Investigation

Chapter 8

Taehyung

"HAPPY BIRTHDAY, KIM SEOKJIN!!"

The birthday boy giggled and raised his glass of beer. "Thank you everyone for coming," he said. "I know that this is just a small party in our usual bar but I'm glad to be celebrating my 29th birthday with my beloved friends and coworkers. Also Captain Kim Namjoon, nice to have you here!"

"TO SEOKJIN!!"

Almost everyone in the precinct was here and some of them even brought a plus one, excluding me and Jihyun because both of our partners were too busy with work apparently.

"There are SO many people damn," Jihyun said as her eyes wandered around. "I didn't know Seokjin's friends with everyone in the precinct."

"I'm kind of sure that they came here to get the free food," I said, causing both of us to giggle.

After a while of beer drinking, she turned around and smiled. "Jungkook, you came!" she yelled out. "I thought you would be working tonight."

He proceeded to give her a peck on the lips before he said, "Yeah, but I wanna meet you."

Jihyun then turned to me and looked at me with her eyes that basically asked if it were okay for me to let them do their own things, so I nodded without her having to ask.

"Thanks, Tae. I'm sorry that Sojin couldn't come tonight," she said before leaving with her boyfriend.

Again, for some unknown reasons, I stared at them while continued drinking my beer. They seemed pretty happy. Good for Jihyun, I guess.

"You feeling jealous?"

I almost choked when Seokjin sneaked out on me. "Geez, man. Stop appearing out of nowhere like that."

He chuckled. "Admit it, man. You got some feelings for her."

"No, I don't," I said before taking a sip of my beer. "She's my best friend. I'm happy that she's happy."

"You've always thought that you would always be Jihyun's source of happiness, haven't you," he asked, "that you would always gonna be her go to guy, not knowing that the time of her finding her own man has arrived?"

I scoffed while avoiding any eye contact with that creep. "I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Lie to yourself as much as you want, man," he said. "I've been there before. I pretty much know how it feels."

"How what feels? I'm not feeling anything."

He scoffed while grabbing his beer, about to leave. "I just have to tell you one thing," he said while leaning closer to me. "If one day you finally come to a realization that you have fallen for her, man up and tell her. You don't wanna be too late for that."

---

"Morning, Detective Kim," the officer greeted me. "We found a dead body in the lake this morning."

I approached the corpse that was covered with white fabric. I couldn't open my eyes properly because of last night's hungover and since it was so early in the morning, but they immediately widened as I was shocked when I discovered that the person's mouth was sewed shut.

"What happened here?"

"We have to send this to forensic to know the details of the death," the officer said. "All we know for now is that she was murdered just this morning with her neck sliced with such a clean cut like this right here and that the killer sewed her mouth shut."

"Time of death?"

"Probably at 3 am earlier today."

"Alright, thanks," I said. "Send me the forensic report later."

The officers nodded and proceeded to take the corpse away. I then noticed Jihyun had also arrived at the scene and was staring blankly at the lake.

"What are you thinking about?" I asked.

She sighed. "Nothing," she said. "Did you ask who found the victim?"

"Yeah, a married couple who happened to be jogging around the lake," I said. "They're on their way to the precinct now. Let's go."

I noticed something off about Jihyun as she kept furrowing her eyebrows at the sight of the lake. If I didn't drag her to the car and drive away to the precinct, she would be standing there for hours.

"Hi, Mr. and Mrs. Choi?" I greeted as I handed them two cups of tea. "Please, take a sit."

They took a seat on the comfortable couch in one of the rooms in the precinct and so did Jihyun and I. They seemed to be stressed out after seeing the dead body, especially the wife who looked terrified.

"I'm sorry, detectives," she said. "I'm just not used to seeing dead bodies. I was shocked seeing the amount of blood that bled out from her neck. It was horrible."

"The amount of blood? That would mean that the murder happened not long before you arrived at the lake," I said. "Could you tell me what time you arrived at the scene?"

"We're early joggers," Mr. Choi said, "so I think we were there around 5.30 PM."

The weather was cold indeed, but the precinct had a heater to make the room warm, so it made me wonder why Mr. Choi kept wearing his scarf.

"Mr. Choi, do you want to remove the scarf? We can make the room warmer if you're feeling cold."

He shook his head. "No, thank you. I have some rashes on my neck, so I'm more comfortable wearing the scarf."

I was relieved that Mr. and Mrs. Choi were more than happy to help us with the case as they willingly answered every question I asked. 


However, I got quite worried with Jihyun. She didn't say a single thing during the witness questioning. All I knew was that she had been looking forward to work together in a homicide case, but now she seemed the opposite.

I wanted to ask her what was wrong but I hadn't gotten the chance. Jihyun and I were busy with our own tasks. I was in charge of the forensic update and keeping in contact with the victim's family where as Jihyun was tracing back the victim's activities hours before the murder happened and making phone calls here and there.

It was finally late at night and the captain told us to continue in the morning. I stretched my neck all the way to my legs while groaning before I packed my stuff and noticed that Jihyun was still standing in front of the white board, looking at it intensely.

I patted her back. "Hey, did something happen to you today?" I asked. "You know you can tell me anything. Is it Jungkook? What did he do to you?"

She chuckled. "No, it's not him," she said. "It's nothing. I'm fine."

I scoffed. "Yeah, like I would believe that," I said. "Come on. What's wrong? Are you upset because I was assigned as the primary detective for this case?"

She shook her head. "It's just that," she said, sounding a little bit careful, "this case seems awfully similar."

"Similar to what?"

It took her a few seconds to finally answer me. "To Jimin's murder case."