Talking to the moon

Chapter 22

The station was buzzing with life, not caring if Yunjin felt exhausted and couldn't keep up.

She slumped back into her chair, looking at the photograph in her hand. A young foreign girl, Chou Lìhuá, only about 23 with striking features, was found dead in an alley with her one-year-old child, whose name had been redacted for privacy reasons in the documents, crying and beaten. It's been about four years since then, so the child would be five now. Even trying to uncover the name would be useless because Yunjin severely doubted that they would remember anything. She sighed, setting it down, closing her eyes trying to go over the facts in her mind.

According to her friends back in Taiwan, Lihua got pregnant, kicked out of her house, and was lured to Korea with the promise of work. No work visas or visas, in general, were ever completed, so in the seven months between her arrival and eventual death, Yunjin had no clue what had actually been going on. She had her suspicions, the autopsy showed high levels of heroin use in her system, but the cause of death was blunt force trauma. And a small tattoo on her wrist, a snake insignia wrapped around her wrist with roman numerals tattooed under it; XII-X-VIXX. Trafficking maybe? That's what Yunjin's current theory was.

"Make any progress on that yet?" Sakura's voice startled her eyes open as she looked over to see the woman leaning over her staring at the file on her desk. First thing Yunjin had noticed, she cut her hair. A good chop, now it ended just above her shoulders, the top half tied up into a half-up ponytail. She was starting to gain a little weight, if you weren't looking you probably wouldn't notice, especially not with the three sizes too big jacket she insisted on wearing to cover her increasingly obvious baby bump.

"No." Yunjin groaned, "No CCTV, no witnesses, this case is also like four years old now. Why was it even reopened anyways?"

"I guess she was the daughter of some big Taiwanese politician." Sakura shrugged, "Apparently he kicked her out when she got pregnant to save face for his campaign, but that didn't end well for either of them. He demanded we reopen the case."

"Do you think this tattoo has anything to do with it?" Yunjin tapped the photo on her desk, "It just keeps nagging me."

Sakura went quiet for a few seconds, "Isn't that the same symbol that patrols picked up last week?"

"Which one?"

"The one that was running and crying half-naked down near Hongdae."

Yunjin snapped, straightening her posture before looking over the file once more. Her fingers flew over to her computer, typing in trying to get the report. Maybe she could interrogate her and try to find something out. She could feel Sakura taking a seat next to her, not so subtly reaching over to grab the bag of potato chips Yunjin had bought from the vending machine in place of a proper lunch. (Don't tell Chaewon). "You can just take them."

With that permission, Sakura snatched the bag letting it rest on her lap as she watched Yunjin work. The loud crunching sound starting to get on Yunjin's nerves she sighed, "Don't you have a case to work on?"

"I'm on break."

"So?"

"I'm not sure if you know this, but a break is when you don't work for a little bit and relax so you don't overwork yourself."

"Wow? Really?" Yunjin deadpanned, glaring over at her friend who just rolled her eyes in response. "Speaking about breaks, are you and Kazuha doing better now?"

"Yeah," Sakura sounded relieved by that, and quite frankly Yunjin was as well. Kazuha's text to her had been very angry, and Yunjin thinks it was fair. They made a big decision that affected the lawyer without her knowledge or consent, and Zuha was never a person to take very kindly to things like that. "We talked about it."