Detour

34

Day 11, D-27

Jisoo

Thirty.

Haein broke another rule for me, for us. His team in SMPA was working with illegal hackers to get Thanatos past DMs related to all the crimes and they were able to retrieve them. Thirty. Exactly thirty days after he sent his first message to the previous victims, the killing happened. It's our Day 11 at home, D-27 before the 'actual killing'. We cannot spill this information to the investigating team. We are fully aware that anything we obtained illegally is something we cannot use legally.

Police force should consider employing hackers because how could they...

It's been three days. The happy and bubbly Haein I've been with for the past months partly evaporated into thin air after that night. He was like treading on to thin ice.

Thanatos sent a message.

It already started.

For the past three days, I've seen his serious side again. We busied ourselves checking all the security cameras we placed inside and outside the store, countercheck the information sheet of all the attendees but we concentrated mostly of the people we unexpectedly saw at our store opening. That's at least for the police side investigation.

As for me and Haein, we included our team among the probable list. We didn't even single out male attendees, because female could be accomplices too. And even though my heart aches to include Halmeoni on that list, she was included. My gut feels says she's not and she was genuine to me. But then again.

Trust no one.

***

Three days of us together at home, finally today was a bit different.

He was supposed to be working at the store M-W-F, at home T-TH-S, Sunday the store is closed except for urgent deliveries. Our first week, he did not come to the store Wednesday, we make a sweep of all the details of the opening.

It was confusing as hell.

We cannot find any clue. It was so clean that we cannot link any of the attendees to Thanatos. But at least one thing is for sure, the killer attended the ribbon cutting and was with us last Monday.

Eugene was helping us secretly by doing another profiling of the killer, as per her assessment, it's either he had exceptional hacking skills or he was paying someone to clean his dirt and keep his identity hidden. And he could have accomplices. Anyone with connections to the pattern of the crimes: CCTV access, real estate information access, social media pages moderators, and so far, no one among our guests fit to that criteria yet.

At the back of my mind, I was hoping it was not someone from the police force, because the team was close to my heart and I cannot imagine anyone from them involve in this. But a part of me also screams the endless possibilities, especially it was me who discovered the pattern of the serial killing, something the department either failed to do or could deliberately hide.

Two days of thorough investigation, I pushed Haein to go back to work. As in work at the store. He can't stay too long at home, and if the killer is silently observing us, it will be too suspicious already. One thing's for sure, both of us are still safe since we already had an exact timeline of the killing, an information useful for us and we could take advantage.

Been awake for an hour but I am still stuck on bed, Haein was inside the bathroom. My head's been spinning tremendously and I feel like throwing up, and my back pain had worsened versus Monday's attacks. He went out of bathroom and his eyes went straight to me. I was leaning against the headboard, feeling a little bit better compared to how I am an hour ago. Probably the past two days of strenuous work in front of the laptop made me sick. My stomach was rumbling but I was not hungry. My stomach felt cold, disastrous.