Chapter Text
"You have perfect grades, you can pick a better option than the police academy." The teacher smiles up at her kindly. "You can pick anywhere you want with these, Soohyun."
"I'm not interested in any other places." She takes a deep breath before replying again, "I have a reason."
"May I hear it?"
Soohyun nods.
"I want to help the little people."
And that was the truth; a flicker of memories of a young boy who was a distant memory and the gossip of a community. All she wanted to do was to help the little people.
(If only Soohyun had become friends with that boy. Maybe that way, she would have known what had happened to him.)
-
"They're clean, detective. Other than mysteriously refusing to give us information, they are a normal luxurious hotel." Hyukjae turns to her with a confused face. "Could we have been wrong about them?"
"No, can't be." Once again, Soohyun went over the Nebula Hotel information they've accumulated. Since the moment they came to work this morning, she had asked Hyukjae to look into it.
But they found nothing; not a single thing out of place that deems suspicion.
There has to be something; Kang Yohan had a high probability of working with these people after all. Why else was that business card planted in his office? If what she knows of Kang Yohan the past few days to be true then it must have been a trail left intentionally by the chief judge.
"Detective, do you really think we need any more evidence than that hard disc?" Hyukjae leans back on his seat, exhausted from a wild goose chase since early morning. "There are talks of Nam Seok Hoon possibly pleading guilty; the court date is three days from now. Shouldn't we call it a close?"
"That's true but." She can't accept it, there had to be something; anything. For one last time, her eyes sweep over the information. 'Nebula Hotel is owned by the Janggu Group. Notably the place has always been the go to venue for Social Responsibility Foundation's annual events; the Janggu Group is also one of the highest known donors.'
No, it couldn't be.
"Hyukjae, let's call it a day." Without even looking to see her coworker's reaction, Soohyun stood up and gathered her things. "Good work today."
Her mind was in chaos as she drove on the road (in hindsight, a thing that she really should not have done), hands in automatic as she pulled up and saw the eerily familiar house. Ah, how she hates how the house has taken root in her mind.
Ringing the bell was routine by the third time she came by. What wasn't routine though was that it wasn't Kim Gaon who opened the door for her; no, it was a middle aged looking woman wearing formal and pressed clothes. 'The house caretaker?' She guesses silently.
"Is anybody home?" She asks when the house caretaker doesn't react to her. "Kang Yohan or maybe Kim Gaon?"
"Master Kang is out and I suggest coming back later." The caretaker tilts her head in thought while letting her eyes look Soohyun up and down. "Master Kim is home."
"Alright, then can I meet him?"
Instead of denying or affirming her, the caretaker moves aside to let her in. "Watch you step inside," she says before turning around and walking into the house.
The interior of the mysterious manor is always the same, never changing. Never changing except for the electric roomba that were occupying the floors all around the main room of the house. 'So this was why she said to watch my step,' Soohyun thinks when she accidentally kicks a lone roomba.
"Master Kim is still asleep in his room," the caretaker says, turning around to face Soohyun who was standing nervously in the middle of a roomba invested floor. "Wait here, I will call him."
'Asleep? At this time?' Not wanting her to be punctually wrong, Soohyun looks down at her own wrist watch. It displayed that it was already 12 pm, yet the actor is still asleep? "Who's asleep until this time?" She unconsciously mutters under her breath.
"It's a Sunday, what is wrong with sleeping in?" A voice suddenly answers her.
Startled, Soohyun quickly looks to see who answered her. Coming from the second floor of the house, a girl on a wheelchair was visible; her face a grimace, as if she was looking down (figuratively not literally) at Soohyun. "...Hello there?"
"What does he see in you?" The girl says with a haughty tone before wheeling away out Soohyun's sight.
What the fuck was that? Also who the heck-
"Detective," this time, it was a familiar voice. "I wasn't expecting you to come so early…"
Not far from where she stood was Kim Gaon; a very evidently just woken up Kim Gaon. From his untamed bed hair and swollen face, even to the untucked sweater; it all looks as if the actor just woke up and rushed to greet Soohyun.
Soohyun almost feels bad for waking the other up.
"Sorry, is this a bad time?" She says while giving an apologetic smile to the model slash actor but Kim Gaon regards her apology with a wave of his hand.
"It is fine. You're here for Yohan?"
She shakes her head. "Actually, I was interested in meeting you. I apologise if that sounded a little too direct."
Kim Gaon's expression changed completely; from that of a politely friendly one to pure genuine surprise. The surprise wasn't there for long, only a blink later and it was masked back down by a hospitable smile. Soohyun expected nothing less from an actor who was known across the country.
"Well then. Detective, would you like to take a walk around the garden while I water some few things?" Kim Gaon suggested with an easy voice before starting to walk towards the door leading to the garden. Soohyun fell in step next to the house owner as he picked up a watering can.
They walked slowly through the luscious and well maintained garden. Kim Gaon narrates all the way through the process, even pointing out the interesting plants he had around. "Did you know you can plant things even in shoes? As long as you punch a few holes and pick the right seeds, and tada, a new life!" The male says excitedly while watering one of his 'shoe plants'.
There were two that caught Soohyun's eyes though; and for good reason too. All the rest of the shoes looked as if it was Gaon's own, yet this one looked like there was no way it was Gaon's. Because it was a small girl's low heel shoe.
Not only that, next to the shoe was a dress shoe that looked suspiciously familiar to Soohyun.
"Whose shoes are those?"
"Hm?" Kim Gaon looks towards the shoes that Soohyun was pointing at. "Oh, that's Elijah and Yohan's. I told them to handle it themselves but," he sighs while watering the two shoes. "They never remember to water them."
"Oh."
At this point of time, Soohyun never bothered to question everything that was going on in this house. How weird it was for a judge and an actor slash model to be dating? Why does Kang Yohan have such a big house? Who was that girl? The second she asked one, the questions kept coming.
Yet, Soohyun can't just voice these to Kim Gaon, could she? Does he know about all the rumors surrounding Kang Yohan? How about the nebula group thing? How much does he know?
But one answer was obvious in her mind. He was an actor; there was no telling what exactly this male in front of her was really thinking of.
And Yoon Soohyun wasn't going to try and find out if her battle is really with Kang Yohan.
"Detective?"
She snaps out of her rabbit hole of thoughts and questions when Kim Gaon calls upon her. "Yes?"
"I think that was Yohan just now; should we go back in to greet him?"
-
Soohyun had come here to question Kang Yohan (and to an extent, the whole Kang household) yet how had she ended up in such a situation?
Somehow, Kim Gaon had roped Soohyun to eat breakfast with the other members of the household; which consists of the wheelchair girl, Kang Yohan (who was giving Soohyun a very suspiciously cheery smile) and Kim Gaon himself.
Most importantly, nobody at the table except Gaon seemed outwardly pleased that Soohyun was there.
"Who is she?" The wheelchair girl asks with a sour expression. "Is she your mistress?"
Soohyun does not choke on her food at such a wording.
"Elijah," Kim Gaon says in a reprimanding tone while Kang Yohan's laughter surrounds the table. Elijah in turn, pouted when Gaon told her that it was wrong to call people that on the first meeting.
If they acted like this, Soohyun can't help but feel like she was sitting in on a normal family breakfast. It felt unnervingly domestic that she almost wanted to forget her suspicions of Kang Yohan and run out of there. But there was one thought in her mind.
It was the same thought as last time; Kim Gaon is an actor. Not only that, Kang Yohan is manipulative and Soohyun knows this. Sure, Elijah doesn't seem outwardly deceiving but she wasn't welcoming or polite either.
How much of this was real and how much of this was an act?
"I'm done. Lieutenant Yoon, how about we talk in my office?" Kang Yohan announces the moment he finishes his meal (and about every other dish on the table). The chief judge took a quick drink and stood up, signaling with his head for Soohyun to follow him.
Soohyun, who had finished her meal long before the judge, stood up and followed him; not forgetting to give a nod of thanks for the meal.
If there was one thing Soohyun can rely on this house, it was that it never changed. Unmoving and soulless, that was the manor of Kang Yohan. Inside his office didn't change either; still the normal and dark room that it was last time. With the binds wrapped together to the side but for some reason the room still felt so dark.
"Go on, I'm sure you're brimming with suspicion," Kang Yohan says while leaning back and half sitting on the edge of his desk. His expression was teasing and amused.
How annoying.
"Is it the foundation?" Not seeing the positives in beating around the bush, Soohyun dropped the question that has been hanging on the edge of her tongue.
"Is it?" Kang Yohan asks back with the same infuriating teasing tone. "Detective, ask me a more conclusive question and maybe I'll answer you."
Suppressing a sigh from escaping her throat, Soohyun frowns at Kang Yohan. "Maybe?" She mutters under her breath. "The nebula group, the foundation, and Chief Judge Kang Yohan. Are these all collaborators?"
"You are half right." Kang Yohan stands up and walks closer to Soohyun, only stopping when they were only a breath away. "I'm not working with those foundation bastards," Kang Yohan practically whispers between them before walking past Soohyun.
"Get out of my house."
-
Kang Yohan has a grudge against the foundation.
That was the single thought that ran through Soohyun's mind all through the three days before Nam Seok Hoon's court day. True to Hyukjae's words, the actor pleaded guilty and is now asking for the lightest sentence that the prosecutor could give him.
Soohyun didn't watch the live court; she was too busy digging into Kang Yohan's past to see if she could pinpoint where the grudge might have started. That was when she fell into a photo of the older brother of Kang Yohan.
No, half older brother.
"No way!" Soohyun exclaims while moving back from her computer screen. Not only was Kang Yohan apparently a bastard child; his older brother had the exact same face as Kim Gaon.
Ring ring.
Soohyun's surprise stupor was broken by her phone ringing, indicating a call from Hyukjae. "Hyukjae, what's wrong-"
"Detective, they're asking for Nam Seok Hoon to be castrated!"
"...What?!"
The more she listened to Hyukjae's explanation and synopsis of the live court that keeps sounding more and more like a circus; the more Soohyun felt like she had landed on the nail.
"Thank you for the update, Hyukjae." Soohyun doesn't bother waiting for her junior, hanging up and going back on her research.
This was it.
The church fire was the key; it was obvious. A mysterious fire that stinked as if Kang Yohan did it himself; and lots of core players in Korea inside the church while it happened.
-
Right that afternoon, when she knew that Kang Yohan would be in his office. Soohyun walked in, flashed her badge and didn't even bother knocking.
Annoyingly, Kang Yohan didn't seem surprised either.
"You can't possibly really think of castrating Nam Seok Hoon," Soohyun starts with a disbelieving voice but Kang Yohan doesn't react.
"I could if I wanted to." Kang Yohan finally looks up to regard Soohyun with a raised eyebrow. "I didn't know police lieutenants are now let to barge in the chief judge's offices," the judge comments while directing an amused smile at Soohyun.
Soohyun takes a deep breath; here goes nothing. "A church fire." Bingo, she thinks when Kang Yohan demeanor changed completely after the words slipped through her mouth. "It was a church fire."
Silence stretches between them; Kang Yohan looking at Yoon Soohyun with a long deliberate stare and Soohyun staring back at him and trying to see each and every little movement he makes.
"...Lieutenant, why did you become a police officer?"
Surprise. That was her first reaction to the sudden inquiry. But Soohyun doesn't let herself falter under the suddenness of it all; not when she has hit the jackpot. "I wanted to help the little people."
"Hmm." Kang Yohan stands up, reaches into one of his drawers and flips through some papers inside. "Lieutenant, you went to Gongbu kindergarten, yes?" Soohyun nods tentatively as an answer. "A sad and pitiable boy who had to stop schooling because his parents went bankrupt… does any of this ring a bell, Lieutenant?"
Her breath hitches up unknowingly; the ends of it getting stuck on her throat.
No, it can't be.
Kang Yohan puts down a file on his desk without words. And Soohyun was close enough to know exactly what was inside the papers when Kang Yohan opened it for her to read. On the first page was a picture of a young boy whose face Soohyun only remembered in her dreams.
With a name written next to the picture: Kim Gaon.
"Have you ever been curious to know who the boy is, Lieutenant?"
Soohyun went inside this office with the intention of shocking Kang Yohan; hitting the jackpot. Yet it seems that the chief judge has one upped her.
The one that was trapped was her.
-
The next few days were a blur to Soohyun. A meaningless haze as she tries and fails to comprehend everything around her.
The boy was Kim Gaon.
Even the mere thought makes Soohyun shudder; breathe falling in stutters. Did Kang Yohan knew from the start? No, of course he did. In the end, it wasn't a checkmate in her favor, it was Kang Yohan's win.
Dig deep enough into the devil's history and you might lose yourself. The sentiment never rang true enough for Soohyun until now. Try and fail to reveal the truth of another person's and they might dig into your past too.
In the middle of her thoughts, deep enough that every other senses felt far away from Soohyun; her phone rings. When she checks it, she sees three miscalls from Hyukjae.
"Hyukjae?"
"Finally, detective!" Hyukjae says through the call, his voice coloured with relief. "Open the tv. Kang Yohan didn't castrathed Nam Seok Hoon, he threw him to a prison!"
Looking around the mess of her living room, Soohyun locates the remote and turns it on. Displayed was a news section with the headline: 'Nam Seok Hoon sentenced to a life in a prison special for sexual offenders!'
"-it's fitting for the bastard but… Detective, are you listening?"
"Hyukjae, I'll call you later."
Not even bothering to turn the tv off, Soohyun grabbed her car keys and dashed out of her house. It was a Sunday so the bastard has a high probability of being home even when he just finished a court a few hours prior. If not knowing when to stop was being hard headed then not knowing when to quit even after being defeated was insanity; but, maybe Soohyun could learn to accept it if she just tries one last time.
One last time in talking to Kang Yohan. Except she didn't think she would be dropped into a stalemate before the first move.
"Detective?" The one who answered the door was Kim Gaon.
Soohyun doesn't say anything. Don't dare to. Merely standing there and staring. It hits her hard how similar Kim Gaon is from back then; still wide eyed and reserved from the world in how he stands. Wearing only long sleeved clothes.
"Soohyun. Call me Soohyun," the words slipped past her mouth even before she could think for a second of the implications of asking the actor such things. Does Kim Gaon know that they went to the same kindergarten? "We're the same age, aren't we? How about we drop the honorifics?" It was disrespectful to ask such a thing to somebody she has met a handful of times; even more so to a known celebrity.
But Kim Gaon looked both as flustered as her and amused. "T-Then, call me Gaon, Soohyun," he says while half laughing (in disbelief or amusement, Soohyun's not sure). "You're here for Yohan?"
Not trusting her mouth enough, Soohyun decides to nod wordlessly while Gaon moves to let her in.
"You know where his study is already, just go in."
Nodding in thanks to the actor, Soohyun walks towards the door that she knows fairly well by now. The interior of it's bleakness never changes, an old looking and sad feeling always attached to it. What also never changes is Kang Yohan never being surprised by her arrival nor acknowledging it.
"The church fire killed my brother, his wife and almost his daughter," Kang Yohan says when Soohyun closes the door behind her. His back turned to Soohyun while his gaze was reflected outside the window that was overlooking the lush garden. "Those bastards that are standing on top of the county just fought for their own survival inside." Kang Yohan's fingers tighten around the arm rest of his chair. "They didn't even care when my brother ran around the room trying to locate Elijah; yet they gave me such sympathy when I was in the hospital…"
Creaking sounds as Kang Yohan spunned around in his chair to face Soohyun with a condescending glare. "Let me ask you again, Lieutenant. Why did you become a police officer?"
"...the nice feeling when people thanked you for helping them; when people depended on you. I chased after the feeling and made a game of repenting for my past wrongs."
-
"Hey, what's your name? Why are you always playing alone?" A small girl asks another boy who was wearing a too big kindergarten uniform. "Don't ignore me. I'll introduce myself first. Hi, I'm Soohyun, and you are?" Soohyun whines while leaning to look at the boy's face that had a confused frown on it.
"...Gaon."
Soohyun tilts her head. "Hah? What was that?"
"I said, my name is Kim Gaon!" The boy says loudly to the girl, now turning annoyed at the teasing.
"Nice to meet you, Gaon. Let's be friends!" Soohyun says while laughing at Gaon's openly distasteful face.
Time went on and now there wasn't a lone boy who played by himself; now the boy was accompanied by a girl. Together they had fun, until Soohyun missed one day of school because of a flu and the boy was alone again.
"Soohyun, you missed school yesterday," a girl asks Soohyun; a classmate. "Were you sick?"
"It must be because she keeps playing with Kim Gaon. A poor restaurant boy is dirty!" Another girl says and all her classmates around her laugh with the joke.
Soohyun makes a disgusted face at the sudden crude joke. "Kim Gaon?"
"You keep playing with him lately, Soohyun. No way, you have a crush on him?"
"No way!" Soohyun rebukes instantly. "I- I wasn't playing with him. I was pretending to be friends with him!" She blurts out in a loud voice when all of her classmates look at her suspiciously.
Mad and angered that all of the kids around her would look at her so disgustedly, Soohyun said something that she wasn't sure she could ever take back. "Who would want to be friends with a dirty boy like him!"
Laughter erupts across the teacherless room. Everybody laughs along with Soohyun as she lets some laughter bubbles out of her lips too.
"Kim Gaon the dirty kid!" A few kids chanted while pointing behind Soohyun. Truth be told, behind her was Gaon who looked at Soohyun with a sad expression; betrayal was more befitting.
The words were already said and there was no taking it back. Soohyun with a haughty expression looked away from the sad boy and joined in even more on the laughter of her friends.
She stopped contact with Gaon right there and then as he ran out of the laughing classroom.
Not even three months later, the sad and betrayed boy's parents went bankrupt.
--
"Did you have to break her so much?" Gaon asks Yohan when he walks out of his study; just finished escorting out a defeated looking police lieutenant.
Yohan shrugs. "It would be easier to do it this way."
"Easier to control her, you meant." Gaon leaned back on the comfy sofa and looked up at the ceiling. "Find their weakness and exploit it. Exactly what you did to me."
A hand on Gaon's chin jerks his gaze to face Yohan who had a complicated expression on his face. "For you, it was me doing something you always dreamed to do for years; for her… it's different," Yohan says while his hands trails upward to ruffle Gaon's hair.
"She feels regret, Yohan."
"Regret is only the first step to forgiveness," he says with a grave voice while standing up and looming over Gaon's frame. "And regret would be her motivation to finally make herself useful to me," the chief judge says before sealing Gaon's lips with his own.
Gaon hums into the kiss, pressing into Yohan's chest to pull back for air. "Usefulness?" He whispers between the two of them while Yohan trails kisses down his neck. "Is that all people are worth to you-" his words get cut off when a hard thug at his hair makes Gaon throw his head back; giving more space for Kang Yohan.
"You're already useful to me, Gaon," the silent confirmation that Kang Yohan says to his neck makes Gaon's head spin.
An intoxicating feeling of being useful to somebody; eating away at his mind.