The Shadow Kissed Chapter Two
I don’t particularly like…the beginning of this and how Heechul explains the case, but and so um yea :/ This is probably one of the longer chapters without having the largest word count as well, but all the information is needed or I wouldn’t have stuck it all in here.
New Characters revealed.
THIS STORY IS ABANDONED AND WILL NOT BE COMPLETED. UPON REQUEST, I AM WILLING TO WRITE UP AN ADDITIONAL "CHAPTER" EXPLAINING THE REST OF THE STORYLINE AND HOW IT WAS MEANT TO END, BUT IT WILL NOT BE COMPLETED. The contents of this masterlist has been unlocked for those who still want to read the story; however, as I have already stated, it will not be updated at any point in its original capacity. Thank you for your interest and time.
Title: The Shadow Kissed
Author: insanityplays
Rating: R
Pairing: KRY (Kyuhyun/Ryeowook/Yesung), Kangteuk, Hanchul. More to be added as revealed.
Characters: Psychic!Ryeowook, Psycho!Kyuhyun, Cop!Yesung, rest of Super Junior + M, appearances by DBSK, SNSD, and f(x)
Summary: After a nightmare Kim Jongwoon forwent paying any special attention to, he’s placed on a cold case fourteen years old where the only witness is a soon to be twenty-three year old man locked away in a mental “hospital” owned by the same people suspected for the murder/arson case of the Cho Family. Boring re-investigation aside, Jongwoon finds himself thrust into living his nightmare - only this time, it isn’t a dream.
Disclaimer: I do not own.
Warning: Includes, or will include, Angst, Drama, Romance, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Action, and Mystery. Also includes, or will include, paranormal activity, ghosts, attempted murder and murder.
- Chapter Two -
Stunned into silence from the appearance of his nightmare in reality, Yesung couldn’t move. In front of him lay the opened case file of the fourteen year old cold case Heechul was assigning him to, and in it, the face of little Cho Kyuhyun, with his curly red-brown hair, stared up at him with endless brown eyes.
But instead of the happiness he would have expected from an old child’s photo, or the fear from the night before, he saw only cold insanity, and his heart ached for what the murder of his family had done to him.
The appearance of his nightmare come to life was all it took for Yesung to realize he had, indeed, seen this case when it’d been blasted all over every news channel for three weeks fourteen years ago, and the mystery from earlier this morning finally came to an end.
The landing wasn’t soft, was far more than bumpy, and he was more frightened than he’d ever been in his entire life.
He knew, in that instant, that he owed this boy something, owed him everything, and something outside of his power knew it too. The fact that he’d dreamt this family’s death the night before he was assigned to the case spoke of something else controlling what he had to do, and told his instincts there was a reason behind it that he couldn’t fight.
“So you do remember. Thought you would,” Heechul continued after a short pause that felt miles long to Yesung. “Do you remember what happened?” Yesung had to fight with himself not to blurt out the events of his dream.
“I just remember a murder with only one survivor. And a fire,” Yesung answered, thinking back to the details of the case that he remembered from the news. Heechul nodded.
“Murder/arson case. Never was solved,” Heechul shook his head with a sigh. “With the house burned down, as well as the bodies, we never had much evidence to go off of, but the ones originally in charge of the Cho case had the strong suspicion it had something to do with SM Industries and Lee Soo Man,” Heechul explained, before pausing with a furrowed brow.
“Actually, if it weren’t for Kyuhyun getting out of that house, despite the fire, there never would have been any suspicion at all about what had gone on inside. Everyone would have assumed a house fire, and that would have been that, but the boy…he somehow made it out. Not to say he didn’t almost die, and perhaps that would have been more merciful, but his survival and screams of murder after he woke up were what prompted a full scale investigation that led to SM Industries.” Heechul paused again, eyes meeting Yesung’s in an almost silent challenge. It was almost a question, an offer to get out now, but Yesung wasn’t turning his back on something he had no real control over. Or, at least felt he had no control over. Heechul continued when he was met with no response but prompting eyes.
“Through friends, it was found out that Cho Kyuhyun’s father had worked for SMI at one point, but when the officials on the case went to check, every record of the mans employment had completely vanished. Their best computer hackers couldn’t find it, so they never could link SMI to anything, and after three weeks, they were forced to close their investigation. There was nothing more they could do. Most of their evidence had been burned down with the house, and their only witness had already gone insane.
“Which is why, I have to say, I was glad when Siwon told me about the little boy who was treated worse than any other patient there, and because of it, was the most violent. I was curious why he would be treated worse, and when Siwon came back with his name, I knew immediately. I also knew that Siwon had to bring this place down if we were ever going to take out SMI, and that I needed someone to work on Cho Kyuhyun’s case.” Yesung let out a shuddering breath, trying not to imagine how the little boy was treated worse then anyone else there, and let his mind drift back to his dream and what he assumed were the truth of the events of that night.
“So where do I start?” Yesung asked once he’d cleared his throat, running a hand through messy black hair. Heechul grinned.
--
Down a hallway Yesung had never paid attention to before that was key card access only, Heechul led him to a room where two men resided, sitting at computers as they worked. At first, Yesung thought Heechul was going to lead him on to another room, but after he looked around, and realized there was no other room, he turned and gawked at Heechul in disbelief.
Heechul smirked. “I never said there were a lot of people on this case, did I?” he asked, and it made Yesung glower.
“No, but I was expecting more than two.”
“Three, actually. Have you forgotten Siwon already?” Heechul asked with a laugh.
“Four, now that Yesung’s on it,” one of the men piped up, and Yesung turned to look at him.
Sitting at a desk that held five computer monitors was Kim Junsu, a man Yesung had seen around headquarters more than a few times, but who he wasn’t particularly close with. He had styled, messy blonde hair that was longer on the top and shorter against the sides and back, diamond earrings, and a knack for computers that he’d turned successfully into a career.
Not to mention his enjoyment of blowing things up and how that had landed him with a job.
“Junsu-shii,” Yesung greeted after only a moment, bowing his head slightly. Junsu bowed his head back.
“Just Junsu, if you’d please, Yesung. We’re working on this case together now.” Junsu smiled, and Yesung returned it before looking over to the only other man in the room. He found himself surprised to be facing Henry Lau, the computer prodigy.
The boy was hardly twenty-two, fresh out of college, and already working on a case that was supposed to remain top secret. His entire countenance reflected his young age. He had long brown hair, left flat against his head and down the back of his neck, his bangs slightly longer on one end where they were swiped to the side over his eyes. He still had a baby face.
Henry gave him an uncertain smile. “Yesung-shii,” he greeted, much the same way Yesung had greeted Junsu. Yesung shook his head at the younger man.
“We’re all working on the same case, right?” Henry only nodded before turning back to his own computer.
“Right so, now that we’ve all been introduced,” again, Yesung sent Heechul a glare, “Kim Junsu here has been working on a reenactment of the murder on his computer for the last three days, to give us an idea of what happened. We don’t have all the facts, but we have enough. He can fill you in later.
“Henry over there has been working his magic trying to find the missing employment records of one Cho-shii, something that, at the very least, will give us motive, and possibly help us get a warrant.
“As for you, I want you to start off by burying yourself in every little piece of information we have on the case, get yourself familiar with it. Then, we’ll throw you to the sharks, so to speak.” Heechul grinned as he left, waving a dainty hand towards Yesung on his way out.
Yesung truly hated that man.
Junsu’s throat clearing caught his attention, and he turned to face the man. “Every insignificant detail can be found on that computer there,” he announced, pointing to one of the computers that sat on a long desk on the other side of the room. Yesung sighed and decided to get to work.
--
It was nearing midnight when Yesung finally shut off his computer with gritty eyes and begin his trek home, walking by Henry as he left the room, realizing the younger man hadn’t moved an inch since he’d been introduced - other than his fingers at the keyboard, at least.
He didn’t bother saying goodbye, too tired to even attempt to open his mouth, and he knew Henry wouldn’t reply anyway. The boy was even more engrossed in what he was doing than Yesung had been, and when Junsu had left an hour earlier with a cheery goodnight, Yesung almost hadn’t heard it. Henry hadn’t taken any notice at all, nor would he now of Yesung as he clicked away on his computer, eyes pinned to his computer screen as he dissected a bunch of coding that looked like a load of highly frustrating gibberish to Yesung, so Yesung moved past him without a word.
His mind was still on all the information he’d soaked in within the last few hours anyway, and he shivered before he even made it outside, wishing again that he’d had the foresight to grab his jacket out of his office before meeting with Heechul earlier that day.
He’d read through newspaper cutouts and health records, school records, and legal records, watched news clips from before and after the murder, and gone through every inch of what was in each thin case file, as well as emptied the box of evidence that had come with the Cho Kyuhyun case.
Their details were still spread out on the long desk his computer was settled at, among which he found handfuls of pictures from the fourteen year old cold case he would be working on, and the little boys bloodied clothing, burnt and ragged and nearly falling apart after so many years.
In the pictures, he’d also seen the destruction of a burnt down home at various angles, the uncovered, burnt skin of the boys legs, torso, and arms, and then of the little boy with a ventilator on a stretcher as he was carted into an ambulance to be taken to the hospital.
He never wanted to see so much blood again, nor did he wish the destruction or clear pain he’d seen on his worst enemy.
In the second file, the one Choi Siwon was working on, there’d been less photos, but they were garish none the less, quick snapshots Yesung didn’t want to know how Siwon took. Many of them were of the patients themselves, covered in bruises that Yesung got the feeling weren’t their own doing, and a few of the employees with their fingers grasping tight to patients shirts, or with their fists raised in a threatening manner. Then there were the baggies with the pills.
The drugs didn’t vary per patient, but some were smashed or ground up, presumably to be put in the patient’s food or drink, and other’s whole. Yesung didn’t recognize the name of the drug, but if he had to guess, it would be something like a tranquillizer to get the patients off their backs.
If Yesung had to hazard a guess, the lone syringe half-filled with some clear liquid was probably for the less cooperative patients, and he had no doubt that all of this was what Siwon was trying to prove - that the whole thing was a con to make money off people who couldn’t defend themselves. It made Yesung sick to his stomach to think about it, even more so to think that the man behind it all had murdered Cho Kyuhyun’s family and was trying to kill him even now.
But in all honesty, what made Yesung the most horrified were the news clips he’d watched. There weren’t that many of much importance, and many were less than a minute long, but the ones that covered the first week were the ones that caught and kept Yesung’s attention.
One of the first was of the house as it burned, and he could almost smell the scent of sulfur in the air as he’d watched. The view was from a helicopter that hovered above, completely panned in to focus on the two story house he recognized from his dream.
The grass around it and the garden on one side were already completely charred, burnt to a crisp and smoldering as the water from the fireman’s hoses hit them. The whole roof of the house had collapsed inside, flames roaring out of the dent it created, racing across and down its sides, consuming all it could and everything that was in its path.
The back door of the house was open, fire licking up its frame, and one of the long beams of the porch that held up the balcony in the back had collapsed, leaving the balcony supported by one beam, but groaning as it threatened to give way.
A voice far away from the chaotic scene rattled off what was going on, calling it a house fire and unable to tell anyone of any survivors, or even if anyone had been inside, though considering it was occurring at three o’clock in the morning, there was more possibility of that than there was not.
There was another news clip from the same night, around the same time, of the little boy. He’d been found by an old couple when he’d knocked on their door - though as they’d told it it’d been less of a knock and more of a loud collapse on their front porch.
Their house was the first house down the street the path that lead through the woods to the Cho estate came out on, and it hadn’t been hard to put two and two together. The old couple had immediately called the police upon seeing the boy, and mentioned the scorched clothing and the scent of sulfur they could already smell in the air.
Both the paramedics and the fire department had come, and, of course, the media - they were like ants at a picnic. They wouldn’t miss something as big as this for the world.
The woman on screen that he watched interviewed the old couple with the paramedics working right behind her, within the shot, as well as a few CSI. She’d moved from the old couple, to the paramedics as they lifted the boy onto a stretcher, ventilator attached to him, and one of the CSI snapping pictures for evidence, asking for the clothes not to be thrown away, but given to them.
Yesung hardly listened to the words exchanged between the paramedics and news reporter - his attention was too focused on the little boy getting fed air through the ventilator. The camera panned in for a better shot of his face, and that was when Yesung realized he was still conscious, though the delirium in his eyes suggested he wouldn’t be so for long.
But before the little boy went under, his eyes locked with the camera, appearing as if he were looking straight at him, and his lips had moved beneath the breathing mask hooked over his face.
Yesung almost hadn’t been able to see what he said, but he realized after a moment what the boy was mumbling.
“They killed them, they killed them,” over and over again. It was enough to break anyone’s heart.
The next four days broadcasts were short updates on the case and the health of Cho Kyuhyun. After he’d been admitted to the Seoul hospital, it was reported that he’d gone into a coma.
News reporters told the public repeatedly that there had been four others in the house that night. The father, the mother, a daughter, and a baby, all believed to have been murdered before the house was set to burn.
The CSI on the case reported signs of arson, and among the photos in the case file were those of the fire trail. Yesung was no expert, but neither were the men who’d set the fire, if the very obvious trail lines were any indication.
The reporters also took to flocking outside of the Seoul Hospital Kyuhyun was being cared in, making any announcements from in front of it, the building an expanse behind them.
It was on the fourth day of Cho Kyuhyun’s seemingly endless coma that Yesung watched a news cast where a lady he’d seen often was making another update. Kyuhyun’s condition was said to be good, though he was still in a comatose state, and as long as bandages were kept over the long second degree burns he’d suffered on his torso, arms, and legs, until they were healed, he would be fine.
Aside from the coma at least.
She was just signing off when the hospital doors burst open behind her, and she turned when she heard the screaming.
It wasn’t distinguishable at first, and all Yesung could make out was Kyuhyun wrapped in bandages, though dressed, and held with his arms behind his back by two big nurses. His head was one of the only places that wasn’t wrapped in gauze.
The camera panned in on him, trying to get a closer shot of the boy, and as it did, it became apparent what the violently struggling boy was screaming.
He was screaming a bloody death on the murderers of his family, screaming to let him go, screaming he would claw his way out if he had to, and the sound of his words were harsh, grating, and so pain filled it was amazing the boy was still standing up right.
That’s when he looked at the camera - for the second time appearing as if he were looking directly at Yesung - his eyes piercing, a haunted brown with depths that swirled with his insanity.
The look had sent a shiver up Yesung’s spine, and goosebumps racing over his skin.
There were ghosts in those eyes.
Even thinking about it now raised goosebumps as Yesung climbed into his car and drove off for home, mind still whirring with all that he’d learned. He’d watched news clips from before the murder also, as well as read newspaper clippings.
By this point, he almost felt as if he knew the little boy from his nightmare. He knew about the competitions he’d won, the band concerts he’d performed in, the singing competitions he’d participated in. He knew about the wrist he’d sprained, the leg he’d broken, even that he’d gotten chicken pox when he was a baby.
They were all things you’d know about a childhood friend, and Yesung knew it all from reading about it. Every little thing Cho Kyuhyun was mentioned in was part of the files on the computer he’d been looking through earlier that day, and all it served to do was break his heart even more.
The murder of Kyuhyun’s family had taken everything from him, and Yesung wished he could give it all back.
He drove home wondering what things would have been like for the boy if his family had never gotten tied up with SM Industries.
--
His breathing was harsh as he crawled with his belly to the floor and his back to the pipes beneath the house, one arm covering his head from damage, the other dragging him through the crawl space, constantly switching when the pain got to be too much for him as the fire attacked him, heated the metal his skin was forced to come in contact with.
His whole body ached as he crawled, tears streamed down his cheeks, and he could feel the licks of flame biting at his stomach, knew his legs were scarred where harsh burns were put out by the dirt beneath him, and he couldn’t help but wonder when this torture would end, even as he found himself scrambling out from beneath the underbrush, the hedges, of the house that covered the small open flap of the house’s skirt that workmen used to enter and exit when work needed to be done.
He was barely able to scramble to his feet with the pain eating at him, jarring him to his very bones, but he managed, and with the heat of the burning house behind him cheering him on, he took off at a dead run down the path he was oh so familiar with, into the woods that surrounded the little meadow that made up his home, and down into the city of Seoul, towards the street the path way led into, even as he listened to the excited cheering of one of the three men behind him, and the scared whinnies of the horses his family kept in a corral just down the path out the back of his house.
His heart raced as the woods grew closer to him, and he jumped, arching into the trees and bushes that were a safe haven, just able to hear the heavy footfalls of the two men chasing after him, not bothering to even shout at him. They had all the confidence in the world, even as he knew they wouldn’t catch him in the woods he knew like the back of his hand.
Even so, the cold fear that they would catch him before he could get away, before he could do something that would save his family, in any little way possible, raced through his veins. He didn’t kid himself, as he took off through the dense trees, dancing around the foliage that would give away his position, that any of them were alive, but he could hope, at the very least, that he might get lucky, and he might save even one of them if he were only brave enough to get away and get to the police.
And even if he couldn’t save one of them, he would put away the bastards who’d killed them.
He barely contained the sobs within him, barely kept them from bursting through his lips, but his chest hurt like mad, and his heart felt like it was going to give out on him and kill him before he could do anything for his family. The grief was just too much.
And he knew, if he looked down, he’d even find his mothers blood and bits of her brain all down his front, in his hair, covering his face.
He’d even spat a piece of her out earlier, when his eyes had been wide and scared, his ears had rung with the sound of a gunshot, and he’d dove under one, two, three men’s legs and out the door he’d burst in through, running for any little place he could find to hide.
That place had been the linen closet with the hole in the bottom that he could just fit through that his mother hid with the laundry basket. He’d heard the men call for him, heard as one of them told the others not to worry about it, to just start the fire, and when he’d heard the first crackles of flame, smelt the beginnings of his house burning, he’d thrown the basket against the wall and out of the way, not caring that he’d be heard, and wiggled through the hole and under the house.
He felt more tears trickle down his face at the memory of abandoning his family to the flames that would eat them alive, but he kept running, aiming for the one place he knew he had to get to if he wanted to be safe, the one place the men wouldn’t follow him into, wouldn’t look for him in if they didn’t hear, see, know him to be there.
He heard the sound of them stumbling through the trees and bushes behind him, much farther to the left then he was, and he couldn’t help his small, pain filled smile when he heard them getting further and further back in the darkness of the woods, couldn’t help but chance a glance at the pale night sky with its big, full moon gazing down at him, and tell his mother, his father, his sister, his baby brother, that he was almost there; that he’d never let them get him.
It was the smell of marsh and mud that alerted him first to the fact that he was almost there, almost to the far banks of the lake that stood between him and the town of Seoul. Through a break in the trees, he could see a few feet below the rock he stood on the black surface of the lake that shimmered like gold in the daylight, but gleamed like black satin in the thick of the night, but he didn’t stop, didn’t pause as he kept running, jumping onto the log he knew well, grabbing his legs tight against him in the cannon ball position as he jumped off as he and his sister had done so often before, before plunging nearly soundlessly into the depths of the water below.
The sound below the water was louder then he knew it would be above, the momentum and height of his jump, the tight, air packed seal he’d made his body into, muffling the sound of his weight hitting the water, the way he and his sister had practiced over and over and over again.
The frigid water burned against his scalded, peeling skin, but he welcomed its shadow, welcomed the fact that it would keep him safe as nothing else would as he lay wrapped up tight in the blanket it created that was better than any hiding place he could have found above.
He could only hope the men were father to the left than he’d been, and that they were taking the downwardly sloping path to the left of the cliff he’d jumped from, staring at the panoramic view of the lake to their right. He could only hope they’d move down fast, that they wouldn’t stop to wonder if he’d gone under because he knew his breath would only last until the other bank, until he’d swam to the surface, and even as he thought to try for longer, he knew he’d never last long enough if their gazes lingered, waiting for his head to break the surface of the water.
And with the way his breathing had puffed above, he wondered if he’d even make it that far, but he did, just barely, and he held on tighter, feeling his mind go woozy at the oxygen deprivation, until he knew he would go mad if he stayed down any longer.
Popping out from beneath the surface of the water, he took in a deep lung full of air, clinging to the lake’s bank as he gazed around himself, at the long pathway to his left, finding no one. He scrambled from the water, his clothing sopping wet but no less blood stained, no less burnt, than before, and scrambled for the trees, not caring that it was possible they were just ahead of him, waiting to ambush him - his mind was too preoccupied with the idea that they were behind him, possibly just beneath the waters surface as he’d been just moments before.
It was the sound of growling voices that finally had him coming to a halt, shaking from the cold, throbbing from the pain, but too afraid to move in case they heard him, found him. He was too close now to get taken down, his vision was beginning to blur, but nothing mattered except getting through the last of the trees and to the first house on the street.
He heard them beginning to move then, heard them trudging back through the woods the way they’d come, and caught a snippet of conversation as he stood flush against a tree one of them brushed up against.
“…gonna kill us when he finds out we let one of them get away…”
The words hardly filtered through, but he felt a beat of elation, even as he waited, tense and nervous, on the verge on unconsciousness, black spots appearing before his eyes, until the sound of their footsteps had mostly faded, and then he was off again, down the path to the street right outside the woods that stood like a sentinel around his now burning home.
He stumbled more than once, went crashing through brush they way he hadn’t before, and could only pray the men were too far away to hear him, because his exhausted body was sending him plummeting forward whether he wanted it to or not, and he knew there was no stopping it.
Especially not with the way his mind was whirring in dizzying circles.
He barely made it to the doorstep of the first house outside of the woods, hand stretched out before him to grasp at the dark wood of the door, before he collapsed, nearly on his face if his hand hadn’t been there to catch him. He rolled, blinking rapidly against the dark spots in his vision, as the world around him spun.
He begged his body to move even as he felt nausea curl in his stomach, but it wouldn’t cooperate, wouldn’t answer to his call. He couldn’t stand up, and after a moment, he realized he couldn’t feel his arms or legs, and even as he opened his mouth to scream for help, the movement felt sluggish and slow.
His head throbbed, and he groaned against the sharp pain that begged to knock him out, and then a light turned on over him, shining in his eyes, turning the black spots white. He heard a door open, but even with his eyes open, he couldn’t seem to see anything. It was all so blurry, colors vivid, but shapes indistinguishable.
“Please, they killed them…they killed them please…help…they killed them…” he rasped over and over again at what he hoped were people standing over him, but he wasn’t even sure the words were leaving his throat.
He started to feel his hope die, and thought he felt tears as they coursed down his cheeks, but he was numb. Everything was numb, even as he cried. In his mind, he begged his parent’s forgiveness.
That’s when he saw her - the bright silhouette of his mother against the darkness of the night sky, brighter even than the lamp light shining in his eyes. He had no idea what was going on around him, but his mother was there, and the minute he saw her, nothing else seemed to matter.
--
Yesung’s mouth opened on a choked cry as he took startled gulps of air, sitting up suddenly in bed from where he’d been laying moments before. He could make no sound as he panted against the bed covers and keeled over, nausea the first thing he experienced after the threat of not being able to breathe.
He threw off his covers then, sitting back up as well, and fanned at himself when he realized he was covered from heat to toe in sweat, dying from a nonexistent heat in his bedroom. He shivered despite it though, and shook against the fear, the pain, the grief he’d experienced in the dream.
If he’d had enough breath in his lungs, he knew he’d be in the bathroom, heaving what he’d had for dinner, but he could hardly breathe as it was as he gripped his head at the sudden onslaught of pain he’d awoken with.
Goosebumps covered his skin as he gasped for breath, and he shivered again, a draft of cold air only making the post nightmare jitters worse.
These dreams will be the death of me, he thought, even as he let out a choked moan for what he’d seen, for what the boy, Kyuhyun, had been forced to live through.
--
Masterlist/Character Information
New Characters revealed.
THIS STORY IS ABANDONED AND WILL NOT BE COMPLETED. UPON REQUEST, I AM WILLING TO WRITE UP AN ADDITIONAL "CHAPTER" EXPLAINING THE REST OF THE STORYLINE AND HOW IT WAS MEANT TO END, BUT IT WILL NOT BE COMPLETED. The contents of this masterlist has been unlocked for those who still want to read the story; however, as I have already stated, it will not be updated at any point in its original capacity. Thank you for your interest and time.
Title: The Shadow Kissed
Author: insanityplays
Rating: R
Pairing: KRY (Kyuhyun/Ryeowook/Yesung), Kangteuk, Hanchul. More to be added as revealed.
Characters: Psychic!Ryeowook, Psycho!Kyuhyun, Cop!Yesung, rest of Super Junior + M, appearances by DBSK, SNSD, and f(x)
Summary: After a nightmare Kim Jongwoon forwent paying any special attention to, he’s placed on a cold case fourteen years old where the only witness is a soon to be twenty-three year old man locked away in a mental “hospital” owned by the same people suspected for the murder/arson case of the Cho Family. Boring re-investigation aside, Jongwoon finds himself thrust into living his nightmare - only this time, it isn’t a dream.
Disclaimer: I do not own.
Warning: Includes, or will include, Angst, Drama, Romance, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Action, and Mystery. Also includes, or will include, paranormal activity, ghosts, attempted murder and murder.
- Chapter Two -
Stunned into silence from the appearance of his nightmare in reality, Yesung couldn’t move. In front of him lay the opened case file of the fourteen year old cold case Heechul was assigning him to, and in it, the face of little Cho Kyuhyun, with his curly red-brown hair, stared up at him with endless brown eyes.
But instead of the happiness he would have expected from an old child’s photo, or the fear from the night before, he saw only cold insanity, and his heart ached for what the murder of his family had done to him.
The appearance of his nightmare come to life was all it took for Yesung to realize he had, indeed, seen this case when it’d been blasted all over every news channel for three weeks fourteen years ago, and the mystery from earlier this morning finally came to an end.
The landing wasn’t soft, was far more than bumpy, and he was more frightened than he’d ever been in his entire life.
He knew, in that instant, that he owed this boy something, owed him everything, and something outside of his power knew it too. The fact that he’d dreamt this family’s death the night before he was assigned to the case spoke of something else controlling what he had to do, and told his instincts there was a reason behind it that he couldn’t fight.
“So you do remember. Thought you would,” Heechul continued after a short pause that felt miles long to Yesung. “Do you remember what happened?” Yesung had to fight with himself not to blurt out the events of his dream.
“I just remember a murder with only one survivor. And a fire,” Yesung answered, thinking back to the details of the case that he remembered from the news. Heechul nodded.
“Murder/arson case. Never was solved,” Heechul shook his head with a sigh. “With the house burned down, as well as the bodies, we never had much evidence to go off of, but the ones originally in charge of the Cho case had the strong suspicion it had something to do with SM Industries and Lee Soo Man,” Heechul explained, before pausing with a furrowed brow.
“Actually, if it weren’t for Kyuhyun getting out of that house, despite the fire, there never would have been any suspicion at all about what had gone on inside. Everyone would have assumed a house fire, and that would have been that, but the boy…he somehow made it out. Not to say he didn’t almost die, and perhaps that would have been more merciful, but his survival and screams of murder after he woke up were what prompted a full scale investigation that led to SM Industries.” Heechul paused again, eyes meeting Yesung’s in an almost silent challenge. It was almost a question, an offer to get out now, but Yesung wasn’t turning his back on something he had no real control over. Or, at least felt he had no control over. Heechul continued when he was met with no response but prompting eyes.
“Through friends, it was found out that Cho Kyuhyun’s father had worked for SMI at one point, but when the officials on the case went to check, every record of the mans employment had completely vanished. Their best computer hackers couldn’t find it, so they never could link SMI to anything, and after three weeks, they were forced to close their investigation. There was nothing more they could do. Most of their evidence had been burned down with the house, and their only witness had already gone insane.
“Which is why, I have to say, I was glad when Siwon told me about the little boy who was treated worse than any other patient there, and because of it, was the most violent. I was curious why he would be treated worse, and when Siwon came back with his name, I knew immediately. I also knew that Siwon had to bring this place down if we were ever going to take out SMI, and that I needed someone to work on Cho Kyuhyun’s case.” Yesung let out a shuddering breath, trying not to imagine how the little boy was treated worse then anyone else there, and let his mind drift back to his dream and what he assumed were the truth of the events of that night.
“So where do I start?” Yesung asked once he’d cleared his throat, running a hand through messy black hair. Heechul grinned.
--
Down a hallway Yesung had never paid attention to before that was key card access only, Heechul led him to a room where two men resided, sitting at computers as they worked. At first, Yesung thought Heechul was going to lead him on to another room, but after he looked around, and realized there was no other room, he turned and gawked at Heechul in disbelief.
Heechul smirked. “I never said there were a lot of people on this case, did I?” he asked, and it made Yesung glower.
“No, but I was expecting more than two.”
“Three, actually. Have you forgotten Siwon already?” Heechul asked with a laugh.
“Four, now that Yesung’s on it,” one of the men piped up, and Yesung turned to look at him.
Sitting at a desk that held five computer monitors was Kim Junsu, a man Yesung had seen around headquarters more than a few times, but who he wasn’t particularly close with. He had styled, messy blonde hair that was longer on the top and shorter against the sides and back, diamond earrings, and a knack for computers that he’d turned successfully into a career.
Not to mention his enjoyment of blowing things up and how that had landed him with a job.
“Junsu-shii,” Yesung greeted after only a moment, bowing his head slightly. Junsu bowed his head back.
“Just Junsu, if you’d please, Yesung. We’re working on this case together now.” Junsu smiled, and Yesung returned it before looking over to the only other man in the room. He found himself surprised to be facing Henry Lau, the computer prodigy.
The boy was hardly twenty-two, fresh out of college, and already working on a case that was supposed to remain top secret. His entire countenance reflected his young age. He had long brown hair, left flat against his head and down the back of his neck, his bangs slightly longer on one end where they were swiped to the side over his eyes. He still had a baby face.
Henry gave him an uncertain smile. “Yesung-shii,” he greeted, much the same way Yesung had greeted Junsu. Yesung shook his head at the younger man.
“We’re all working on the same case, right?” Henry only nodded before turning back to his own computer.
“Right so, now that we’ve all been introduced,” again, Yesung sent Heechul a glare, “Kim Junsu here has been working on a reenactment of the murder on his computer for the last three days, to give us an idea of what happened. We don’t have all the facts, but we have enough. He can fill you in later.
“Henry over there has been working his magic trying to find the missing employment records of one Cho-shii, something that, at the very least, will give us motive, and possibly help us get a warrant.
“As for you, I want you to start off by burying yourself in every little piece of information we have on the case, get yourself familiar with it. Then, we’ll throw you to the sharks, so to speak.” Heechul grinned as he left, waving a dainty hand towards Yesung on his way out.
Yesung truly hated that man.
Junsu’s throat clearing caught his attention, and he turned to face the man. “Every insignificant detail can be found on that computer there,” he announced, pointing to one of the computers that sat on a long desk on the other side of the room. Yesung sighed and decided to get to work.
--
It was nearing midnight when Yesung finally shut off his computer with gritty eyes and begin his trek home, walking by Henry as he left the room, realizing the younger man hadn’t moved an inch since he’d been introduced - other than his fingers at the keyboard, at least.
He didn’t bother saying goodbye, too tired to even attempt to open his mouth, and he knew Henry wouldn’t reply anyway. The boy was even more engrossed in what he was doing than Yesung had been, and when Junsu had left an hour earlier with a cheery goodnight, Yesung almost hadn’t heard it. Henry hadn’t taken any notice at all, nor would he now of Yesung as he clicked away on his computer, eyes pinned to his computer screen as he dissected a bunch of coding that looked like a load of highly frustrating gibberish to Yesung, so Yesung moved past him without a word.
His mind was still on all the information he’d soaked in within the last few hours anyway, and he shivered before he even made it outside, wishing again that he’d had the foresight to grab his jacket out of his office before meeting with Heechul earlier that day.
He’d read through newspaper cutouts and health records, school records, and legal records, watched news clips from before and after the murder, and gone through every inch of what was in each thin case file, as well as emptied the box of evidence that had come with the Cho Kyuhyun case.
Their details were still spread out on the long desk his computer was settled at, among which he found handfuls of pictures from the fourteen year old cold case he would be working on, and the little boys bloodied clothing, burnt and ragged and nearly falling apart after so many years.
In the pictures, he’d also seen the destruction of a burnt down home at various angles, the uncovered, burnt skin of the boys legs, torso, and arms, and then of the little boy with a ventilator on a stretcher as he was carted into an ambulance to be taken to the hospital.
He never wanted to see so much blood again, nor did he wish the destruction or clear pain he’d seen on his worst enemy.
In the second file, the one Choi Siwon was working on, there’d been less photos, but they were garish none the less, quick snapshots Yesung didn’t want to know how Siwon took. Many of them were of the patients themselves, covered in bruises that Yesung got the feeling weren’t their own doing, and a few of the employees with their fingers grasping tight to patients shirts, or with their fists raised in a threatening manner. Then there were the baggies with the pills.
The drugs didn’t vary per patient, but some were smashed or ground up, presumably to be put in the patient’s food or drink, and other’s whole. Yesung didn’t recognize the name of the drug, but if he had to guess, it would be something like a tranquillizer to get the patients off their backs.
If Yesung had to hazard a guess, the lone syringe half-filled with some clear liquid was probably for the less cooperative patients, and he had no doubt that all of this was what Siwon was trying to prove - that the whole thing was a con to make money off people who couldn’t defend themselves. It made Yesung sick to his stomach to think about it, even more so to think that the man behind it all had murdered Cho Kyuhyun’s family and was trying to kill him even now.
But in all honesty, what made Yesung the most horrified were the news clips he’d watched. There weren’t that many of much importance, and many were less than a minute long, but the ones that covered the first week were the ones that caught and kept Yesung’s attention.
One of the first was of the house as it burned, and he could almost smell the scent of sulfur in the air as he’d watched. The view was from a helicopter that hovered above, completely panned in to focus on the two story house he recognized from his dream.
The grass around it and the garden on one side were already completely charred, burnt to a crisp and smoldering as the water from the fireman’s hoses hit them. The whole roof of the house had collapsed inside, flames roaring out of the dent it created, racing across and down its sides, consuming all it could and everything that was in its path.
The back door of the house was open, fire licking up its frame, and one of the long beams of the porch that held up the balcony in the back had collapsed, leaving the balcony supported by one beam, but groaning as it threatened to give way.
A voice far away from the chaotic scene rattled off what was going on, calling it a house fire and unable to tell anyone of any survivors, or even if anyone had been inside, though considering it was occurring at three o’clock in the morning, there was more possibility of that than there was not.
There was another news clip from the same night, around the same time, of the little boy. He’d been found by an old couple when he’d knocked on their door - though as they’d told it it’d been less of a knock and more of a loud collapse on their front porch.
Their house was the first house down the street the path that lead through the woods to the Cho estate came out on, and it hadn’t been hard to put two and two together. The old couple had immediately called the police upon seeing the boy, and mentioned the scorched clothing and the scent of sulfur they could already smell in the air.
Both the paramedics and the fire department had come, and, of course, the media - they were like ants at a picnic. They wouldn’t miss something as big as this for the world.
The woman on screen that he watched interviewed the old couple with the paramedics working right behind her, within the shot, as well as a few CSI. She’d moved from the old couple, to the paramedics as they lifted the boy onto a stretcher, ventilator attached to him, and one of the CSI snapping pictures for evidence, asking for the clothes not to be thrown away, but given to them.
Yesung hardly listened to the words exchanged between the paramedics and news reporter - his attention was too focused on the little boy getting fed air through the ventilator. The camera panned in for a better shot of his face, and that was when Yesung realized he was still conscious, though the delirium in his eyes suggested he wouldn’t be so for long.
But before the little boy went under, his eyes locked with the camera, appearing as if he were looking straight at him, and his lips had moved beneath the breathing mask hooked over his face.
Yesung almost hadn’t been able to see what he said, but he realized after a moment what the boy was mumbling.
“They killed them, they killed them,” over and over again. It was enough to break anyone’s heart.
The next four days broadcasts were short updates on the case and the health of Cho Kyuhyun. After he’d been admitted to the Seoul hospital, it was reported that he’d gone into a coma.
News reporters told the public repeatedly that there had been four others in the house that night. The father, the mother, a daughter, and a baby, all believed to have been murdered before the house was set to burn.
The CSI on the case reported signs of arson, and among the photos in the case file were those of the fire trail. Yesung was no expert, but neither were the men who’d set the fire, if the very obvious trail lines were any indication.
The reporters also took to flocking outside of the Seoul Hospital Kyuhyun was being cared in, making any announcements from in front of it, the building an expanse behind them.
It was on the fourth day of Cho Kyuhyun’s seemingly endless coma that Yesung watched a news cast where a lady he’d seen often was making another update. Kyuhyun’s condition was said to be good, though he was still in a comatose state, and as long as bandages were kept over the long second degree burns he’d suffered on his torso, arms, and legs, until they were healed, he would be fine.
Aside from the coma at least.
She was just signing off when the hospital doors burst open behind her, and she turned when she heard the screaming.
It wasn’t distinguishable at first, and all Yesung could make out was Kyuhyun wrapped in bandages, though dressed, and held with his arms behind his back by two big nurses. His head was one of the only places that wasn’t wrapped in gauze.
The camera panned in on him, trying to get a closer shot of the boy, and as it did, it became apparent what the violently struggling boy was screaming.
He was screaming a bloody death on the murderers of his family, screaming to let him go, screaming he would claw his way out if he had to, and the sound of his words were harsh, grating, and so pain filled it was amazing the boy was still standing up right.
That’s when he looked at the camera - for the second time appearing as if he were looking directly at Yesung - his eyes piercing, a haunted brown with depths that swirled with his insanity.
The look had sent a shiver up Yesung’s spine, and goosebumps racing over his skin.
There were ghosts in those eyes.
Even thinking about it now raised goosebumps as Yesung climbed into his car and drove off for home, mind still whirring with all that he’d learned. He’d watched news clips from before the murder also, as well as read newspaper clippings.
By this point, he almost felt as if he knew the little boy from his nightmare. He knew about the competitions he’d won, the band concerts he’d performed in, the singing competitions he’d participated in. He knew about the wrist he’d sprained, the leg he’d broken, even that he’d gotten chicken pox when he was a baby.
They were all things you’d know about a childhood friend, and Yesung knew it all from reading about it. Every little thing Cho Kyuhyun was mentioned in was part of the files on the computer he’d been looking through earlier that day, and all it served to do was break his heart even more.
The murder of Kyuhyun’s family had taken everything from him, and Yesung wished he could give it all back.
He drove home wondering what things would have been like for the boy if his family had never gotten tied up with SM Industries.
--
His breathing was harsh as he crawled with his belly to the floor and his back to the pipes beneath the house, one arm covering his head from damage, the other dragging him through the crawl space, constantly switching when the pain got to be too much for him as the fire attacked him, heated the metal his skin was forced to come in contact with.
His whole body ached as he crawled, tears streamed down his cheeks, and he could feel the licks of flame biting at his stomach, knew his legs were scarred where harsh burns were put out by the dirt beneath him, and he couldn’t help but wonder when this torture would end, even as he found himself scrambling out from beneath the underbrush, the hedges, of the house that covered the small open flap of the house’s skirt that workmen used to enter and exit when work needed to be done.
He was barely able to scramble to his feet with the pain eating at him, jarring him to his very bones, but he managed, and with the heat of the burning house behind him cheering him on, he took off at a dead run down the path he was oh so familiar with, into the woods that surrounded the little meadow that made up his home, and down into the city of Seoul, towards the street the path way led into, even as he listened to the excited cheering of one of the three men behind him, and the scared whinnies of the horses his family kept in a corral just down the path out the back of his house.
His heart raced as the woods grew closer to him, and he jumped, arching into the trees and bushes that were a safe haven, just able to hear the heavy footfalls of the two men chasing after him, not bothering to even shout at him. They had all the confidence in the world, even as he knew they wouldn’t catch him in the woods he knew like the back of his hand.
Even so, the cold fear that they would catch him before he could get away, before he could do something that would save his family, in any little way possible, raced through his veins. He didn’t kid himself, as he took off through the dense trees, dancing around the foliage that would give away his position, that any of them were alive, but he could hope, at the very least, that he might get lucky, and he might save even one of them if he were only brave enough to get away and get to the police.
And even if he couldn’t save one of them, he would put away the bastards who’d killed them.
He barely contained the sobs within him, barely kept them from bursting through his lips, but his chest hurt like mad, and his heart felt like it was going to give out on him and kill him before he could do anything for his family. The grief was just too much.
And he knew, if he looked down, he’d even find his mothers blood and bits of her brain all down his front, in his hair, covering his face.
He’d even spat a piece of her out earlier, when his eyes had been wide and scared, his ears had rung with the sound of a gunshot, and he’d dove under one, two, three men’s legs and out the door he’d burst in through, running for any little place he could find to hide.
That place had been the linen closet with the hole in the bottom that he could just fit through that his mother hid with the laundry basket. He’d heard the men call for him, heard as one of them told the others not to worry about it, to just start the fire, and when he’d heard the first crackles of flame, smelt the beginnings of his house burning, he’d thrown the basket against the wall and out of the way, not caring that he’d be heard, and wiggled through the hole and under the house.
He felt more tears trickle down his face at the memory of abandoning his family to the flames that would eat them alive, but he kept running, aiming for the one place he knew he had to get to if he wanted to be safe, the one place the men wouldn’t follow him into, wouldn’t look for him in if they didn’t hear, see, know him to be there.
He heard the sound of them stumbling through the trees and bushes behind him, much farther to the left then he was, and he couldn’t help his small, pain filled smile when he heard them getting further and further back in the darkness of the woods, couldn’t help but chance a glance at the pale night sky with its big, full moon gazing down at him, and tell his mother, his father, his sister, his baby brother, that he was almost there; that he’d never let them get him.
It was the smell of marsh and mud that alerted him first to the fact that he was almost there, almost to the far banks of the lake that stood between him and the town of Seoul. Through a break in the trees, he could see a few feet below the rock he stood on the black surface of the lake that shimmered like gold in the daylight, but gleamed like black satin in the thick of the night, but he didn’t stop, didn’t pause as he kept running, jumping onto the log he knew well, grabbing his legs tight against him in the cannon ball position as he jumped off as he and his sister had done so often before, before plunging nearly soundlessly into the depths of the water below.
The sound below the water was louder then he knew it would be above, the momentum and height of his jump, the tight, air packed seal he’d made his body into, muffling the sound of his weight hitting the water, the way he and his sister had practiced over and over and over again.
The frigid water burned against his scalded, peeling skin, but he welcomed its shadow, welcomed the fact that it would keep him safe as nothing else would as he lay wrapped up tight in the blanket it created that was better than any hiding place he could have found above.
He could only hope the men were father to the left than he’d been, and that they were taking the downwardly sloping path to the left of the cliff he’d jumped from, staring at the panoramic view of the lake to their right. He could only hope they’d move down fast, that they wouldn’t stop to wonder if he’d gone under because he knew his breath would only last until the other bank, until he’d swam to the surface, and even as he thought to try for longer, he knew he’d never last long enough if their gazes lingered, waiting for his head to break the surface of the water.
And with the way his breathing had puffed above, he wondered if he’d even make it that far, but he did, just barely, and he held on tighter, feeling his mind go woozy at the oxygen deprivation, until he knew he would go mad if he stayed down any longer.
Popping out from beneath the surface of the water, he took in a deep lung full of air, clinging to the lake’s bank as he gazed around himself, at the long pathway to his left, finding no one. He scrambled from the water, his clothing sopping wet but no less blood stained, no less burnt, than before, and scrambled for the trees, not caring that it was possible they were just ahead of him, waiting to ambush him - his mind was too preoccupied with the idea that they were behind him, possibly just beneath the waters surface as he’d been just moments before.
It was the sound of growling voices that finally had him coming to a halt, shaking from the cold, throbbing from the pain, but too afraid to move in case they heard him, found him. He was too close now to get taken down, his vision was beginning to blur, but nothing mattered except getting through the last of the trees and to the first house on the street.
He heard them beginning to move then, heard them trudging back through the woods the way they’d come, and caught a snippet of conversation as he stood flush against a tree one of them brushed up against.
“…gonna kill us when he finds out we let one of them get away…”
The words hardly filtered through, but he felt a beat of elation, even as he waited, tense and nervous, on the verge on unconsciousness, black spots appearing before his eyes, until the sound of their footsteps had mostly faded, and then he was off again, down the path to the street right outside the woods that stood like a sentinel around his now burning home.
He stumbled more than once, went crashing through brush they way he hadn’t before, and could only pray the men were too far away to hear him, because his exhausted body was sending him plummeting forward whether he wanted it to or not, and he knew there was no stopping it.
Especially not with the way his mind was whirring in dizzying circles.
He barely made it to the doorstep of the first house outside of the woods, hand stretched out before him to grasp at the dark wood of the door, before he collapsed, nearly on his face if his hand hadn’t been there to catch him. He rolled, blinking rapidly against the dark spots in his vision, as the world around him spun.
He begged his body to move even as he felt nausea curl in his stomach, but it wouldn’t cooperate, wouldn’t answer to his call. He couldn’t stand up, and after a moment, he realized he couldn’t feel his arms or legs, and even as he opened his mouth to scream for help, the movement felt sluggish and slow.
His head throbbed, and he groaned against the sharp pain that begged to knock him out, and then a light turned on over him, shining in his eyes, turning the black spots white. He heard a door open, but even with his eyes open, he couldn’t seem to see anything. It was all so blurry, colors vivid, but shapes indistinguishable.
“Please, they killed them…they killed them please…help…they killed them…” he rasped over and over again at what he hoped were people standing over him, but he wasn’t even sure the words were leaving his throat.
He started to feel his hope die, and thought he felt tears as they coursed down his cheeks, but he was numb. Everything was numb, even as he cried. In his mind, he begged his parent’s forgiveness.
That’s when he saw her - the bright silhouette of his mother against the darkness of the night sky, brighter even than the lamp light shining in his eyes. He had no idea what was going on around him, but his mother was there, and the minute he saw her, nothing else seemed to matter.
--
Yesung’s mouth opened on a choked cry as he took startled gulps of air, sitting up suddenly in bed from where he’d been laying moments before. He could make no sound as he panted against the bed covers and keeled over, nausea the first thing he experienced after the threat of not being able to breathe.
He threw off his covers then, sitting back up as well, and fanned at himself when he realized he was covered from heat to toe in sweat, dying from a nonexistent heat in his bedroom. He shivered despite it though, and shook against the fear, the pain, the grief he’d experienced in the dream.
If he’d had enough breath in his lungs, he knew he’d be in the bathroom, heaving what he’d had for dinner, but he could hardly breathe as it was as he gripped his head at the sudden onslaught of pain he’d awoken with.
Goosebumps covered his skin as he gasped for breath, and he shivered again, a draft of cold air only making the post nightmare jitters worse.
These dreams will be the death of me, he thought, even as he let out a choked moan for what he’d seen, for what the boy, Kyuhyun, had been forced to live through.
--
Masterlist/Character Information