Here I Lie // ATEEZ ✔

- 13 -

Dowoon hooks his fingers behind his head, leaning against the leather office chair as he takes one final look at the transparent board. Alone in the room, he had taken all the time he had from after he met the victims until lunch to put together the information they have so far. Pictures of the culprits and victims are pasted on the board, with scribbles of relevant details and lines connecting them with each other. He had transferred the timeline from his notebook to the board, providing him with a wider view but even so, there are a lot of empty gaps.

Jeong Yunho's picture is in the middle of the board, the most prominent culprit now. Before, he was also thought to be one of the victims, but things changed when he was found out to be the rightful owner of the villa. His picture is connected with lines to the five victims, with the words 'director/boss' written along the line, and to the other two culprits with the words 'friends' written along the lines. The lines connecting the victims are all adorned with huge question marks, because he still can't come up with how they could be connected.

With Mingi's picture, he wrote 'MISSING SINCE 2 DAYS AGO'. Underneath Wooyoung's picture he wrote 'REPORTED MISSING 4 YEARS AGO' and underneath San's picture he wrote 'DIED 4 YEARS AGO, SUICIDE'. There is the summary of the events that happened with the case written at the bottom of the board.

"Why did they torture them and then let them go?" he thinks out loud. "But if they wanted to be caught so much, they could have stayed put and let the police do their job. Why run away?"

"That means their game is not over yet," a voice offers, the sound of a door shutting behind him following suit. Dowoon swivels in his chair to spot the team's hacker, also considered the genius of the team, bringing in two cups of coffee with him. He offers one to the former and he accepts. "Do you know the actual situation at the villa when they ransacked it?"

Dowoon doesn't answer as he lets the hacker - Kang Younghyun - explain. It's not that he doesn't know, but he needs another perspective, and Younghyun just might be the person to bring light to the case.

"Everything in the house in orderly, the way you would leave your house when you know you're going on a long trip for some time. The dishes were clean, windows and doors were shut and you could say, everything was in place. Well, except for the victims' belongings, that is. The basement is wide open, as if inviting all the officers to take a look. It's like they're saying 'Hey, take a look at my work, isn't it beautiful?' As opposed to the upper grounds of the villa, the basement is dirtied with blood and their prints, which means they are not trying to bury whatever they did. They knew we were coming, oh of course they would be expecting us when Wooyoung had asked them to tell us everything. They ran away not because they're scared of getting caught, they ran away because that's their plan. That is exactly the flow of their game."

"There was a message on the wall Yeosang said he was kept in, but the first message they supposedly wrote in Seonghwa's room was found to have been erased," Dowoon refutes. "Why is that so? Why kill Seonghwa straight away but try to cover the evidence of it ever happening, when they put the rest of their work proudly on display?"

"This... is only my theory but that could have been the outlier in their gameplan. They weren't supposed to kill him, because they had prepared three enclosures for them. But maybe he found out something too early, or maybe one of them wanted to prove something to the others, he decided to take matters into his hands. Seonghwa could have only been unlucky to be the random first victim, or there would be a particular criteria on why he was chosen."

"According to Hongjoong, Seonghwa's face was lacerated really badly, up until his features were unrecognizable, but his body was barely scathed. Why did the murderer aim for the face only?"