The Diamond Race | discontinued

chapter 8

23:00 Seoul, South Korea 37.5665° N, 126.9780° E

He had an itch.

Not a real itch, though. It was more of a figurative one. He let his eyes slide slowly between the dead man in front of him, and then to the ominous black briefcase, that lay innocently by the dead man's feet. It was not the first corpse he had ever seen, and it probably wouldn't be the last. In any given case, he wouldn't really have cared about a dead man and a briefcase, but this had meaning. A meaning he had yet to understand. An itch, yet to be scratched.

"How did this man die?"

D.O turned his attention from the picture in front of him, to Sehun who sat, cross-crossed on the edge of the dead man's desk eating take-out. D.O had no idea how someone could eat with a fresh corpse just below their feet, but Sehun was an odd ball that way. He was terrified of many things, but a dead body? Nope, not at all.

"Beats me." Sehun replied between bites. "I thought Lay said it was some type of poison."

"Belladonna." Lay chirped as he held up a small glass bottle with a gloved hand. "Someone decided to go old school."

"Right." Sehun nodded. "My guess is a jealous wife. Maybe he had some sort of affair? It's entirely possible, you know?"

"Hmm. That's possible." D.O rubbed his thumb along his lower lip in contemplation. "What do you think, Lay?"

Sehun scowled at that.

"Isn't my counsel enough?"

Lay snorted. "It would be, if your suggested motive, wasn't from the plot of some crime show."

Lay was laying (pun not intended) on the ground, right beside the body. He turned his head to look the corpse in the face.

"This guy was injected with the belladonna. He didn't drink it. There's a prick mark in his neck, right into his bloodstream, straight to the heart. Cruel, but effective and efficient. I would have done the same thing. I have no motive for you, though."

"I never said I was a specialist in this." Sehun gestured at the crime scene with his chopsticks. "I'm just throwing ideas out. Why is this dead guy such a big deal anyway? We've had more serious assignments than this, right?"

Sehun's eyes are boring into the side of his head, but he didn't give in to the younger. Lay glances at him as well, his gaze equally questioning.

"He was supposed to give us information, for this assignment. Why don't you just profile him?" D.O tossed a couple pictures of the deceased (taken when he was very much alive) onto Sehun's lap as he got up. He was tired of sitting, and his shoulder are getting stiff. He stretched, relishing the feeling of relaxing muscles and popping bones.

Sehun sets down his take-out, wiping his greasy fingers on a napkin, before picking up one of the photos.

"Well, this guy is filthy rich."

"We know that." Lay muttered.

"Let me finish." Sehun snapped. He glanced down at the corpse, then at the pictures in his hand. Sehun reached into his pocket for a pair of black gloves, before crouching down by the body on the floor. Sehun shooed Lay away from the body as his eyes narrowed. He looked the corpse over, his hands trailing down the front of the suit on the body.

"The suit is new. It's a men's windowpane wool-silk two-piece suit, from Brioni, nonetheless. Around seven thousand United States dollars. Just released this season."

"How do you even know this?" Lay's eyed widened in surprise.

"My mother ordered one for my brother, it came in recently. She absolutely wouldn't stop raving about how good he looked in it."