Chapter Text
Seoul Psychiatric Hospital
Morning
(present day)
“Yoongi-ssi, if you don’t mind, state your name and age clearly for me.”
Yoongi shuffles in his chair, trying to get comfortable on the unforgiving metal somehow. He feels like a prisoner under interrogation in this room, all slate-gray walls and harsh overhead lighting that burns the backs of his eyes. He supposes, all things considered, that’s not far-off from the truth of things, although these people assure him interrogation isn’t the right word. What was it that they had called it? A conclusive interview.
“My name is Min Yoongi,” he states, terse on every word. “I’m 31 years old.”
“Good.” The fox-eyed agent on the right shuffles her papers into a neat stack, then steeples her fingers together as she looks at him. “Do you know why you’re here, Yoongi?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Could you tell me why?”
“To give a statement on something I’ve already discussed in length.” His sour mood must leech into his tone because the younger agent - Yoongi is sure her name is Choi - gives him a disappointed frown and exchanges a glance with her partner.
“It’s customary to follow up after a period of time,” Choi tells him patiently. “Some details of the case are still unclear, and you can help us by walking us through the events from start to finish–”
“Because you think I’m crazy,” Yoongi interrupts, leaning forward intently. “You’re waiting for me to contradict something I said last time so you can seize the chance to mark me down as verifiably insane and tell everyone ‘ I told you so’. Well, I’m telling you now, I’ll say the exact same things I told you last time–”
“Yoongi,” Choi’s partner, a balding agent called Pak, interjects. “We’re just looking to run through your account again in hopes that it gives us all a better understanding of the events that transpired during those months. You can do that, can’t you?”
Yoongi inhales deeply, fiddling with his thumbs. He sits back in his chair again. There’s no use getting angry now; his frustration is futile. “Yes. I can do that.”
“Good.” Pak presses a button on the recording device sitting between them. “Go ahead and start.”
“I don’t know where you want me to start, agent.”
“From the beginning. Wherever you feel like things began will be fine,” Pak tells him pleasantly. “Whenever you’re ready, Yoongi.”
—
Seoul Metropolitan Police Department
Afternoon
(14 months prior)
Yoongi isn’t depressed. He’s never been depressed. “Boredom,” more realistically, has to be the word most befitting to the sense of restlessness he feels as though he’s wading through day in and day out.
If he’s being honest, it’s not even boredom so much as it is frustration. His greatest struggle is eternally grappling with the fact that he isn’t at all where he thought he would be at the ripe old age of thirty years. If you’d spoken to him closer to a decade ago, he would have told you his life was laid in front of him like a perfect array of puzzle pieces just waiting to be pressed into their places. He’d completed his military service immediately following high school graduation, was discharged with excellent marks, and joined the police academy to continue putting his strengths to good use. There was a girl, too -always the ideal girl who cinches together the happy ending like fine ribbon ends pulled taut into a bow.
Only - she hadn’t been the ideal girl. And the happy ending didn’t look the way Yoongi had envisioned it. The abrupt halt to his marriage looked like arguments that stretched long and uncomfortable across days, a hefty stack of legal paperwork, and sliding his golden wedding band off his finger to be tucked away in a drawer and never looked at again.
Yoongi isn’t depressed. He’s underwhelmed , underachieving and quite possibly washed up without any real accomplishments to his name.
“Aish, hyung…are you listening to me right now?”
Yoongi glances up from his lap to find Jeongguk's concerned face looming in front of his own, brow creased and mouth tugged down into a frown. He wears this doe-eyed look of his that Yoongi has long since grown accustomed to seeing, though it used to take him aback when this little Bambi of a boy - a man really, a very young, very obedient man - was first assigned to him as his junior partner. Yoongi is well aware now that one shouldn’t be fooled by Jeongguk’s innocent demeanor; he has a streak of brilliance, the bodily strength of a small rhinoceros, and he’s a damn good detective. Yoongi would know; he trained Jeongguk himself.
He leans back in his rolling chair and raps his knuckles on the desk, sighing. Jeongguk was saying something a moment ago in that insistent, lisped voice, the lazy Busan satoori he dips into when he isn’t trying to impress anyone. “No, yeah, no, I’m listening, Jeongguk. Just repeat that last bit?”
Jeongguk’s brow furrows, and he rolls his eyes. “I said , maybe it’s time you put this whole case thing on the back burner for a while. I don’t think it’s going anywhere right now, you know?”
Ah yes, the case. The Case. Yoongi’s unsanctioned passion project, the culmination of countless hours on and off the clock assembling information, pulling files and connecting the metaphorical dots in his head.
Yoongi tips forwards, resting his forehead next to his keyboard and letting out a drawn-out groan to vent his annoyance. “I really thought this time they’d understand. Months of piecing together information - months - and the board refuses to validate it. Why ?” Yoongi lifts back up to glance at Jeongguk, narrowing his eyes to make sure the younger one is reacting appropriately. “You know I’m onto something, don’t you?”
Jeongguk reaches for the cup of coffee on his desk (it’s long since gone cold, Yoongi knows; he brought it in personally before his hearing this morning) and takes a considerably long sip. “I-I think you see the patterns, hyung. I really think you do.”
Yoongi makes a sour expression. “That sounds patronizing.”
“It isn’t!” Jeongguk jumps, corrects his words in a hurry. “It’s just, if you’re looking for something, and you really want to see it, you will see it, regardless of whether it’s there. It’s not your fault, it’s just how the human brain works.”
“Yeah, thanks, I feel much better knowing you think I’m inventing all this in my head, but at least it’s something everyone does, right?” Yoongi pushes himself to sit up straight again, prodding at the soggy, half-eaten sandwich sitting on his mouse pad, but feeling uninspired to eat it.
“I think–” Jeongguk steeples his fingers together diplomatically. Like a therapist who’s just assessed Yoongi and now has to break some sort of unfortunate diagnosis to him. Jeongguk gets like this a lot; as one of Yoongi’s few resident friends, he must be aware of the fact that he’s one of the rare people who can get through to Yoongi, and he makes the most of it. “You want this all to be more fantastical than it is, and I get it. Realizing that 90% of being a detective is just mountains of paperwork feels like a shitty pill to swallow, at least in my experience. Maybe you’ll get used to it, but maybe you won’t, and that’s okay. Maybe this isn’t where you’re meant to end up?”
“Are you telling your superior to quit, Jeongguk-ssi?” Yoongi asks, knowing full well that isn’t Jeongguk’s intention in the slightest.
“ No , I’m saying I want you to be doing something that makes you happy, or at least fulfilled in some way. Even if that means I have to be reassigned to some corporate, machismo asshole, and no one brings me coffee in the mornings or baked goods on Friday. I don’t want you to feel trapped here, alright?”
“I don’t feel trapped here,” Yoongi grumbles. “I feel trapped by our fucking department directors.”
They’re pricks, every last one of them. Strictly by the book in the worst ways possible. If it isn’t something they’re absolutely required to deal with, they’ll kick it under the rug. Which is why, for the third time in a row, they’re dismissing Yoongi’s appeal to look into The Case, his case, a sly string of murders that he knows are connected.
“Different MOs,” the department head, Gwan Hyunwoo, had told him this morning in his closing statement. “ Not even slightly enough circumstantial evidence to believe that we’re dealing with the same offender. This is your third hearing, Detective Min. Following the conclusion of this meeting, if you’re unable to set this false narrative aside and operate as needed in your daily tasks, we’ll have no choice but to suspend you in dereliction of duty.”
Fucking dereliction of duty. Yoongi doubts that anyone here works harder than he does. Not only does he complete his regularly assigned tasks, he works his goddamn ass off day and night following every movement of The Shadow.
The Shadow: because Yoongi is a detective, not an artist, and he couldn’t be bothered to come up with a more creative moniker when ‘The Shadow’ gets the job done fine. He moves like a shadow, impossible to pin down and difficult to discern, but Yoongi knows, he absolutely knows, that this person exists and continues to strike again and again, unseen and undetected, despite Yoongi’s best effort to draw attention to him.
Wherever Shadow is, he’s probably laughing about the whole thing, watching the board of the Seoul Metro Police Department cast aside well-assembled evidence against him without a second thought for the third time.
“And Gwan’s new assistant, that book licking dickhead with the nice hair, what’s up with him ?” Yoongi announces almost explosively, sitting up in earnest to turn to Jeongguk with an air of indignance. “ Kim Taehyung. Everyone’s saying he transferred from a different department, but don’t you think it would have been a more popular decision to promote one of us who has actually been working in this vein for a while?”
Jeongguk’s mouth pinches while he watches Yoongi speak, until evidently he decides he’s heard enough because he reaches across the gap between their desks and pats Yoongi’s forearm. “I think you’re focusing on the wrong issues here. I just want to ask- no, I need you to let this whole Shadow thing simmer down for a while. Okay?”
“I can’t .”
“If you don’t, you’re going to get suspended,” Jeongguk replies insistently, dropping his voice conspicuously quieter on the last word, as if he fears their office mates peering over cubicle walls to listen in. “If you don’t want to quit, you probably don’t want to get suspended, hyung,” Jeongguk tells him, worry still furrowed deep into his brow. He takes a deep breath and straightens up his expression, fixing Yoongi with what Yoongi thinks is his best stern look. “Just step back, and maybe one day something will happen, and you can revisit, yeah?”
Yeah , Yoongi wants to snort derisively. Not a fucking chance . Yoongi didn’t waste six months of late nighters and scrutinizing report after report from any and all departments just to throw away everything he’s assembled so far and leave it for later. If no one’s going to step up and help him with this, so be it. He hasn’t gotten a helping hand this far, and that didn’t stop him. Maybe it slowed him down considerably, but slow work is better than doing nothing. This doesn’t end here.
“Hyung? Promise me?”
Yoongi picks up his soggy sandwich and tosses it into the trash can decisively. “Sure, Jeonggukie,” he lies through his teeth. “I promise.
—
Min Yoongi’s Residence
Night
Yoongi’s resolution didn’t play out the way he’d envisioned. After the third appeal, he’d told himself he’d truly take matters into his own hands with the resources he had available. Meaning he won’t just assemble folders of information on Shadow, he was prepared - determined , even - to go behind Director Gwan’s authority and personally pursue whatever leads he came across. The only problem was…there weren’t many leads to speak of.
It’s been three weeks and nothing’s changed. It’s not for his lack of trying; Yoongi has monitored every case he’s gotten his hands on, but there’s been no apparent movement from The Shadow.
He contemplates asking Jeongguk if he can look through his case files and see if there’s anything interesting in there, but he doesn’t want to raise any alarms with his younger counterpart. After all, Jeongguk thinks he’s put this little project aside for now, and Yoongi would like for it to stay that way.
He returns home to his apartment after 9 PM. It’s longer than he’d usually be in the office, but he got swamped filling out reports that he let pile up over the last few days. Yoongi won’t be caught with any sort of dirt on him in regard to dereliction of duty, even if that means overextending himself to stay caught up at every turn.
Yoongi kicks his shoes off in the hallway, not bothering to put them in the closet, and ambles into his kitchen with his coat still on. The past few months, he never takes his jacket off as soon as he gets home. He’s had this weird sort of paranoid vision fueled by too many action movies that one day he’ll return home and Shadow himself will be waiting around the corner with a knife, yelling something about how Yoongi should have just minded his own business before brutally stabbing him.
And one might ask, ‘ What’s a jacket going to do in the unlikely event that you get stabbed?’
Well, the answer is absolutely nothing, but in the same way children hide under their blankets seeking protection from unseen bogeymen, Yoongi childishly chooses to believe that his thin army jacket would somehow render him invincible to blades when the time calls for it.
He pulls a ramen packet from his pantry and starts a pot of water boiling. Hunger barely calls to him, but he hasn’t had anything since breakfast, so he might as well try to eat. As soon as Yoongi tosses the noodles and seasoning packet into the water, he figures it’s been a reasonable amount of time and pads into the hallway to take his jacket off and hang it up.
The sound of his phone vibrating sounds off loudly as soon as he pulls off half his coat, making him knock his elbow into the door jamb painfully.
“Shit,” Yoongi swears, shaking his arm out of the second sleeve and dropping the jacket on the floor before making a grab for his phone. The screen is lit up with the contact name Jackson, informing Yoongi that his main connection at the security and monitoring subset of their department is trying to reach him. It’s called a sub-department, but in reality it’s actually just Jackson sitting in a basement surrounded by computer monitors, pouring over CCTV footage and attempting to pull faces or spot tucked away details. He doesn’t know about Yoongi’s personal mission with The Shadow, but he does know that Yoongi flagged a series of particular murders that he links to Shadow and asked Jackson to let him know immediately if any new information surfaced.
“You’ve reached Detective Min,” he answers formally, kicking his shoes aside and plopping down on the couch.
“Yoongi-hyung.” Jackson sounds like he’s shaking his head. “It’s just me, you don’t have to play proper.”
Yoongi makes a face. As a veteran of their department, Yoongi finds himself reflexively enforcing the strictness of his image in order to maintain being taken seriously. Although it’s not like any of that is doing him a great deal of good these days, so maybe Jackson has a point. “Whatever,” he replies, rolling his eyes. “Do you have anything for me?”
“Yeah, actually. I’m a bit late, I was swamped in office all day, but I have something I think you’ll like.” In the background, Jackson can be heard shuffling through papers, and then comes the scrape of a rolling chair. “You know how the security cameras on Mr. Dokgo’s residence were disabled the night he was murdered? Well I got my hands on the actual cameras and sure enough, no footage. But , that paranoid bastard was smart enough to get the good ones, the smart ones. Even when disabled, they have a sort of fail-safe programming that runs on battery power for a few hours as backup.”
Yoongi sits up quickly. “Are you telling me you pulled footage of someone in the residence that night? You got that motherfucker on camera?”
“Sort of, like all things, it’s not that simple. The frame quality declines as the battery packs lose charge, I scanned over all the footage and towards the end I got about three frames of a masked figure leaving through the smaller staff entrance driveway on the east side of the house and heading right down Gamsup-doro . Now this is where it gets sort of…rough around the edges. I figured if I could just get into the street cameras I could follow him till he got to a car or something, then we could pull plates and registration tags. Since he didn’t expect to be on camera leaving the residence in the first place, I doubted he would be taking precautions not to be sighted after leaving the property.”
“Do you have permission to be cracking into city surveillance cameras?” Yoongi inquires suspiciously, an antagonistic note in his voice. He knows Jackson gets almost as overzealous about his work as Yoongi himself does, enough that he’s willing to bend the definitions of a rule in his favor when the situation calls for it.
“No but - listen, I’m trying to help you, Min Yoongi–”
“I’m kidding, Jackson. You know I’m not writing up a report for this shit, tell me what you found.”
“Well, I hopped from camera to camera, and it took awhile because I had to switch between footage streams every time he took a turn to guess which direction he went, but I tailed him all the way to that rave nightclub in Gangnam-Gu , you know, Aurum? He went in the front of the building and I swear I poured over the footage from the rest of the night, but I never saw him leave. There are no surveillance cameras in the back of the building, so it’s possible he left that way.”
Jackson sighs, short and sharp. There’s a ruffling sound that sounds like his own hand pushing through his hair before he speaks again. “Look, I know it’s not a perfect lead. It’s guesses on guesses, he could be anyone, an innocent bystander even, wrong place at the wrong time. But every staff member of Mr. Dokgo’s has been pulled and accounted for, and he’s not one of them. I was able to pull higher quality stills of him from surveillance footage, at the very least you have a new face to look into- or, half a face. He’s wearing a mask.”
“No, no, this is perfect,” Yoongi stands up quickly. “You’re a fucking genius, Jackson. I need you to send me those stills as soon as possible.”
“I’ve already emailed you the file, it should arrive in your inbox any second.”
“Perfect, Jackson, you’re so- I couldn’t do this without you.” If the man were standing in front of him, Yoongi would probably kiss him on the face. “You’re the best, thank you. And let me know if you find anything else.”
“You know I will,” Jackson replies through a yawn.
“ Aurum, it’s open every night, yeah?” Yoongi glances at his watch. It’s not even 10pm. He has plenty of time.
“Yeah, but listen, man. That’s a weird place, it’s supposed to be high end, and you know that’s where the shadiest shit happens. You don’t wanna show up there at night all by your lonesome.”
“I’m a fucking cop, Jackson,” Yoongi groans. It’s his job to show up places and poke around and deal with the consequences.
“Cop or no cop, I hear some skeevy rumors about what goes down there. Word on the street you know? You’re better off going in the morning. Way less of a crowd, I hear morning ragers aren’t too popular with the nightclub audience.”
Yoongi sits back down slowly, tapping his foot. He’s never been patient; being asked to slow down and not barrel into things impulsively is his greatest nemesis. He’s got new information, and he’s supposed to just not pounce on it?
“Tomorrow morning, yeah?” Jackson repeats.
“Fine,” Yoongi huffs unhappily. “Tomorrow morning.”
“Good going, dude. Get some rest now.”
“Yeah sure, g’night Jackson.”
Yoongi tosses his phone on the couch as he hangs up. The house smells slightly acrid, and he realizes his ramen on the stove has boiled over and burned into a nasty sludge. That’s fine, he wasn’t hungry anyway, and he certainly isn’t hungry now. He’s got too many thoughts running through his head to be hungry. He almost doesn’t want to believe it for fear of getting his own hopes dashed, but there’s a very real possibility that The Shadow has been caught on camera for the first time ever.
Tomorrow, Yoongi goes to Aurum to find out what business he has there. Who he is. What he does.
Tomorrow.
—
Aurum Nightclub, Gangnam-gu
Morning
For a high-end joint, Yoongi thinks Aurum is something of a shithole: an industrial building tucked in the heart of the district, nondescript, with a sole blue metal door functioning as its barely-marked entrance, but that doesn’t seem to matter to its patrons. The people that come here know exactly what they’re looking for.
Aurum is a sort of open secret operating in the heart of Seoul. Jackson was correct in his claim that shady business dealings go down here: drugs, gambling, prostitution, you name it. But it’s the kind of shit that happens on the streets anyway. As long as Aurum is here, it consolidates a handful of it into one location that the police department can keep a bored eye on and intervene if anything gets too out of hand. Aurum and its clients mind their business and keep to themselves for the most part, so they’re left alone until someone acts out of line.
It’s just past 9:00 in the morning, and the place is all but deserted. It’s a cavernous single-room space lined with a second story balcony. There’s a bar on one side and a stage on the other, occupied by two scantily clad women twirling unhurriedly on steel poles. They don’t seem to be putting on a show for anyone in particular - the only other people here are a sour looking female bartender and three glum men in business suits hunched over at the bar.
Yoongi approaches the counter slowly, feeling oddly anxious. He’s not dressed in uniform, as Jackson warned him he’d sooner get information dressed as a patron than as a cop. Apparently, cops aren’t appreciated in illegal underground rave clubs - who would have thought?
He did his best to dress the part: ditching his usual slacks and uniform coat for tattered blue jeans, a plain t-shirt and a worn-down hoodie he scrounged from the back of his closet, but he still feels like an imposter. Like they’ll see right through him and kick him out for being a dirty, nosy cop, and then he’ll lose his only lead.
“Can I help you, mister?”
Yoongi glances up. The bartender is looking at him, hip cocked to the side, smacking her strongly scented bubblegum in an unenthusiastic manner.
“Yeah, uh, hold on-” Yoongi digs in his pocket for the pictures Jackson emailed him last night. He filtered through them about an hour ago, picked the best one and printed it. His thinly veiled guise is to pretend he’s searching for a friend who’s gone missing and pray whoever the man in this photo is, he isn’t someone easily recognizable in a way that will blow Yoongi’s cover.
He slides the image over the counter to the bartender and raps his knuckles on the polished, wooden surface. “I’m looking for a friend of mine, he was last seen in the neighborhood. He look familiar to you?”
The woman looks at the picture, then up and Yoongi, and back down at the picture again, her expression as sour as ever. For a single tense moment, Yoongi is sure she’ll call him on his bullshit, and he’ll have no backup plan. And then she tosses her towel on the counter and turns away from him, busying herself with the rack of dishes on the back counter.
“Yeah, sure, I’ve seen him a few times.”
“Yeah?” Yoongi straightens up, his heart kicking up to beat a little faster.
“He was here a couple nights ago, and then again a while before that. Not a regular regular, but not a first timer either.” The woman grabs her discarded towel and starts scrubbing down tall glasses as she speaks.
“Did he…talk to anyone?”
“‘Sfar as I know, he was here to see one of our boys. Pays well for it.”
“Boys?” Yoongi repeats, puzzled.
She glances back, giving him a deadpan look. “Prostitutes. He sees a prostitute here.”
Oh. Yoongi should have seen that one coming, given the location he’s at and all. “Is he…here, by any chance? The prostitute?”
“I can’t give you info on who’s working right now, that’s a safety hazard. Aurum puts a lot of effort into maintaining the care and security of our dolls, we’re not just some whorehouse.”
“No, I understand. That’s really good, I’m sure they um- appreciate that. But if I could speak to him, that would help me a lot.”
The bartender turns around to face him fully, heaving a sigh. “Listen, mister, I can’t just set up meet and greets with the entertainment. You pay to see them, or you don’t see them at all.”
“No, no, it’s not like that,” Yoongi backtracks quickly, realizing this woman probably thinks he’s running a cheap scheme to get in with a prostitute for free. “I’d just really like a moment to talk, only talk, with him. It’s important. He could know something I don’t.”
“I’m sorry. We just don’t run the place like that. It’s not my call, it’s the rules.”
“Please,” Yoongi swallows thickly. It’s not hard to feign desperation, this is his only lead. He can’t afford to let it slip through his fingers. “Every minute I waste trying to find him, someone else could be getting ahead of me. He’s my friend, I want to see him come home, but I can’t do that if you don’t help me right now.”
Yoongi blinks immediately following his appeal, somewhat impressed by his own believability. The plea must truly be convincing, because the woman’s expression softens slightly for the first time.
“Kid,” she murmurs. “The guy has clearly got a lot of money, I doubt he’s in any danger he can’t take care of.”
“Ma’am, all due respect, but the fact that he’s in possession of money is exactly why someone would target him.”
It’s a point that can’t exactly be argued, and the bartender visibly caves, tossing down her dishrag. “Fine, you go in this back room here, and you have ten minutes to talk with him. If I find out you tried anything funny, I’ll blacklist you from stepping foot in here again, you hear me? And this is off the record to anyone else.”
Perfect , Yoongi thinks silently. Off the record is exactly how I want it . He nods earnestly and follows her as she flips the end of the countertop up to make a little walkway and ushers him into a narrow room that looks like nothing more than a broom closet with a card table, two folding chairs and a saggy looking mini fridge.
“Wait here a moment,” she murmurs. “I’ll call him out. Don’t try anything, I’m serious.”
“I won’t,” Yoongi swears. “Thank you.”
The bartender disappears, shutting the door firmly behind her and leaving Yoongi on his own. He takes a seat in one of the rickety chairs and taps his fingernails on the table anxiously.
He isn’t sure he expected to make it this far into the building - he had prepared to be rejected at first sight, or at the very most, told that no one recognizes the man in his picture - but here he is, about to interrogate the prostitute who seems to have slept with him.
The door clicks open after no more than a minute or two, making Yoongi start and raise his head to look at the person entering. At first glance, Yoongi is immediately aware of (and somewhat humiliated by) the way his jaw drops open at the mere sight of him. The visitor’s tanned skin seems to glow without effort, as if there’s light inside him trying to seep out of his pores. It gives a visual contrast to his pitch black hair that curls slightly at the ends, framing his face like some sort of halo. Angelic, Yoongi thinks distantly. And yet his eyes are dark with awareness, intelligently calculating and indicative of the fact that he’s no spineless waif in distress, looking to be saved. Beneath his keen eyes and delicate, angular features, the newcomer wears nothing more than a pink silk robe that ends at the tops of his thighs and ties loosely at the waist in a deep V that leaves most of his golden chest on display.
It’s all Yoongi can do to close his mouth and stop staring like a prepubescent boy seeing pornography for the first time as the other man pulls out the chair opposite to him and takes a seat in a way that’s graceful but almost bored. Like his time here is being wasted, and he already knows it.
Yoongi clears his throat, rearranging himself in his chair. “Hello. Thank you for coming. I wanted to speak with you about–”
“Your friend, I know,” the man finishes for him. “Risu already told me.” His voice is delicate, carefully spoken, each word intentional and well-thought-out. He folds his arms over his chest and leans back in his chair, the ghost of a smug smile settling onto his pink lips. “But you’re out of luck, because I don’t talk to cops.”
Yoongi blinks, more thrown off by that statement than he would have been if the prostitute had reached over and physically shoved him. “I’m sorry?”
“I think you heard me. You think I can’t tell? Most people don’t know it, but they’re shit at hiding their emotions. Your thoughts place themselves everywhere, not just in what you say, but how you dress, the way you hold yourself, even the way you style your fucking hair. And, you know what? No one appears more entitled or egotistical than police officers. I can tell it just from the way you sit there. So yeah, I’m gonna guess ‘cop’. Am I wrong?”
Fucking hell, he looks smart, but Yoongi didn't expect him to be so unblinkingly bold about it . On one hand, he could try to play it off and pretend the man is mistaken, but he clearly possesses some sixth sense that Yoongi lacks and that could continue to backfire. Which means the only move left is to embrace the cop angle and pray not a single word of this tracks back to the department.
He pulls his shoulders back and straightens up, reaching into his back pocket and pulling his badge and officer ID card out. “Fine. I’m a cop. And you’re now on record in a regional murder investigation. Under Section C, Line 56 of National Investigational Code, you’re obligated to tell the truth to the best of your ability when questioned, lest you face charges of deliberately withholding information. By itself that’s already a serious crime, but I would especially think a prostitute like yourself wouldn’t want to be written up given the…illegal nature of your work. It would be a shame if you were to face time behind bars for that, wouldn’t it?”
The man’s ingénue face curls into a glare that somehow still manages to look beautiful on him. “You wouldn’t do that, Aurum and the local police force have had underground deals running for years that ensure the place runs undisturbed.”
Yoongi leans forward, locking eyes with the other man. “I don’t have to bring down the entire establishment in order to carry out a specific vendetta against you that would ensure you spend the next decade or so locked up. In all honesty, I don’t care if you’re a prostitute, I don’t have a personal agenda to make your life difficult, but I will if you’re causing problems for me. So, tell me now, do you still not talk to cops?”
The man uncrosses and recrosses his arms, his nostrils flaring unhappily. Yoongi is secretly impressed with himself, thanking years of training in interrogation and poring over district and federal law for carrying him while he bullshits his way through this conversation.
“If I talk, how do I know you won’t run back to your department as soon as you have what you want just to report me?”
“Well, for starters, you could believe me when I say I don’t want to deal with a mountain of paperwork just to drag in some prostitute who isn’t hurting anyone after you already gave me what I wanted. I’m dealing with a murder investigation here, do you really think you’re the most pressing issue at hand?”
The man looks affronted at the thought of not being the most important matter on the table, but shrugs it off. “I guess not,” he acquiesces, somewhat bitter. “I’ll answer what I can - but sweetheart, I’m only a whore who works here, I’m not some beacon of insider knowledge.”
“Any information is better than nothing at all,” Yoongi replies quickly, digging in his back pocket for a notepad and pen. “You can start with your name, in case I need to reach out to you again for any reason.”
The other man leans back in his chair, folding his arms over his chest so that the wide silk sleeves slip down to his elbows. “I’d rather you didn’t do that. I think I’ll be fine doing this off the record.”
“If you wanted it off the record, you would have been better off answering my questions from the start. It’s a bit late for that now. Your name, please.”
He pulls the inside of his cheek in to chew on it, staring down Yoongi with murder in his eyes. It’s evident that he doesn’t enjoy being told what to do - a strange trait for a prostitute, frankly.
“You can call me Jack,” he states coolly, contempt written all over his face. “That’s the best I’ll give you.”
Yoongi could push further - he could get an answer if he tried, he’s sure - but he’s itching to make this quick. The longer he sits here, the higher he feels his chances of being caught are. And besides, the bartender out front gave them a time limit. He sighs and scrawls down Jack on the first page of his notes. “Do you have any identification on you?”
The prostitute - Jack - raises arms shrouded in silk cloth, gesturing at his minimal outfit. “Yeah, sure, it’s tucked right into my Gucci lace panties, officer.”
Yoongi doesn’t crack a smile at this, and Jack rolls his eyes.
“ No , I don’t keep ID on me at work. Anyone who needs to know who I am here already knows my face.”
Oh, whatever. Yoongi is already not doing this by the book, and he doesn’t particularly care that much about a prostitute's credentials in the bigger picture. It’s not about who he is, it’s what he knows that Yoongi is really after.
“Fine,” Yoongi segues smoothly, tucking his pen into his notepad. He fishes out the picture that Jackson emailed him from his pocket and slides it across the table. “Do you recognize this man?”
Jack picks up the photo with neatly manicured fingertips and examines it closely. His dark eyes are serious, and he’s quiet for a dragging moment before speaking. “I know him.”
“What’s his name?” Yoongi leans forwards, eager.
“I don’t know.”
“He’s a client of yours, isn’t he? How do you not know his name?”
“Officer, I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but an establishment like this gets a lot of people who would rather remain anonymous. It’s not unusual for someone to use an alias. The only names he has me call him are the pet kind. Baby. Honey. Daddy. That sort of thing.”
Yoongi, for good measure, jots down that information, trying not to think much about how he’s scribbling daddy among his notes.
On the other side of the table, Jack sets the photo down and looks up, unimpressed. “He’s being investigated for murder, you say?”
“He’s a potential suspect. We have to cover all of our bases when looking into people.” Yoongi taps his pen on the table. “Has he ever expressed a notable interest in violence, perhaps requested you do something that made you uncomfortable or potentially unsafe?”
“While he’s fucking me, you mean?” Jack asks, flicking his eyebrows up in a way that’s almost challenging.
Yoongi refuses to balk at his crass tone that’s obviously meant to incite a reaction. “During intercourse, yes. Psychopathic tendencies frequently present themselves in sexual fantasies or interests. Choking, blood, a desire to roleplay non-consensual acts or even act on them in real life. I understand this may be difficult to discuss, but it’s important to know as much as we possibly can.”
Jack shrugs, flicking his dark hair out of his eyes. “It’s not difficult to discuss, he’s never done anything like that. He’s always been kind to me.”
“Has he ever mentioned in conversation anything that stood out to you or that you found concerning?”
Jack crosses one leg over the other, causing his robe to slip down further. Yoongi chews on his lip, working overtime to keep his mind on the task at hand and not on the way almost the entirety of the other man’s nude, golden thigh is on display. It’s indecent - his dress, his mannerisms, they’re effeminate and odd for a male, and certainly not something that strikes Yoongi as being effectively attractive. And yet, his eyes feel like they’re roaming unleashed with the way they keep wandering astray without his permission.
“My clients expect a certain standard of discretion from me,” Jack announces in an even tone. “The conversations we have are private.”
Yoongi opens his mouth. “Mr- Jack , all due respect, but there’s no such thing as client confidentiality in an illegal service. You’re unfortunately required to answer my questions right now.”
“There’s nothing to be said about him. He’s a businessman of some sort. Sometimes he’ll talk about that, but he’s not big on post-coital discussions. He shows up, we fuck, he pays, he leaves. He’s a good client, there’s nothing else I can tell you.”
Jack's jaw is set, giving him a stubborn look, and it irks Yoongi. There’s something with this person he sees, the unnamed Shadow, and Yoongi knows it. He was the only person on the premises that night who isn’t already accounted for.
Yoongi wishes he could simply camp out here till the man reappears and bring him in for questioning, but he has no grounds on which to make an arrest without the approval of his superiors, which means he has to bide his time and accumulate enough information until he has an undeniable case to present. He can’t blow the single shot he has because he’d be blowing the whole operation and his career along with it.
“Well, in that case,” Yoongi flips his notepad to a fresh page and scrawls a number on it before tearing it out and setting it on the table between them. “We’re done here, for now, but by all means, call me if there are any further developments. I know you’re hesitant to trust a police officer, but I promise you, you’re the last person I’m concerned about apprehending. It would be much more helpful to me to have your eyes on the inside.”
Jack narrows his eyes. “You want me to work as some sort of undercover cop?” He asks, voice dripping with unbridled suspicion.
“Of course not, but between the two of us, if we were to work out some sort of deal where you tell me whatever I need to know in exchange for your legal immunity…a lot of prostitutes wouldn’t pass up the opportunity for a favor like that.”
“I’m not a lot of prostitutes,” Jack replies, tilting his chin down so his dark eyes flash dangerously. “You’re worried about me doing business with a cop, but do you really want to do business with a whore?”
“I’ve dealt with worse,” Yoongi tells him. He’s been waiting his whole life for something interesting or important to happen, to be more than a bunch of paperwork and half-baked cases shuffled into a file somewhere. He’s sure he can handle one badly behaved prostitute if the end game is apprehending The Shadow.
“Just think about it.” Yoongi taps the paper with his number on it before pushing his chair back and exiting the room without another word.
—
Somewhere in Gangnam-gu
Afternoon
It’s pouring rain by the time Hoseok leaves Aurum , which isn’t likely to be notable to anyone else, but he despises the cold. Hoseok likes to bask with the aura of a lizard under a heat lamp: slow moving, unbothered, very, very warm. The only time his heart rate should be up is when he’s being fucked just the way he likes, not because his heart is working overtime to heat him in this miserable rain.
He flags down a taxi, silently grateful that he changed into a turtleneck and belted jeans before leaving the club. When it’s Namjoon he’s planning to see, Hoseok usually doesn’t go through the fuss of putting on street clothes under his long jacket - not when it’s much more entertaining for them both to let Namjoon look at him in his pretty outfits - but today calls for business attire and something warmer than a lace slip under a pea coat.
“ Geum-doro, please,” Hoseok instructs the driver, pulling his black mask snugly over his nose. Teens these days wear them as a sort of fashion statement, but Hoseok is keener on the anonymity that comes with a good facial covering. No one needs to know who he is, and he likes to keep it that way, especially after the run in with the cop today. The last thing he needs is an overzealous police officer tailing him.
He tucks his chin down and pulls out his phone, tapping out a quick message to Namjoon.
HS: on my way
A chat bubble pops up almost as soon as he sends it, lingering for a moment before Namjoon’s reply materializes on screen.
NJ: Good. I have questions.
Hoseok frowns. I have questions isn’t half as exciting as I’m bored, undress and dance for me , but then, he knew what to expect when he shot off a warning text to Namjoon following that strange cop, Min Yoongi, showing up at Aurum.
It’s not like Hoseok set out to watch Kim Namjoon’s back; they’re not friends, or lovers, or anything in-between. More like mostly-amicable colleagues. Hoseok does him favors when he needs it, Namjoon does the same, and sometimes they’ll tag team a target if the payout is good, split the reward and spend the rest of the night in each other’s company for the hell of it. Prostitution may only be a cover for the fact that Hoseok is a knife for hire, but that doesn’t mean he can’t fuck like one. And it certainly doesn’t mean he doesn’t know how to show Namjoon a good time - better, he’s sure, than anyone else. Just for a night, every now and again.
Like he said: they aren’t lovers, Hoseok isn’t responsible for Kim Namjoon in the slightest, but on a rainy day, it does pay to have allies.
The cab deposits him at the end of the gated driveway leading up to Namjoon’s house, and he hustles to pay his fare and jog up to the front entrance before the rain soaks through his coat. One of these days, Namjoon will cave and give Hoseok the code to his security system so he can let himself in, but for now he knocks twice and waits for an answer.
His wait is short-lived, luckily. After a short pause, Hoseok hears muted footsteps and the metallic click of the deadbolt sliding before the door pulls open and Namjoon pokes his head out, looking displeased. He usually looks displeased, though.
“That didn’t take long.”
“I told you I was on my way,” Hoseok brushes past him impolitely. He’s not standing out here in the cold waiting to be let inside. “It’s not like it’s a long drive from the city center.”
“Well, I didn't have time to get dressed up.”
Hoseok pauses in the middle of taking off his long coat and glances over his shoulder at Namjoon. In the dim lighting of the foyer, his close-cropped hair is so black it’s almost blue, and slightly on end from being pushed back over and over again. It’s clear he was wearing a suit at some point, but all that’s left now are gray slacks belted snugly around his strong waist.
“That’s okay,” Hoseok drops his jacket on the coat rack and turns around, tilting his head coyly. “I needed my outfit to be better than yours for once. How has work been?”
“Shit,” Namjoon sighs sharply. He never is one to mince words. “My assignment slipped between the cracks, and now I have to travel to Italy to track him down, or wait god knows how long till he resurfaces in Korea again. Hyung is going to have my head.”
“Seokjin?” Hoseok chuckles, recalling Namjoon’s older brother. He’s not a field agent like Namjoon; he works in unseen offices handling clients and doling out target assignments. Hoseok prefers less of a bureaucratized experience, hence the reason he’s a freelancer, but he and Namjoon can still relate to one another on most fronts. “Weren’t you just telling me how he’s soft on you?”
“He won’t be after this,” Namjoon mutters, trailing down the hall to the living area without waiting to see if Hoseok follows. “And judging by your text, you don’t have anything good for me.”
Hoseok waltzes after him and sinks onto the barstool at the kitchen island. In light of Namjoon’s mood, now may not be the best time to tell him what he came here to tell him. It’s probably more of a “red wine, two or three orgasms” type of night. Hoseok has known him long enough to understand his moods, for better or for worse, like a second nature. He knows when to give it to Namjoon slow and messy, lazily riding him while they’re both tipsy. He knows that when he’s in a good mood, excited, he likes it rough, likes it when he can pin Hoseok down and have everything his way. And when he’s angry, he doesn’t want to be in control at all; he’ll let Hoseok tie him up and tell him what to do. Hoseok likes those days. He likes pushing Namjoon so thoroughly out of power that he’s forced to let go, at least for a while.
Hoseok crosses one leg over the other neatly and glances around. “Do you have anything to drink?”
Namjoon raises an eyebrow, skeptical. “Of course I do, why?”
“How about we just…have a glass? Do you want to take a shower? I could use a shower. I’ll suck you off, if you want.”
“You told me you had something to share with me.” Namjoon folds his arms over his chest. “So share.”
“I changed my mind,” Hoseok shrugs. “It can wait.”
“Hoseok,” Namjoon half-groans, closing the distance between them and pulling him near, nosing into his neck just bordering on rough. “I’m not playing right now.”
“I’m not either,” Hoseok insists. He slides his hands up Namjoon’s unclothed back, feeling up the golden expanse of his skin, each ridge of his tensed spine.
Alright, “ colleagues ” may not have been the best choice of word to describe them. Hoseok likes to pretend they’re still as no-strings-attached as the day they met, but deep down he knows, in a strange way, that he cares about Kim Namjoon. Cares about the way he should be cold, and intimidating, but he’s truly not. Cares about how he’s so meticulously dedicated to his work. Cares that he knows Namjoon, he understands him. And like it or not, Namjoon knows him, too, probably better than most.
Not that that’s saying much - Hoseok doesn’t exactly keep a close circle of friends.
“I need to know what you know,” Namjoon mumbles into his shoulder, dragging Hoseok back to the present circumstances. “You care enough to tell me, don’t you? Don’t we have that, at least? Trust? Dependability?”
“Obviously,” Hoseok exhales a measured breath. “I’m here, aren’t I?”
He traces his fingertips through the sparse hairs trailing down the nape of Namjoon’s neck, contemplating his next words.
“I spoke to a cop today.”
Namjoon’s reaction is instantaneous. He makes a throaty noise of annoyance and knocks his forehead against Hoseok’s shoulder bone. “ Fuck , why would you do that?”
“I didn’t have many options.” Hoseok rolls his eyes, suddenly bristling with attitude. “He came to Aurum and–”
“Cops never come to Aurum ,” Namjoon interrupts. Hoseok can’t see his face, but he already knows what it looks like: brow furrowed, nose wrinkled, lower lip jutted out into something akin to a pout.
“Well, this one did.”
“What did he want?”
“You.”
Namjoon sucks in a breath sharply and pulls away. He stands up straight, running his hands through his hair again, more agitated this time. “And how exactly does he know me?”
“He doesn’t. He had a few photos of you, pulled off security cameras. They’re grainy, you can hardly tell it’s you anyway. He was asking questions, wants to know who you are.”
“Did you tell him?”
Hoseok raises one eyebrow in disgust. “Do you think I’m fucking stupid, Kim Namjoon? I avoided answers. Played dumb and gave him just enough to get him off my back, but listen - before you get worked up, something is off about him.”
Namjoon drops down onto the barstool across from Hoseok and heaves a sigh. “Explain.”
“He’s experienced, for starters. He had all sorts of credentials on his badge, but he was in there alone. He tried to play undercover at first, but I called him out to get the upper hand before he could, and he…he didn't look annoyed, he looked nervous. ” Hoseok twists the silver ring on his index contemplatively. Remembers how the cop avoided eye contact, rushed through questions. He didn’t even insist on seeing some ID from Hoseok. It was like he wanted things to be off record. “Felt like he wasn’t supposed to be there.”
Namjoon lifts his chin, a slight spark returning to his eyes when he looks at Hoseok. “What are you saying?”
“I don’t know yet. Maybe he wasn’t even a real cop, just some nosy bastard. You can find out, can’t you?”
“Of course I can fucking find out,” Namjoon gets to his feet and cracks his knuckles before pulling Hoseok up by his chin. “You didn’t manage to get his name, did you?”
Hoseok smiles coyly, cocking his head and pressing an open-mouthed kiss to Namjoon’s blushed lips. “I’m no rookie, sweetheart,” he smirks, recalling the ID the cop had flashed at him this morning. “His name’s Min Yoongi, and I have his number.”
—
Seoul Psychiatric Hospital
Morning
(present day)
“Sorry, do you mind if I interrupt?”
Yoongi blinks once, turning his head slowly to face Agent Pak. He tries to smile, but he’s sure it appears on his face like more of a frigid grimace. “Haven’t you, already?”
The older man looks affronted. He sniffles and pushes his glasses back up his nose, shifting around in his chair a bit. “Er, yes, well, I just wanted to clarify. Is it or is it not hearsay to include the conversations of others in your own personal recollection of the story?”
“You told me, agent, to tell the story from start to finish. There’d be no way to do that if I wasn’t able to supplement it with the information I received from others.”
“I just wonder if there would be any way to corroborate the version your - your friends supplied you with,” Pak says lightly, shifting his notepad forwards with his fingertips.
Yoongi narrows his eyes at the agent, leaning in and fixing him with a chilled stare. “They weren’t my friends , agent. Don’t disrespect them by glossing over the details that make you personally uncomfortable. And I never had any reason to believe they’d lie, I trusted their word then, and I trust it now. If that’s not good enough for you, I have nothing to say.”
The two agents exchange a weighted glance, and then Choi looks back towards Yoongi, nodding once. “Very well, Yoongi-ssi, continue as you were. What happened after the rendezvous between Mr. Kim and Mr. Jung?”
Yoongi leans back in his chair, pressing the fingernail on his index to a bolt jutting out from the steel tabletop and twisting it slowly as he speaks.
“After that, Hoseok came to find me.”
—
Seoul Metropolitan Police Department
Morning
Yoongi’s phone goes off without warning - an abrupt, shrill ring that fills the muffled quiet of the office. He hits answer to silence it more than anything else, clicking out of a case file lazily and leaning back in his chair.
“Detective Min,” he half-yawns. “Who’s speaking?”
“It’s Jack.” The voice that answers him is plenty recognizable even without the name, velvety smooth, unusually dulcet for a man. “Jack, from the–”
“Yes, I know who you are,” Yoongi cuts him off, getting to his feet automatically. He peers around the office in a hurry, taking note of his company. It’s a sleepy afternoon, and most of the others on shift are poking at lunches or rubbing their eyes to keep at attention. A few yards away, Yoongi can see Jeongguk clicking through a game of solitaire on his computer.
The likelihood of being overheard is minute, but… Yoongi can’t afford to take any risks. He scoots his chair back and makes a beeline for the bathroom, bolting the door behind him for good measure.
“Hello, sorry,” he clears his throat. “Spotty service.”
“You’d think the police headquarters would have state-of-the-art reception,” Jack notes dryly. Yoongi can almost see the way he’d quirk his gamine features skeptically if he were here now.
“Yes, well, basement level and all that,” Yoongi shrugs. That part, at least, is not a lie. Suffice to say, his department isn’t exactly well funded or spacious. “Did you have something you wanted to tell me?”
“Yes. Well, no, not really, not like that. I haven’t seen that man you’re looking for, if that’s what you’re wondering. I called because I thought about what you said, and I had your number right here and I…” Jack trails off, letting his sentence dangle for a moment. “I decided I do want to help.”
“Really?” Yoongi’s voice goes up an embarrassing octave, and he immediately drops it back down gruffly. “I– yeah, well, good. That’s the right choice.”
“I figured, if I can help you, and you can help me, then that’s not too bad of a deal, right?”
“Right,” Yoongi agrees, almost breathless. An inside man. Shit, is this too much? All police task forces plant informants from time to time, but it’s a rigorous process. The psychological evaluations and prep paperwork alone take months. If Yoongi’s higher ups were to find out he’d independently sourced one, he’d be fired without hesitation. Even Jeongguk might not waste breath defending him.
But this case is bigger than he is. There’s a serial killer wandering free on the streets of Seoul, and Yoongi is the only one who sees, only one who cares. He swore to uphold justice the day he joined the force. Not to follow every rule,or check every box, but to uphold justice.
Sometimes justice doesn’t go hand in hand with abiding by the law. Surely rules are more of a… guidebook. Yoongi can take it from here.
“We should arrange a meeting then,” Yoongi clears his throat yet again. Jack is probably counting on him to take the lead here, which is useless because Yoongi is all but fumbling blind. A meeting sounds appropriate, doesn’t it? “To discuss reasonable expectations and set some ground rules.”
“Right,” Jack clicks his tongue softly. “At the station, I assume?”
“ No .”
That sounded aggressive. Yoongi has to play this cool. “No, not at the station. It’s probably best to choose somewhere low profile. There’s that old ramen place on Euljiro-doro , we can meet there tomorrow afternoon. I’ll wear plainclothes.”
“Good. Shall I bring anything?”
“Just yourself and a good attitude.” A good attitude? Yoongi kicks himself. What is this, a fucking elementary school field trip? God, who taught him how to speak to people?
“I always have a good attitude, darling,” Jack replies. His smile is almost audible on the other end of the line. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Good. Tomorrow. Bye.” Yoongi hangs up hurriedly and shoves his phone in his pocket, sliding down the wall to sit on the cold, damp tile. He can’t undo this. He has plans now, there’s a prostitute - a civilian - involved, and the act is already set in motion.
He’s either made a move that will drag a killer to justice, or he just ended his career in one fell swoop.