Chapter 31
The talk of Yoon Jun-young being a rising star on TV seemed absurd, as he lived in a residential complex where small villas were clustered together. Still, it was a villa with a neat exterior befitting a celebrity, but it seemed somewhat vulnerable in terms of security.
At least there was a CCTV at the entrance, which was somewhat fortunate. Newly aware of the CCTV’s presence, Muyoung stepped inside.
One at the entrance, one in the elevator, and no separate cameras in the hallways. The top floor where Yoon Jun-young lived was reserved for two households, unlike the lower floors.
After grasping the structure of the villa, Muyoung stood in front of Yoon Jun-young’s house. Before opening the front door, he put on latex gloves and entered the passcode given to him by Yoon Sang-hee, Jun-young’s sister. As the keypad operation sound cut through the silent corridor, the tightly closed door opened without resistance.
The darkened interior of the house was filled with a chill. Wondering where the cold was coming from, he looked around slowly and saw that the window near the veranda was half-open. The pale curtains swayed like ghosts in the winter wind that had entered through the window.
Whether it had been open from the start or someone had opened it, it was strange to leave the door open in this dead of winter. Perhaps because it was a house where someone had died, it felt eerily desolate.
Taking off his shoes and entering the living room, Muyoung turned on the lights first. With the lights on, the entire view of the living room came into sight.
The neatly organized living room showed clear signs of thorough cleaning. That’s why it felt even more oddly dissonant.
Wondering if Yoon Jun-young was the type to keep his house this tidy, well… If nothing else, the homes of drug addicts were invariably messy.
With their minds preoccupied elsewhere, they lacked the leisure for meticulous attention.
Of course, it was possible that a family member had cleaned up after the police had been there. He decided to keep all possibilities open, even if it seemed somewhat unnatural.
Muyoung pulled out a UV flashlight from his pocket. As he turned off the lights that had been illuminating his view, the living room was again plunged into pitch darkness.
He moved around, shining the bluish light of the flashlight here and there.
“Ha, look at this?”
The strange sense of dissonance he had felt in the well-organized living room was due to the lack of signs of life. He had thought it was too clean for a drug addict, but under the UV light, the hidden messy reality was revealed.
Fingerprints, footprints, hair, and other transferred substances.
Contaminants that were barely visible to the naked eye showed fluorescent reactions when illuminated by the blue light. While it looked spotlessly clean on the surface, the reality was different.
Muyoung followed the glowing traces with his flashlight.
Traces that looked like footprints were chaotically imprinted. Unlike normal daily movement patterns, they were haphazard. Here and there, signs of wiping were mixed in as well.
Something had clearly happened in the living room.
“I knew it.”
Those chaotic marks proved that his judgment that Yoon Jun-young was definitely not the type to commit suicide was not wrong.
And those marks led to the half-open door beyond. Seeing the switch on the outside, it seemed to be the bathroom where the guy had died.
Muyoung headed to the bathroom, following the light of his flashlight.
He shone the light on the toilet, sink, and bathtub in order, but there were no traces here.
Muyoung narrowed his already slender eyes and swallowed a sneer.
He died by hanging himself here, in this bathtub, but didn’t leave a single fingerprint? It’s not like the dead guy’s soul could have erased his own traces.
Turning on the bathroom light, he took out a spray bottle containing luminol reagent. He sprayed it all over the bathroom to find any possible bloodstains, then turned off the light again.
In the pitch-black bathroom, he carefully searched for traces of fluorescent glow. He meticulously examined the floor, ceiling, and every object in the bathroom.
And he found it. Traces that hadn’t been completely wiped clean on the edge of the bathtub.
Whether it was Yoon Jun-young’s or the killer’s, he couldn’t know until a detailed analysis.
Muyoung knelt in front of the bathtub and captured the glowing fluorescent traces on his phone. Then he took out a cotton swab in a pack from his pocket. It was part of a forensic kit he had brought, just in case.
As he was gently dabbing the traces left on the bathtub edge onto the cotton swab, Muyoung’s ears perked up.
In the house that was quiet to the point of being desolate, he sensed an out-of-place presence.
A very faint noise that would have gone unnoticed if he hadn’t been paying attention. It was clearly the sound of a doorknob turning.
Is there someone else in this house besides me?
Since no one had opened the front door after he entered, they must have been in the house before him.
Could it be a family member who came to rest briefly while the funeral was still ongoing? If not…
The perpetrator coming back to look for traces they failed to erase.
The reason criminals revisit the crime scene is to reassure themselves of their own safety.
Humans have a self-protective instinct, and criminals too want to protect themselves from the crimes they’ve committed. They need to eliminate any remaining evidence, to quell their anxious minds.
With this certainty flashing through his mind, Muyoung very slowly straightened up from his crouched position. Four steps to the bathroom door. He approached the door, pressing his body close behind it, holding even his breath.
In that moment, a chill ran down his neck. Muyoung sensed it.
That he and the other person were aware of each other, separated only by this door.
His senses sharpened like raised fur in this silent battle of nerves.
If it were a family member, they wouldn’t move with such mouse-like stealth. Muyoung, with tension coiling through his entire body, reached for the bathroom doorknob.
Suddenly flinging the door open, Muyoung quickly extended his arm. With his large hand, he grabbed the other person’s collar and pulled the retreating figure into the bathroom.
First cutting off the escape route and isolating them, he then struck with his elbow. The dark figure, caught off guard for a moment, was startled only briefly.
Quickly regaining composure, the assailant blocked the incoming blow with both arms and immediately launched a knee strike. The knee connected with a thud to Muyoung’s side.
“Ugh!”
It must have been an effective strike, as a short groan escaped Muyoung’s lips. However, Muyoung was no pushover either. He twisted the hand gripping the assailant’s shoulder and slammed them against the wall with a thud. Using his muscular forearm, he pressed down just below the attacker’s collarbone, immediately constricting their airway.
“Gah!”
Muyoung put his full body weight into further compressing the opponent’s windpipe. Despite the overwhelming force and skill in this restraint, the other person continued to resist fiercely.
The assailant swung their fists, struggling to push him away. But it wasn’t easy. Muyoung stuck close to avoid the incoming punches.
“Who are you?”
“Urgh!”
Strength gathered in the clenched jaw, and the low, sunken voice was full of menace towards the opponent.
“Who are you to sneak into this house like a rat? Huh?”
Muyoung planted his sturdy legs firmly on the floor, pressing down on the throat of the person pinned under his forearm. Unable to escape the pressure, they broke into coughing fits.
Trapped between the wall and Muyoung, the person spat out rough curses before giving up resistance and frantically grabbing Muyoung’s sleeve.
“First, this, please, ugh, let go and, let’s talk,”
As if declaring surrender and asking for their throat to be released, they repeatedly patted Muyoung’s forearm with their hand.
“Don’t try any tricks, just talk. If we continue like this, you’ll soon lose consciousness.”
“Pro, ugh, Pro, Prosecutor Seo!”
Stammering and struggling, the voice revealed that the person they were looking for was none other than Seo Muyoung.
“Prosecutor Seo Muyoung, right?”
What on earth was going on? The fact that this person knew his name meant they must be someone familiar with him, but it was too dark to identify them.
“Kuh-hup, Prosecutor, I’m… going to die….”
Muyoung reluctantly stepped back from the man. As the force on his neck loosened, the man slid down the wall.
Meanwhile, Muyoung looked around for the flashlight. He quickly picked up the flashlight that had been knocked into a corner during the intense scuffle. He immediately checked the face of the person sitting on the floor.
As the person who had been squinting at the sudden light lowered his arm, a familiar face was revealed under the blue light.
It was a detective from the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency’s Wide Area Investigation Division whom he had encountered at the National Forensic Service about a month ago.
“…..Detective Choi In-ho?”
Muyoung raised his eyebrows at the unexpected figure.
“Detective Choi, why are you here…”
“Kuk, kum, haa, I really thought I was going to die.”
Choi In-ho massaged around his neck, catching his rough breath. Then, turning his neck left and right to loosen his tensed muscles, he laughed with an exhausted sigh.
“You know, I’m actually a martial arts expert in the police force, but this is so embarrassing. Prosecutor Seo, what kind of exercise do you do? Taekwondo?”
“……”
“No, judging by the way you grabbed my collar, it must be Jiu-Jitsu.”
He continued to chuckle even while coughing. It was such an anticlimactic ending that made all the tension from earlier seem ridiculous.
“How can you laugh at a time like this?”
“Well, it was you who did this to me, Prosecutor. What if it wasn’t you but the culprit? Not only would I have let the culprit escape, but I would’ve been attacked instead? My seniors would have eaten me alive.”
Muyoung clicked his tongue and extended his hand. He then helped Choi In-ho up as they clasped hands.
“By the way, what do you mean by culprit?”
“Didn’t you come here with the same thought as me, Prosecutor Seo?”
It was too obvious to play dumb. However, the appearance of Choi In-ho, who didn’t even have investigative authority over this case that had been ruled a suicide, was even more suspicious. Wondering if he might have a different purpose than his own, Muyoung held back his words.
“You were suspicious about Yoon Jun-young’s suicide, right?”
“This isn’t even your jurisdiction, is it?”
“The same could be said for you, Prosecutor Seo, couldn’t it?”
🍓
Thank you for reading! ♡
