Her Image (NAMJOON FIC)

Lies that have no end

Now 

"You say, the second time you met Nicole was at a club?" Detective Shaw asked, scrambling through her bag to find a paper and pen to take notes. 

She had accidentally ran into Namjoon while out walking her dog, and even though this went against workplace policy, she was eager to find out more about the Nicole Gray story. He was sitting in a park bench, alone, watching people pass by so she just assumed he had the time to talk. The problem with assuming such things, was, that she had forgotten to consider whether he wanted to talk at all. 

"Correct. It was somewhat spontaneous, but not really," he confessed. While Shaw was fully immersed in the story, Namjoon just threw out facts at hand, not too eager to put together a coherent story as he had been upon their first meeting. 

"Care to explain more, Mr. Kim?"

"I was heading to bed that night, I didn't have the energy to go to the bar then. Busy week at work, you see," he told, adding the unnecessary details that made Shaw impatient- she just wanted him to get to the gist of the story, "and I see Nicole's posted a selfie with Gia, in their apartment. 'Ready to hit up the city,' she said."

"Did she ask you to meet up?"

"Gosh, I wish," Namjoon said. "I took it on myself to find her. I realize this sounds weird, but I'm a shy guy. I have friends who work in the industry, from when I used to be a musician, so I just asked around. Nicole's apparently well-known in our city."

"From there," he continued," I was able to narrow it down to two clubs. One of them was more high-end than the other, but also a gay club, so I took my chances. I figured this would be her niche, she seemed quite liberal."

"So you track down Miss Gray, then what?"

"Well, I changed into something a little less gross and I headed out under the excuse of meeting up with a friend. I actually waited for a little over fifteen minutes, but she showed up. With her crew, no fail."

"It was Gia, the tomboy one, a guy with purple hair, two really tall girls and another one wearing a Star Wars tee. They looked like a pretty mixed bunch, but I found out from her Facebook that they had all met in college. Gia and Nicole had been roommates; purple hair boy and the tomboy girl seemed to be good friends that went way back; the tall girls were in Club Volleyball with Nicole and Star Wars girl... there was nothing about her. Regardless, it seemed like Nicole was the one who pulled the entire friend group together. She had the most followers on social media, most comments per picture and an alarmingly high picture upload rate."

"I believe her disappearance was reported based on her lack of activity on Instagram, correct?"

"Yes, she hasn't posted in ages," Namjoon said, a tinge of worry beginning to creep up on his spine again. 

At first, he had thought she was just taking a break of humanity and social media, and just entirely cleansing at some retreat or something- clearly, that was why he had not heard of Nicole in the past two weeks. However, there was always space for doubt to creep in- for his mind to go down the worst possible path in the given situation.

"So, back to the club, did you approach her?" Detective Shaw asked.

"No, I actually just hovered around for a while, pretending I didn't notice her. Nicole is cut from a different fabric, though. When she noticed me, she actually ran up to me and greeted me a little too- enthusiastically. I figured it was the drinks," Namjoon said, "but later I found out she didn't even drink."

"Did you notice anything in particular at that time? Any signs of," Detective Shaw interrogated, but barely jotted down anything in her journal. This story was more for herself, "I don't know, substance abuse, erratic behavior?"