Se-hun and Hwa-sook met Dal-geon, Hae-ri, and Tae-ung in the hall.
"Heol," Se-hun commented. "I thought I had it bad when I was hypnotized."
"Ne, all you did was beat up a suspect, kiss Snow white, and nearly throw Dal-geonssi off a building," Tae-ung said.
"At least he didn't try to drug anyone into falling in love with him," Dal-geon pointed out.
"Ne," Se-hun agreed. Then—"Wait, I kissed Hwa-sookssi?"
"Ne," Tae-ung confirmed.
"But that was before—"
"Yup."
Se-hun frowned. "I don't remember that."
"Not to worry, Shrek, she liked it," Dal-geon informed him. "Even though she tried to pretend that she didn't. Isn't that right, Snow white?"
Hwa-sook hit him on the arm and shot him an annoyed look.
"God, what a mess," Hae-ri groaned, pinching the bridge of her nose.
"Guess you've still got it, eh, Timjangnim?" Se-hun said. "Did you see the way that kid was looking at you? Like he was a starving man and you were the world's biggest sandwich."
"Gomawo, Shrek, that's helpful," Hae-ri said dryly.
"What are we going to do with him?" Hwa-sook asked.
"We'll have to get him and his family set up with the witness protection program," Hae-ri replied.
"Witness protection?" Dal-geon repeated. "He poisoned you, Hae-rissi. He ought to be thrown in jail."
"He didn't mean to hurt me, Dal-geonssi."
"He put a foreign substance into your coffee without your consent. He has some culpability in this."
Hae-ri shook her head. "Older and wiser people than Ri-byung have been manipulated into doing things they wouldn't normally do by Edward Park. I'm not going to ruin the poor kid's life because he let Edward Park delude him into thinking he was in love with me."
"Think the family will go for it?" Hwa-sook asked. "I mean, witness protection is kind of a big deal. They'll have to leave their whole lives behind."
"They'll have to," Hae-ri said. "Edward Park is sure to find out that his plan didn't work eventually. I can't imagine he'll let this failure pass without wanting his intended pawn to feel the full consequences of his disappointment. Ri-byung won't be safe once Edward Park figures out he's talked to us."
"Forget Jin Ri-byung, what about you?" Dal-geon said. "Once he realizes that Jin Ri-byung botched the poisoning effort, he's bound to come up with a plan to come after you in some other way."
"Cha Dal-geon's right, Timjangnim," Tae-ung said. "You need to reconsider some of those protection measures we talked about when Dal-geonssi first got the lamb."
Hae-ri sighed. "Arasso. If I agree to let someone on the team stay with me for the next few days, will that make you happy?"
"Aniyo," Dal-geon answered. He wouldn't be happy until the threat to Hae-ri's life was removed once and for all, and there was only one way to make sure that happened. "But it's a start."
"Shrek, get the police on the phone and see if they can someone down here to talk to Ri-byung's family," Hae-ri instructed
"Will do, Timjangnim," Se-hun said.
Hae-ri turned to Hwa-sook. "Snow white, take that flask to the lab and see if you can run down the source of the poison. It's a long shot, but if we can figure out where it's from, maybe we can figure out how Edward Park got his hands on it."
"No problem," Hwa-sook said.
"I'm going to talk to Ri-byung's eomma and try to help her understand that her whole family has to leave their entire lives behind them and enter the witness protection program if they want to have any chance of keeping Ri-byung alive," Hae-ri continued. "Hook, I need you to go pick up the rest of Ri-byung's family and bring them here to talk to the guys from the Witness Protection Program."
"Arasso."
She looked at Dal-geon. "Dal-geonssi, I want you to sit with Ri-byung and see if you can unhypnotize him."
"I don't know the trigger," Dal-geon protested. "Breaking the power of Edward Park's hypnotic suggestion without knowing the trigger will be damn near impossible."
"I don't care," Hae-ri said stubbornly. "You have to try."
Realizing Hae-ri was likely to prove intractable on this point, Dal-geon resigned himself to a wasted afternoon. "Ne, ne."
On second thought, it was entirely possible that Edward Park had planted a secondary suggestion beneath the first that might prompt Ri-byung to resort to physical violence against Hae-ri if the first plot failed. Dal-geon straightened. Perhaps breaking Edward Park's hold over Ri-byung would be well worth the effort, after all.
Orders dispatched, Hae-ri opened the door to the interrogation room and addressed Ri-byung's mother, Dal-geon at her elbow. "Eommoni? Could you come with me? I'd like to talk to you in my office."
She glanced uneasily at her son, clearly reluctant to leave him alone in the state he was in.
"Cha Dal-geon's going to sit with Ri-byung for awhile," Hae-ri told her. "I think he might be able to help him."
"Help him?" Ri-byung's mother said uncertainly.
"Dal-geonssi has a very unique skill set," Hae-ri informed her. "He's going to do everything he can to break the trance Ri-byung is under."
"Arasso," Ri-byung's mother said dubiously. "If you think it's best."
"I do."
Ri-byung's mother patted Ri-byung on the shoulder and followed Hae-ri to her office, leaving Ri-byung with Dal-geon. Ri-byung scowled at Dal-geon, obviously less than pleased at being left in the charge of the man he perceived as the major threat against Hae-ri's affections towards him.
Dal-geon suppressed a sigh. This was going to be fun.
___________
Hae-ri spent the rest of the day mired in witness protection program procedure with the Jin family and two NIS agents. Tae-ung had returned with Jin Ri-byung's father and younger sister, and Hae-ri watched their faces as it slowly dawned on them that they were going to have to leave behind everything that they knew if they wanted to keep Ri-byung safe. Ri-byung's mother and father were familiar with the Edward Park case from the papers. They were understandably horrified to learn their son had not only conversed with the notorious killer, but had been hypnotized and manipulated by him into poisoning someone.
Dal-geon found Hae-ri on her couch at the end of the day, drinking a glass of soju and looking depressed.
"Ya," she said tiredly. "Want some?" She gestured to the bottle on her desk, indicating for him to help himself.
He sat down next to her and took the glass from her instead, taking a healthy swallow.
He was tired, too. He'd spent six hours with Ri-byung before he'd finally found the trigger, and then another half hour with the kid helping him wrap his head around the fact that he really had been poisoning a woman he'd had a crush on for the better part of six months. After that, Dal-geon returned Ri-byung to his family, but he'd taken one look at the crowd in Hae-ri's office and retreated to the safety of his attic until the agents and everyone had left.
"Thank you for helping Ri-byung," she said to him. "After you broke the trance, he seemed a lot more… sane."
"Ani. All in a day's work," he said with a lightheartedness he didn't really feel.
"What was the trigger, anyway?"
"It was the phrase 'Cha Dal-geon is a dishonest little worm,'" he informed her.
She stared at him. "How the hell did you figure that out?"
"Patience, and dumb luck."
"Jinjja. How did you figure it out?"
Dal-geon shrugged. "I tried every physical cue in the book and every poem William Shakespeare ever wrote before it occurred to me to try some of the phrases from the note Edward Park left me after he killed Hoon. Edward Park enjoys symbolism. In the event that his plan succeeded, there's a reasonable chance I would have eventually figured out that Jin Ri-byung was behind the poisoning. He would like the idea of reminding me that the death of yet another person I cared about could be laid at my feet."
Hae-ri scowled. "Didn't we already talk about this? I don't want you blaming yourself for things that he's done."
"I can't help how he thinks. Besides, it got us to the end goal—Jin Ri-byung is unhypnotized and won't be trying to kill you anymore, so that's all that matters."
"So he's totally cured? He isn't convinced he has a crush on me anymore?"
Dal-geon shook his head. "He's cured of the hypnotism. The crush pre-dated the hypnotism, so unhypnotizing him wouldn't have had any effect on that."
"I thought Edward Park was the one who convinced him he was in love with me."
"Andwae. It was more subtle than that. It really was an impressive piece of work. Edward Park knew Jin Ri-byung had a crush on you. When he hypnotized him, he dialed up his craving for your attention a notch or two, just enough to get him to consider drastic means to obtain it. Then he reinforced the feeling by making Ri-byung think that when you smiled at him, you were in love with him."
"Reinforced it?"
"Ne. After all, what is more attractive than someone falling in love with you? Think about it from Jin Ri-byung's perspective. Imagine this person you've been pining for ages suddenly starts giving you every indication they love you back. They smile when they see you and they look at you like you're the only person in the world. There's no feeling in the world headier than that."
"Except that it was all based on a lie made up by Edward Park," Hae-ri reminded him.
"Ne," he agreed. "Except for that."
"I feel awful about it. If I'd known…"
"There's nothing you could have done, Hae-rissi. You had no way of knowing Edward Park was twisting Jin Ri-byung's perceptions to the extent that he was interpreting a polite smile as evidence that you were in love with him."
"I just can't help thinking I could have prevented it somehow, if I'd realized he was taking a thank you smile as encouragement of this ridiculous crush."
Dal-geon shook his head. "Poor kid. One's first broken heart is never a pleasant experience, but to realize the other person never cared for you romantically at all is even worse. Plus, you know, the whole thing about realizing you've been inadvertently poisoning the object of your affection —I'm sure that's no picnic, either."
She shuddered. "God, what a disaster."
She looked miserable. Dal-geon looked at her closely. Hae-ri was feeling much better than yesterday, but the poison hadn't completely worked its way out of her system yet; she'd still suffered the lingering effects of a headache all day. The headache had doubtlessly been compounded by the stress of dealing with the teenage admirer who had been poisoning her and his family. Or possibly the strain of knowing for certain that Edward Park was actively plotting to kill her. Or, you know, all of the above.
Dal-geon's heart went out to her. Hae-ri was always the one who the rest of Vagabond turned to when things were at their worst. For all of her tough, no nonsense exterior, Hae-ri possessed a strange brand of nearly indefatigable optimism. Though she could be short-tempered and irritable when something annoyed her, she, more than anyone else on the team, remained steady and calm when the going got tough. If she did feel discouraged about a case, she rarely allowed anyone to see it. Least of all him – she always seemed to want to protect him from her darker moments. To see her visibly frustrated over what Edward Park had done to Jin Ri-byung and his family was actually physically painful to him. Between the two of them, she was the one who offered constant encouragement; he was the one who teetered dangerously on the brink of despair. Perhaps it was the knowledge of how very much he owed her in that regard or perhaps it was merely that he hated seeing her unhappy, but seeing her like this caused Dal-geon to do something he very rarely did: he acted without thinking, and put his arm around her.
He wasn't sure which surprised him more: his own temerity, or the fact that Hae-ri didn't pull away from him. Instead, she leaned her head against his shoulder and closed her eyes.
She must be even more upset than he'd thought.
Poisoned and exhausted, her defenses were down. Perhaps another kind of man would have respected the boundaries that Hae-ri normally maintained as her true wishes; he, Dal-geon, intended to take full advantage of the breach in her defenses while he could. He shifted closer to her.
"Edward Park ruined his life, Dal-geonssi," she said into his shoulder. "Ri-byung was accepted to his dream University, did you know that? Now he won't be able to go. He and his whole family have to leave their lives behind, start new. And for what? Because he happened to be a convenient player in one of Edward Park's games. All these lives… Edward Park doesn't give a damn about any of it. It's all just a game to him."
Dal-geon's arm tightened around her. "I know."
She raised a hand and covered her eyes. "And Ri-byung's family… they had no idea what to make of this. Can you imagine being pulled out of your office in the middle of the day and being told your son is probably going to be murdered if you don't get out of town immediately?"
Dal-geon stroked her hair and listened to her worry about Ri-byung and his family. "They'll be all right, Hae-rissi," he said gently.
"They have to leave everything behind," she repeated. "Their home, their friends. Everything they've worked for their whole lives."
"Ne, but they have each other," he reminded her.
"I suppose," she sighed, letting her hand fall back to her side.
"It will be difficult. Especially for Jin Ri-byung, and especially at the beginning. But he's safe," he continued, his voice hypnotically soothing. "We figured it out in time. And I can guarantee you his family will be happier starting over with a clean slate with their family intact than staying in their twice-mortgaged home faced with the grief of losing their son to a killer."
"I guess so," she said. "It's just so unfair. Ri-byung doesn't have anything to do with this case. He was just unlucky enough to get caught in the crossfire. Now he's probably going to be screwed up for life just because he had a little crush on me."
"Oh, I don't know about that," Dal-geon said lazily. He was enjoying the soft weight of Hae-ri leaning against his side and the silk of her hair between his fingers. "You talked to him before he left, didn't you?"
"Ne. It was one of the most awkward conversations I've ever had in my life."
"But you persisted, despite how uncomfortable you were. You spoke to him, reassured him. You made him feel better."
"How do you know what I said to him? You were hiding up in your attic."
"I know you," he said softly. "You forgave him for poisoning you, and you took the sting out of the rejection as best you could. You gave him whatever hope you could offer."
"Fat lot of good that will do him," she said darkly.
He sighed. "Look on the bright side, Hae-rissi."
"There's a bright side?"
"Sure."
"What's that?"
Dal-geon shrugged. "At least we know he's got good taste. Sure, he'll probably be pretty neurotic with his first girlfriend or two, but eventually he'll end up with a warm, caring woman who sees the best in him despite his flaws."
"You think so?"
"I'm sure of it."
She sighed. "I hope you're right."
He kissed the top of her head. "I bet you a thousand won she'll have nice hair and innocent smiling eyes," he said into her hair.
She pinched him and sat up, but her mouth curved up at the corners slightly as she did so, so he counted it as a win. "Jugulae?"
She stood and stretched. "I should probably go."
He watched her try to work the tension out of her neck, and thought about ways he could soothe the muscles there for her. "You want me to drive you home?"
She shook her head. "Hook's lurking around here somewhere. He's assigned himself guard duty and is planning to stay at my place tonight. He'll take me home."
"Ne."
She headed for the door. "See you tomorrow."
"Ne." He watched her go. "Hae-ri Go?"
She turned in the doorway. "Mmm?"
"Sleep in tomorrow, okay?"
She blinked in surprise at the unexpected suggestion. "Weh?"
"You've been poisoned and you had a hard day. You deserve the rest."
She thought about this. "I suppose it couldn't hurt to come in late for once."
"Geureomyo. Plus, you probably won't feel like drinking coffee tomorrow, so you'll need the extra sleep if you're going to be fit company for anyone," he reasoned. "Jinjja, it's for the good of the team."
She made a face. "You're going to tell Hook to confiscate my alarm clock, aren't you?"
A brilliant smile broke out over his face. "Jinjja Hae-rissi, what an excellent suggestion. I'm so pleased you thought of it."
She grabbed a pen from the table by the door and threw it at him. "I expect you to have a strong cup of your blackest, most caffeinated tea ready for me when I come in."
"It will be here waiting for you," he promised.
She left, and he went into the kitchen, setting down the glass of soju and rummaging around in the cupboard for the box of his favorite teas. He selected a fine tea he'd found in a specialty shop.
Well, it wasn't love potion, but it would do.