Meridian ◈ Seungjin

45 ◈ Shoebox

Seungmin started, "I..."

His voice fell off. As the grip he held on his chin allowed his head to tilt, the elbow he kept rested on his knee propped in the low-cut windowsill of the unoccupied faculty room wobbled to keep him steady.

How the pair had ended up in the old faculty room was anyone's guess. Seungmin managed to slip them both into the unused room in the corner of the dorm building with minimal resistance; A gentle nod at the correct person here, a basic white lie slipped to the right person there, a diplomatic smile of persuading incense, a kind word written on a recommendation letter passed through tongue, and suddenly, avenues locked behind firmly shut doors were revealed with welcoming arms inviting them into the lion's dens which waited at the end of the roads. For the record, he had not been carrying anything around with him. Not this time. Yet, his incredible ability to act as if he belonged amongst the glaring eyes and trimmed claws came to fruition for the umpteenth time.

That annoyingly untouched confidence radiated beautifully from him again, in time to offer the pair a place to talk in privacy.

"What's wrong?" Hyunjin prompted from his comfortable spot leaned back. Arms crossed. Legs crossed. He lingered in the strip of wall next to the windowsill the human relaxed on, barely in front of him. The perfect spot to scan over Seungmin's every detail and contorting expression as his eyes twisted with mangled thoughts. His eyebrows quirking. His lips twitching. His jaw tensing. Him, pondering. The vampire delved into the entertaining circus act of Seungmin's twitches, nearly forgetting his own uncontrolled habit of touching the sliver of skin behind his ear. He caught himself picking at the spot, and brought his hand back to where it was supposed to be pretzeled.

Seungmin glanced to the vampire. His head shook as he admitted, "I don't understand."

"Woah. What did you say?" Hyunjin teased. A smile pulled at the corner of his lip as he jeered at the human's frowned expression pulling firmer by the second, "Seungmin doesn't understand?"

The human dropped the pinched grip he kept on his chin. He rolled his hand in, slowly bringing his propped foot from the windowsill to the ground to match the crossed shield of the vampire's posture. His eyebrows knitted together as his lips seemed to puff, an air of frustration flowing from his shoulders as he elaborated to his detective partner:

"Changbin; Who was spotted out of his room the night of the murder, exhibited suspicious behavior. Felix; The broken fang, suspicious behavior, all that we heard in the hallways, from others, his unexplained whereabouts before the break, the sudden break up and unusual loathing towards Jisung. And it can't be either of them because Changbin had been attacked. Changbin was removed from the situation, leaving Felix as our main culprit. But the bite marks aren't uneven. It can't be Felix."

"Those who I thought would be most likely to turn up evidence were eliminated as suspects in a second," Seungmin huffed in irritation. His puffed lips splayed firmer, pressing from the rounded corners to a flatiron edge. Balancing him against the windowsill, his other hand combed through his strands of brown hair. That fluffy mop of down feathers and temptation. He pushed the knots back from his face as he bit, a hiss sizzling on his tongue as if he had fangs of his own to attack the world with, "I can't make sense of it. There has to be something you and I are missing. Something major. Something we have overlooked since the beginning. There seems to be no other solution."

The vampire observed the furious scrunch of the other's features; The knotted eyebrows, the curl of his nails dug to comb his scalp, the tense jaw clenched tight, the horizon of his lips, he took all his details in for a moment. He fell into watching how they pieced together, like the brightly colored squares of the Rubik's Cube. Complex and intangible incoherence, yet when slotted properly, fit together in sensible culminations of reward. Even the sacrilegious vanity, though it clashed with the defiant glimmer in his inquisitive eyes, they fit hand in hand with one another. Seungmin was a puzzle to be solved, not a mystery to be unraveled.