Derange

01

Haein

Hell.

It was how I wanted to describe the last 24 hours of my day. This shouldn't even be the case. But shit of all shit happened.

Amara's dedication day was supposed to be a day of celebration, a day full of bliss, a day of overflowing love. Jisoo's last day in Jeju was supposed to be creating happy memories with our instant SMPA-Jeju family but unfortunate things happened, and now, even this memorable day was tainted again by another horrible event.

I could clearly recall the farewell party our friends organized in Jeju, it was fun for all, then the screams, until we saw the place covered with blood, blood of an unknown, a gruesome setup, investigation happened only to find out it was a pig blood and probably just a gang prank, prints of the people responsible for that thing were nowhere to be found.

As if it was a ghost doing.

As if a sea of blood appeared miraculously out of nowhere.

A bloody note surely not addressed to anyone, but made Jisoo jittery, assuming the note was intended for us.

Countless times I had to reassure my wife it wasn't Smith, that he was locked up and investigation showed he didn't have any accomplices, and that he can't harm us anymore. Those times she had to wake up in the middle of the night, screams, sweats,  and swears due to nightmares, of me being killed by him. Those times of looking over her shoulders, thinking something bad might happen to me, to us.

It took a while before she found her peace, before I convinced her that it was nothing but mere coincidences.

We were doing fine.

We were all okay.

Not until today.

And I am much more perflexed, earlier that day when she thought there was a sniper aiming at my heart; she was extremely distraught, then hearing the news about Smith, her response was nothing as oppose to what I expected of.

I expected her to worry. I expected her to freak out.

Seeing her act like it was nothing was much more alarming to me.

******

The night was blanketed of darkness, just like any other previous nights we had, only before that, Smith was locked up in a secured facility in Jeju.

It wasn't the case anymore.

Aaron Smith escaped.

I arrived home exactly twenty hours after I and the rest of the Jeju team flew back to take reports from Sup Jang's Crimes division reps about Smith's escape. I was personally requested to come since I was the head investigator of Smith's case.

I was welcomed in Jeju with overwhelming reports of how he escaped, but nothing about his latest whereabouts.

The car transporting him from his old facility to his new holding cell was hijacked. Tire spikes on the road, two dead men, three more injured, surveillance cameras jammed, it wasn't a doing of a single man. The department raised a manhunt operation warning, not limited to Jeju, but for the entire Republic, making him included at the Top Ten wanted list

Someone helped him escape.

Whether he orchestrated this or not-

He was out there, now being a threat to everyone.

A threat to my family.

And all of this really happened during Amara's dedication, like it was a well planned surprise for us.