There's always room for another

Chapter 9: 2.2 - the tiny deaths

IMPORTANT: trigger warning - sexual abuse. I think it's mild, but of course any form of abuse is terrifying (and I'm not a judge of any of that), so heads up: that occurs towards the end of the second chunk.

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2.2

Ining had sort of burnt all her bridges when she left the police force a few years back. The corruption, the power plays - Ining had lost her taste for all of that after her mother got sick. There really was no point to all that when she could have made her career doing literally anything else.

(Much more moral route, her mother would say.)

(Die poor, but with your honour intact.)

Still, Ining had to admit she missed the vast resources the police force had at their fingertips. Those lazy bastards probably had no idea how easy they had it.

"Well, that's this town a dead end," Ining muttered to herself as she pored over her notes in her rented hostel room. It was a small place, quite a bit aways from the actual town center, but it had served as her base of operations just fine. She would miss this place when she left tomorrow. Seoul was her next stop, to recoup and pick up a few other jobs that would pay for the next stretch of her investigations.

It had been rinse, repeat of that pattern for the past six months: head to a town on the train line Byulyi had gotten on, search for a few weeks, and then recoup in Seoul to try again. Thanks to her one friend

(the only one who still talked to her anymore, that is)

in the police force, Ining had managed to track down the taxi driver who had taken the two girls she had seen that day so long ago, and gotten him to reveal where he had taken them to. He hadn't been willing to speak until they revealed that it was linked to Moon Byulyi's case - the older man had given them the information in the hopes that he wouldn't be implicated as an aide to kidnapping. Because that was what Ining was sure had happened.

She'd staked out the building for days after that, wanting to catch the girl who had hustled Moon Byulyi into the taxi. After five days Ining had to give up, and resorted to knocking on each door in the building one by one. Most of them had been reluctant to talk, wary of detectives and police force in general. It wasn't the best neighbourhood, really. Most of them were students from the nearby university, and Ining wouldn't have imagined any of them being involved in something so sinister if she hadn't seen it with her own eyes. As it was, one student stood out.

She'd been young, probably in her early twenties. She'd opened the door with a belligerent expression on her face, completely unimpressed to see Ining at her door. She'd replied curtly that she wouldn't answer any questions after Ining introduced herself. "You don't have a warrant," she had stated simply, and made to shut the door on her. Ining had stopped it with a foot, wincing at the sharp pain.

"Wait, hold on. I'm investigating the disappearance of Moon Byulyi." Now, Ining made her trade in being observant. Noticing things like flickers in expressions, the way people shifted in response to questions or answers. Everything about this girl set her senses pinging when she immediately tensed, looking up and down the corridor discreetly for prying eyes and ears.

"What about her?" The sneer would have set anyone else off, but Ining knew there was something underneath it. She could just feel it. She couldn't quite remember the face of the girl with Moon Byulyi - she just hadn't been paying enough attention at the time, and she had been quite far away for intimate details - but this girl fit the build, at least. "Didn't she drown in the river or something?"

"Yeah, but we have reason to believe she actually did survive the fall." Ining purposely didn't give away her true theory. "So we're asking around for anyone who might have seen anything. May I come in?"