Mr. No || NCT || Completed

50 - Where Renjun is slow

"Why are you coming to our place again?" Renjun grunted while cutting in between two cars. After leaving Cha Kunwoo's place, Chaewon had announced that she was going to stop by at his place before going home.

"Jaemin told me that he wants to give me something."

Renjun rolled his eyes. "Of course he does."

Chaewon was too busy with the recording device to pay attention to his pettiness. She had recorded their meeting with Cha Kunwoo and wanted to make sure that the audio wasn't damaged.

"Does it work?" Renjun asked and nodded towards the device in her hands. "It would be useful to listen to the conversation again later to see if we missed anything."

Chaewon pressed play and the conversation they had had moment ago with the reclusive doubler filled the car. The sound quality wasn't the best, since the device had been hidden in Chaewon's pocket, but it was good enough to hear what they were discussing.

"Then all you need to do is find the two missing pieces to have the address of whatever was hidden in Seoul", Cha Kunwoo's voice said before Chaewon paused the recorder.

"The cure", she mused and stuffed the device into her bag. "Who knew, right? I don't know why but I'm surprised that it exists."

"I don't believe until I see it", Renjun condemned her hopefulness without hesitation. "We still need to find the missing pieces before we can get any further. Have you read through all of your grandmother's diaries? Could the piece be hidden there or do we need to go back to Jeju?"

Going back to Jeju together with Chaewon didn't sound like a bad idea –
Renjun wanted to drown his brain for getting side-tracked so easily.

Chaewon shook her head. "There's still couple of them left that I haven't even opened but I'll comb through them tonight."

"As for Nam Jihoon – ", Renjun paused briefly. Chaewon swallowed. The shock was still fresh in their minds. Even though they had never even met the guy, it was painful to think about his mother who had been waiting so long to be contacted by her younger son. Renjun cleared his throat. "As for his piece, we need to figure out where to search. His calendar – the one Cha Kunwoo gave us last time – didn't have many personal details so I don't know if he was close with anyone."

Chaewon didn't say anything at first and when Renjun glanced at her, he saw pensive look in her eyes. It was the same look that had preceded her weird comments in the past that had often led to difficulties.

In the words of Cha Kunwoo: "What seemed like a blessing was a curse."

After spending so much time with Chaewon, Renjun had started to think less about what she was or what she was capable of but maybe it had been a mistake. Maybe he had allowed himself to grow too comfortable around her.

"We should call his mother and ask if she knows something." Chaewon was blissfully unaware of Renjun's thoughts as she stared out the window while sitting on top of her hands. "I have a feeling that she could help us."

Her words didn't convince him. "When we went to her place, she said that Nam Jihoon was always more distant. And we spoke with her for a long time yet she said barely anything about him."

"That's the thing. We thought that she herself was the reason why we found her file, so we focused on who she is. Now that we know that she was included because of her son, we would approach the case from a different angle."

Renjun lifted his eyebrows. While Chaewon did have a good point, he wasn't keen on the idea of going back to the old woman. "Are you planning to tell her that her son was murdered alongside our relatives?"