Case 143 🌹 Seungjin

2

"Men, this will be our new addition to the team. His name is Felix," Chris said.

A boy with short blonde hair gave them all a clumsy smile, his hands locked tightly together over a folder. "Hello, it's nice to meet you all," he said. Hyunjin noted he had a slight stutter and round silver glasses on the bridge of his nose. 

"Great, we have a nerd with social anxiety," Changbin commented, turning back around to his computer.

Wooyoung scoffed at the detective. "Don't worry about him. He's a jerk."

Felix went through introductions with the team, Changbin being the only one to refuse a handshake. He told Felix to get to work instead. What Hyunjin noticed most about Felix in the first week that he worked was how punctual he was. A total people-pleaser. He had what was asked of him on the needed desk the very morning it was required. He came at seven on the dot and left at five.

He had a young aura, too. Twenty-five and working as a forensic investigator. He was bright. No doubt about it. Both with mind and personality. Even Changbin started warming up to him eventually. That was due to the amount of coffee Felix gave him at the exact time he needed it, though.

"This CCTV footage sucks. Are you sure you retrieved it from the right person?" Changbin asked the forensic behind him.

"Mister Jacob. Yup. He was nice. Handed it up without much of a problem. I just told him we were doing an investigation, showed him my badge, and he surrendered it."

Hyunjin pressed his thumb on the spacebar of his keyboard and paused the video. He pointed to the figure of a man. Their face was concealed from the cameras thanks to a baseball cap on the top of their head. Short sleeves, though no feature to mark down in case they needed to find him again. The first thing Hyunjin looked for in disguised criminals was tattoos, piercings, or other attributes that could be of any use.

This guy was clean. He didn't even have a case on his phone. It could have been normal if not for the fact he was dressed so plainly in a bank provided only for the richest of the rich. It didn't match up. With no way to identify him, Hyunjin started the video back, but not before Changbin took a picture.

"It's a trap," Changbin said.

"You think so, too?" Hyunjin asked, taking a sip of coffee from his styrofoam cup.

"I know so. Anyone trying to get away with a serious crime like what we are suspecting wouldn't dress like that. They'd tuck their fancy five hundred dollar button-up into a pair of freshly pressed pants and adorn themselves with luxurious accessories to charm desperate girls looking for a free ride. They don't wear Converse."

"I wear Converse," Jisung said as he walked into the room.

"Yeah, and you're an idiot."

"I'm gonna open a bank account with them," Changbin stated, disrupting Jisung and Seonghwa who had started bickering.

"You can't do that. That's out of our hands," Hyunjin sighed.

"Not if it's a private matter."

Changbin was rich. That wasn't information he threw at people's faces to get them to like him, but a fact. His family had a huge business in South Korea that was handed down through generations. Currently, his older sister was running it. If he asked her for a little money, Hyunjin had no doubt she'd help him. The perks of a good sibling relationship.

Hyunjin wouldn't know. He didn't have siblings. He left for the military at seventeen to get away from his dad. Something common among military enlistees was a fucked up home life. One they felt the need to escape. He had always felt bad for the people that dropped out and wept at the idea of going home to inform abusers that they'd failed. He could only hope the training they did endure had taught them enough self-defense and independence that they could separate themselves from those situations.