The Sun to my Moon

Chapter 16: Hints

"So," Go Hae-ri said the next day, leaning against Gi Tae-ung's desk and taking a sip of her coffee as she addressed the team. "What have we got so far?"

The rest of the team exchanged glances. "Not a whole lot," Kong Hwa-sook admitted.

"Well, it's early days yet," Hae-ri said. "This is a long haul, not a sprint. I don't expect you to have all the answers after only one afternoon. Just tell me what steps you've taken so far. Shrek, you go first. Have you made any progress on Miki?"

"Not really. The woman's like a friggin' ghost," Kim Se-hun complained. "I talked to everyone in the building who ever said hello to her, and none of them knew a thing about her except that she had a lot of cat pictures by her desk. Everyone said that she was polite, didn't make waves with anyone. She would make small talk if approached, but never volunteered anything personal about herself."

"What about HR?" Hae-ri asked. "She had to have gone through a background check to get a job at the NIS. Have you gone through her personnel file?"

"I took a look at it. All the numbers were disconnected."

Hae-ri frowned. "Well, they had to have been connected when she applied for the job. See what you can do to figure out who those numbers connected her recruitment officer to when the background check was run."

"Will do, Timjangnim."

"Anything else to report?"

He shook his head. "No. Haven't started in on Jo Bu-yeong yet. Spent too much time running around asking about Miki yesterday."

"All right. Snow white, how about you?"

Hwa-sook sighed. "I haven't managed to learn anything about Ki-soo that I didn't already know. He seemed like such a golden boy, you know? He wasn't like Miki, lonely and isolated. He had friends, a stable family. I talked to some of his friends, and they'd known him for years. Never suspected a thing. I talked to his team leader, and he said Ki-soo was an exemplary agent. He made his career on a bust, saving the lives of two of his fellow officers at great risk to himself."

Se-hun frowned. "That doesn't sound like Pinocchio."

"What do you mean?" Hwa-sook asked, startled.

Se-hun looked away. "Nothing. Never mind."

"It's not nothing," Cha Dal-geon said. "You're thinking of something specific that made you say that. You witnessed an event that made you think Pinocchio wasn't quite the golden boy everyone else thought he was, perhaps?"

"No, I didn't," Se-hun protested weakly, but it was no use. He was an even worse liar than Hae-ri.

"Spit it out, Shrek," Hae-ri said. "This could be important."

"Fine," Se-hun said reluctantly. "It was during the Tim Dae case. Me, Snow white, and Pinocchio went to talk to that one creep, and he and his cousin and his crazy mom drew guns on us. Hwa-sook's gun jammed as one of them creeps was about to come up behind her."

"I remember," Hwa-sook said. "You saved me. You shot the guy before he could get me."

He avoided Hwa-sook's eyes. "Ne."

"It should have been Pinocchio," Hwa-sook realized. "He was in a better position. You had to cross into the open to cover me, putting yourself in greater danger. But you did it anyway."

"Of course I did," Se-hun said, lifting his eyes to hers and sounding almost angry. "But Han Ki-soo should have stepped up. He was engaged to you. He got to come home to you. How could he face the possibility of never being able to come home to you again and not do everything in his power to make sure that never happened?"