——
Her phone beeped right before she was about to take another bite.
Thinking that it was Tiffany with more pictures of Jiyoon, she quickly put her chopsticks down to unlock the screen.
"Good evening, Taeyeon. I'm sorry for disturbing you but I was just at your apartment to drop off the oranges and no one was there. I realize that it's my fault for coming by so late at night. I got held up, unfortunately. Anyway, I will come back another time or just mail them to you."
She exhaled and typed a reply. "Thank you, Mr. Hwang. I'm afraid we're still out. Feel free to do whichever you find easier."
He sent another message but Taeyeon didn't really pay attention to it because Yuri suddenly appeared with papers in her hand.
"This is all we could dig up on such short notice," Yuri said as she sat down next to Taeyeon. "Juhyun's still trying to search further so let's just wait and see." She then took hold of one of the bowls and a pair of chopsticks after she had handed Taeyeon the papers.
Taeyeon skimmed the rows of numbers highlighted in yellow. "What does this mean, exactly?"
"Well, apparently, he steadily received a certain amount of money every month to his account. It wasn't transferred though. Always through cash deposit at the bank." Yuri began scooping the food into her bowl.
"Who deposited it?"
"Now that's the tricky part. The bank didn't have a complete history of the transactions since it had been quite a long time ago. Also, the signatures on the deposit slips vary and the written addresses look fake. Whoever was giving him money wanted it to appear random, done by different people at different banks with slightly different amounts every time."
"But it's not random. I mean, it was done once a month so that's a pattern right there," said Sooyoung.
Yuri nodded. "Major fail on their part." She took a bite from her food.
"The names are probably fake too then?" asked Taeyeon.
"That's what I thought, at first," answered Yuri through a full mouth. "But then I saw this." She put her chopsticks down, took the papers from Taeyeon, flipped the page and pointed at a row she had highlighted in green. "Check that one out."
"Choi Kyujun," Taeyeon read. Her eyes widened. "Wait. This name sounds familiar-..."
"He's dead now, unfortunately." Yuri resumed eating.
Taeyeon gasped. "That juice collector!" She remembered the murder case that introduced her to Tiffany and started this whole mess with Seungjin.
"Are you sure that this is the same Choi Kyujun?" asked Sooyoung.
Yuri nodded. "I bet he was still green at that time. He used his real known address and signature. Juhyun did a quick comparison."
"That's not very smart."
"His stupidity, our lucky break." Yuri took another bite. "At least we found our link. No innocent student would receive money from a shady juice collector. You can use that to get him to talk."
"Any other familiar names?" Taeyeon flipped the pages, scrutinizing the names.
"Unfortunately not. But I found something else. In the first few years after he graduated, he would make monthly withdrawals of the exact same amount."
"From his account?"
"Yes."
"And why didn't you notice this sooner?"
