Black, Blue, and Gold (Book 2)

Turning Over A New Leaf (Part 2)

Jisoo entered the room with a stack of papers in her hands. She handed them to Jongin who proceeded to distribute them among his colleagues.

Sooyoung entered not long afterwards with a tablet in hand. She connected it to the system and took a seat.

"Okay. Everyone's here?" Jisoo looked at the room and saw them nod. "Right." She looked at Joonmyun. "Let's get started."

Joonmyun nodded a little.

Jisoo took a deep breath. "If you look at the papers I gave you, you will see that we are reopening the kidnapping case of Lee Jaewan." She paused and saw no surprised reaction except for Jennie's confused expression. "I guess you've all expected this, huh?"

Some stole glances at Joonmyun who stayed silent.

"For the sake of Jennie, I shall go through the case briefly once more." Jisoo looked at Jennie and gave her a small smile. "It's okay, Jen. This happened before you joined the team." She lifted her paper. "Lee Jaewan, four years old, was kidnapped from his kindergarten almost five years ago."

Jennie's eyes widened. "How was that possible?"

"His mother was running a bit late and, in her rush, forgot to notify the teacher until the last minute." Jisoo saw Joonmyun clenching his jaws. She became more cautious. "The boy was then picked up by someone else."

"The teacher let him go with a stranger?" Jennie still couldn't believe the recklessness she was hearing.

"No. The teacher went inside for a second to pick up the ringing phone – from the boy's mother, ironically – and came out to find him gone."

Lisa nudged Jennie slightly under the table, gesturing towards Joonmyun who was staring at his paper. Jennie got the message. "Sorry, Joonmyun. I was just..." She wasn't sure what to say.

Joonmyun looked up and smiled weakly. "It's okay, Jen. I've heard the facts and gone through them countless times. I'm used to the reaction. It was my initial reaction as well." He swallowed. "Recklessness," he mumbled – looking down at the paper in front of him.

"Anyway," Jisoo cleared her throat. "Jennie, I'm sure the team will walk you through that case later. Right now, there are other new things I'd like to share with you all." She nodded at Sooyoung who tapped the tablet, displaying a picture of a boy in a supermarket and a younger girl on the large screen.

"We have reasons to believe that this is Lee Jaewan, age 9," Jisoo gestured at the picture of the boy. "Sooyoung has created an age progression facial reconstruction to estimate how the boy will look at the age of 9 based on his old pictures."

Sooyoung added another picture to the mix and some gasped at the similarity.

"Joonmyun, walk us through what you have found so far," Jisoo ordered. She sat down and let Joonmyun take over.

Joonmyun stood up and went to stand in front of the screen. "This boy didn't give me his name but he pointed to a young woman when I asked who he was with." He gestured at Sooyoung who displayed another picture on the screen – that of a woman with shoulder-length hair. The quality of the picture was bad though. "I asked Sooyoung to help me do a background search based on her picture that I took hastily." He took a deep breath. "But we've found nothing. This picture was too blurry and it was taken from an angle that obscures most of her face because she hurried out of the supermarket – grabbing the boy when she saw him talking to me. The most I remember about her is that she's about Inspector Manoban or Inspector Kang's age." He decided to use the formal term since it was a case briefing after all.

Lisa frowned. "That's it?"

"Unfortunately so. She looked normal, average. There was nothing out of the ordinary so I can't even remember her face clearly," Joonmyun answered, looking disappointed with himself.