In the sedan on his way to work, Wonjoon watched the screen of his tablet. Kim Yieum sat silently at the dining table, staring at the food laid out before him. After a long moment of hesitation, he finally pulled out a chair and sat down. The instant he lifted a spoonful to his mouth, the corners of Wonjoon’s lips curled upward.
At the low sound of laughter, Section Chief Lee glanced at him through the rearview mirror. Wonjoon kept his eyes fixed on the screen for a long while.
What a waste. I should’ve installed cameras elsewhere, too.
Thinking a detective would naturally be sharp-eyed, he had limited himself to a single camera in the kitchen facing the living room. Now he regretted it slightly. He would probably need to retrieve it soon anyway. The timing depended on when Kim Yieum’s heat arrived.
“Are you certain the drug works?”
“They say the symptoms usually appear within a week.”
“A week…”
Wonjoon murmured under his breath, and Section Chief Lee spoke carefully.
“Do you think he’ll contact you first, Mr. Choi?”
“If he hid it even from his family, then almost nobody knows. The acquaintance who prescribed his suppressants is an omega, correct?”
“Yes.”
“Come up with a suitable excuse and make him take leave. Better yet, send him overseas. Once he’s completely isolated, he’ll have no choice but to ask me for help.”
Section Chief Lee listened in silence before cautiously asking another question.
“I’m curious why you’re going this far, Mr. Choi.”
“I’m curious too.”
“…”
“I wonder what kind of expression is hidden beneath that proper, composed face when he breaks down crying. What his moans sound like. What he looks like when he clings to me.”
Wonjoon trailed off and bit down slowly on his lower lip.
Fuck. I haven’t even touched him, and I’m already hard.
He switched off the tablet and leaned back against the seat. He only hoped the drug would take effect sooner—if possible, even a day earlier—and bring on Kim Yieum’s heat.
“You’ve got someone watching him, right?”
“Yes. I told them to contact me immediately if he shows any symptoms.”
“Keep him under surveillance twenty-four hours a day. If some other bastard gets to him first, you’re fired.”
That was the polite version. In reality, it meant he might kill him. Because of that, Section Chief Lee seriously considered assigning additional people to the surveillance detail.
As the car sped toward the company, Choi Wonjoon gazed out the window. After finally getting a proper night’s sleep, his mind felt clearer than it had in a long time, and his mood was lighter as well.
At first, he thought it was coincidence, but it wasn’t.
Whether it was Kim Yieum’s pheromones or simply the strange energy of the house itself, there was undeniably something there that suited him perfectly.
Which only made him want to possess it even more.
The method itself was simple.
He just had to make Kim Yieum his.
The only problem was how filthy the method would be.
Dust billowed behind the car as it climbed the narrow alleyway. The entire neighborhood was marked for redevelopment, and the late Yang Taekil’s house was located there. The perpetrator, Kim Sangbeom, had confessed to killing Yang Taekil inside the home and dismembering the body in the bathroom.
Because the area was slated for redevelopment, there were no nearby CCTV cameras. Heavy rain on the night of the murder had also obscured most usable footage, making it difficult to determine the exact time of the crime.
When they arrived, faded police tape stretched across a peeling front door.
Yieum stepped out of the car, ducked beneath the tape, and pushed the door open. It creaked loudly. The yard beyond was choked with weeds, giving the old house a bleak, abandoned atmosphere.
As he crossed the yard and entered the house, the stale odor of mildew struck him immediately. After the suspect confessed, the forensic team had already searched the place thoroughly, but aside from the victim’s hair and traces of blood, they had found little of significance.
“About the new prosecutor in charge—if he’s asking the team leader for supplementary evidence, he must be meticulous.”
With the culprit already in custody, it was understandable that the team leader felt irritated by the prosecutor’s insistence on additional evidence.
Yieum recalled Jung Daehan, whom he had met outside the National Forensic Service building.
Meticulous?
For some reason, the only image that came to mind was that of a scruffy countryside mutt.
He entered the bathroom where the body had been dismembered and examined it carefully. The culprit had apparently poured bleach and chemical cleaners everywhere afterward, and perhaps because of that, a faint but distinctive odor still lingered in the air.
After even prying open the drain cover to inspect the inside, Yieum called out to Namsu.
“You said the water usage barely changed from the previous month, right?”
“Yeah. It actually decreased, if anything. But cleaning a place this thoroughly without leaving traces would’ve required a huge amount of water. Weird, isn’t it?”
Yieum nodded and stepped back outside.
The bedroom Yang Taekil had used looked no different from a pigsty. Half-eaten food containers and piles of trash surrounded the computer desk, and the ashtray overflowing with cigarette butts had blackened with old residue.
Frowning, Yieum searched through the room and opened the drawers one by one. The inside of each was just as chaotic.
As he sorted through the contents, several middle-school award certificates surfaced.
Yang Taekil’s older brother—the man they had met at the dog breeding facility—had claimed Taekil had been rotten from childhood, a delinquent who neglected school and caused nothing but trouble.
But apparently that wasn’t entirely true.
Then Yieum noticed something wedged behind the drawer frame.
He removed the drawers completely, reached inside, and pulled out a black wallet small enough to fit in his palm.
Inside was a bankbook.
Opening it, he saw it had been issued roughly twenty years ago. Judging by Yang Taekil’s age, he would have been around twenty at the time.
Apparently he’d held a steady job. Deposits exceeding one million won had been made regularly each month, but most of the money had later been transferred to an account under the name Yang Mokhyung.
Yang Mokhyung—the older brother they had met days earlier.
“I checked around, but there’s not much here. What’s that?”
Jung Namsu dropped down beside him and peered curiously at the bankbook.
“Yang Taekil’s brother said the guy was complete trash. Said he only leeched money off the family.”
“But he was depositing money every month. What’s this supposed to be? Loan repayments?”
Flipping through the later pages, Yieum realized Yang Taekil had been sending money to his brother for years.
There was no way to know where the money had gone. Maybe he had been repaying a debt. Maybe he’d been supporting the household.
Either way, it painted a very different picture from the one Yang Mokhyung had described.
“Look into Yang Mokhyung. Find out what he was doing twenty years ago and where he lived back then. Ask around about him too.”
“Ah, the team leader’s not gonna like that.”
“Why not?”
“You heard him yourself. He told us to just go through the motions. The suspect isn’t even claiming innocence—he turned himself in. Imagine if the real culprit suddenly showed up now. That’d be a disaster on its own. They’ve already told the media they caught the guy.”
“It’ll be a much bigger disaster if this explodes later. You know that too.”
Taking the bankbook with him, Yieum searched the room one last time before brushing the dust from his clothes and standing up.
Outside, the sunlight felt blindingly bright.
How is May hotter than midsummer?
He hadn’t slept at all the previous night because of Choi Wonjoon, and the exhaustion still clung stubbornly to him.
Once inside the car, he rubbed his face hard in an attempt to wake himself up. Jung Namsu watched him with concern.
“Want me to drive?”
“No chance. I’m still paying this car off.”
“I’m a good driver now. I’ll be careful.”
“No thanks.”
At the immediate refusal, Namsu puffed out his cheeks in protest.
He had once driven Yieum’s car during a pursuit and crashed into a guardrail. Since then, he’d effectively been banned from touching the wheel.
As they drove down the narrow winding road, clusters of decrepit houses passed by outside the windows. Most of the residents had already moved out because of the redevelopment project, making witnesses difficult to find.
After merging onto the main road and driving for a while, Yieum glanced into the rearview mirror.
Then he checked it again.
Namsu noticed immediately.
“What’s wrong? Something there?”
“That black car behind us. I think it’s been following us for a while.”
“No way. Seriously?”
Namsu twisted around to look. It was an expensive imported sedan, its windows tinted so darkly that it was impossible to see the driver.
After staring at it for a moment, Namsu pulled out his phone.
“I’ll run the plate.”
He made a call and requested a vehicle lookup. About five minutes later, after repeating the license plate number aloud, he quickly jotted something into his notebook.
“The car’s registered to Kim Yoonsik. No criminal record, and it’s not stolen. Know him?”
“No.”
As they prepared to turn left, Yieum switched lanes and stopped at the light. The black sedan suddenly swept past them and sped away.
Ah, what the hell? Was I imagining things?
Yieum let out a hollow laugh, and Namsu laughed too.
“Guess it was nothing.”
“Yeah. Probably. I must’ve been overly sensitive.”
The light changed.
Just as he began the turn, his phone rang.
The name “Jung Daehan” flashed across the screen.
Yieum instinctively glanced at Namsu.
I never properly told him we were friends.
Worried about giving the wrong impression, he meant to decline the call and return it later—but pressed the wrong button instead.
The call connected.
“Yieum, it’s me. Are you busy?”
Caught off guard, Yieum stumbled over his words.
“Daehan. I’m out right now. If it’s not urgent, can I call you back later?”
“Sorry. Call me when you have time. It’s nothing serious—I just thought I should meet Yang Taekil’s brother in person.”
Internally, Yieum cursed.
The moment he looked over, Namsu was already staring at him with a dumbfounded expression.
Yieum hurriedly ended the call, but Namsu immediately exploded.
“W-wasn’t that the new prosecutor? It was! Same name and everything! Wait, what is this? You two know each other?”
“I was going to tell you. The timing just never felt right.”
“That’s so unfair. Even if you didn’t tell anyone else, you should’ve told me first. I’m your work wife, sunbae.”
“Hey, I said I was going to.”
“When?”
“T-today…?”
“Seriously? Don’t lie to me. Your face gives everything away, you know.”
While desperately trying to calm Namsu’s wounded pride, Yieum suddenly felt his chest seize.
His breath caught sharply in his throat.
The shock hit so abruptly that he gasped and slammed on the brakes.
Screeeech—
The car lurched to a stop as horns blared behind them.
Startled, Namsu immediately turned toward him.
“Sunbae, what’s wrong? Are you hurt somewhere?”
“No… my chest just feels tight.”
Yieum quickly switched on the hazard lights and pulled the car over to the side of the road, but his heart was hammering wildly.
What’s happening to me?
Cold sweat broke out across his skin. Struggling to breathe, he watched as Namsu hurriedly reached for his phone to call an ambulance.
Yieum stopped him and instead asked him to buy water from the convenience store nearby.
Namsu nodded and rushed out of the car.
The moment he was alone, Yieum sucked in a shaky breath and rubbed at his cheek.
The symptoms had vanished almost as quickly as they’d appeared, but they were unmistakably similar to the onset of his heat cycle.
He glanced toward the convenience store where Namsu had disappeared, then hurriedly pulled out the hidden pill bottle and swallowed one of the suppressants.
A moment later, Namsu came running back with water in hand, breathing hard.
“Sunbae, drink this. Are you okay? Feeling any better? Get out—we should go to the hospital. I’ll drive.”
“No. I’m fine now. I think my blood pressure just dropped for a second.”
He forced a smile as though nothing had happened and gripped the steering wheel again, but his thoughts were in chaos.
Why again?
His heat symptoms only surfaced faintly once a year. Experiencing them again so soon was abnormal.
What the hell is happening to my body?