(i think) he did it

SERIAL KILLER OR A LOVE AFFAIR? Local man goes missing weeks after his own husband, police consider dropping him from pool of suspects, consider dropping case altogether.

Almost two months after the mysterious disappearance of his husband, Son Dongmyeong, a friend reported Kim Donghan as missing to the police this morning. After Kim was previously suspected of possibly being involved in the disappearance of his spouse — police went so far as to speak of a possible murder after Son reportedly uncovered Kim’s infidelity only days before he disappeared, according to his brother who recalled a conversation about Son wanting to call Kim out the Friday before Son was reported missing by Kim himself on Wednesday, January 15th — police now considers dropping Kim from the pool of suspects and looking for someone who might have been after them both. Or maybe, after all, this is just an elaborate plot to mend a lover’s quarrel.

“Dongju?” his mother’s voice filters through the line, and he’s never heard it sound like this — this frenzied, almost watery. His heart kicks into overdrive, and he shoots upwards on the couch. “Dongju, have you seen your brother?”

Dongju’s eyebrows shoot up his forehead. “Not for a few days. Why?”

And the sob that breaks out of his mother tears through him with such violent force it might have torn him to shreds. “Donghan called us earlier,” she manages to get out. “Dongmyeong didn’t come home from work last night, so he called to ask if he’d come home. He said they had a fight, and now no one has seen him since he left work.”

If Dongju would ever have to describe what it feels like to have your heart drop, this would be it. He saw Dongmyeong for their birthday last week, when they met up for dinner at a local BBQ place like they do every Friday, except this time with the added fun of two free bottles of champagne when they told the server it was their birthday.

He told him, then, that he felt like he was losing control of things. That it was getting out of hand, slipping from between his fingers, all between Donghan and him. And Dongju tried to — tried to what, really?

Reassure him that things would be fine, because they have always been? Now his mother is on the phone with him on a shitty Wednesday night after he was yelled at at work all day and still hasn’t had dinner despite his growling stomach, and she’s telling him that it’s been over twenty-four hours since anyone last saw Dongmyeong.

“But his coworkers did see him at work?” he asks, a little breathless, and he hates it.

“Yes.” He can almost feel his mother nod through the line. “Donghan called into his work last night when he was already a few hours late because he got worried, and they told him he had clocked out at his usual time. One of them said she saw him leave the building, but not the parking lot. No one has seen him since.”

The world ends, or comes to a halt, freezes in place with a record scratch so loud it tears Dongju’s eardrums. It tears into him so harshly he wants to cry, even if he knows he can’t. Shouldn’t.

Dongmyeong isn’t gone, he tells himself after his mother hangs up the phone — though not without telling him that he was one of the last people they had to call, because there are not many places Dongmyeong could possibly be, and they would be alerting the police now. He’s just wandering around somewhere, trying to clear his head. He has friends everywhere, he might just be hiding from Donghan for a while to let things clear up.

That sounds just like him, Dongju decides when he sits back down with legs he wills not to shake. Run away when he’s mad and let things be handled by other people, return when things are easier. He’s always done that.

Though not for a long time, not since they were high schoolers and someone made him mad in Literature class.

And it’s usually Dongju who fixed things for him, who went in silent and with a shy smile where his brother was always too loud and stepping on too many feet at once, fixing the messes he made. It was never something that was required of him, but something that came naturally, making sure that Dongmyeong was okay.

Not that Dongju never got mad, not that Dongmyeong never had to fix things for him. It was a mutual thing.

But now that’s — well, he supposes fixing Dongmyeong’s messes is Donghan’s task now. Dongju doesn’t need to go running around looking for him, because Donghan already did. He doesn’t need to go in and fix what happened, because it’s a thing between Dongmyeong and Donghan that they have to fix on their own.

And Dongju was one of the last people they called.

He sits back down on his couch and cradles his head in his hands, trying not to pray. His phone rests heavy in the pocket of his sweater, waiting for a call that he knows might never come.

Dongmyeong is not gone.

“I think Han’s cheating on me,” is how Dongmyeong decides to open the conversation as soon as he drops down at the table Dongju’s occupying and picks up the menu in a swift motion, as if unbothered by what he just exclaimed.

Dongju, on the other hand, feels his entire face drop to his feet. “What?”

Dongmyeong sighs, long and hard, and his head drops backwards. Maybe he is bothered, after all. He definitely looks paler, eyes framed by dark circles and his hair a little unkempt from running his hand through it. This is how he looked during finals season in high school, but not after a day fresh out of his lovely home with his husband.

“I found a tie when I got the laundry out of the washer that definitely is neither mine nor his. And when I went to get the bank statements this week I noticed that someone spent like two hundred dollars on jewelry in person, not online so it could still be on its way, that he has neither worn nor given to me, even though he had plenty of chances today. He barely even seemed to remember that it’s my birthday.”

Dongju’s hand curls around the chopsticks he was already holding. “He could be waiting for tonight …”

“He could,” Dongmyeong confirmed, and he’s not looking at Dongju. His eyes are directed at his hands, like they always are when he’s nervous. Afraid, maybe, like he was the day of his wedding, three years ago. “Or I could have gone back further in our bank statements and noticed things he spent money on that seem like gifts but that never landed in my hands. Chocolate, flowers, more little pieces of jewelry, wine and fancy dinners that I didn’t go on.”

“Oh,” Dongju breathes out. “Oh, Myeong, I’m so sorry …”

Dongmyeong shrugs, but Dongju can tell that he’s not as unaffected as he’d like to pretend he is. His cheeks are running red with some twisted kind of shame, perhaps, and Dongju hopes he doesn’t think it’s his fault.

“Is it weird that the worst part for me is that he apparently goes as far as to … wine and dine whoever it is?” A laugh pushes past his lips, though there is no joy in it. His eyes seem almost empty, fallen into his skull. “Like, I don’t even care if he’s fucking someone else, it’s the everything around that that’s getting to me.”

And in the flicker of the light over their heads, Dongju could swear he sees a tear flash in Dongmyeong’s eye.

There’s not much he can say to that, lips staying pressed together. Dongju has never had much of an opinion on Donghan, even if they’ve been brothers in law for over three years. They went to school together, too, had a few classes together and Dongju might have thought him a bit strange, especially after he started dating Dongmyeong. But he never thought anything much about him, just that he was the guy who married his brother a year out of school.

The wedding was nice and quaint, pretty tame for two people like them, and Donghan’s family seemed so nice when they adopted Dongmyeong right into their middle and squeezed Dongju’s arms, too. And Donghan sidled up next to him by the bar later in the night, and they had a few drinks together, all in good fun.

Dongmyeong always seemed happy with him, from the very day he announced that he was madly in love when they were sixteen, to the day they got married at twenty, to even a few weeks ago when Dongju dropped by their house for a Friday night dinner. And as long as Dongmyeong was happy, Dongju was, too.

But now Dongmyeong’s eyes are twinkling in an awful kind of way at this BBQ place, and Dongju feels his fingers curl into a fist. If this is Donghan’s real face, he doesn’t know how he was fooled for so long.

“I don’t think there is any doubt,” Dongmyeong whispers when Dongju doesn’t say anything. “I’ve been suspecting that something is up for a while because he’s been acting so weird and is barely home anymore. All of this is just the confirmation.” He presses his lips together, and he looks so tired. “I’m just gonna confront him about it.”

Dongju nods slowly. What else is there to do, when Dongmyeong already looks so exhausted?

“Dinner first,” Dongmyeong decides, an unsure smile climbing onto his face. He snatches a piece of meat right off the grill and stuffs it into his mouth without waiting for it to cool, but he makes no sign of discomfort.

They first stay mostly quiet while they eat, much opposed to how their dinners usually go, despite it being their birthday. Only when Dongmyeong tells the waiter that it is, and he is delighted, carrying two free bottles of champagne to their table, “For a twin birthday!” and Dongmyeong fills both of their glasses, do they relax.

Dongmyeong is on his third glass and still munching away at his meat, leaned back in his seat and eyes a lot happier than they were just half an hour ago, when Dongju dares to breach the topic again.

Himself on a few glasses of champagne and his belly full of warm meat, his tongue gets looser, his mind swimming with questions he normally wouldn’t ask out loud. “Why did you marry him, anyway?”

Dongmyeong seems little bothered at the indiscretion. He shrugs. “I don’t know. We were happy in high school, I guess, and I thought that we were so madly in love that we would be happy forever. I heard all those cute stories about high school sweethearts getting married, and I guess I wanted that for myself. We were both young and dumb.”

Dongju nods slowly, again, and fills his glass up again. “Do you not love him anymore, then?”

And the look Dongmyeong sends him over the edge of his glass is so helpless it almost hurts to look at. “I don’t know,” he repeats in a whisper. “I guess I do, but maybe only because I’m used to it. All I know is that it hurts that he’s treating someone else the way he used to treat me, and that he’s lying to me. Whether that means I still love him, I can’t tell you. I almost wish I didn’t, so I could just up and leave. But a part of me just wants to fix this.”

“Fix it and then what?” Dongju asks before he can stop himself.

“Go back to normal?” Dongmyeong suggests, eyes almost careful when he looks up. He shrugs again. “I don’t know. I guess the question is, do I love him or do I love having a peaceful life that I want back?”

Dongju doesn’t know the answer to that, either, and he fills Dongmyeong’s glass again when he empties it.

They remain in the restaurant for a while longer, finishing a bottle and a half of champagne between the two of them, and Dongju packs up the rest before they pay and leave. Dongmyeong stays at his side as they leave, walks with him the entire way to Dongju’s apartment block before he says goodbye to catch the bus.

“Happy birthday, Ju,” he says, a smile catching on his face before he goes in to hug him.

“Happy birthday,” Dongju whispers back when they part and Dongmyeong hurries down the sidewalk with a wave.

And in the morning, Dongju rolls over despite the light headache pounding between his brows, and he picks his phone off the nightstand to shoot Dongmyeong a text, wishing him good luck with Donghan.

Dongmyeong doesn’t answer, but Dongju presses his phone to his chest, anyway. Close to his beating heart.

The local police station is grey. Cold, grey stone walls decorated with nothing but a plaque here and there, uncomfortable blue plastic chairs in the waiting area and the air smells faintly of tobacco and stale coffee, just enough to tingle in his nose. The lady behind the desk hacks her nails into the keyboard with loud clicks.

Next to him, his mother is sleeping wrapped up in his father’s arm, hair falling into her face in a tangled mess.

Donghan isn’t here yet, because he had an important meeting at work that he couldn’t miss even to testify for his own husband’s disappearance, but the officer that welcomed them assured them that he would be here soon.

Soon, apparently, is a relative term for police officers, because they’ve been here almost the entire night. The sun came up at least a few hours ago, and his parents fell asleep some time between midnight and now.

The officers are looking for him, they promised, though Dongju can’t imagine what that looks like. Dongmyeong is neither a child nor is he in immediate danger or in need of medical attention. He’s been gone for around 36 hours now, but likely the police thinks the same way Dongju did. He’s just hiding somewhere, waiting out the fight.

After all, Donghan must have already told them that they had a fight. That Dongmyeong is prone to running away when he’s mad. Though Dongju isn’t sure what exactly Donghan told them the fight was about. That’s why he’s here.

He passed by Donghan and Dongmyeong’s house on his way here, saw their car in the driveway. He already felt like raising an eyebrow when his mother told him on the phone that Dongmyeong’s coworkers hadn’t seen him leave the parking lot, though he couldn’t think of why. Now he knows. He remembers.

The lady behind the desk raises her head with a smile when the door opens. Dongju can’t see the face of the man that steps in from this angle, but he’s too short to be Donghan, so he lets his head drop back down.

“Hi, I’m here for the case of the guy who was reported missing last night, Son Dongmyeong? I’m a friend and I saw him a few days ago, I thought I might know something that could help.”

Dongju raises his head again at the mention of his brother’s name, takes in the guy at the desk. He’s definitely shorter than Donghan, half of his head is hidden by the hood of his sweater, a lousy jacket thrown across his shoulders and the mismatched sneakers remind him of something like home, thrown across the hallway by the door.

The guy turns around after the lady gestures towards them, and Dongju near shoots out of his chair.

“Giwook?” His stiff knees pop when he takes a step forward, but he hasn’t seen Giwook in ages. Maybe not since Dongmyeong’s wedding. Going towards him feels almost natural, drawn to what he’s looking for.

He bites his tongue when he realizes those thoughts, and stops himself from shaking his head.

“Hi Dongju.” Giwook pats his shoulder when he’s within reaching distance, and something about the look on his face hurts deep in Dongju’s chest. The sympathy, perhaps. To see that people already feel sorry for him. Dongmyeong hasn’t even been gone for two days and already, people are pitying him. “I heard about Dongmyeong this morning and I came as fast as I could. They really have no clue where he might be?”

“Well, he’s not at home, nor is he with me or you or with mom and dad, and his coworkers haven’t seen him since he left work two days ago, his phone has been turned off since then, too, and we called most of his other friends.”

Giwook presses his lips together and his eyes sweep across the room. “I can’t believe this,” he decides to say, finally. “He wouldn’t just run away like this, would he? At least not for two days, without letting literally anyone know that he’s fine. Even if he had a fight with Donghan, he’d at the very least call you to assure you he’s not dead, right?”

Dongju shrugs, and he feels so helpless. The exact way Dongmyeong looked in that restaurant on their birthday. “I don’t know. I don’t know anything at the moment, I’m just — worried. What if he is —”

He cuts himself off immediately, hands cramping as he drops back down on his chair. A look to his right assures him that his parents are still asleep, didn’t hear what he just almost said. Giwook sits down on his other side, also silent. Hunched over himself, hair falling dark into his face. Neither of them knows what to say, apparently.

“I’m sure he’s okay,” Giwook tries after a moment. “Dongmyeong always ends up okay, doesn’t he?”

Dongju traces the wall straight ahead of them with his eyes, the fine lines between the bricks where the concrete covering them sinks in. “I’m not so sure,” he whispers back, and Giwook flinches to turn around to him.

Before he can elaborate, though, tell him what he thought of in the wee hours of morning, the door across the room opens and the officer that welcomed them here steps out. His parents jolt awake, too.

“We tried to track his phone’s last location before it was shut off, but it seems that he must have left it at home before he left for work that day, because it was still there and on in the evening, after the time Mr. Kim told us Mr. Son should have been home. It must’ve just turned itself off from lack of battery.”

Dongju frowns. “But why would Donghan not mention that his phone is in their home?”

The officer shrugs. “He didn’t say that it was not, I’m not sure if he mentioned the phone at all. The poor guy was completely distraught when he showed up here yesterday. After all, he’s just as worried as you are.”

“So you can’t find him?” his mother asks, cutting off the words sitting at the tip of Dongju’s tongue.

“We can’t track him by his phone, nor did it bring us any extra information, no,” the officer says with a smile. “But we are trying our absolute best to find out where he is. Please rest assured that we will find him.”

The officer turns around, and Dongju sends a last glance to the door to make sure Donghan hasn’t wandered in, before he gets up and follows the guy a few steps down the hall. Behind him, he can hear Giwook get up, too.

“Officer, can I talk to you for a moment?”

Raising both of his eyebrows, the officer turns back around. He offers a mild smile at the sight of them. “I can only assure you once again that we are doing our absolute best —”

“I’m sure you are,” Dongju cuts him off. This guy is ticking him off. “But I have some serious concerns regarding the circumstances of my brother’s disappearance, as well as information that might help you figure out what happened to him. If my suspicions are right, this could be a lot more than just a random kidnapping or running away.”

The officer raises his eyebrows again, but this time in something that even looks like interest. “Well, then come along, son. Let me hear what you have to say.” He guides him towards an office in the corridor they enter, and Dongju is vaguely aware of Giwook following them, until they are both seated in front of a desk.

“So, what vital information do you have?” the officer asks, dropping down at his desk with a sigh.

Dongju clears his throat. “My brother in law,” he starts, “surely he’s told you that he and my brother had a fight before he disappeared, right?” When the officer nods, Dongju continues, “Did he tell you what the fight was about?”

The officer raises an eyebrow. “Well, not exactly. He told us it was a normal fight, nothing serious. Something that all couples do every now and then, nothing out of the ordinary except that it makes him feel even worse now, because they left the house mad and now Mr. Son is gone. Why, do you know anything else about it?”

“I can’t guarantee you that the fight was about what I think it was about, of course, I wasn’t there.” Dongju scans the officer’s face. “But when I saw my brother last week, he told me that he’s fairly certain that his husband is cheating on him, and that he was going to confront him about it. Now considering he went missing less than a week after he told me this, and after they, according to my brother in law, parted in fight, it’s certainly interesting to look at.”

The officer taps his chin, visibly considering Dongju’s words, sharp eyes set on his face. “Was your brother sure that Mr. Kim was cheating on him, or did he just think that he was?”

“Well, he hadn’t caught him in the act,” Dongju relents. “If that’s what you mean by being sure. But he had evidence that highly suggested that he was right. Bank statements and all, laundry that isn’t theirs in their washer.”

Nodding, the officer takes a note in a small book in front of him, before he looks at Giwook. “Do you wish to add anything to this, or, if I can ask so bluntly, why did you follow us here?”

Giwook clears his throat and inches forward in his seat. “I saw Dongmyeong, Mr. Son, a few days ago, on Monday. He also told me that he thought his husband was acting weird, he didn’t tell me what he suspected exactly, just that he’d been losing sleep over it. I was concerned, and I meant to call him all week to check in on him again, so when I heard this morning that he disappeared one day after I talked to him, I just … wanted to tell you what I knew.”

The officer takes another note, and he’s frowning, this time. “Interesting, very interesting. Thank you.”

“I have another thing,” Dongju speaks up again, right as Giwook reclines back into his chair. His own fingers dig into the cushioning of his. “My brother’s coworkers, who were reportedly the last people to see him, stated that they saw him leave the building after he clocked out, but not the parking lot. I thought this was a strange statement when I first heard it, and it only became more bewildering to me when I passed my brother’s house and saw their car there.”

From the corner of his eye, he can see Giwook raise his eyebrows, as if something dawned on him, too, and the officer leans forward in his chair. “Could you elaborate on that?”

“My brother’s work is on the other side of town from their house, in an area where only one bus goes every couple of hours, and not around the time that my brother usually gets off work, he’s told me about how annoying this is a million times. He and his husband only have one car, and usually my brother takes it to work because it’s so much more convenient for him. But on the rare occasion that my brother’s husband would need the car, he would then come to pick my brother up from work. So if the car is at their home, that can only mean two things.”

“Either Mr. Kim didn’t pick your brother up and left him to walk or wait for the bus that day,” the officer starts.

“... Or my brother was home first, either drove himself or was picked up, and then disappeared,” Dongju finishes. “And I think that if my brother in law had really not picked him up, if something had come up that made him unable to, he would’ve mentioned that in his sob story about desperately waiting for him to return home, don’t you think?”

The officer leans far back in his chair, folds his hands over his belly. “How very interesting,” he says.

Dongju sinks back into his chair. “I know you didn’t think this was a case of high interest, because Dongmyeong is a healthy adult in no apparent danger, but I’m highly concerned that something might’ve happened to him.”

The officer nods and leans back forward to scribble some more notes into his book. “Yes, of course, we will look into this. Have a little chat about these claims with Mr. Kim as soon as he shows up. Thank you very much.”

They are dismissed with that, and Dongju trudges down the hallway next to Giwook, though he can barely pay attention to his own steps. His mind is boiling, swimming with thoughts. Of Dongmyeong at that barbecue place, talking about his own heart breaking. Of him on the happiest day of his life, or so he claimed, of how nice he and Donghan always looked together. The perfect couple, even when they were all too young to know what love meant.

Of how he sounded when he wished Dongju a happy birthday, a hug around his shoulders, the worst kind of glisten to his eyes at the thought of returning home to someone who didn’t look at him the same anymore.

And now he’s gone. One day he was there, chugging champagne and complaining about life, eyes filled with glee when they were not about Donghan, and now Dongju curls up in his uncomfortable chair in this ratty police station, and hopes. Prays, almost. That there is still a piece of his brother left that could return home.

His apartment is dark and smells like sleep and used up air, so he opens a window in the kitchen.

Giwook follows him inside, visibly a little hesitant because he’s never been here before, and he takes a seat at the kitchen table only when Dongju gestures for him to do so. He looks around while Dongju sets up a kettle of water.

“What would you like?” he asks. “Coffee, tea? Something to eat? I think I only have some packs of ramen left …”

Giwook shakes his head, clears his throat. “Coffee would be fine.”

“All right.” Dongju nods and turns the kettle back off, pours the water into the coffee maker instead.

Caffeine, he thinks, will only make things worse for him right now, as he’s already as nervous and jittery as can be, shaken up after nearly an entire day at a police station, but he pours himself a cup, anyway.

Giwook sits opposite of him, shoulders sunken in on his form, hands curling around his cup. His eyes flit around the kitchen, along the busted fronts of his cabinets, the ugly curtain in front of the window, the few photos he has struck up to the fridge to add a bit of life to the space. Dongju hates it here just as much as Giwook visibly does.

“It’s not the prettiest place, sorry,” he tries to sugarcoat it, anyway. “I’m kind of broke at the moment.”

Giwook shakes his head and takes a sip of his coffee, despite it still being piping hot, and Dongju almost has to smile at him trying not to pull a face. “Absolutely do not worry, it still looks better than my place.”

And Dongju realizes that he has no idea where Giwook even lives now. They used to be neighbors when they still lived at home, when Dongju’s parents decided to move to Suwon for his mother’s job. Giwook was the weird, gap-toothed kid from across the hallway, with a guitar strapped to his back and ugly blonde streaks in his hair when they just turned sixteen. The reason Dongmyeong bought a pair of jump boots, and picked up the piano again. Dongju always sat back and watched them, nothing to say when Dongmyeong got a tattoo on the night of their eighteenth birthday, holding onto Giwook’s hand in the chair, and they all laughed about it on the way home.

Giwook has always been around, until Dongju moved away from home first, and didn’t see him until they ran into each other at Dongmyeong’s wedding, and not ever since then. It’s been three years. Giwook is a different person now, his hair back to black, the piercing high on his ear still there but much more discreet. He’s grown up a little.

Dongju longs to ask, ask anything. What Giwook does now, where he lives. What his life looks like. If he has anyone waiting for him, someone to come back to. But he figures this is not an occasion to chitchat.

Giwook is only here because he’s exhausted, they both are, and Dongju offered.

“Where do you think he is?” Giwook asks after a moment of silence. Something in Dongju cramps up.

“I don’t know,” he whispers, doesn’t intend for it to come out as a whisper but through his clogged up throat, it still does. “Currently I’m just hoping that he’s fine. That, you know, he is somewhere.”

Giwook falls very silent, hands stilling around his cup. They don’t say anything until Dongju has washed out the cups and offers Giwook to stay, if he wants to. Offers him a place on the couch if he’s too tired to go home, and Giwook accepts and Dongju almost wants to curse him for it. Almost.

He leaves him a blanket and gets him a pillow from his bedroom, and before he can wish him a good night, Giwook looks at him from where he sits on the couch and, into the quiet, whispers, “I’m sure he’s okay.”

And all Dongju can do is nod, and try his hand at a smile.

It’s been two weeks. Dongju calls his mother every day, made sure that the local police station has his phone number to call him as soon as they have any news, and he’s started going back to work.

One of his friends from university, before he ended up dropping out, opened a tattoo parlor a few streets down from Dongmyeong’s house a while ago and while Dongju sure has no talent or qualifications to be doing tattoos, he’s sure Youngjo would have rather closed his business down again right away than not hire Dongju somehow.

So he spends most of his days sitting behind the little front desk of the parlor, booking Youngjo’s appointments and playing stupid games on the ancient computer when it’s quiet.

He comes back into work a few days after Dongmyeong disappeared and Youngjo is already waiting for him. He sits in Dongju’s chair behind the desk and he flinches upwards when the door opens to reveal him. “Dongju.”

“Hi.” Dongju swallows around the knot in his throat and drops off his bag. “Sorry for kind of dipping on you.”

But Youngjo leaves him no room to talk. He crosses the room before Dongju can take off his coat and wraps him into a hug. A full force one, locking his arms around him so tight Dongju feels like he might suffocate, but it’s warm and comfortable and Youngjo has always been so familiar. “Don’t you dare apologize.”

He pulls Dongju away from his chest to look at him, and his expression hurts to look at. “Oh Dongju, I’m so sorry.”

Dongju doesn’t know what to say to that, doesn’t know how much he is allowed to grieve and accept condolences, when everyone is still looking for Dongmyeong. Youngjo pats his head and offers to get him a coffee, and it feels good, like comfort, but Dongju doesn’t know how much of that he deserves.

The others are so kind to him, too, when they trickle in one after another. Keonhee squeezes his hand on the desk and Seungwan offers to make him another coffee when he empties his, but he declines. It just makes him feel smaller, the way they dote on him. It just makes him feel like he’s giving up, when everyone treats this as mourning.

At night his skin still itches with the thought of Dongmyeong never returning, but he pastes a smile onto his face as soon as the sun rises, combs his hair and washes his face and goes to work. Lets everyone tell him how sorry they are, and how hard they are praying for his family, for his brother to come home soon.

Donghan has been questioned by the police, and they put on some more investigations about the night Dongmyeong disappeared, and at least in the paper it said that they are considering Donghan a suspect. But also that the evidence tying him to his husband’s disappearance is too lacking for them to even keep him on the station. Just because he has a motive doesn’t mean he did it, the officer told Dongju when he dropped by again.

Dongju is — tired. He misses his brother. He wants to go home, curl up against his mother’s shoulder and never leave again, even if he knows that she would flick his forehead and tell him to grow up.

Lovingly, because he knows she misses Dongmyeong, too, waits up every night, sits by the phone with his father.

Giwook has kept in touch, too, and Dongju feels it is the only good thing to come out of this. It’s a reliving of his adolescence, in a way, a name on his phone he hasn’t heard in so long, a voice in his ear he almost forgot. Giwook was always closer to Dongmyeong, and Dongju knows they kept in touch, but he and Giwook never did.

But now Giwook calls him, almost every other day, even just for a few minutes. They make sure the other is okay, Giwook asks for any news about Dongmyeong, and Dongju has to let down every time.

There are no news about Dongmyeong. The police department doesn’t call, Donghan doesn’t call, his parents don’t call, even though Dongju calls them every day. Dongmyeong doesn’t show up at their place, or at Dongju’s place, or at Giwook’s. He doesn’t show up anywhere, and slowly, Dongju is losing his last bits of hope.

Prayers go unanswered when he doesn’t know what god to offer them to, and he buries his face in his hands.

Articles about Dongmyeong’s disappearance fade away, the papers pick up new topics. No use beating a dead horse. If the husband doesn’t get arrested, what’s the point in reporting about his missing spouse and his infidelity?

Dongju sits up at night, with his head stuck between his knees, and pretends his eyes don’t run dry.

It’s a terrible thing, a torn feeling, wretched. To grieve someone he’s not sure he’s even lost. To be so unsure, where he is, if there even is a place for him to be at. How he got there, and why he hasn’t come back or let anyone know that he’s alive, if he is still alive. Did he get picked off the street by a stranger, or does Dongju walk past the house of a murderer, a kidnapper, every morning when he passes Donghan’s house on his way to work?

It tears at him, he wants to hold his own head underwater until the thoughts fade away. When he curls up at night, and ignores another of Giwook’s texts, asking if there are any news, because there never are. He’s run out of words.

When he passes by Donghan’s house once again, and notices that the bouquets of flowers in the living room windows are gone. They were brought by concerned neighbors, to express their sorrow about Dongmyeong, and maybe they have just welked, but a heavy feeling settles in Dongju’s gut at the lack of them,

Like Donghan is replacing him already. The way he replaced the tires of their car, right after Dongmyeong disappeared. Shiny and new, carrying no trace of what might have happened that night, making tire tracks useless.

Dongju watches him. Even if the police aren’t doing anything — he hasn’t forgotten.

Every morning he takes the extra long route to work to pass by their house, look at the car with its new tires parked in the driveway the way it was after Dongmyeong disappeared. Innocent, and yet so incriminating. He watches as Donghan leaves the house, himself on the way to work, in his nice little suit and tie. Picture perfect.

Not the picture of a man who just lost his spouse under mysterious circumstances, but a picture, certainly.

Dongju doesn’t call the police again. His feet don’t carry him back to the station. It’s a fight lost, he knows — they find the evidence leading to Donghan too lacking, and they must have been convinced by whatever he told them about the car situation, because they let him go, and Dongju doesn’t feel like trying again.

So he just walks past Donghan every morning, watches as he leaves the house, until he catches a sliver of another face behind the front door, a smile that isn’t Dongmyeong’s, and he nearly chokes on his own breath.

It’s been less than four weeks, and Donghan has already let his affair into the house he used to share with Dongmyeong. He isn’t waiting for him to come back. He took the flowers away not because they welted, but because he’s not grieving, maybe even to accommodate his new flame, make him feel more welcome in a space that never belonged to him, make him feel like he’s not an intruder in the space that used to be shared by a married couple.

Dongju’s hands twitch with the urge to strangle them both. Does the mister know what happened to Dongmyeong, to his partner’s husband, is he in on this? How can you be so cruel, so selfish, to insert yourself between a couple, a happy home life, and watch peacefully as your lover’s despaired spouse is … disposed of?

Dongju sees him around the house constantly after he first notices him, and he hates him more every time. A gorgeous face, bleached blonde curls falling into his eyes, he moves around the house like it’s his. Leans against the side of the car as he talks to the neighbors, a smile on his face to deceive them into forgetting that this is not his house, not his husband, not his life. That he is the one out of place here. They all seem to fall for him.

And Donghan hasn’t just let him into the house. He’s moved in, permanently. The neighbors all saw the moving truck, and even though the lady who tells Dongju squints a little, they still don’t seem to see anything wrong with it.

Dongju wants to cry and punch a wall at the same time. It’s only been a month. Dongmyeong isn’t dead.

But people move on too quickly when it’s not their life that lies in shambles, and while they may shake their heads a little, they don’t seem to think it’s incriminating for Donghan to have someone new moving into his house less than a month after his husband of three years disappeared under mysterious circumstances.

He calls Giwook on his way home and pretends the tears aren’t hot in his eyes. That his voice doesn’t shake, that he doesn’t feel choked up on his own breath as he says, “I know he did it. I know it.”

And Giwook tries to be calming, tries to be kind. His voice is so sweet and it reminds Dongju of easier times, Dongmyeong’s bedroom in the middle of the night, the streetlight outside the window illuminating the tips of their noses as Dongju listened to them making their music, pretended he didn’t listen, but he was there every time.

But not even Giwook is enough. No words of comfort could console him as the words shoot out of him, ball up in his throat like acid. His eyes bleed bleach onto his cheeks, and he nearly crunches the phone in his hand. His neighbor eyes him curiously as he nearly knocks his door down. “His fucking mister has moved in already. Moved in! He prances around the place like it’s his, probably sleeps on Myeong’s side of the bed. God, I’m going to be sick.”

“Try to calm down, Ju,” Giwook tries again, but the rage is already coursing through Dongju’s veins like a drug.

“If he killed him —” the words get stuck in his throat, and he has to let himself fall back against the kitchen counter, taking a deep breath. “If he killed him, the bastard won’t see the light of day tomorrow.”

His hands shake and his breath comes out hard. He has to remove the phone from his ear for a second, let his hands fall down along his body to tilt his head back and blink back the tears threatening to fall. Swallow down the sob threatening to build, force it back down his throat. His face twists in agony, and he raises the phone again.

Giwook is already talking on the other side. “ — get yourself into trouble. The police said they were looking into it, and I’m sure that if they had serious concerns that Donghan might have done something to Dongmyeong, they wouldn’t have let him go. Please don’t do anything you’ll regret. I know you’re mad, I am, too. I want the bastard to suffer just as much as you do, even if he isn’t involved in this, he still cheated on Dongmyeong. But we can’t —”

“We can,” Dongju whispers, interrupting him. “The police don’t care, Giwook, they already didn’t care when Donghan first reported him as missing. They think it’s just some stupid lover’s quarrel, and I’m not sure that Donghan didn’t, I don’t know, bribe them into staying silent about his possible involvement in this.”

Giwook is silent for a moment, and slowly, Dongju can feel his heartbeat slow down again. His eyes don’t burn as hard anymore, the world slowly realigns itself. “So what do you plan on doing?” Giwook asks finally.

“I don’t know yet,” Dongju confesses, still a little breathless. “I don’t know if he did anything to Dongmyeong, maybe this really is just a misunderstanding. I just know that if he did, if Dongmyeong is in any way harmed because of him, I will not rest until he’s dealt with. In what way that will manifest I don’t know yet.”

“You’re not really going to kill him, are you?” Giwook’s voice sounds caught in his throat, too.

“I would be a bit of a fool to admit that on the phone if I was going to,” Dongju says, and a small laugh pushes past his lips despite it all. “I don’t know. I guess I’ll just have to see what happens.”

And Giwook is so dangerously quiet on the other side of the line. “Call me if you think of something,” he says, and there is so much in those words, so much that Dongju is not sure he can grasp. A meaning in the tone of his voice, like he’s offering. I would help you kill a man if only you ask. His breath gets stuck in his throat.

“I will,” he says, and Giwook hangs up without saying goodbye. Dongju falls back against the edge of the counter.

He just wants all of this to be over.

“Oh, you know, it’s not much.” The man laughs a little, lovely, and pushes one of his blonde locks out of his face. “We just both thought the place could use a new touch, and figured the garden would be a great place to start.”

He’s standing so proud over the fence, looking like a king. The freshly painted fence, white where it was previously bright red, Dongmyeong’s personal touch to the house. Mrs. Hong smiles at him, friendly as she always is, and compliments him on the choice of color, voicing her slight distaste of the red, anyway.

She catches sight of Dongju as he approaches, and her smile only broadens. “Ah, Dongju! Have you met Sanggyun?”

“Hello Mrs. Hong,” he says, stepping closer with a bow of his head to her. “I have not.”

“Well,” Mrs. Hong says with a slight laugh, squeezing his shoulder. “This is him. He’s — well, uh.” She clears her throat, awkward what to label him as in front of him, visibly. “He lives with Donghan now.”

“I figured.” Dongju turns to Sanggyun, takes in the easy smile on his face, his hair swaying the soft breeze, the rosy blush high on his cheeks, red from the cold. Who paints a fence in February? Dongju thinks.

People who have something to hide. People who want to get something past them as quickly as possible.

“Nice to meet you,” he says, lays it on thick, gives him a smile. “I was wondering who I’ve been seeing around here lately. I think I already talked to Mrs. Hong about it? Surprising that Donghan found someone new so quickly.”

The smile on Sanggyun’s face becomes just the slightest bit more strained. “Yes, well. Things move fast.”

“Right.” Dongju doesn’t stop smiling at him. “I should probably introduce myself. I’m Dongju. Son Dongju. I’m Dongmyeong’s twin brother. You know, your boyfriend’s husband?”

If nothing else, the last words serve to finally wipe the smile off Sanggyun’s face once and for all. His eyes shake, and Dongju can feel the presence of Mrs. Hong by his side grow a little awkward. “Oh,” he says smartly, clearly fumbling for words. “Oh, I didn’t know that. I didn’t know he had family in the city. I’m — I’m so sorry for your loss.”

“Loss?” Dongju asks, raising both of his eyebrows. “As far as I’m aware my brother is not dead.”

“Oh, oh no, of course not, that’s not what I —” Sanggyun rushes to say, interrupting himself to clear his throat and push another strand of hair behind his ear. “They’re still looking for him, right?”

“Right,” Dongju confirms, still not letting his smile fall. “It’s only been a little over a month since he disappeared, less than that even. Would be rather strange to give up the search already. Could make you seem like you weren’t waiting for him to come back in the first place. Like you knew he wasn’t going to.”

Sanggyun’s eyes seem close to tumbling out of his skull, and he’s clutching the handle of his paint bucket so hard his knuckles turn white. “I don’t know what you’re on about,” he says, but his voice is shaking.

“Of course not,” Dongju layers the sweetness even thicker into his voice. “Of course, I already told the police that both me and Dongmyeong knew that Donghan was seeing someone else while Dongmyeong was still around, I’m assuming that to be you, and that he told me that he was going to confront Donghan about it only four days before he disappeared. Very strange circumstances, but the police must have already cleared Donghan. Or something cleared him for them.” He doesn’t elaborate what he means by that but he feels like Sanggyun understands. Mrs. Hong does, too.

“Right.” Sanggyun nods. “Donghan is just as much in grieving as you must be.”

“I’m sure.” Dongju finally lets the smile drop, if only for a moment to pointedly drag his eyes up and down Sanggyun’s figure, before he lets it return in full force. “He sure seems to be carrying on shiny toys to help himself cope.”

Before he has to watch Sanggyun’s mouth drop open in protest, Dongju excuses himself, bowing his head to Mrs. Hong, who is staring at him in rather open bewilderment. “So sorry to interrupt your conversation,” he says, smiling at her. “I’ll be on my way now, I still have to call my mother. She’s so worried all the time now, you know?”

Mrs. Hong nods, spark returning to her eyes. “Of course.” She puts a hand over her heart. “All mothers would be.”

Dongju nods, making sure to be extra dramatic to assure Sanggyun is still looking at him. Pouts a little and touches his hand to his chest, too. “Yes, I’m so sorry for her. Of course we are all grieving, but my parents were definitely hit the hardest. It’s like whoever did this didn’t even think of the fact that he has a family, too.”

Mrs. Hong looks at him with so much kindness, so much empathy, Dongju almost feels bad for using her so blatantly to make Sanggyun more uncomfortable. “Please tell her my deepest condolences. I’m praying for your family”

“I will, thank you so much, Mrs. Hong.” He bows to her, bows to Sanggyun — though not without sending him another overly sweet smile — before he bids his goodbye and makes his way down the sidewalk, out of the neighborhood.

At least Mrs. Hong will tell the other neighbor about this, now, and they won’t be as welcoming to him anymore.

“I know they did something to him,” Dongju whispers into the dark of his apartment, the light of the streetlight in front of his window blocked out by the curtains enough to only faintly reflect in the black irises of Giwook’s eyes. They stare up at him with such a strange emotion buried beneath. “You should’ve seen the look on the bastard’s face.”

Giwook is close, way too close, but Dongju can’t see his face. Their knees bump and a breath brushes across his face when Giwook asks, “What do you want me to do?”

“Run a check on him,” Dongju whispers back. He’s sure his breath passes across Giwook’s face, too, and it’s so inappropriate to think about it like this, in this situation. “Find any dirt on him that you can. We’ll need anything.”

Though he can’t see him, he can almost feel Giwook nod through the air between them. His leg shifts against Dongju’s, and his phone illuminates the room when it lights up with a notification. Blue light paints lines of shadows onto Giwook’s soft face, round cheeks to fit into the curve of a palm, and Dongju wants to reach out.

He slaps himself across the face, mentally, and keeps his hands to himself.

Giwook and Dongmyeong might have been a thing once, way back then. When they were still teenagers in ratty band t-shirts and Dongmyeong bleached his hair a splotchy shade of orange when he was going for platinum blonde.

Dongju never found out if they actually ever dated, because Dongmyeong did meet Donghan so early in his life — though Dongju knows that they took quite a few breaks to be with other people, especially around graduation, before they decided to get married two years out of high school. He just doesn’t know if Giwook was ever one of them.

He could imagine it — they were always so close. Closer than Dongju has ever been to any of his friends. But he also doesn’t know why he thinks so much about it, with Giwook’s face illuminated blue in the darkness of his home.

Because Dongmyeong is gone now, and it doesn’t matter if he and Giwook ever fucked because Dongmyeong is married, too, and his spouse might be the reason he’s missing now. Because Giwook is here tonight because Dongju can’t stand to be alone anymore, because the walls of the apartment close in on him and he can’t breathe.

Nothing matters, not if Dongmyeong isn’t with them anymore and Dongju doesn’t know where to turn. Has to call Giwook, a figure from his high school years that he hasn’t talked to in years, in the middle of the night because panic steals the breath from his lungs and the thoughts from his mind, and he needs someone to talk to and Giwook does talk, stays on the phone all the way from his apartment to Dongju’s, and he sits on the floor of his living room with him in complete darkness and asks, What do you want me to do? Where do you need me?

Here, Dongju wants to say, but he doesn’t know who he’s talking to. Is this Giwook, or is this just an image straight out of their teenage years. something that reminds him of Dongmyeong so much that he longs for it.

Does he need Giwook here, or is he just so intricately linked to Dongmyeong in Dongju’s head, all of their years together and always the question if they ever dated, and he just misses his brother.

Does Giwook need Dongju, or does he just see Dongmyeong in his eyes? Does he just miss his best friend?

He doesn’t know, but he doesn’t know a lot of things these days. Giwook doesn’t seem to know either.

Dongju forgets what’s up and what’s down, what’s left and what’s right, when Giwook reaches out for him. Faint grey light of the blocked out street light casting shadows along the tendrils of his hand, his warm palm hovers an inch from Dongju’s cheek like a question, and Dongju leans his face into it. Seeks the support, and Giwook doesn’t give.

His face is so much closer, even in the near darkness Dongju can count his lashes. His breath touches Dongju’s lips, and he’s shaking. Dongju is, too.

“We’ll find him,” Giwook promises around shaky words. “And if we don’t — we know who has to pay.”

Dongju wants to nod, because he does know, but he doesn’t have the energy left. Giwook’s hand is warm against the side of his cool face, and he wants to lean into it even further. Let it sink into his skin, become one.

“Please don’t leave,” is all Dongju knows to whisper back, and he wants to cling onto him.

“I won’t,” and his face is even closer. Dongju can’t escape the warmth of his breath brushing along his face, and he finds he doesn’t want to. Only wants him even closer, for comfort and for warmth. “As long as you don’t leave me.”

They are in this together, now, a secret whispered into the dark of this shitty apartment, on the phone one day and now again, softly, like this. If he killed him, the bastard won’t see the light of day. We know who has to pay. Giwook’s eyes are big and round and full of a gentle innocence Dongju doesn’t know how to deal with, and he wants to hold him. They can’t escape, not from each other, not from this secret. They said it out loud, it’s becoming real.

If Giwook turns away from him now, Dongju might end up in jail. It’s this power they have over each other’s lives now, letting it dangle between their fingers, having seen each other at their worst, their most desperate.

Dongju could destroy him with a flick of his pinky, and Giwook could do the same to him.

It’s the fact that they don’t, that Giwook cradles his cheek in his palm so gently, looks at him with eyes so open and vulnerable, that Dongju leans onto him for the support he needs — that’s what really binds them here.

Face only inches from Dongju’s, his breath in his mouth, Giwook asks, “Can I?”

And Dongju knows he should say now, knows this is not appropriate, that they are looking for his missing brother and they are not here to fall into each other, but Giwook is looking at him, and he wants. He wants.

A magnetic pull, Giwook’s eyes and lips and his round face in the darkness, so soft. Desire so loud and hot, roaring inside of him, and Dongju has no idea where it came from, how long it has been there. Giwook asks, Where do you need me? And Dongju whispers, Here. Lips pressed against a palm. Like calls to like.

The enormity of my desire disgusts me. But it’s hot, scorches him inside out, and he’s so alone.

Dongju finds himself almost sobbing, the sound lodged in his throat, desperate, “Please.”

The tidal wave crashes against the shore.

When Dongmyeong and Dongju were five years old, their family moved from Seoul to Gwangju, into a much bigger apartment, and their parents decided they should sleep in separate rooms, because they feared that they, especially Dongju, who never had many friends apart from his brother, were becoming too dependent on each other.

They hated it, of course — though Dongju learned to appreciate the precious good of a bit of privacy when he was older, sharing a room with Dongmyeong was still fun to him when he was a small child.

Their rooms were still right next to each other, and during the first few months of their parents forcing them to sleep apart, and thus making their more or less secret playtimes past their bedtime impossible, they developed a communication system via knocks on the wall that their rooms shared.

At first it was just Dongmyeong softly rapping his knuckles against the wall and Dongju replying, making sure the other was there. That they were not alone. But it became giggling into fists, knocking patterns, almost conversations.

Subverting their parents was always the most exciting game for them.

They developed the patterns more the older they got, learned about morse codes from some movie they went to watch when they were eight and had just moved to Yongin, and Dongju drew charts for both of them to remember letters and words in their new language. Even in Suwon they still did this, and Dongmyeong taught Giwook.

They always insisted for their beds to be pushed on opposite sides of the same wall, and their parents indulged them, if only so they would stop nagging them.

And whenever Dongju would lie awake at night, head full of mess, he’d knock on the wall, and Dongmyeong would reply. Always there, even on the sleepiest of nights, and Dongju did the same for him. It was an exciting thing when they were five and thought they were tricking their parents by finding new ways to play and talk at night after they separated them, but it was helpful when they were both angsty teenagers, and needed someone to talk to.

Even after their worst fights, they could be sure the other would reply if they knocked on the wall.

It was hard sometimes after Dongju moved out, not having a wall to knock on, not having Dongmyeong around in general, and it became a natural thing to text, call in the middle of the night. Knock knock.

Now he lies awake, head pressed hard into his pillow, and wishes he was five again, his brother on the other side of the wall, giggling too loud to be sneaky. He wishes he was an angsty teenager again, fretting about a crush in school, or a bad grade on a test that his parents scolded him for, and a knock on the other side of the wall reassuring him that things would be fine, that he was not alone. He isn’t sure if things will ever be fine again.

Because on the other side of the wall is just one of his neighbors, and the line that connects his phone to Dongmyeong’s has been dead for weeks, and there is no longer a knock able to answer his.

He opens his phone, anyway, stares at old texts until his eyes burn from the brightness of the screen. Shallow conversations, because they said what they really needed to on the phone. The contact picture he has set for Dongmyeong is a baby picture of them, clutching onto each other’s arms and smiling at their dad behind the camera.

His fingers move before he can think twice about it.

[12:44am] Dongju (Wombmate #2): Knock knock

[12:44am] Dongju (Wombmate #2): I miss you

[12:44am] Dongju (Wombmate #2): Come back home soon. Please

It’s at work, Dongju’s sitting at his desk with a sandwich Keonhee brought for him because they’re all scared he’s not feeding himself properly, when the TV in the waiting area switches to the news.

He doesn’t pay attention to it. Sometimes it’s nice watching the news in the breaks between whatever sports game or music program they decide to put on for the day, and Dongju is on his break, anyway — he wants to eat his sandwich and scroll through his phone before he has to go back to wrestling with Youngjo’s schedule. Keonhee and Hwanwoong are sitting with him, sipping juice and talking to each other about the customers they just had.

But Keonhee gasps next to him, suddenly, and the voice of the newsperson is insistent, so he looks up just in time to see the screen change from the young man to a video clip of a police boat on the river.

“ — several missing person reports still being unsolved in the city, police pulled a body out of the river an hour ago, matching at least one of the missing people. A young man, according to police likely in his early twenties, could match the description of the young man who disappeared after leaving his workplace only nearly two months ago —”

Dongju nearly drops his sandwich. The world becomes a record scratch again, blurring around him.

His hands shake as he watches, eyes not leaving the TV screen, as the clip is cut off just before the object the officers are pulling out of the water comes into view. His mind turns into a black hole, and he sets his sandwich down.

Dongmyeong. His head races, aches, doesn’t let him grasp onto a coherent thought, but his name crystalizes out of the mess. Dongmyeong. They found Dongmyeong’s body, swimming in the river.

He doesn’t recognize anything of what is going on around him. He’s left his chair, but he doesn’t know when. His feet carry him past the desk, closer to the TV, but he doesn’t feel the cold breeze that comes in through the door, he doesn’t see Hwanwoong and Keonhee, he can barely hear the voice of the newsman over the static in his head.

Scraps of words and sentences that are said somewhere, “ — yet to be identified — calling the families of the missing people — hoping for a fast result — autopsy — police almost certain they can match up the body to the missing person report — parents — husband called —” but Dongju can’t sort them, can’t think.

He sways on his feet and has to hold onto the wall to keep standing. One of the others is right behind him but he didn’t see them move, can’t register who it is even as they offer him a glass of water and try to move him to sit down again — his hand shakes too hard to accept the glass, he would spill it all over his lap, but that’s the only thought that reaches his brain. His eyes stay fixed on the TV screen even as the newsman moves to the next topic.

Someone is talking to him, words in his ears, but he hears the world like through cotton.

“ — Dongju, okay? We’re so sorry,” he can eventually make out, and it’s Seungwan who is holding onto his shoulders and trying to smile at him. He doesn’t know when she got here. The others are trying to shield him from the customer who just entered the shop, and he doesn’t know when they managed to take him back to the desk.

She offers him another glass of water when he doesn’t even know what happened to the first one, if he drank it and why he can’t remember that, but Dongju can’t think.

Can barely hear her, anyway, his head still humming with static and the image of the video. A bunch of cops huddled around the railing of the boat, watching as they pull the limp object out of the water. Too big, too dark, water dripping out of hair that he’s let grow too long again, blue lips and cold skin that hasn’t seen life in weeks —

“Dongju, please calm down,” Seungwan pleads, and only then does he realize how hard he’s breathing, fingers digging deep into the cushion of his chair, vision blurring as he blinks back the welling tears.

None of those pictures ever appeared on the TV screen, but they fill his head, and he has to push them away. Images of Dongmyeong, a small heap of a body at the shore of the river; helpless; lifeless. All because someone he thought loved him couldn’t keep his eyes off other people, and tried to get rid of him.

Dongju’s heart gets stuck in his throat, pulsing hot with rage, and he thinks back to the phone call with Giwook. If he killed him, the bastard won’t see the light of day tomorrow. Thinks of Giwook, We know who has to pay.

Now there’s a body, and the image of Dongmyeong’s water bloated corpse, disposed of in the river so no one would ever find him, robbing him and his family of the funeral he would have deserved, at least. All there is left of him is a watery corpse, eyes bulging out of his pale skull, blue veins under his skin, and Dongju is blind with rage.

“I think I would like to go home,” he manages to say, looking up at Seungwan, who offers him a kind nod.

He takes the water she offers because his throat is parched, but when he’s gathering his things from his desk, he doesn’t think about going home to sleep or cry or call his mom. He pulls his phone out of his pocket as he puts on his coat, and shoots a text to Giwook. Praying that he’s already seen the news. Asking how fast he can be here.

He looks up to find Keonhee still by the door to his own room, looking at him. Making sure he doesn’t faint and makes it out safe. A shaky smile finds its way to Dongju’s lips. “Keonhee,” he whispers.

Keonhee raises his eyebrows, and he’s such a good kid, Dongju knows. Older than him, but he’s tall and a little gangly and blinks at people with a nearly stupid innocence in his eyes, and Dongju has always liked him. He’s sweet, and good, and fiercely loyal, and Dongju knows he would do anything to protect a friend. “Yes?”

Dongju steps closer, already in his coat, and Keonhee doesn’t back away. “How willing are you to keep a secret?”

And when he leaves the shop with the wind fresh on his face after the stuffy air of the place, he draws the hood of his sweater over his head and lowers his head, hand wound around the phone in his pocket. And he walks past Donghan’s house, sees the flickering light of the TV in the window, and smiles to himself.

Oh, how scared Donghan must be now that they are one step closer to uncovering him, to ruining all that he stands for. The public is onto him, wants to know what happened to the poor soul that they pulled out of the river.

And Dongju is onto him, too. He can barely swallow around the hot rage balled in his throat.

He walks home with his mouth twisted into a smile.

Giwook is already there, leaning against the wall outside of Dongju’s apartment with his hair falling into his face and a dark pair of eyes shining from beneath the strands. They are dead set on Dongju’s face.

He follows him into the apartment wordlessly when Dongju unlocks the door.

“What do you have?” Dongju asks once they are inside and the door is shut to any spying ears.

He turns around to find Giwook already smiling at him, hand wandering to the pocket of his sweater. “Well, the guy is basically an angel. Not even a parking ticket to his name, and all of his family members I could find are clean, too. His mother married three times, so I guess he takes after her. But.” He fingers a folded piece of paper out of his pocket and hands it to Dongju with a big smile. “I did find this.”

Dongju unfolds the paper to the logo of an insurance firm staring back at him. “Oh wow,” he whispers when his eyes fall on the big sum at the bottom, right below the field proclaiming the policy holder as Kim Sanggyun. The paper is more of a receipt rather than a contract, but it’s more than enough. “That’s a big one.”

“That is a huge one,” Giwook agrees. “I have no idea what he’s planning with this, but I’m afraid if we don’t kill him, he might do the job for us. No one will even consider you compared to this, especially not if you have an alibi.”

“Which I do,” Dongju assures him. “They’ve only been seeing each other for a few months at most, right? He purchased this three months ago, when Dongmyeong was still around. How can he just take something like this out already? Doesn’t Donghan have to sign something, too, for someone else to insure him?”

“Well, sure. I can’t tell you what they were really planning with this, just that Donghan won’t be able to testify for Sanggyun’s innocent intentions behind this if he’s dead. This also serves as proof that Sanggyun and Donghan already knew each other intimately before Dongmyeong ever disappeared. With both Dongmyeong and Donghan out of the picture, this will look like Sanggyun was after Donghan’s money, convinced him to start a life with him, took out this big life insurance policy, they got rid of Dongmyeong together, and then Sanggyun got rid of Donghan to reap the premium.”

Dongju nods, looking down at the paper. “They might suspect him of double homicide.”

“Exactly. And amidst all of that, if you have people testifying that you were with them and possibly even physical evidence that you were somewhere else, and if you serve up some sob story about your poor brother and his poor husband, they won’t even have much time to waste on you.”

Dongju nods again, and folds the paper up. A smile creeps onto his face when he looks up at Giwook. Inside of him, the anger still boils, but now he has somewhere to leave it. “We should probably get rid of this, though.”

Giwook pulls a lighter out of his pocket, and they throw the burning document into the sink, wash the ashes away.

“Do you have the keys?” Giwook asks, and Dongju tosses him Dongmyeong’s keyring.

He scavenged it weeks ago when he stopped by Donghan’s, days after Dongmyeong disappeared. Took it out of the bowl on the kitchen counter when Donghan wasn’t looking as proof that Dongmyeong must have been home, but the police did not particularly care. They believed Donghan when he said that Dongmyeong had just forgotten them.

“Okay.” Giwook’s voice is quiet, and when Dongju looks at him, his eyes are already on him. Face yellowed out by the kitchen light, and Dongju feels his hands shake with something that tastes like both anger and fear.

“We know who has to pay,” he repeats Giwook’s words in a whisper. Dongmyeong’s face flashes before his eyes again, bloated and wrinkly from water sinking into the skin, blue from the cold. Disposed of, just like that. Ripped out of his life to assist a plan. Dongju wants to shake and cry, but instead, his hands curl around the edge of the counter.

“And we can make them pay,” Giwook promises, although his voice shakes. He reaches out a hand, and Dongju clings to it. Cold fingers meet a cold palm. “We don’t have to wait.”

Dongju nods. He shivers in the cold air, goosebumps creeping up his arm, and Giwook holds onto his hand.

He has many pictures of Dongmyeong stuck on his fridge, mainly because he was always around. Both of them with their high school diplomas in front of their chests and in their little uniforms; a picture they took at Dongmyeong’s wedding after a few glasses of wine; thirteen years old and with their legs halfway into a river on vacation, hiking up their shorts; their father holding both of them as blanket bundles in the hospital, one newborn baby in each arm.

That might be the only picture of Dongmyeong Dongju has that he isn’t smiling in. He’s always smiled in every picture taken of him, because he always smiled, in general. A ray of sunshine, smile stretching wide across his face.

Dongju was always shyer than him, but that wasn’t hard when Dongmyeong was just that confident. That radiant. He brought the sun along with him wherever he went, lit up the room and all the people in it.

Now his light has been extinguished, crushed in a selfish fist, and Dongju feels sick just thinking of his brother in past tense. Sunlight, the brightest fire in the universe, thrown into the river and put out. Dongju can’t just sit and rest his hands in his lap, watch as the murderers get to continue their new life, get to move on from what they did.

It burns so brightly inside of him, the flame Dongmyeong left behind, and he finds it in Giwook’s eyes, too. They stand and stare at each other, hands intertwined, in the still air. They know who has to pay.

“Let’s do it,” Dongju whispers, and Giwook smiles at him. It’s not a nice smile.

The night passes almost in a haze. Dongju calls Keonhee before they leave his apartment just to check up, and Giwook gets on the subway that will take him closer to Youngjo’s apartment, on the other side of town.

One minute he’s standing in the subway station, giving Giwook a head start to match up their timing, already equipped with the keys and a knife in the pockets of his coat, a few towels in the bag over his shoulder, and there are only flashes of the walk to the house before he’s already kneeling in front of the couch.

He can’t count on both hands how many times Dongmyeong complained to him about Donghan’s habit of falling asleep in front of the TV almost every night, leaving him to go to bed alone.

Now, as Dongju wraps his knife into the towel, Donghan is not sleeping. Dongju stays very still.

There are no sounds in the house except for the TV behind him, still playing some music show. Sanggyun is sleeping upstairs, none the wiser of what is happening as long as Dongju stays quiet. Donghan’s breathing has ceased, too.

It was such an oddly quiet affair, Dongju almost can’t believe it happened. Donghan was sleeping on the couch, as expected, and he didn’t rouse when Dongju very quietly turned the key in the lock and pushed the front door open. He just knelt in front of him, held the towel to the side of his neck, and hesitated for a second.

Donghan looked so peaceful in his sleep, and he still looks peaceful now, as deep red soaks up the towel — Dongju has another one at the ready. He didn’t look like a murderer, like someone who would get rid of his spouse.

But the house isn’t right. The last time Dongju was here, there were still pictures of Dongmyeong on the cabinets, a bouquet of his favorite flowers in a vase on the kitchen table. A family picture of Dongju and Dongmyeong and their parents next to the TV. All gone now, removed for the comfort of someone who never belonged here.

Just like Dongmyeong was. Bile burned back up in Dongju’s throat and he pressed the knife down.

Donghan only made one choked, aborted sound at the back of his throat, echoing off the living room walls, his eyes flying open to stare up at Dongju, before they fell shut again as the life trickled out of him.

Now he’s still on the couch, and Dongju presses another towel to his neck and keeps quiet.

His mind is blank, his nerves lie so exposed to the air that his hands don’t get the chance to shake, adrenaline still wiring him and keeping time a blur. The front door opens and Giwook is there, a hand on the back of Dongju’s head as if to steady him. He can’t see, can’t speak, can’t feel the warmth of Donghan’s body fading away under his hands.

Somehow, he watches as Giwook pries his hands away from the body and ties one of the clean towels around Donghan’s neck and hoists the lifeless body off of the couch.

They carry the body into Donghan’s car in the darkness of the neighborhood, even the streetlights out at this hour, Giwook takes the keys. The towels, too, and the gloves Dongju wore, they throw onto the backseat with him, to be burned and hidden somewhere else. Giwook crawls onto the driver’s seat. It won’t take him too long.

“You’ll be okay,” Giwook whispers, a hand against Dongju’s cold cheek. “We’ll be okay.”

He leaves, then, to do his part of the job, and Dongju only wanders back into the house to make sure nothing stayed behind. No bloodstains on the couch or the pillow, no dirt from their shoes.

He leaves the house behind the way he found it, door unlocked for Giwook when he comes back to leave the car and the keys where they found them. Even Dongmyeong’s keyring, so none of it can ever be traced back to them.

Dongju wanders down the street and lights a cigarette when he turns the corner. His feet carry him home but his mind is far away, hand buried in his pocket. Just like that. Donghan is gone the way Dongmyeong is. Reunited in wherever the fuck the afterlife happens. Dongju wants to laugh and cry at the same time.

At least no one will have to die anymore. He’ll never forget the dark red stains on the towel.

Giwook returns when it’s almost morning, the sky lightening up at the horizon.

Dongju left the door unlocked for him, like he did the front door of the house, and he listens to him take his shoes off by the door, softly clicking shut behind him, and doesn’t move an inch.

The curtains are open this time. He’s curled up on his bed, watching the sun rise as Giwook approaches him.

“You done?” he asks, and he doesn’t like how hoarse his voice sounds. All he can see is Donghan’s lifeless face, still in the living room Dongju helped decorate a few years ago, but he knows that Giwook is lingering by the door of his bedroom. Not quite sure how to approach him, visibly, so Dongju moves to sit up.

“I am.” Giwook takes a few steps into the room. “I don’t think they’re gonna find him anytime soon.” He brushes the hood of his sweater off his head, finally, and sits down at the edge of the bed. Their phones, collected from Keonhee, he sets down next to each other on the bedside drawer. “Did you get any sleep?”

Dongju shakes his head, drags a hand down his face. “No, I — I just —”

He has to cut himself off, but Giwook nods. Understands. His eyes seem tired, too, but it’s not a kind of tiredness that can be cured by sleep. Giwook reaches for his hand, and Dongju is grateful for the warmth tangling with his fingers. “We’ll be okay,” he promises again, and Dongju can only hold onto him. “It’s okay.”

It’s not. Giwook knows it’s not, Dongju knows. All he can see when he closes his eyes is the life draining out of Donghan, the red stains in the towels, Giwook lifting up a corpse.

They’re here, in his bedroom, in his apartment, but the air still carries the scent of Donghan’s house. Dongju’s hands still smell like blood even though it never touched his skin and he spent thirty minutes scrubbing them. Giwook wraps around him and it’s supposed to be comfort, but he doesn’t smell like himself. He smells like Donghan’s cologne and of the fire he used to burn all evidence. It stings in Dongju’s nose, and he wants to bury himself.

They took a life, they planned to take a life and then they did, and he doesn’t know how to deal with it.

Donghan deserved it, he killed someone himself. He killed Dongmyeong, his own husband. He killed him just to be with someone else. He had to pay, Dongju knows, and it will be even better if Sanggyun goes to jail for it, too.

They deserve it, deserve every minute of suffering, but Dongju’s hands still shake. It’s a weird kind of adrenaline rush, just to think about what he did. Pressed a knife to a neck until the skin gave, until blood started running. Stared into Donghan’s panic stricken eyes during the last moments of his life and just drove the knife deeper.

Watched as the life bled out of him. The power he had in that moment, no matter how wretched and cruel, to end another person’s life, still makes his heart rate spike now. It felt like playing god.

“Breathe, Ju,” Giwook whispers into his ear. He’s still wrapped around him, pressed against his back.

Dongju tries to breathe. Tries to ground himself by holding onto Giwook. He listens to him breathe, in and out, chest falling and rising against Dongju’s back. Clings to the feeling of Giwook pressing a kiss to the side of his head.

“Don’t leave,” he tries into the silence, when he remembers how to force oxygen into his lungs. When he regains the strength to turn around, hands falling into his own lap and Giwook’s face so close to his own.

Giwook is so good. Always has been. Right here, in Dongju’s shitty little apartment but he doesn’t comment on it, doesn’t ask. Why Dongmyeong managed to score a house and a husband while Dongju spent the last three years rotting away in this shitty little place, with busted cabinet fronts and windows that still let in the cold.

His face is so close, always just looking at him with those eyes. Round and careful, taking in everything.

Giwook is so kind but Dongju feels helpless in front of him, like every inch of his self, of all that he is and that he does, is being watched. Being asserted. Like Giwook looks at him now and sees a murderer.

But his hands are still there, his arms fell away when Dongju turned but his fingers still linger around his sides. A ghost of a touch against the fabric of Dongju’s sweater and Giwook looks at him with unchanged eyes. Like all he sees, after all, is a face from an awkwardly shared childhood. Not a killer.

“I won’t,” he promises, and Dongju wants to fall forward against him. Wants hands against his skin and lips in his hair and all of the reassurance Giwook can offer because everything hurts and he hates it.

He knows that this is wrong — blood lingers on his hands no matter how much he washes them, and the image of Donghan’s still face will haunt his dreams for as long as he is alive — but he needs this. He needs fingers digging into his cheeks and warm hands to ground him, needs to feel this so he doesn’t float out into space.

Like that day, just here, in this apartment, when Giwook kissed him on his living room floor and they held onto each other until their limbs tangled too much to tell them apart, and Dongju felt alive.

He doesn’t think this is about Dongmyeong anymore, but it is about feeling like he’s still human.

Like he’s still deserving of love, of a chance to let himself sink into the comfort of another person’s embrace, after what he did. Like Giwook will still look at him the same, will brush his hair out of his eyes and look at him with such a strange fondness in his eyes. Like there is just more to it, not a lack of resentment for what he did, but the opposite —

This is wrong. Giwook kisses him and it’s wrong and Dongju knows but he can’t help himself.

Because Giwook doesn’t just look at him like he doesn’t hate him for what he did to Donghan, but like he loves him for it. A strange desire buried in his eyes and it sparks a flame inside of Dongju.

So he doesn’t protest, doesn’t tell Giwook that this is wrong. Maybe he knows. Maybe they both know and choose to ignore it, just like they ignored how wrong it is to kill a person. How much worse can it be to fuck about it?

His back meets the mattress and he just locks Giwook in place above him, legs around his waist, hands on his neck and burying into the soft locks at his nape, drawing him in closer. And Giwook balances above him, on his elbow next to Dongju’s head, the hand he has against his face feels like he’s cradling him.

Their lips stay locked, mash back together over and over until there’s no room between them even as their sweaters meet the floor and Dongju somehow frees his hands to undo his own pants. Giwook only drives deeper.

It’s so cold in the room, shivers creeping up his spine but his body doesn’t need any other warmth. Not when Giwook’s hands are there, everywhere, running down his sides and nearly pushing him up the bed. It’s fumbly, noses bumping when they kiss again and Dongju digs his hands into Giwook’s hair a little too hard, but it’s good. Thighs falling open and a soft sigh on his lips; Giwook presses a kiss to the inside of his knee, digs his fingers into the flesh.

There’s lube somewhere in the drawer, because Dongju, too, is a man with needs. Although he has to dig for it a little, dust coating his fingers, and Giwook presses kisses to the slope of his shoulder where he’s rolled behind him.

He hums when Dongju turns back around, and their bodies slide back together.

“You okay?” he asks. A hand against Dongju’s face, holding him again. Giwook’s eyes are so open, so asking. He wants him to answer, honestly, truly. Wants to know if where this is going is okay, if Dongju is okay with it.

He’s not just okay with it. “Yes,” he whispers, though. “Yes, please.” And his hands wind back into Giwook’s hair, pulling them together, not letting go even as Giwook spreads him open. Even as he feels himself burning up and can’t choke back the sound that escapes him, fingers in his ass and Giwook’s breath on his skin.

“So good,” Giwook compliments, and Dongju has to squeeze his eyes shut. “You’re so, so good, Ju.”

The garbled sound that leaves his mouth when Giwook spreads him open even farther sounds almost like a sob, even to his own ears, and Giwook looks up in concern. Brows furrowing over open eyes. “Are you okay?” Again.

Dongju nods and buries his face in the pillow to his right. “Yes,” he adds, a little breathless. “Yes, don’t stop.”

Giwook doesn’t, even if his eyes stay on his face for a little longer, wary. Careful not to hurt him, like Dongju deserves all the care in the world. He wants to cry even more.

“I’ve always thought you were so pretty,” Giwook whispers when he comes back up to him, hands on the sheets next to him, kissing him. Printing the words right into his mouth. Dongju clings to him. “You are so wonderful.”

“I’m not,” Dongju whispers back, and it comes out frenzied, almost watery. “I’m not. I killed someone.”

“But didn’t he deserve it?” Giwook thumbs down his cheek, and his eyes are so open again. So honest. Even here, talking about murder, excusing it, in the darkness of Dongju’s bedroom, he looks so good. So wonderful, as he called Dongju. He is truly wonderful, eyes round with kindness. With love. “I thought you were enchanting.”

“It’s not right,” Dongju tries again, voice hiccuping as Giwook runs a hand along his side.

Giwook hums. “It’s not. But don’t you feel so much better?”

And Dongju does. Even if his mind screams at him, even if he wants to kick out and yell and maybe cry, even if he knows it’s wrong and the rottenness of it runs deep into his veins, he feels so much better. Knowing that that bastard is out of the world, that Dongmyeong’s delicate memory would not be tainted by his murderer roaming free.

It’s addicting. Satisfaction like a drug that he licked off his blood stained hands and can’t get enough of. He took a knife and ended the life of someone so unjust. He played god, decided who needed to die, and it feels good.

“I do,” he whispers, and Giwook smiles at him. Tips of his fingers tracing along his cheekbone.

“See?”

And Dongju lets himself believe that, lets the satisfaction drown out the rot. His veins flush with it and he clings to it when Giwook rocks into him and he lets out a deep moan into Giwook’s mouth.

His hands run down the warm skin of Giwook’s torso, grip into it. Fingers digging into the flesh until bruises will bloom in their wake in the morning, and Giwook whines right back into his mouth. Spreads heat right down into him, with his hands everywhere and his frame so warm and comforting around him. So sturdy. Grounding.

Giwook is so good to him, holds him so gently, has him arching up into the cool bedroom air, body overheating and searching for relief, all while pressing sweet kisses to his lips. Whispering praises into his mouth, compliments.

This is all the more addicting, the hands on his face and the tongue in his mouth and Giwook having his eyes roll back in his skull as he hits his prostate dead on, over and over again, and Giwook everywhere. So much Dongju can’t think, can’t do anything but cling onto his arms and hike his hips up as much as he can, get a better angle, and let out broken moans that sound like sobs even to himself. Giwook drowns them in his mouth.

Until it’s finally too much — the heat, the words in his ear telling him how good he did, how pretty he looks like this, and having Giwook so, so close. The heat coiling inside of him bursts, and the world whitens out.

Vaguely, he’s aware of Giwook coming, too, not long after him. A keening sound leaving his throat as he rests his forehead on Dongju’s chest, and Dongju just has enough energy left to tangle his fingers in his sweaty hair.

They lie there like this for a moment, panting, motionless. Before Giwook picks himself back up to get rid of the condom and roll down on the mattress next to him.

Dongju turns to find Giwook looking at him, eyes soft. He leans into the palm Dongju curls around his cheek, a smile pulling at his lips when he kisses his thumb. Dongju finds himself smiling, too, and he dives in to kiss him properly. A much softer press of lips, hips knocking under the covers Giwook throws messily over them, legs tangling.

It’s warm, good, when Giwook wraps his arms around him and their foreheads knock somewhere in the middle.

“I’m scared,” Dongju admits, voice low, because he is. Of being found out, no matter how careful they were, and of what he did. What this could make him become.

Giwook breathes warmly against his face, and he no longer smells like Donghan, or like fire. He smells of sweat and himself. “That’s okay,” he promises. “That’s okay. We can do this. You’re not alone.”

Dongju nods and presses a kiss to Giwook’s cheek. “Sleep?” he suggests, and Giwook smiles at him. Nods.

Whatever the future would hold for them, it wouldn’t before they rested.

Back again in the cold grey police station, Dongju feels faint on his feet.

His mother dabs her tears away with a well used tissue, and Dongju hasn’t seen her cry as much in his whole life as he has in the past months. He wants to reach out for her, but he doesn’t dare. Stays by Giwook’s side, silent.

It’s not Dongmyeong. The body. It’s not him. They called his parents in as soon as they found it because it matched up so well with Dongmyeong’s description, but when they got here this morning, while Dongju was still sleeping in Giwook’s arms, they confirmed that it was not their son.

And amidst police trying to find out who the hell the boy they fished out of the river is, then, Sanggyun must have called them to report that Donghan had not been home when he woke up this morning, and wasn’t at work, either.

So here they are, back where they were nearly two months ago. In this drafty waiting room with its loud reception lady and its uncomfortable blue plastic chairs, which Dongju doesn’t bother sit down on this time.

He and Giwook remain standing, leaned against the cool concrete wall. Sanggyun sits, awkwardly, a few chairs away from Dongju’s parents, wobbling his leg. His eyes don’t stray off the hands in his lap, but Dongju has no mind for him.

It’s not Dongmyeong’s body. It’s not Dongmyeong’s corpse. Which means Dongmyeong could be alive.

Which in turn could mean that they killed Donghan in vain, that he was maybe not a murderer after all, but Dongju hasn’t gotten that far yet. For now, it just means that his brother is not a bloated water corpse. That he might be out there, somewhere. Waiting to be found. There is a knock waiting to answer Dongju’s.

He leans against Giwook’s arm, and closes his eyes to the tears.

A door to their right opens, and the officer from two months ago steps out again. He looks a lot more serious this time, at least. “Mr. Kim? If you would please follow me.”

Dongju watches as Sanggyun nearly flinches out of his seat, and his eyebrow wanders far up his forehead.

Sanggyun doesn’t get to leave whatever interrogation rooms they take him to again.

Another cop comes to collect Dongju maybe an hour later, after his parents have already left, stating that they had not been in contact with Donghan for weeks and spent the entire night at home worrying about their son potentially being dead before they could come here this morning to confirm that he is, in fact, not. He scuffles down the dimly lit hallway, and Dongju follows him, hands in the pockets of his sweater, heart in his throat.

“Mr. Kim, in his defence, let us know that he thinks you might know something about Mr. Kim’s disappearance,” the cop says when they sit down in one of the bare interrogation rooms. “He said you’ve been engaging in suspicious behaviour.”

Dongju raises his eyebrows. “What kind of suspicious behaviour?”

“He mentioned you sneaking around their house, and stopping by in their neighborhood to talk to the neighbors and spread rumors about him and the relationship between him and Mr. Kim.”

Dongju shakes his head. “I’ve never snuck around their house, if you can take my word for that. And while I will not deny having talked to their neighbors about him — under what motive did he tell you did I do that?”

The cop raises his eyebrows. He’s old, older than the other one, white hair frilling around his ears and mustache wobbling when he purses his lips. “That you think he and Mr. Kim are responsible for your brother’s disappearance.”

“Which I think is my good right,” Dongju counters. He has this all down, practiced it with Giwook. “Considering that Mr. Kim is dating my brother’s husband, and he moved in with him less than a month after my brother disappeared under unexplained circumstances. Doesn’t exactly seem like they were expecting him to come back.”

The cop nods, and takes notes. “Right. Mr. Son, where were you last night?”

Dongju swallows. “Me and my boyfriend were at my coworker’s house with some other people until the early morning. We only got back to my apartment around five in the morning, and went right to sleep.”

“Your boyfriend is the guy you were with out in the hall?” the cop asks, and when Dongju nods, he takes another note in the book he has with him. “And those coworkers can confirm that you were with them?”

“Absolutely.” Dongju nods again, and he’s dismissed to the waiting room after he leaves him Youngjo’s address and the phone numbers of Keonhee, Youngjo and Hwanwoong.

And while he sits on one of those uncomfortable chairs with his eyes pressed closed and his head leaned on Giwook’s shoulder, he overhears the voice of two of the officers talking about him, a small smile on his face — “Yeah, no, the alibi is soundproof. They all confirmed they were both there the entire night, and we could track their phone locations to the address, too. It’s on the other side of town, would be a bit of a hassle —”

Giwook squeezes his hand, and yet another officer steps out a few minutes later to thank them for their cooperation and dismiss them. Dongju doesn’t let go of Giwook’s hand when they leave the station.

“So we killed him for no reason?” Dongju whispers into the quiet, when the thoughts finally catch up to him.

They are in Giwook’s apartment, this time, because it’s ultimately closer to the police station, and Dongju barely has the energy to take in the strange surroundings. He sits at the tiny kitchen table with a cup of coffee wrapped up in his hands and stares at the wall opposite of him. Images of Donghan’s still face in front of his eyes again.

Giwook leans against the kitchen counter, arms crossed over his chest. His eyes are warm and heavy on Dongju’s face. “Not necessarily,” he tries to console, but his voice, too, shakes.

They did. They killed a man under the presumption that he deserved it, that he was responsible for Dongmyeong’s death. With Dongmyeong not even being dead, their reasons to kill fall away, too.

“Just because that body isn’t him doesn’t mean he’s not dead,” Giwook tries again, and if those words were supposed to be comforting, he did not think them through very well. At least, he steps closer when Dongju curls forward against the table, puts a shaking hand against his back. “I’m sure he’s not. But —”

Dongju nods, dragging a hand down his face as he sits back up. “I know.”

“You had a feeling that Donghan and Sanggyun did something bad to Dongmyeong long before the body was found. Even if he’s not dead, that doesn’t mean that they aren’t responsible for his disappearance.”

Giwook is right, he knows he is, and he’s a hand to cling onto, even if it shakes.

“So we just need to find him now,” Dongju whispers, nodding at his own words. “We’ll find him, and he’ll testify that they made him disappear, one way or another. Then nothing will keep Sanggyun from going to jail.”

Giwook still shakes, and he says nothing else, but he lets Dongju cling to his hand. Lets him curl their bodies together, Giwook’s chest against his back, his face buried in his hair. Giwook smells like coffee and plastic chairs, all around him, surrounding him even here. He holds on so tightly.

Because they can find Dongmyeong. They need to. He just needs the reassurance that he’s not alone.

While Sanggyun is held custody as an urgent suspect in the cases of two missing people, Dongju and his parents are granted access to the house after the police were unable to find any evidence at the place Donghan was last seen.

It was his mother who pledged for it, actually — now that she can be certain that Donghan was not loyal to her son, she insisted that they, as Dongmyeong’s remaining direct family, should be able to obtain his personal belongings from a house he would most likely not be returning to once they find him.

It’s the greatest, most unexpected help Dongju could’ve asked for, when he gets to wander into the house alongside his parents without anyone questioning what he’s looking for.

His parents dig through the closet in the bedroom for any and all clothes that belong to Dongmyeong, and, wandering around the living room, Dongju overhears his father exclaim in surprise at the few they find.

“It’s like he packed before he left,” he says, and it makes Dongju halt.

There is indeed not much left of Dongmyeong in the house, and Dongju always wrote it up to Donghan wanting to make Sanggyun feel more welcome, less like he was intruding into a space that wasn’t his. To them not wanting to be reminded of what they did. And while that might be the case for pictures and decorations Dongmyeong put up —

Dongju digs through the shoe stash by the door, certain that he remembers at least a few pairs of shoes Dongmyeong owns, but he only finds a single pair that’s even in his size.

Pressing it to his chest, he looks around the house. Did Dongmyeong pack before he left?

All his parents find in the closet upstairs are a few old t-shirts, two pairs of jeans with holes at the knees, changes of his work uniform, a few pieces of underwear and a handful pairs of socks. By far not even a quarter of the clothes Dongmyeong owns. Did Donghan and Sanggyun throw it all out, or did he take it with him?

The only thing that stands out against it, jarringly, is his phone left in one of the kitchen drawers. Why would he take a suitcase worth of clothes and shoes with him, but not his phone?

Who leaves their phone behind? Dongju’s fingers tap against the kitchen counter, his mind wandering back to Giwook. Dropping their phones off with Keonhee so he could take them back to Youngjo’s house and only return them when Giwook came back to collect them in the early morning, after he dropped Donghan’s body off.

Who leaves their phone behind? Someone who doesn’t want to be found. Who’s not supposed to be found.

A shiver runs cold down his back, and he pockets Dongmyeong’s phone and turns away before he gets sick — to the other side of the kitchen, where yet another thing catches his eye.

A small pile of envelopes, likely just collected from the post in the past few days, like most households will have them on the kitchen counter before they remember to stash them away or throw them out. It’s nothing out of the ordinary, until Dongju picks one out. It bears the stamp of Dongmyeong’s workplace, but it’s not addressed to him.

It’s addressed to Sanggyun. A payroll. Even addresses match up.

“Mom,” he calls out, and she turns around from where she’s digging through the pan cabinet for the special saucepan she gave Dongmyeong for Christmas last year. “Did you know Sanggyun and Dongmyeong worked together?”

“What?” She gets up off the floor and pushes a piece of hair out of her face. Dongju hands her the envelope and she flips it around a few times. “Huh. How weird. Is that how he knew Donghan?”

“Weren’t Dongmyeong’s coworkers reportedly the last people to see him the night he disappeared?”

His mother’s eyes flit up to his face. There is a wariness in her gaze, in the way she folds the envelope closed again. “Yes, and one of them stated they saw him leave the building, but not the parking lot.”

“It’s usual that people clock out at the same time, though, right?” he asks, just to make sure. “That several people leave the shift at once. They always have several people working, it’s not likely for the shifts to change at the same time.” She nods, slowly, and he continues, “Do you think we can find out who was on shift that night?”

“Probably.” She sets the envelope back down on the counter. “I’ll call them right now.”

And while his mother is on the phone in the hallway, Dongju’s eyes drift back into the living room. To the laptop placed closed on the couch table, just where it was the night he came here for Donghan.

I went further back in our bank statements and found —, Dongmyeong’s voice rings in his head. Bank statements.

The laptop is technically probably not part of Dongmyeong’s personal belongings, as Dongju is not sure who purchased it and if they didn’t share it, but Donghan isn’t around anymore to complain, and Sanggyun will not be home for at least a little while. No one will look twice if he lets it slide into his bag.

With access to all of that personal information, Giwook will probably know how to find what they need.

He digs through more cabinets in both the kitchen and the living room, hopes to find yet another clue as to what exactly might have happened to Dongmyeong, but the only thing he comes up with is the gifted saucepan.

His father is searching through the car in the driveway, unlocked with Dongmyeong’s keys. Which Giwook left in the bowl on the kitchen counter after he parked the car back in the driveway and locked the door. Dongju can only hope that his father doesn’t accidentally find a leftover piece of Donghan in the backseat.

It’s already hard enough to be here, with his parents, in the place where he killed a man. He tries to breathe.

Only in the attic, when he pulls down the dusty ladder and climbs up, does he find more of what he’s looking for. Like a box with all of the framed pictures Donghan removed from around the house, pushed into a corner. There is another box of stuff that must have belonged to Dongmyeong, books and a water bottle and a folded up blanket that Dongju remembers wrapped around Dongmyeong. A bottle of cologne and a bag with makeup utensils.

But no matter how many other boxes Dongju opens, full of holiday decorations and stuff they must have brought when they first moved in and never unpacked, his clothes and shoes remain missing.

Dongju sinks back on his calves where he’s kneeled down to dig through the boxes, dust clinging to his knees and rising up into his nose with every box he opens. He pushes his hair out of his face with a long sigh, and his eyes wander across the room. To a suitcase leaned against the wall next to the stairs. He frowns.

Some time last year, Dongmyeong and Donghan went on vacation together. Dongju remembers it very vividly, because it was their first vacation together outside of the country, and Dongmyeong would not stop sending pictures.

Among others, a picture of the two of them in the airport with their cute customized suitcases.

Now here, leaning against the wall, is only Donghan’s bright purple suitcase. And a big, vaguely square shaped gap in the dust next to it, where Dongmyeong’s dark blue one must have stood not too long ago.

So where is it now, and where are his clothes?

His father helps him haul the two boxes downstairs, and when they reach the living room again and Dongju shakes the dust out of his hair, his mother has put the phone down again.

She approaches him with a heavy look on her face, crossing her arms. “You were right. Sanggyun did work the night Dongmyeong disappeared. And their shifts ended at the same time, but his manager said Dongmyeong usually likes to hang around for another few minutes after he clocks out, so he probably left a few minutes later than Sanggyun.”

Dongju nods slowly. The weight in his chest settles a little deeper.

Once they have searched every niche of the house for anything that might have belonged to Dongmyeong, his parents load the stuff into the car and hug Dongju goodbye at the door.

The only things he takes for himself off their stash is the family picture Dongmyeong used to keep next to the TV, and the phone and laptop he already has on him. His mother smiles when he picks out one of the old t-shirts, because he’s almost sure that belonged to him at one point. He presses it to his chest and takes it home.

At least now, they have somewhere to start.

It takes almost another week for both of them to find time, between messy work schedules and Giwook still trying to finish his university degree, to meet up again and go through what Dongju found in the house.

When Dongju gets ready to leave for Giwook’s apartment after work the day they agreed to meet, Youngjo grabs his own coat off the hook and offers to drive him.

“I took the car this morning, anyway,” he says when Dongju tries to decline, shrugging on his coat. “And you said it’s in the opposite direction of your place from here, right? So in the direction of my place, roughly. Really, Ju, it’s no bother. It’s so cold outside, I’d feel bad letting you walk all the way there on your own.”

He seems insistent, so Dongju shrugs and agrees, follows him down to the car parked at the back of the building.

It is nice, to be warm and sinking back into the cushion of the seat instead of fighting against the wind biting at his cheeks, but he can’t deny the awkward atmosphere in the car. After what Youngjo did for him.

Youngjo remains silent until they reach the main street, have to wait for the light to turn green.

Dongju didn’t have to involve him, or the others. Probably shouldn’t have. It would have been better for them, certainly, if he had never told them what he and Giwook were going to do. Youngjo is far too good of a man, and they’ve known each other since Dongju’s stumbling first days of his attempt at university. He would do anything for him, even employ him at his newly opened business without any qualifications to keep the roof over his head.

Or lie to law enforcement about where Dongju was on a particular night last week so he wouldn’t go to jail. He didn’t have to, he could have called the police right after he learned about the plans. But he didn’t.

And Dongju shakes in his seat, still scared of what he did, and what he caused other people to do. If they get busted, if someone comes up with evidence that it was undoubtedly Giwook and Dongju committing Donghan’s murder, they would all go down the drain. The two of them, but also Youngjo, Keonhee and Hwanwoong.

Dongju started it. He dragged everyone else into it — even Giwook was hesitant at first.

But Youngjo turns his head to look at him at the light, and when Dongju finally meets his eyes, he smiles. “You know, I’ve always wanted to commit a crime.”

And a laugh bursts out of Dongju despite the tears threatening to pool in his eyes. “Really?”

“Really.” Youngjo grins, too, as the light turns green and he continues driving. “I didn’t think it would be covering up the murder my friend committed, but here we are, I guess.” Dongju only catches him looking over from the corner of his eyes because he’s already looking at him. “So don’t worry. You’re not ruining my life.”

Dongju has always wondered how Youngjo is so good at reading minds.

“Keonhee is a little more scared than Hwanwoong and I am, I think, but that’s just because he’s Keonhee. He definitely trusts you more than the police, so you don’t need to worry.” Youngjo smiles to himself, and Dongju finds himself doing the same. “He loves you, he’d do anything for you. So do Woongie and I.” He clears his throat, scratches his neck a little. “And it’s not like Dongmyeong was a stranger. We miss him, too. The bastard deserved it.”

And Dongju feels even more like crying, but all he does is croak out a thank you to Youngjo and lead him down the busy city streets to Giwook’s apartment. And when they hold in front of it, he lets Youngjo pull him into a hug.

“One last question.” Youngjo gestures up in the vague direction of the apartment block, where Giwook is undoubtedly already waiting for him. Dongju runs hot before Youngjo even gets to ask. “I know he was your boyfriend for the alibi, so you’d have a reason to introduce him to us, but, you know. Is he?”

Dongju shakes his head. Shrugs. “I don’t know. Up until that night I probably would’ve said no.”

Youngjo snorts under his breath. “I don’t want to ask.” He shakes his head, too, and pats Dongju on the shoulder. “Well, whatever it is. I promise you don’t have to worry about any of us. You just focus on your … whatever.”

“Thank you,” Dongju says again, smiling to himself. He looks up the facade of the building, imagines he can spot Giwook’s lit up kitchen window from down here. “But tonight really isn’t about that.” And when Youngjo raises an eyebrow, he cramps his hand into a fist and elaborates, “Tonight, we’ll try to find my brother.”

Even the short distance to Giwook’s apartment has Dongju freezing, winter still creeping in through the cracks and the heating always being out in the hallways. Stepping through the door feels like falling into a jacuzzi.

Giwook left the door open for him — like they do.

He looks up from the couch when Dongju enters, raising his eyebrows, but a smile spreads on his face, easy. “Oh, hey,” he greets, pushing himself up. “You’re early.”

“Yeah, Youngjo offered to drive me so I wouldn’t have to walk in the cold.”

Giwook brushes a hand through Dongju’s hair — Dongju tries not to lean into it — and offers to get him something to drink from the kitchen. Dongju says yes to a coffee, because it’s not like Giwook has much else to offer and he feels like he’s freezing from the inside out, and drops down on the couch with his bag in his lap.

“So what do you have?” Giwook asks as he sets two cups of coffee down on the table in front of them and folds his legs under himself when he sits down.

Dongju reaches into his bag and pulls out Dongmyeong’s phone first. “Myeong’s phone,” he says, tossing it over to Giwook. “I couldn’t find Donghan’s, it must be with Sanggyun or maybe the police have it. But I did get this.” He pulls the laptop out of the bag and sets it down on the couch between them. “Dongmyeong told me he found out that Donghan was cheating mostly through their bank statements, and I just thought —”

Giwook nods, raises an impressed eyebrow. “Yeah, it’s not impossible that they have some shit saved on here.”

He boots up the laptop, opening up without a password, and Dongju moves to sit behind him. Hooks his chin over his shoulder to watch what he does as Giwook clicks through the websites already opened, looks through their browsing history. “If I find porn in here I’m quitting,” he mumbles and Dongju smiles against his shoulder.

Giwook smells good, he notes, pressing his nose against the slope of his shoulder while his eyes remain on the laptop screen. It’s just something he’s noticed. Ever since Giwook came back and smelled like Donghan and fire.

“Aha?” Dongju zones back into what Giwook is doing right as he’s opening an email, pretty far down in the email inbox. Curved letters thank the addressee, Kim Donghan, for his reservation. “He rented a room in a motel out of town a few days before Dongmyeong disappeared.” Giwook lets the cursor hover over the date.

“That’s our birthday,” Dongju says, and Giwook looks up. “It doesn’t say the time, does it?”

“Well, this email was sent at night,” Giwook moves the cursor again to highlight the time it says next to the subject. “Eight. It could’ve been sent later, but usually I’d say they’d send it out right after the reservation is placed.”

“By eight that night Dongmyeong and I were absolutely already at the restaurant. And we stayed a while. Definitely long enough for him to drive out of town and be back by the time Dongmyeong got home.”

“Especially if he was already used to sneaking around,” Giwook adds with a scoff, and Dongju has to nod. Giwook scrolls further down the email’s content, cursor hovering over the date again. “Huh,” he makes, and Dongju looks up to see him frowning. “Wouldn’t it usually say from when till when he booked the room? There’s no end date here.”

He’s right — the email only states the date the reservation would start, namely his and Dongmyeong’s birthday, but not when it would end. “Can you do that?” he asks. “Book a room open-end?”

“If you have the money, probably.” Giwoom shrugs. “And Donghan sure does.”

“Well, if we can get into their bank statements,” Dongju suggests again, “we could see if he’s still making deposits to the motel. If the room is still reserved for him.”

“You think he’s keeping Dongmyeong in a motel room?” Giwook asks, but he opens the website, anyway.

“I wouldn’t put anything past him at this point.” Dongju shrugs. “And he travels a lot for work, so it would be easy to explain regular deposits to motels to the police. Especially when they already want to believe he’s innocent.”

Giwook hums in agreement, and immediately scoffs when they get to the login page and a saved password pops up. “Who the hell saves the password for their online banking. Is Dongmyeong actually stupid.” He lets the cursor hover over the button for a moment, hesitating. “Pretty sure hacking someone’s bank account is highly illegal.”

Dongju laughs, out loud, at that and wraps both of his arms around Giwook’s middle to squeeze him. “You know what is also highly illegal?” he asks. “Murder. We literally killed someone, and you’re worried about this?”

Giwook snorts and clicks the button. “I’m just saying, if we do find him and they ask how we knew where he was, we’ll have to think of a way that excludes illegally looking at Donghan’s bank statements.”

“Mhm,” is all Dongju makes, eyes already scanning the rows of withdrawals for the last month. “Oh, would you look at that,” he says, freeing one of his hands from around Giwook to point at one of the rows. “Wasn’t that the name of the motel? That was only last week. Like, two days before —” He cuts himself off, but Giwook knows.

“Yeah, and the week before that, too.” Giwook’s cursor hovers over the date.

“Why would he keep paying for a motel room if no one’s staying there?” Dongju asks, turning his head up again to look up at Giwook’s face. “Unless he has someone staying there. Someone he doesn’t want around here anymore.”

Giwook shakes his head, rakes a hand back through his hair. “I’m just asking — why would he go through all the trouble of renting out a motel room for him and keeping him there for over nearly two months when he could also just, I don’t know, break up with him? Like I get it, he cheated and Dongmyeong called him out for it, but. Why make such a drama out of it when he could’ve also just ended the relationship? Admitted that he did and ended things?”

Dongju shrugs again. “Well, we thought he killed him. I could ask you the same question there.” His fingers draw a pattern against the plane of Giwook’s belly as he thinks. “Unless there was something else involved that Dongmyeong knew about. Tax evasion or some other dirty business. A reason to keep him silent.”

Giwook hums, cursor still hovering over the withdrawal. “I guess in any case it can’t be a bad idea to check out who is actually staying in this room. I have a feeling you might be right.”

And Dongju smiles and smacks a kiss against Giwook’s shoulder. “Well, let’s go, little detective.”

The getting out of town proves to be the hardest part. They find the address of the motel on its website, but it’s outside of the city’s subway system and no train or bus would take them there.

Neither of them has a car, though Dongju knows for a fact that Giwook got his license back at home.

So when Dongju wakes up in Giwook’s bed the next morning and shrugs on a sweater he hands him and lets himself be kissed goodbye at the door, he leaves for work with a plan. Leans over his desk when it’s quieter, and gives Youngjo the sweetest smile he can muster after spending four hours staring at a computer screen.

“Remember how you said yesterday that you love me and would do anything for me?”

And Youngjo laughs, eyes crinkling and head bobbing when he throws his head back a little. “Oh dear. Didn’t think that would backfire this quickly.” He sets his lunch down on the desk. “What do you need?”

“Just how willing are you to give up your car for a night?”

Youngjo raises an eyebrow. “To you? Not at all, considering I know you don’t have a license.”

“Just because I don’t doesn’t mean I don’t know anyone who does.” Dongju gives him his best pout, even stronger than the previous smile. “Giwook has a license, he drove for our little plan, too. Please?”

Youngjo narrows his eyes at him. He knows that Giwook has to have a license because Dongju at least vaguely filled him in on what they were going to do, without going into details, but he still seems hesitant. “What do you two need a car for? I don’t want any funny business going on there, I just got the cushions cleaned.”

Dongju snorts. “It’s not that.” He clears his throat because his heart has crawled up so far it hinders him from breathing. The pure thought of what this night might bring has a shiver running down his back, near tears coming to his eyes as he whispers, “We might know where Dongmyeong is.”

Youngjo raises his eyebrows, breathes out an, “Oh,” so softly Dongju barely hears it.

“The location we found is not in the city, though, and we need a way to get there.” Dongju swallows, hands balling to fists on the desk. “I know you’ve already done so much for us, but this is — we could find him. Please, hyung?”

And Youngjo’s eyes have gone so soft. He said just yesterday that he knows Donghan deserved what was coming for him, because Dongmyeong was not a stranger to him, either. Dongju might have always been closer to him, but it’s always been hard to be Dongju’s friend without inevitably getting caught up in Dongmyeong, too.

If anything, even if Dongmyeong was a stranger for him, he has to know how much he means to Dongju. And if he really loves him as much as he swore yesterday, he would do this for him. Dongju knows in his heart.

“Okay,” Youngjo breathes out. “Okay, yes, of course. When do you need the car?”

Dongju swallows around the smile climbing onto his face. “Thank you, hyung.” He reaches out across the table and squeezes Youngjo’s hand. “We were thinking tonight, if that’s all right with you. Giwook will pick me up here.”

Youngjo nods. He smiles, too. “Of course. I can just ask Seungwan to drive me, or maybe Seoho’ll pick me up.”

And when Dongju packs up at the end of his shift and Giwook shows up at the door of the parlor with an awkward smile, lets Youngjo ceremoniously hand him the keys, Youngjo turns back around to Dongju and locks him in a hug.

“Be careful,” he warns both of them when he releases him again, though not before reaching out to mess up Dongju’s hair. “I want my baby back in one piece. Talking about both my car and Dongju.” He sends Giwook a glance at that, but promptly starts laughing. Giwook lets out an awkward giggle, too, and Dongju squeezes his arm.

“We will be,” he promises Youngjo, one foot already out the door.

“And,” Youngjo adds quickly, halting them once again. Dongju turns back around to him to find him smiling, with a weird look to his eyes. Almost glassy. “Bring Dongmyeong home.”

Dongju curls up on the passenger seat of Youngjo’s car the second night in a row, but it’s not Youngjo driving this time, and the air is not as awkward — though something hangs between them, too, tasting like anticipation. Fear.

Giwook is kind of a jerky driver, not really stable in the way he holds onto the wheel, but Dongju doesn’t complain. God knows he can’t drive at all, never tried even when Dongmyeong got his license back then. Never wanted to. And Giwook is nervous, too, just as much as Dongju is.

They both know what they expect to find at the end of this road.

Dongju has to swallow around the lump in his throat. He hasn’t seen Dongmyeong in two months now — actually believed him to be dead for the majority of that time. He doesn’t think they’ve ever been apart for that long.

It sounds silly. They are both grown adults, they live on their own, Dongmyeong had a whole life with a house and a husband and possibly plans of a family — and if their kids would possibly have only been a few pets. They didn’t live together and Dongju, too, had at least a semblance of establishing some things for himself. Even if instead of a house and a husband he had his shitty apartment and all his broken dreams to keep him company, it was something.

But they were always close. Despite not filling in all of the twin cliches, not being identical and not spending all of their lives together, matching it all up, they were still close. Best friends. Even after they moved out from home and went their separate ways, they used to meet up like once a week for dinner, or at the very least grab boba together.

Now he hasn’t seen Dongmyeong in what feels like ages, and he still isn’t entirely sure where he is. What if Dongmyeong doesn’t want to be found? What if, after all, there is no longer a Dongmyeong that can be found?

He curls up even tighter, leans his forehead against his knees and closes his eyes.

They will find him. At the end of this road waits the motel, and they will find Dongmyeong in one of the rooms and they will take him home and Sanggyun will go to jail for homicide and kidnapping.

By now the police should have found out about the life insurance policy, and found that very suspicious.

From the corner of his eyes he catches Giwook looking over at him when they finally leave the tall buildings of the city behind them, the road straightening out and their environments evening.

Giwook reaches out for him, hand on the wheel a lot steadier now that they’re out of the city, and Dongju threads his fingers between his. Takes in the warmth of his palm, lets it travel up his parm. He takes a deep breath.

“We’ll find him,” Giwook reassures like the voices in his head. “I promise you. Even if we don’t find him tonight, we won’t stop looking for him, right? We won’t give up. He has to be somewhere, and I promise you we, I will not give up until we find him. Not even Donghan can just make him vanish off the face of the earth.”

Dongju nods and holds onto his hand a little tighter. Swallows all of the negative thoughts down.

Dongmyeong has to be somewhere, Giwook is right. He has to.

The road takes them longer than anticipated when they get into a traffic jam about an hour out of the city. Dongju falls asleep somewhere in the middle of it, and Giwook only shakes him awake when the sun has long set and the car is parked on a small lot between two grey buildings.

“This is it,” Giwook whispers, gesturing somewhere behind him.

Dongju pulls himself out of his slumped position, shakes his hair out of his eyes and turns. Right opposite the two buildings they’re parked between stands what must be the reception building of the motel, a rusty gate right next to it and a flickering lightboard in the window advertising prices Dongju can’t make out from here.

“You’d think someone like Donghan would pick a nicer place even for someone he’s trying to get rid of.”

Giwook shrugs helplessly, and they get out of the car. It’s chilly out and Dongju is glad he brought his thick coat, and the closer they get to the reception building, the grimier it seems. He wrinkles his nose.

“At least if this is such a rundown place it might take less convincing for them to let us know where he is,” Giwook suggests, eyeing the prices on the lightboard. “Man, even I could afford to rent this place out.”

They enter, and at least the room is warm — Dongju breathes out in relief when the door falls shut behind them and they are enveloped in this bubble of comfortable heater air. The lady behind the counter looks up from her paper with a smile, which nearly catches Dongju off guard. She looks a lot too friendly for this place.

“Hi,” she greets when they step closer to her desk. “Do you have a reservation? Or would you just like a room for a night?” Her eyes flit between them, and Dongju knows this is not that kind of place, but he grows warm, anyway.

He clears his throat, leaves Giwook a step behind when he finally steps all the way to the desk. “No, actually we’re just here to ask something.” When she raises her eyebrows, he continues, “My brother has been staying here for a while, and I currently have no way of reaching him, is there any way you could tell me what room he’s in?”

The lady looks unsure, eyes going round. They stay fixed on Dongju now, though. “I mean,” she stutters. “I’m technically not allowed to do that, you know, for privacy reasons —”

“I know.” Dongju clears his throat again, clogging up with fear. “But I’m family, and it’s — urgent. It really is.”

Her eyes flit back to the old computer on her desk, humming with how hard it must be trying to stay alive, and she wrings her hands. “I’m sorry, I’m afraid I really can’t —” But she sighs when her eyes catch on Dongju’s face again and he tries his best to look as pleading as possible. “You know what, I don’t get paid enough for this anyway.”

Dongju wants to laugh, but he resigns himself to a smile when she drops down into her chair and opens a program on her computer. Immediately, it begins to hum even louder.

“Thank you so much,” Dongju says, and she sends him a look over her glasses, friendly smile mostly gone.

“You promise me no funny business?” And when Dongju nods, she turns to her computer with another sigh. “What’s your brother’s name?”

“Son Dongmyeong.” And he folds his hands where she can’t see, praying. They might not be as lucky to encounter an underpaid night shift receptionist tired of her job at the next place.

She types the name into the program, and Dongju waits with bated breath as she stares at the screen.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she says eventually, looking up. “It doesn’t look like he was ever —”

“Oh, he might be here under the name Kim Donghan, now that I think about it,” Dongju hurries to say, nearly biting his tongue. “That’s his husband, and I’m pretty sure he booked the room. Sorry.”

She waves him off and types the new name in once more.

Dongju clenches his hands together so hard his fingers ache where they press against each other, so hard Giwook takes a step closer to rest a hand against his upper arm. Comfort, but his mind still races. Where are they supposed to look if Dongmyeong is not here? Where are they supposed to start when their only lead ends here?

His breath catches in his throat when the receptionist raises her head once more, and regards him for a moment through the mirrored glasses of her spectacles, before she shakes her head and sighs yet again.

“Room 43,” she says, and Dongju’s heart leaps in his chest. “And don’t tell anyone about this.”

They nearly sprint out of the building, through the rusty gate into the park of rowed up rooms. Giwook is a lot better at scanning the doors for their numbers in the dark, and he lets Dongju cling to his arm for stability.

His legs shake — and he can’t tell if it’s excitement or fear, a mix of both or something else entirely.

They found out which room Donghan has been renting for so long now, but it’s not said that they will find Dongmyeong behind its door, and not something else Donghan has been hiding. Giwook seems to believe in it, though, excitement filtering out of his voice as he whispers the number they pass by out loud.

Dongju finds himself wanting to believe in it, too. And then his legs shake for an entire other reason — he hasn’t seen him in so long, he thinks back to lonely nights and an aching heart, no knock answering his. He misses him.

“Forty-three,” Giwook breathes out and they halt. The door is right in front of them, just up two steps.

Slowly, Dongju unwinds his fingers from around Giwook’s arm. They stand and stare at the door, the small window with its neat curtain next to it, for a moment before he asks, “Should I go alone?”

Giwook shrugs, and his eyes shake when Dongju looks up at him. Nervous.

Dongju lets go of his arm fully and takes a step forward. Giwook stays behind him even as he climbs the two steps onto the porch running along the front of the rooms, and raises his hand to knock.

His pulse is loud in his veins. He rests his knuckles against the wood of the door, takes a deep breath. If it’s not Dongmyeong on the other side, they will simply excuse themselves and leave, saying they got the room number wrong. And Dongju might shed a silent tear on the way home, but Giwook would never mention it.

And if it is — well. He breathes out and knocks.

A second passes. Two. There’s rustling on the other side of the thin door and Dongju is counting his breaths. Counting Giwook’s breaths, somewhere behind him. His hands knot together and he almost closes his eyes.

Finally, steps approach, and the lock opens with a click. Dongju watches as the knob turns in slow motion, another click announcing the door opening, and as the gap between door and wall grows bigger, revealing —

His eyes sting so hard they water, and all he gets out around his choked up breath is, “Hi.”

A body slams into his so hard he almost stumbles backwards, just so managing to stay on his feet as arms wrap around him and Dongmyeong lets out a sob so heartbreaking Dongju wants to let go of him immediately, just to check if he’s hurt somewhere, but Dongmyeong wraps around him with only even more force.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” he asks around a watery voice, but before Dongju can think of an answer, Dongmyeong must open his eyes over Dongju’s shoulder and spot Giwook at the bottom of the steps.

He lets go of Dongju at once only to hop down the steps and wrap Giwook into a hug, too, so hard Dongju wouldn’t be surprised if a few of his bones cracked. Only then does Dongju get to take in the way Dongmyeong is dressed, barefoot in a pair of his slippers, sweatpants peeking out under his fluffy white bathrobe.

When he’s let go of Giwook and stepped back onto the porch, Dongju speaks up.

“What do you mean, what are we doing here?” he asks, a laugh pushing past his lips, a little incredulous. “We’re looking for you. What the hell are you doing here?”

“Oh.” Dongmyeong swallows visibly and looks around them, down the length of the empty porch, across the empty park, all the way to the opposite row of rooms, before he waves for them to follow them, opening the door again. “We should better talk inside. Can’t have anyone see you here or we might be fucked.”

The inside of the room is messy, the door to the bathroom ajar, the bed unmade, an open suitcase peeking out from under the mattress — the one Dongju noticed missing from his house — clothes draped over the couch.

Dongmyeong pushes some of them aside to them to sit, and awkwardly sits down on the bed.

“Look, I’m really happy to see you,” he starts before Dongju gets the chance to ask again. “I am, I missed you so much, but it’s kind of dangerous for you to be here, so it’d be best if you left again soon.”

“Why?” Dongju sits up on the edge of the couch, but Dongmyeong avoids his eyes when he tries to get a look at his face. Stares at the wall next to Dongju’s head instead and picks at his fingernails. “What’s going on, Myeong?”

A splinter of nail polish comes off Dongmyeong’s nail and Dongju watches as it sails to the ground. “Donghan,” he starts slowly, but shakes his head as if to start over. He swallows visibly “Let’s say, I’m not here entirely on my own free will, of course I would have told you where I was if I could have, but — I can’t. It’s dangerous for you to be here.”

“Why?” Dongju asks again. His fingers itch. “What did Donghan do to you?”

“He took me here,” Dongmyeong says simply. He finally looks at Dongju, too, but the smile that tugs at his lips is unsure. “He and his little mister made sure to store me here until whatever sick plan of theirs goes to fruition. Had Sanggyun wait for me in the parking lot after we both got off our shift, and choke me unconscious. They had my stuff packed and all, I woke up in the car like thirty minutes later, halfway on the way here, because they gave me some kind of sedative. Dropped me off here and told me to not come back. It was really fucked up.”

“So you’re just … supposed to stay here? No one’s keeping an eye on you?”

“Well, that’s the dangerous part.” Dongmyeong looks away again, his eyes find a spot on the floor. “If he finds out you were here, and he might if you tell anyone or anyone sees you … things might happen.” His voice gets quieter when he adds, “They said they didn’t want to kill me right away because they didn’t mean to be cruel, but that they still couldn’t risk me telling anyone, and if they found out that I told anyone or if I try to come back, there might be consequences. Both for me and for people I love, so you should really —”

“There won’t be any consequences,” Dongju cuts him off as gently as he can. No matter what an asshole Donghan was, it might still shock Dongmyeong that — “Donghan isn’t around anymore to find out about anything.”

Dongmyeong’s brows furrow and he looks back up. “What do you mean?”

Dongju swallows and Giwook only offers him a wobbling smile when he looks over at him. “They pulled a body out of the river a little while ago,” is how Dongju chooses the start. “They had mom and dad called in because it matched your description so well, but they didn’t get there until the morning and I just —”

He has to pause for a moment, swallow and take another look at Giwook, who nods at him.

“I already thought that he did something to you before the body showed up. I thought you were dead, and I met his mister and he talked to me about my loss, and I was just so sure that they killed you. So I — I killed Donghan.”

The words sit heavy on his tongue, threaten to choke him up again. He’s only said it out loud once before since he did it, just yesterday, and it was in an almost joking manner. To say it out loud like this, to confess what he did with his brother’s eyes on his face after he hasn’t seen him in so long — he feels caged in, choked.

“You —” Dongmyeong’s mouth drops open and he blinks at him. “You did what?”

Dongju sinks in on himself, shoulders dropping as he wishes the couch would open to swallow him whole. “I killed him,” he repeats, quieter. “Knife to his neck, and Giwook got rid of the body.”

Dongmyeong’s eyes flit back and forth between them when Dongju looks up at him again, and his lips quiver. No matter how much he must hate Donghan, no matter how much he had to go through because of him — he was still married to him for three years, still dated him for such a long time, still shared memories with him.

Dongju has never felt this exposed, this helpless. Bared wrists for Dongmyeong to slash into.

“Oh wow,” is all Dongmyeong says in the end, dragging a hand down his face. He swallows again, and Dongju watches his expression twist into something he can’t quite decipher. “That’s … a lot to take in.”

“We’re pretty sure they’ll think Sanggyun did it, they already have him in custody,” Dongju rushes to say. “Youngjo, Keonhee and Hwanwoong know what I did and they gave me an alibi for the night he disappeared, so I’m not in any danger to go to jail unless one of them spills, but — it might mean Sanggyun will go to jail.”

Dongmyeong nods, sliding his hand into his neck. “I doubt he would go through with the plan of consequences for me without Donghan, anyway. Especially not if the police have already gotten him.”

Dongju allows something like hope to grow back. “Which means that you can come home.”

Dongmyeong nods again, and finally raises his head to give him a small smile. “I guess it does mean that.”

He tells them about what he found about Donghan and Sanggyun’s plans while he packs — apparently, with unravelling their affair, he also found out about some heavy tax evasion and insurance fraud they had been plotting and conducting together. The life insurance Giwook came across was part of their biggest scheme and escape plan.

“I guess it’s good that you got to him before Sanggyun did,” Dongmyeong mumbles half heartedly as throws his clothes back into the suitcase.. “I’m pretty sure they meant to stage his death, anyway, and escape with the money.”

Dongju sends Giwook a look, and Giwook raises an impressed eyebrow.

Donghan and Sanggyun had indeed been planning an entire net of crimes to pile up money and start a new life somewhere else — if Dongmyeong had never found out about them, Donghan would have just staged his own death one day and left him a fake widower in his mid-twenties. Without any knowledge of what really went on.

Now Donghan is no longer around, will never hurt anyone or plot another scheme again, and his mister and partner in crime is potentially facing jail time for all they did, and for his murder.

Dongmyeong’s eyes swim only a little when he finally heaves his suitcase up and they leave his room behind. They wave goodbye to the lady behind the reception desk through the window, and she sends them a smile.

“Whose car is this?” Dongmyeong asks when they move his luggage into the trunk. “Don’t tell me that after committing murder you guys decided to become full time criminals and steal cars, too.”

Dongju slaps his shoulder. “Don’t say that so loud. This is Youngjo’s car.”

Dongmyeong seems satisfied with that. He also seems tired, silent for the most part when Giwook starts up the engine and they head back down the road they came from. Out of the dingy small town the motel is located in, back across far stretches of fields to the city. Home.

The radio plays outdated songs accompanied by the humming of static, and Dongju’s hands still shake as he gets his phone out of his pocket to text his mother — can’t believe what he gets to text her.

He can’t believe that this is it. That they found him, like Giwook promised they would, that Dongmyeong is in the car with them right now, stretching across the backseat and fiddling with his hands, that he’s breathing right there behind them. That they get to take him home, and get to go back to their normal lives.

It’s only been two months, but Dongju barely remembers what he did before he spent all of his days worrying about if Dongmyeong is alive, and where he might be. What did he do before his life was consumed by tragedy?

Now they are on their way home and Dongmyeong falls asleep in the backseat, and Giwook holds his hand over the gear shift, squeezes it when Dongju looks over at him. They did it.

“So something other than murder happened here, huh,” Dongmyeong comments from the backseat, not quite as asleep as they thought he was, and their hands nearly flinch apart. “I see.”

It’s silent for a moment — Dongju counts his breaths again as Giwook’s hand returns to the steering wheel, and Dongmyeong doesn’t say anything else, either — until Giwook starts laughing. Starts laughing so hard his body tilts forward against the wheel and he nearly drives them off the road before he catches himself, and Dongju has to join him. Laughs until Dongmyeong has to laugh, too, and they’re all in tears, clutching their bellies

“This is so absurd,” Giwook says, wiping his tears with one hand. “I’m glad you’re back, Myeong.”

“I’m glad to be back, too,” he says, and he leans his forearms on the backrests of their seats, sticking his head out between them. “And now I think you two have some talking to do.”