Echo || NCTau ||

12 - About croffles

Yeoreum's hands worked fast as she checked every single locker in the empty changing room while keeping an eye on the door. She had been shadowing Jisung for the past week from a distance and realized quickly that her opportunities for killing the boy were limited.

Other than attending cramming academy and dance classes a couple of times a week, he didn't go out much and, following the first failed attempt, he was always accompanied by at least one of his roommates.

From the files she had received from Dr. An, Yeoreum had learned that currently Park Jisung lived in the same apartment with a group of other doublers. There weren't pictures of all of them – Lee Mark and Lee Donghyuck apparently spent a lot of time in another apartment with, presumably, some of the other pack members, and hadn't been present when Dr. An's people were following her target. Additionally, Huang Renjun had recently travelled to China with his girlfriend so he wasn't present in the material either. The faces of the others, however, had become familiar very quickly.

They were like bodyguards. Whenever Yeoreum was waiting for Park Jisung to exit the academy or dance studio, one or two of his roommates appeared before the target had even left the building.

That meant that she needed to catch him while he was inside.

So, there she was, sneaking around the locker room of the dance studio and trying to locate her target's belongings before someone would catch her.

AC was whirring in the ceiling and the sound of music echoed faintly from the practice rooms. Yeoreum pulled down the grey bucket hat to cover more of her face until its edge almost touched the face mask covering the lower part of her face. She wore a baggy hoodie and sweatpants and had even stolen some of Sungchan's cologne in order to create an illusion of being a guy. She didn't need anyone asking questions about why a girl had sneaked into the guys' dressing room.

Finally, after checking most of the lockers, she finally opened one that contained Jisung's jacket and duffel bag and took it out. She needed to find something where she could inject the potassium cyanide she had in her own bag. It would cause a quick death as long as she could ensure that no one found him when the first symptoms hit. Maybe she should block all of the dance studio's doors before leaving.

Yeoreum had been hoping to get her hands on a water bottle but all she could find was a protein bar. She felt the dense texture of the bar through the packaging. If it was soft enough, she might be able to inject the poison into it but if the texture was too soft, the liquid would drip through it.

Just as she was about to take out the syringe from her bag, footsteps halted in front of the locker room's door.

Yeoreum pushed Jisung's bag back into the locker and slammed the door shut before spinning around and opening a random locker that had been empty when she checked it earlier.

By the time the door opened, Yeoreum was hunched over her bag she had lowered on the bench, looking like she was searching for something.

Out of the corner of her eye, she realized that it was her target. Jisung entered the room and walked past her to the bathroom at the other end of the locker room.

This was her chance. Yeoreum rummaged through her bag until she found a piece of cloth and a tiny bottle of chloroform. If she positioned herself correctly outside the bathroom door, she could disorient him with the chloroform long enough to administer the potassium cyanide to get the job done.

Last time she had been planning to use potassium chloride because it was more difficult to detect in autopsy but now that they knew that someone was after Park Jisung, she might as well use the cyanide.

She glanced at the bathroom door while gathering her materials. Considering the strong senses of doublers, timing was the most important factor. She couldn't pour the chloroform before Jisung had unlocked the door because otherwise his second half might smell the abnormal sweetness of the chemical and alert him.