs, but these are old, not from the night of the murder. He had more than the suggested about of alcohol in his blood, which suggests that blood poisoning is the reason for the murder. But with the bullet, he probably died by heart attack. Looking at the wounds, he was dead three days tops.”
“He used to do taekwondo,” Sooyoung mumbled. “That’s why he has bruises. He always went hard on his practices, because he wanted to make sure that he could protect me when I moved in with him.” A few ‘ah’s resound through the room and Hyoyeon rests her hand on Sooyoung’s shoulder, kneading the skin.
“Thank you, Sooyoung and Taeyeon-unnie,” Hyoyeon says, and Sooyoung imagines her smiling. It’s a thought that Sooyoung somehow can picture easily, even if she hasn’t actually seen her before. Sooyoung reaches up and touches Hyoyeon’s fingers, wondering what her face feels like-her lips…
“I’ve checked from friends about what the trio were going that night. I’ve learned that the three were named-Choi Siwon, Lee Hyukjae, and Kim Heechul, all attending university in Seoul, where they met. It was obviously just a night of drinking the stress of exams away that turned out wrong. Lee Donghae, the last person that saw them that night, said that they had been commenting on a lake that sparkled more than the Han River and that they should go. Donghae didn’t go because he had exams, of course, to study for,” Yoochun explained, and Sooyoung can hear the papers flipping in his hands as he read over the information half-heartedly. It was all just old news.
“Checked his finances, too. Nothing special-just eighty-eight cent ramen and alcohol, the typical expenses for a university kid. All the money seems to be coming from their parent’s bank account, about two-hundred thousand won per month, which is more than enough for a few cases of soju,” Yunho continues. “And his phone number seems to be filled with messages from Heechul, Donghae and Hyukjae. He’s just a typical, run of the mill, college student. We’ve got nothing on him.”
Yoona sighed, “Well, thanks for all that you’ve been able to find. Taeng-unnie, continue at looking at the bodies, if you ever need any help, just call me down. Yunho and Yoochun, start bringing in some of his friends from back home and from university-why would someone shoot him in the head in the first place, anyways? Hyo-unnie, you and I will start looking over his recent movements.” Yoona paused. “And Sooyoung-sshi, we’ll be carrying you around a lot-just so that we know ahead of time what they’re like.”
Sooyoung smiled, “That’s what I’m here for.”
Yoona patted her back and started walking outside of the meeting room. “Come on people, I have a girlfriend and I want my cooked dinner! Let’s have this case wrapped up by tomorrow morning!” People started bustling around her, and she cocked her head to the side, her fingernails scraping against the plastic of the chair that she was placed in. She really just wanted to stand up and walk the halls, but there were a thousand pairs of footsteps, and she didn’t want to be trouble.
She never wanted to be trouble. She could hear the sighs trapped in her head already.
“Hey, Sooyoungie! We have a lead-supposedly a guy named Choi Minho was with them the night of the murder. Do you know who this guy was?” Sooyoung smiles and nods. Hyoyeon grabs onto her hand, and Sooyoung is pulled through thousands of corridors that she’ll never really see, the house replaying in her head, the image so strong that she could smell the freshly-cut lawn. It was almost as strong as Siwon’s-so much that it almost hurt. She squeezes her hand and Hyoyeon squeezes back, and Sooyoung bites down on her cheek-she’s here.
“Hyoyeon-sshi,” Sooyoung asks, and Hyoyeon hums, turning around so that Sooyoung is sure that they’re inches away from each other. “Why are you so sad?”
“I’m sad because the world needs a sad person pretending to be happy, or the life’s play will get boring and repetitive,” Hyoyeon explains, brushing some of Sooyoung’s hair from her face. “Now come on, I want to know about this Minho guy-”
“Do you like your job, Hyoyeon-sshi?”
“My job helps people, Sooyoung-ah. That’s all that matters.” Hyoyeon turns away and lets go of Sooyoung’s hand, taking slow, careful steps away from her. Sooyoung stands there, clueless and useless, and she wants to call out when a loud, echoing scream sounds through the hallway-and soon she realizes it’s her own.
“Sooyoung-sshi?” Yoona asks, but she ignores her, running up to Hyoyeon, and she can hear the crying coming from Hyoyeon. She hears more boots, more screaming, and someone calling 911-and Sooyoung sits down on the ground, pressing her forehead to her knees.
The house comes back again.
**
“Maybe you should quit the case,” Yoona suggests when Hyoyeon finally wakes up. The girl shakes her head. It was just a powerful image, is all. A hand, a hand that looked too much like her own, pushing against Sooyoung, making her land on… she wasn’t completely sure what she lands on, but she knows that it results in death. She can hear the screaming-Yoona’s screaming-and the salty tears that run down her cheek. It’s as vivid as Ryeowook…
“No-it’s fine. I just, I just…”
“You dreamed of Ryeowook,” Yuri butted in, patting her shin, “I agree with Yoong, you shouldn’t be getting back on the case until you’re one-hundred-percent okay. And we don’t know how okay you are yet, and we’ll never really trust you when you say you’re fine. Come on, you’re staying at the apartment and I’ll take care of you-”
“Yuri,” Yoona says, “You should get back to the station, you’re still at work. Joohyun and I will take care of Hyoyeon.”
Hyoyeon sighs, looking down at her chipped and bitten fingernails. “I wanted to get care of Sooyoung… so that she wouldn’t have to be in a hotel for another night.” Yuri sighs and rolls her eyes, placing her hand on her hip.
“I’ll take her and you can get care of her tomorrow-but she’s your job.” Yuri waves, before turning on her expensive heels and walking out of the hospital room. Hyoyeon plays with the sheets absentmindedly.
“She sounds mad,” she mumbles.
“We get worried, is all. You’re lucky that the doctors didn’t find out,” Yoona replies.
“It’s not my fault! I don’t want these dizzying spells, but they happen!”
“Why do they happen?” Yoona asks, and Hyoyeon falls quiet.
“I… I don’t know,” Hyoyeon answers after a minute, watching the clock that ticks loudly.
Yoona sighs and gets up, ready to leave. “I have to see if there’s any progress after the Minho news, but I’ll come back to pick you up.”
Hyoyeon smiles and lies back, looking up at deciding that counting the ceiling tiles would be a good way to spend her time.
**
“We have a lead,” Yunho explains when Yoona comes back. “This Minho person was seen entering the car with the three, according to Donghae and a girl from the party. He was not found on the crime scene, though-so we tracked him down and we’ve got him in for questioning. Plus-his fingerprints were on the weapon that we found when you were away.”
Yoona smiles-maybe the crime will be done quickly. She enters the interrogation room, sitting down across from Choi Minho. He looks maybe eighteen years old, with circles under his eyes and it’s obvious that he hasn’t been sleeping much. He doesn’t look like someone that would be doing any bad things, but of course, appearances are deceiving.
“Choi Minho,” Yoona begins, looking at the file set out before her, “You’re not the kind of kid that would be killing his three best friends, but why are your fingerprints on the gun?”
Minho doesn’t talk and Yoona sighs-the day that Hyoyeon gets sick is the day that they have a tough one. Of course. She looks up at sees his numbers-four months. She does quick calculations in her head and decides that he’ll die in prison, probably a suicide.
“Minho, you’re going to get caught or sent to prison, if you speak or not. It’s better to just start talking.”
“Hyukjae thought it would be a good idea to start drinking, and everyone agreed, of course. When Donghae split, we decided to go down to a lake and swim, ‘because we were bored and drunk out of our minds. Heechul fell into the water just as I came back-I found a gun in the woods and wanted to act all cool. I wanted to be cool… Siwon was about to go and get Heechul, but I’ve always hated the guy-so I told him…. I told him that I’d shoot if he swam. He did, so I shot him in the head… Hyukjae tried running away, but he was just so drunk… It didn’t help. I just gave him a kick to the head and ran away.”
“So you killed three innocent people?” Yoona asked.
Minho sighed. “I guess you could consider it to be like that.”
“But your lawyer could fight against you, saying that you were intoxicated and unaware of your actions,” Yoona continued.
“I don’t have a lawyer, so what’s the point?”
Yoona checked-it was now three days on the clock.
**
“I don’t want to leave,” Sooyoung mumbles, holding onto Hyoyeon’s shirt. “I don’t know how I’ll be useful, but Seoul seems nicer than back home.” Hyoyeon smiles, kissing her lips slowly, teasingly, the pictures in her head swimming so vividly that Hyoyeon feels like collapsing-but this feels so right, too.
“Then stay,” Hyoyeon says, “I’ll get Yoona to say yes, to get you a job of an artist or something.”
“I say yes,” Yoona replied, brushing some of her bangs from her eyes, “And if we combine our pay, I bet we can get a flat or something, for the five of us.” Hyoyeon smiles and nods, giving her a silent thank you.
--
end
a/n: thank you for reading!
a/n1: of course, i'll be adding more to this fic, having some sequels and stuff
a/n2: this has to be the longest fic i've ever written, and i feel very happy! i would like to thank all the people that dealt with my arguing, i know it's annoying as hell, and i hope you like the fic!
Fandoms: Girl's Generation with DBSK, Super Junior, CSJH and SHINee
Pairing: HyoSooNa
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: mentions of sex, death, murder, bad language
Genre: Cop!AU, Supernatural!AU
A/N: my big bang submission for troisbang!
Word Count: 11,416 words
Summary: Yoona can see when people will die, Hyoyeon can see how, and Sooyoung where. Haunted with this curse and gift, they all end up at the same place, solving the same crime.
part one
She couldn’t breathe. That was something she remembered. She couldn’t open her eyes because it stung. She smelled the chlorine and other chemicals that brought her an image of a hospital. She could barely see through the thick force, but she could see tiles, and her ankle hurt. It hurt a lot. Xiaoyuan decides that she must have been drowning. And Ryeowook saved her. She looks up to meet his eyes and he smiles and lets out the breath that he must have been keeping in since she had fallen to the sidewalk.
“Thank you oppa,” she mumbles, her fingernails tapping against the glass. Ryeowook nods and goes up to her room, leaving her by the front window. Their parents will be home soon and Lixu will tell them exactly what happened. Maybe it was just one of those things. But she was sure that when she heard Ryeowook say those words, “We should swim sometime this summer, dongsaeng,” that she was brought to a pool. Was she insane? She hoped not.
Ever since then, she took swimming lessons. She finds it to be a good cross-training for her track and field, and she enjoys learning any new skill. Plus, she tells herself, she’ll need it sooner or later. Lixu raises his eyebrow-she never jumps automatically to something-but he knows that she loves any kind of sport, so he does end up cheering her on when she has swim meets, because by the time she knows how to swim well, she wants to compete.
Xiaoyuan ends up passing school, but barely. Realistically, she would have probably failed without the help of another Korean named Kwon Yuri. She knows less Chinese than Hyoyeon, but because they both speak Korean really well, they get along quite well. She’s the one that gets her into dancing, as Yuri makes up an after-school dancing club that fits well with all the other teams that she happens to be part of. Not only that, but she has a great learning ethic.
“If you’re not going to learn, drop out,” Yuri tells her when they’re studying for a science test. Hyoyeon opens her eyes wide-who would give someone advice like that? Xiaoyuan realizes that it’s only Yuri that gives out advice like this, because she’s really blunt and blatantly speaks her mind, and one topic she loves returning to is Hyoyeon’s study habits. Yuri’s a nice girl when it comes to dancing, but school-not so much.
Hyoyeon laughs and tries tackling the math homework again. She isn’t so good with numbers. The only thing she really is good at is biology and literature, apart from Physical Education, of course. She loves the stories in literature, and unlike everybody’s paraphrasing answers, she speaks out, startling many of the other students. And biology is a lot more interesting than any of her other classes-and this is where Yuri comes in. Because even if biology is really fun, Hyoyeon can never remember a single detail right before the test.
“I am learning!” Xiaoyuan replies in Chinese-this always angers Yuri because she’s only learned a little after moving here. Yuri rolls her eyes and bites down on her lip. Hyoyeon laughs and punches her arm, asking for another repetition of what they had learned on the heart, because out of all the organs in the body, Hyoyeon found that to be the hardest one.
“You’re useless,” Yuri mumbled, turning through her notes to find the right pages, “You’re gonna get shot this test, I promise you.” Hyoyeon laughed, but felt the air getting sucked from her lungs.
It was a similar experience to with Ryeowook-a feeling that you were being crushed by a mass that surrounded you. She felt something ripping her skin, like someone had found a small hole in her skin and had begun opening it up, inch by inch, until she felt like her skin was on fire. This was repeated six times-six holes being open, six holes aching, deserving the attention that it was getting. She felt her body being smashed against something, her back sore from the sudden impact. Another hole was opened-that made seven, now.
“Fuck you, Kwon Yuri,” a man whispered, forcing Hyoyeon’s eyes open. She could see the disgusting smirk on the guy’s face and the tar between his teeth-he was a long-time smoker. His breath stank as he leaned in and smelled her skin, the skin that was covered by goose bumps because of the proximity of the man. He laughed and pushed her to what Hyoyeon guessed was a wall, their eyes never parting.
She feels a shaking on her shoulder and she lifts her head to see Yuri staring at her, eyes filled with a worry that Hyoyeon hasn’t seen before from her. She sighs and helps Hyoyeon up. “You had me there,” she swore soon later, massaging her bottom lip between her teeth. “When I called your brother…he had said that this had happened before.”
Hyoyeon sighed-she shouldn’t have made Ryeowook worried, but now she guessed that he was worried and on his way here. Yuri helped her back onto the bed and gave her some time to calm down before asking. “What the hell happened? I didn’t see you do anything like that before. What’s wrong?” Hyoyeon looks down at her fingers, the tips red and her nails cracked, and she wished she was anywhere but here, under Yuri’s watchful gaze.
“It happens to me, but I don’t know why. When I was with my brother once, I predicted myself drowning. When I was with you-I felt like… like I was being shot,” she admitted, “It’s a weird experience but I keep on having this feeling that I’ll never get out of it. That I’ll end up dying or something. And then someone knocks me out of it.”
“That’s why you joined the swim team-because you felt like you were drowning,” Yuri thought aloud, and Xiaoyuan noticed how concentrated her eyes seemed to be on her lap, as if she was thinking really hard. She looked up so that their eyes met. “If this ever happens again, I want to know about it, okay? I’m trying to figure this out, Hyoyeon-unnie, but I’ll need more information.”
Hyoyeon sighed but nodded. “Okay.”
They’re about to go to the same university, majoring in biology, when Ryeowook decides to host a graduation party at his and his boyfriend Kuixian’s place. Because Hyoyeon loves her older brother too much to say no, she brings Yuri along and has a great time, and even shows off some of her swimming skills to the guests in the big, blue pool that sits in the middle of the backyard.
Hyoyeon is in the house with Yuri when screaming can be heard. The two rush out to the backyard to see Kuixian running around, panicked, and many people pointing at a dark figure in the water. It takes Hyoyeon two seconds to figure out that it’s Lixu, and she jumps into the water three seconds later. She tries to pull him up out of the bottom of the pool, but she realizes that his ankle is stuck in what seems like a grate. She pulls and pulls but Ryeowook screams out-bubbles escaping from his open mouth.
His ankle is stuck in too deep and she’s running out of air. She tries to go down to free his ankle, but he pushes her away, shaking his head when she looks at him. She sees him mouth ‘saranghae’ before she has to get out of the water from the lack of oxygen. They empty the pool soon later and carry the body away.
Hyoyeon decides to leave the country two weeks later because she decides that there’s nothing in China to keep her there. Yuri doesn’t allow her to move back to Seoul alone, so they use all their money to buy a flat and share it together. Hyoyeon doesn’t realize how important Yuri is to her until they have their lips together and they’re doing a strong job and battling for dominance over another, Yuri’s tanned skin underneath her’s when it’s all over with.
Yuri becomes a police officer because Hyoyeon becomes a private investigator-just so that they can work together on cases. Hyoyeon walks into the office one day to see Yoona and a crying girl who she learns is named Choi Sooyoung.
And this is where the rollercoaster begins.
**
“She’s blind,” Yuri tells her as they enter the building that morning, her shades on her head and her gun on her belt-a typical look for detective Miss Kwon. “We found her at the doors at five this morning, and we told her to leave, but she refused to leave. A man was with her-Shim Changmin is his name. She supposedly has information on the disappearance of Choi Siwon.” Yoona nods-thanking God that Yuri had two cups of coffee for the two of them, because it was way too early for this.
Yoona has done a good job at not looking at people’s numbers, averting her eyes and deciding to look into their eyes instead of looking above their heads. And the forensic anthropologist has done well in Seoul’s detective agency. The clocks help her-she doesn’t need to look deep at the body to figure out when they’ve been dead, because she’s been able to draw up their clocks from the dead. They always show the negative minutes-how long they’ve been dead. She just adds up after that, it’s easy.
Yuri happens to be one of her closest friends, even if she’s just a police officer and she rarely actually pops up at the office unless it’s to see Miss Kim, who runs the detective force, but has a habit to not wake up as early as Miss Kwon. They’ve been out drinking, the three of them, and Yoona always wants to ask Joohyun if she’d like to come, too, but the journalist is always running around, working or editing so much that her hands are raw and numb and red to the point of bleeding, and her knees are dirty from some even dirty work she does to get this information.
Yoona sighs at the thought of her-she wished that Joohyun could have chosen an easier life. But every time Yoona asks her, Joohyun smiles one of her perfect smiles and shakes her head. “No Yoongie, I’m fine the way I am now. Now, please sleep.” The reassuring thing is that Joohyun never asks when she’s about to die, so Yoona never looks, and whenever she’s near her, she gets this feeling as if Joohyun will be there forever.
Her birthday’s coming up, she thinks; I must get her something special.
“Is Detective Kim here yet?” Yoona asks Yuri when they pass through security and drinks almost half of the coffee. Yuri laughs and shakes her head-they’re roommates, but Yuri never wakes her up. She doesn’t know if that means she’s a good friend, or if Detective Kim is just a really strong sleeper and hates being woken up.
“She’ll be here soon. Our plumbing wasn’t working and she didn’t trust someone in our apartment. She’s very personal about her stuff-all those trophies and stuff.” Yuri takes a sip of her lukewarm coffee and nods. “If you need me, I’ll be at my office. Have fun, Detective Im.” She sends her a wink before waving, strutting off to her office, her pencil skirt revealing her nice and toned legs-strong from running around all day long when she first entered the business.
Yoona walks up to her office, where the blind girl named Choi Sooyoung is waiting. Shim Changmin doesn’t seem to be there. She can’t help it-she looks at her number. It has maybe three weeks to live-unless a dramatic event changes that, of course. She walks over to her desk, her heels clinking against the wooden floors, and she makes as much noise to make sure that Sooyoung knows that she’s there. She puts a hand on her shoulder and almost shivers by the coolness of her skin.
“I’m Im Yoona. I hear you might have a lead to your brother’s disappearance.” She sits down on her desk, her legs swinging off. Sooyoung’s eyes are closed but she turns to the sound of Yoona’s voice and she slumps forward. Yoona knows that her voice is calming-she’s interviewed thousands by now, so she’s used to the calm, cool composure she must hold for the nervous ones, and the harsh, demanding one she must hold for the cocky ones.
The blind woman nods and asks for a blank piece of paper. She looks up and sees Hyoyeon at her door, and the blond seems to get the message, for she goes to get the piece of paper. Hyoyeon might be two years older than her, but Yoona joined the business before her, so she knows the lay of the land better than she does. But Hyoyeon’s tough and reckless-and she’s a good runner. She wears pants to work but if she wore a skirt, Yoona bets that her legs would be strong and powerful, because she can run so much faster than many of the policemen and women on the other side of the building.
Yoona likes Hyoyeon. At work, she holds a dead serious attitude, and if Yoona isn’t able to get something out of someone, Hyoyeon usually is. They work together on most cases-and it was like that since the first day the blonde had arrived in the office. When an older detective left for retirement, Hyoyeon fought so that Yoona could help her in the private investigations and not only the forensic. Taeyeon, the other forensic investigator, worked better alone anyways, so Yoona only did forensic when Taeyeon went on her week-long vacations to Bora Bora with husband Jung Yunho.
Hyoyeon comes back with a blank piece of paper and hands it to Sooyoung, who thanks her. Yoona doesn’t need to look at her clock-she’s already seen it many times before. It never changes, even with every new case; it’s always the same number falling down each day, only to restart. It’s like God’s giving her another life each day, and telling her that she better live it right. Every day, when Yoona checks her number, it’s thirty-seven hours. No more, no less.
Sooyoung smiles and lays the piece of paper on her lap, and Yoona wonders what she plans to do, when the girl starts drawing. For someone whose blind-she draws expertly with quick, sudden strokes, and Yoona’s caught up in her drawing that’s he doesn’t realize that it’s done and Hyoyeon’s talking again. She’s caught up in the blind girl’s hands, lap, everything. It’s weird-because Sooyoung is beautiful, but she’ll never get to see her own reflection.
She has chestnut hair and tanned skin with long legs that made you jealous.
Yoona admires the drawing that now sits on her lap. She recognizes it immediately. It was a lake in the middle of a national park that Yoona had remembered swimming in butt-naked with a less-than-willing Seo Joohyun when they were drunk and younger. She doesn’t even look at Hyoyeon, keeping her eyes on Sooyoung. “I know where this is. Get the group ready to leave and go investigate.” She doesn’t realize that her voice is that commanding, but Hyoyeon barks out orders to everyone.
She gets onto her feet and is about to run away when she looks back and smiles at the blind girl. “He’ll be fine, I promise.” Sooyoung smiles back and nods. “Do you want to come?” Yoona asks-because they could have her in the car or something, she’s sure that Hyoyeon wouldn’t mind that much, but Sooyoung shakes her head politely.
“No, I’ll wait here. I’m used to waiting. Just bring my brother back,” Sooyoung replies, and Yoona half-wishes that she could see her eyes, and wonder how they twinkle and move. Hyoyeon grabs Yoona’s arm, half-questioning her where this lake is, and half-demanding her to get her ass in gear because “there’s about to be more cases by the end of the night and we shouldn’t be stuck finishing this one.”
Yoona laughs and follows Hyoyeon because she has to admit-she doesn’t want to be working on this Choi Siwon disappearance case for any longer. It’s been a silly chase, just a rich kid from the south who got a little too drunk and then disappeared. Hyoyeon had passed it to Yoona because she was busy with a case involving two shots to the face, but she had finished it yesterday, so they now shared it. It wasn’t a very interesting case (and they’ve had interesting cases before), but it’s their job to keep their people safe, so if someone goes missing, they must find said person.
Yoona holds the slip of paper in her perfectly manicured fingers, watching the landscape rush past her like watercolours on a canvas. She smiles-it has been awhile since she’s gone to the country. Of course, there has always been something with the country-Joohyun hates bugs, for one-and she came from the country, so there will always been grueling thoughts of her grandmother dying in the beds of flowers that lay in fields that rush by.
“You seem distracted,” Hyoyeon comments, tapping her knee. Yoona fakes a smile and leans back into the van’s seat, feeling it bump underneath her as they drive onto a gravel road. They’ll be here soon, Yoona knows, and for some strange reason, she doesn’t feel like going. She doesn’t want to have to deal with whatever’s going to be there. The fact that Choi Sooyoung had drawn up that doodle in the first place was grueling-how could someone that couldn’t see be able to draw so well? Was it a picture that was fragmented into her skull, was it the last thing she saw before she died? These questions haunted Yoona’s thoughts as they pulled to a complete stop.
Hyoyeon’s humming brought her out of her thoughts as they jumped out of the car, resting on the dew-sprinkled grass.
“Hey! Look, over there!” One of the cops (Mr. Kim-is that his name?) cries, pointing to the other side of the large lake that separated the investigators from two or three lumps that lay on the ground, motionless. The faster of them (Hyoyeon and some of the rookies) reach the bodies and start doing work on them. Yoona takes her time, because who really wants to see a body at ten in the morning?
She kneels down beside the body and slips on her gloves. Taeyeon starts working on the other one. A small touch to their necks approves their notion-they’re dead. After a few minutes, they’re able to decide how they died. One must have fallen in the water, explaining the wet clothes, and drowned before the others could save him. Because the other two didn’t save him on time, it seemed that they had lost energy and collapsed because of their alcohol levels.
“But that doesn’t explain the bullet,” Hyoyeon pointed out, rolling the bulkier of the three and pointing to the hole in his head. Taeyeon shrugged, slipping the latex gloves off of her hands and brushing her dyed blonde hair from her face, her lipstick shining in the early morning sun.
“Well, that’s obviously what you two need to find out. Until then-we’re keeping with this idea until we can find a better solution. We’ll bring the three bodies in and bring in Miss Choi’s parents-it’s obvious that she won’t be able to pick out who is who. I’ll have Yunho or Yoochun tell Miss Choi and her family the news. They’re always better with the criers.” Hyoyeon hums in approval, threading her fingers in Yoona’s and resting her head on her shoulder.
“Yoong,” Hyoyeon whispers, sighing, “Why didn’t I force Yuri to get me coffee this morning?”
“She gave me yours.” Hyoyeon looks up from Yoona’s shoulder and sizes her up, her lips turning into a thin, straight line. Yoona laughs and pats her shoulder, pushing her back into the van that they arrived in. “Come on unnie, I’ll buy you a coffee when we get back to Seoul, okay? And then we’ll deal with this new case, okay?”
Hyoyeon sighs and grabs onto Yoona’s arm affectionately, letting Yoona drag her to the van, her eyes closing slowly. Yoona smiles, opening her phone and texting Yunho and Yoochun the news, and that they should probably start working on it so that they can figure out who this ‘Choi Siwon’ guy was. Yunho replies (Yoochun never texts back, Yoona already knows that by now) and says he’ll get started on finances and calls while forcing Yoochun to find out what went wrong a few days ago.
She’s about to close her phone when she checks her wallpaper-it’s Joohyun and her, on their way to Seoul for the first time. She smiles to herself, opening up her messages and sending Joohyun a small text.
It’s only ten and we’ve already got a murder, Joohyunnie! T-T Why is my job so hard?
A few minutes later, Joohyun texts back:
If you come home early, I’ll cook, unnie! Keep hard and find the killer! You can do it! Fighting!
She shuts her phone, lying back against the headrest, slowly closing her eyes to the sounds of the cars outside, driving past them on the freeway, as she wonders if she’ll actually be coming home early that night, or doing another all-nighter. Probably the latter.
**
Sooyoung swallows slowly, dropping her head down, twirling her thumbs. She can hear her mother crying and her father’s gruff, low voice. She knows that they’ll start screaming at her next, once her mother can finally pick herself up from the floor and realizes that her daughter had run away from the family, with some guy that she didn’t really know, to Seoul, one of the craziest towns in the world. In sum, it didn’t look so good for Choi Sooyoung.
She sometimes hated the fact that she could cry, even if she was blind. It stung her eyes and all she wanted to do was to tell her body to stop-that it was stupid to cry. But how could she stop? Siwon had been the only person to really dig deep into her heart and find out what was living in there, the only one that didn’t look at her to be a blind person, but rather a super talented girl that deserved so much more than what was bestowed upon her. Whenever she stopped thinking about his laughter or his soothing voice, though, she would imagine his lake.
The very lake that he was found dead at. Soonkyu’s face comes back into her thoughts and she screams-screams at whoever is listening.
“Sooyoung-sshi,” she hears, and she imagines a pretty, beautiful house with a nicely-cut lawn and annuals sitting on flowerbeds. It’s Kim Hyoyeon-Im Yoona’s partner. She looks up, salty tears slipping between the cracks of her lips, and she tries to smile, but she can’t force her lips to turn up. She hears something scraping against the floor and she guesses that it is a chair or something. “I know that things can be tough when you lose someone-”
“Let me join the case,” Sooyoung blurts out, unsure of what came over.
Hyoyeon gasps and Sooyoung guesses that her eyes have widened. She listens, admiring the silence that has fallen, yet feeling extremely self-conscious throughout-because what happens if Hyoyeon just says no and leaves her to fend for herself-and her mother is a tricky business partner. She hums, and Sooyoung realizes that this must be a habit, for she does often. “Yeah, I guess you’d work well with the case. I’d have to ask Yoong, but it wouldn’t be that big of a hassle, I suppose.”
Sooyoung’s heart leaps out of her chest and she jumps up, leaving her arms out, begging for a hug. She can hear Hyoyeon chuckle-but it’s light-hearted and Sooyoung feels her heart pound even harder. Her voice reminds her of Siwon-it’s strong but it doesn’t harm her. She can somehow be confident but yet kind at the same time. Sooyoung squeezes her in the hug, mumbling a ‘thank you’ as they part.
“I’ll be useful,” Sooyoung says, and Hyoyeon pecks her cheek, tapping her thigh before standing up, putting the chair away.
“I’m sure you will be. Now, I need to talk to your mother,” Hyoyeon says, opening the door behind her and entering, closing off the crying noises from her mother and the soothing sounds that she used to know.
**
Sooyoung sits in the room, listening to everyone as they settle down. She knows that they’re going over the information before they divide everything up. She believes that it’s three in the afternoon-there’s still so much work to be done, and she doesn’t even know what there could possibly found from just a few hours. But she likes being in the middle, and she feels Hyoyeon’s thigh brush up against her thigh, and that gives her a sense of satisfaction.
“This is Choi Sooyoung. She’s one of the victim’s sisters, and so she’s willing to give any information about the attitudes of the boys. Keep in mind that she is blind and that she won’t be able to give you any visual clues, but she has a great drawing skill if necessary. She has a lot of insight and she is very intelligent. But don’t push her around too much. Detective Kwon has assigned Im and me to lead the case, seeing as we found the bodies, and we would appreciate Yoochun. Taeyeon and Yoochun’s help in the case to find out what killed these three, young men.”
She hears high heels and some girl that she hasn’t heard yet starts talking. “I looked at the first body-Choi Siwon’s-further upon return. He was the one that got the bullet to the back of the skull. It seems like the gun used was a very small pocket one, so the shot couldn’t have killed him, as the shot only went a few inches into his skull, not actually getting into the bone and hitting the nervous system. There seems to be many bruises on his arms and legs, but these are old, not from the night of the murder. He had more than the suggested about of alcohol in his blood, which suggests that blood poisoning is the reason for the murder. But with the bullet, he probably died by heart attack. Looking at the wounds, he was dead three days tops.”
“He used to do taekwondo,” Sooyoung mumbled. “That’s why he has bruises. He always went hard on his practices, because he wanted to make sure that he could protect me when I moved in with him.” A few ‘ah’s resound through the room and Hyoyeon rests her hand on Sooyoung’s shoulder, kneading the skin.
“Thank you, Sooyoung and Taeyeon-unnie,” Hyoyeon says, and Sooyoung imagines her smiling. It’s a thought that Sooyoung somehow can picture easily, even if she hasn’t actually seen her before. Sooyoung reaches up and touches Hyoyeon’s fingers, wondering what her face feels like-her lips…
“I’ve checked from friends about what the trio were going that night. I’ve learned that the three were named-Choi Siwon, Lee Hyukjae, and Kim Heechul, all attending university in Seoul, where they met. It was obviously just a night of drinking the stress of exams away that turned out wrong. Lee Donghae, the last person that saw them that night, said that they had been commenting on a lake that sparkled more than the Han River and that they should go. Donghae didn’t go because he had exams, of course, to study for,” Yoochun explained, and Sooyoung can hear the papers flipping in his hands as he read over the information half-heartedly. It was all just old news.
“Checked his finances, too. Nothing special-just eighty-eight cent ramen and alcohol, the typical expenses for a university kid. All the money seems to be coming from their parent’s bank account, about two-hundred thousand won per month, which is more than enough for a few cases of soju,” Yunho continues. “And his phone number seems to be filled with messages from Heechul, Donghae and Hyukjae. He’s just a typical, run of the mill, college student. We’ve got nothing on him.”
Yoona sighed, “Well, thanks for all that you’ve been able to find. Taeng-unnie, continue at looking at the bodies, if you ever need any help, just call me down. Yunho and Yoochun, start bringing in some of his friends from back home and from university-why would someone shoot him in the head in the first place, anyways? Hyo-unnie, you and I will start looking over his recent movements.” Yoona paused. “And Sooyoung-sshi, we’ll be carrying you around a lot-just so that we know ahead of time what they’re like.”
Sooyoung smiled, “That’s what I’m here for.”
Yoona patted her back and started walking outside of the meeting room. “Come on people, I have a girlfriend and I want my cooked dinner! Let’s have this case wrapped up by tomorrow morning!” People started bustling around her, and she cocked her head to the side, her fingernails scraping against the plastic of the chair that she was placed in. She really just wanted to stand up and walk the halls, but there were a thousand pairs of footsteps, and she didn’t want to be trouble.
She never wanted to be trouble. She could hear the sighs trapped in her head already.
“Hey, Sooyoungie! We have a lead-supposedly a guy named Choi Minho was with them the night of the murder. Do you know who this guy was?” Sooyoung smiles and nods. Hyoyeon grabs onto her hand, and Sooyoung is pulled through thousands of corridors that she’ll never really see, the house replaying in her head, the image so strong that she could smell the freshly-cut lawn. It was almost as strong as Siwon’s-so much that it almost hurt. She squeezes her hand and Hyoyeon squeezes back, and Sooyoung bites down on her cheek-she’s here.
“Hyoyeon-sshi,” Sooyoung asks, and Hyoyeon hums, turning around so that Sooyoung is sure that they’re inches away from each other. “Why are you so sad?”
“I’m sad because the world needs a sad person pretending to be happy, or the life’s play will get boring and repetitive,” Hyoyeon explains, brushing some of Sooyoung’s hair from her face. “Now come on, I want to know about this Minho guy-”
“Do you like your job, Hyoyeon-sshi?”
“My job helps people, Sooyoung-ah. That’s all that matters.” Hyoyeon turns away and lets go of Sooyoung’s hand, taking slow, careful steps away from her. Sooyoung stands there, clueless and useless, and she wants to call out when a loud, echoing scream sounds through the hallway-and soon she realizes it’s her own.
“Sooyoung-sshi?” Yoona asks, but she ignores her, running up to Hyoyeon, and she can hear the crying coming from Hyoyeon. She hears more boots, more screaming, and someone calling 911-and Sooyoung sits down on the ground, pressing her forehead to her knees.
The house comes back again.
**
“Maybe you should quit the case,” Yoona suggests when Hyoyeon finally wakes up. The girl shakes her head. It was just a powerful image, is all. A hand, a hand that looked too much like her own, pushing against Sooyoung, making her land on… she wasn’t completely sure what she lands on, but she knows that it results in death. She can hear the screaming-Yoona’s screaming-and the salty tears that run down her cheek. It’s as vivid as Ryeowook…
“No-it’s fine. I just, I just…”
“You dreamed of Ryeowook,” Yuri butted in, patting her shin, “I agree with Yoong, you shouldn’t be getting back on the case until you’re one-hundred-percent okay. And we don’t know how okay you are yet, and we’ll never really trust you when you say you’re fine. Come on, you’re staying at the apartment and I’ll take care of you-”
“Yuri,” Yoona says, “You should get back to the station, you’re still at work. Joohyun and I will take care of Hyoyeon.”
Hyoyeon sighs, looking down at her chipped and bitten fingernails. “I wanted to get care of Sooyoung… so that she wouldn’t have to be in a hotel for another night.” Yuri sighs and rolls her eyes, placing her hand on her hip.
“I’ll take her and you can get care of her tomorrow-but she’s your job.” Yuri waves, before turning on her expensive heels and walking out of the hospital room. Hyoyeon plays with the sheets absentmindedly.
“She sounds mad,” she mumbles.
“We get worried, is all. You’re lucky that the doctors didn’t find out,” Yoona replies.
“It’s not my fault! I don’t want these dizzying spells, but they happen!”
“Why do they happen?” Yoona asks, and Hyoyeon falls quiet.
“I… I don’t know,” Hyoyeon answers after a minute, watching the clock that ticks loudly.
Yoona sighs and gets up, ready to leave. “I have to see if there’s any progress after the Minho news, but I’ll come back to pick you up.”
Hyoyeon smiles and lies back, looking up at deciding that counting the ceiling tiles would be a good way to spend her time.
**
“We have a lead,” Yunho explains when Yoona comes back. “This Minho person was seen entering the car with the three, according to Donghae and a girl from the party. He was not found on the crime scene, though-so we tracked him down and we’ve got him in for questioning. Plus-his fingerprints were on the weapon that we found when you were away.”
Yoona smiles-maybe the crime will be done quickly. She enters the interrogation room, sitting down across from Choi Minho. He looks maybe eighteen years old, with circles under his eyes and it’s obvious that he hasn’t been sleeping much. He doesn’t look like someone that would be doing any bad things, but of course, appearances are deceiving.
“Choi Minho,” Yoona begins, looking at the file set out before her, “You’re not the kind of kid that would be killing his three best friends, but why are your fingerprints on the gun?”
Minho doesn’t talk and Yoona sighs-the day that Hyoyeon gets sick is the day that they have a tough one. Of course. She looks up at sees his numbers-four months. She does quick calculations in her head and decides that he’ll die in prison, probably a suicide.
“Minho, you’re going to get caught or sent to prison, if you speak or not. It’s better to just start talking.”
“Hyukjae thought it would be a good idea to start drinking, and everyone agreed, of course. When Donghae split, we decided to go down to a lake and swim, ‘because we were bored and drunk out of our minds. Heechul fell into the water just as I came back-I found a gun in the woods and wanted to act all cool. I wanted to be cool… Siwon was about to go and get Heechul, but I’ve always hated the guy-so I told him…. I told him that I’d shoot if he swam. He did, so I shot him in the head… Hyukjae tried running away, but he was just so drunk… It didn’t help. I just gave him a kick to the head and ran away.”
“So you killed three innocent people?” Yoona asked.
Minho sighed. “I guess you could consider it to be like that.”
“But your lawyer could fight against you, saying that you were intoxicated and unaware of your actions,” Yoona continued.
“I don’t have a lawyer, so what’s the point?”
Yoona checked-it was now three days on the clock.
**
“I don’t want to leave,” Sooyoung mumbles, holding onto Hyoyeon’s shirt. “I don’t know how I’ll be useful, but Seoul seems nicer than back home.” Hyoyeon smiles, kissing her lips slowly, teasingly, the pictures in her head swimming so vividly that Hyoyeon feels like collapsing-but this feels so right, too.
“Then stay,” Hyoyeon says, “I’ll get Yoona to say yes, to get you a job of an artist or something.”
“I say yes,” Yoona replied, brushing some of her bangs from her eyes, “And if we combine our pay, I bet we can get a flat or something, for the five of us.” Hyoyeon smiles and nods, giving her a silent thank you.
--
end
a/n: thank you for reading!
a/n1: of course, i'll be adding more to this fic, having some sequels and stuff
a/n2: this has to be the longest fic i've ever written, and i feel very happy! i would like to thank all the people that dealt with my arguing, i know it's annoying as hell, and i hope you like the fic!