Knight leaned back against the sofa, scrolling through his phone as a way to shake off the tension after the long discussion.
Suddenly a post from the social network FN appeared an image from a yaoi manga depicting a relationship that went far beyond friendship between two young men.
He blocked it immediately, but the algorithm seemed to mock him, pushing another similar post right after.
K9 frowned and muttered in irritation:
“This is ridiculous… the more I block, the more they show up.
Social media these days forces people to look at things they don’t want to see.”
Jay, sitting across from White, glanced over and said with a teasing tone:
“What are you looking at that makes you scowl like that?”
K9 put the phone down, voice annoyed:
“Some Eastern genre that’s been imported.
Lately a lot of girls have even set up fanpages sharing this stuff.
FN keeps pushing it into recommendations, even though male users have complained for years.
The content is… two guys going way beyond best friends.
You get the idea.”
Jay and Thomas both exclaimed at the same time:
“What the hell?!”
White suddenly spoke, her voice calm:
“Let me borrow your phone for a moment, Knight.”
Knight looked surprised:
“What for?”
White cut him off, her tone decisive:
“Don’t ask.
Just give it here.”
She operated the phone quickly, then said:
“Everyone wait a second.
I have something I want the three of you to see.”
White held up the phone.
On the screen was a yaoi fanpage filled with countless illustrated images.
Thomas cried out in genuine panic:
“My eyes!”
Jay grimaced and squeezed his eyes shut, as if trying to erase the image from his mind:
“How can you still look so calm?”
K9 was genuinely outraged, almost jumping to his feet:
“You just unblocked that so we could see it?
Do you have any idea how disturbing that is?
Block it again!”
Thomas still hadn’t recovered from the shock and muttered:
“Please stop looking at us with that completely unbothered expression!”
White remained composed, her voice turning serious again:
“I’m sorry.
But I needed all of you to feel the same thing.
Thomas just asked what kind of emotion could have driven the killer to such brutality, correct?”
Jay fell silent in thought, his voice thoughtful.
“You mean the killer was a man… and when he confessed his feelings to Mark, Mark looked at him with the same look of discomfort we gave him earlier?”
White nodded, her gaze sharp and cold:
“Exactly.
In that moment Mark wasn’t prepared to receive such a confession.
By natural reflex, a trace of discomfort would have flickered across his face most clearly in his eyes.
Even if Mark later tried to stay calm or turned away, that glance that fleeting discomfort became the first knife wound in the killer’s mind.
And then… he returned that gaze with a surgical scalpel.”
K9 interjected, full of questions:
“Then shouldn’t he have cut deep into the victim’s eyes?
That was the part that showed the most discomfort toward him.
Why was the cut… so shallow?”
White raised her head slowly.
Her eyes turned toward K9:
“He both hated and loved.”
She paused, her voice even yet cold enough to pierce bone:
“When he was about to slash the face of the person he loved… the image of Mark appeared before him.
Instinctively he remembered something a time Mark had helped him, a warm word, or simply a sincere smile.
Something that had once left a positive mark on his mind.
And in that moment he hesitated.
His hand trembled.
The blade could not go deep.”
Thomas nodded slowly.
Behind his glasses his blue eyes flickered with belated understanding.
“I see… That’s also why he deliberately left female DNA at every scene.
To make the police believe the killer was a woman.”
White tilted her head slightly, her gaze sweeping across the pinboard where the highlighted hair strands and lipstick traces were marked in red.
“The female hair sample in Mark’s case… was most likely taken from someone close to the killer.
On his first attempt he was still inexperienced, so he only dared to use the nearest source someone no one would suspect.
That will be the key that brings us closer to him.
As for the later DNA samples… they belonged to the girls around him.”
She paused again, her voice dropping as if whispering to the darkness:
“You also know… only a certain type of man who has no interest in women becomes the close friend of many girls.
They share interests, talk freely, and can easily get close to the girls’ hair, lipstick, and nail polish without anyone noticing.
He used that very closeness… to mislead us from the very first case.”
K9 tilted his head, his eyes flickering with confusion mixed with discomfort:
“If that guy is a man who likes men… then I understand why the victim list is full of good-looking even handsome young men.
But what about the symbol?
And the victims studied at different schools, scattered all over the city… What exactly is going on here?”
White sat still, her eyes fixed on the red marker lines on the pinboard.
Her voice was even, cold; each word fell like a piece of ice:
“The crossed-out heart… represents rejected affection.
That much is correct.
What remains difficult to understand is why the first three cases did not have it.
It cannot simply be an identifying mark.
It must carry a deeper, more personal meaning.
But for the moment… I cannot explain it either.”
A heavy silence followed White’s words.
Jay glanced at her, his eyes a mixture of fatigue and hope:
“So… have you been able to sketch out his psychology yet, White?
The way you once did with Kyliam’s?”
White rested a hand lightly on her chin, her eyes fixed on the autopsy photograph on the table.
Her voice became even and mechanical, stripped of human emotion:
“There’s nothing particularly special.
I’m only summarising what we’ve discussed.”
She drew a breath.
“He may work in the medical field.
Possibly an anaesthesiologist only someone like that would have access to propofol.
An intelligent
man pushed into the shadows by a society that refuses to accept the kind of affection he feels.
Rejected, mocked, looked upon as a monster.
And then, when the only person who had ever smiled at him said ‘no’… his world collapsed.”
White raised her head.
Her gaze was sharp as a blade:
“He kills.
Not for pleasure, but to erase the very memory that causes him pain.
The first victim was the one he loved; the twelve that followed are the endless repetition of that old wound.
But he could never have done this alone.”
White exhaled after a moment of quiet gloom:
“And the most terrifying part…is that he believes what he’s doing is right.”
“So what… do we need to do now, White?”
White set the report down on the table.
The dry sound of paper against glass rang out in the soundproof room.
“A good question.
Invite Mark’s closest friends here directly.
Then we’ll know what the truth is.”
Jay frowned, his voice doubtful:
“But what do the victim’s three friends have to do with medicine?”
White tilted her head slightly.
Her cold, sharp eyes flicked over Jay for a second.
“They don’t need to have studied medicine.
Basic chemistry is enough to compound or obtain propofol from black-market sources.
The probability is low, but it cannot be ruled out.”
She paused, her voice dropping as if whispering to the darkness:
“Sherlock Holmes once said:
Once you have eliminated the impossible… whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”
K9 turned toward her, his eyes fixed on White:
“And if those three turn out not to be the killer we’re looking for?”
White remained still, her gaze meeting Knight’s for a long second:
“If we want the truth, we need a test for them.”