Bad Blood ; Killer Instinct

Drilling Gaps; Pasts and Presents

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As night draws in, enveloping the secluded modern house in a cloak of enigmatic darkness and silent peace—peace that did not extend to the interiors.

The therapeutic sizzle of a soldering iron resonates through the fairly sized, dimly lit tech room. A figure, hunched over a work table and whatever specimen they had been working on in concentration, with bright red hair streaks trying to get in his line of view. A tongue sticks out in concentration as they push the unruly locks aside, eyes flitting to his side and back as they pick up on movement.

"Old habits die hard, don't they?"

A voice, soft yet cutting, breaks through the steady whirs, traced back to the blonde resting on the doorframe, arms folded over his chest as his eyes soak in the red head. A certain mischievous glint to them as he shifts into the room.

"It's you, isn't it?" A conviction more than it was a question.

"I have to rush back home from Japan to cover a story for my news outlet because it seemed to be somehow related to us. A bloody scene, and I have to admit it was worse than the ones I'm used to you leaving behind." He pulls back a swivel, dropping on the spinning chair and letting his clothed legs cross over each other. "A few days later and my source in the police says the DNA samples sent to run by the NFS are yet to return, a glitch in the system keeps destroying detrimental information. Your partner was not involved." He leans forward. Eyes trained and waiting for a reaction from the red head being addressed.

“Yet, you fortuitously found yourself in the proximity of a homicide. If your DNA were implicated, Jeon, despite his aversion, would have interceded before NFS involvement." A pause in his soliloquy, slender fingers meandering along the contours of the revolving seat's arm. "So, pray tell, why?" A breath drawn, "Why do you keep interfering in our investigation?"

"What's in it for you?" He smiles in content when the whirs come to a halting pause as the red head drops the heating soldering machine to the side, taking a short glance at the blonde eagerly waiting behind him.

"A peace offering Maybe?" The red head bites back a nonchalant suggestion, clicking his tongue before picking up a drilling machine from his box of tools and setting it on the table while he tinkered with a small palm-sized device.

"Wiping out digital trails is pointless; there's plenty of physical evidence, stuff to sift once I ease up on the delay, run through the system the moment I stop stalling."

"Oh. I'm stalling too, Jimin, curious to see how she handles it."

"She?" The blonde, Jimin, perks up intrigued.

“He had a date.” Another figure, previously imperceptible in the dim recesses of the room inserts. Swiveling back in his chair, the ethereal lighting accentuating his pallid complexion and feline features, he nonchalantly propels a chip in the direction of the red-haired, deftly intercepted.

"It wasn't a date," the red-haired interjects, "more like getting answers."

Disagreement flickers in the eyes of the newcomer, hands resuming the task of traversing through elongated ebon strands held aloft in a tightly secured ponytail featuring understated undercuts at the right and back ends.

The dark-haired regards his companion with some sort of realization.

"You're doing that thing again, Hoseok."