Mr. No || NCT || Completed

17 - Where bribes can be shared

Chaewon's room was clean but cluttered. The floor and shelves were free of dust but instead there was a lot of stuff everywhere - books, cardigans, mugs, notebooks and potted plants scattered on every single surface. The shape of her bed was barely visible underneath all of the stuff on top of it.

"I was going to declutter my wardrobe Marie Kondō -style - you must have watched her show on Netflix", she explained when she noticed that he was looking at the piles of clothing on top of the duvet, "But it didn't happen."

Renjun sat on the floor in front of electronic keyboard because the only chair in the room was busy pretending to be a clothing rack. His eyes lingered on the musical instrument behind him and Chaewon was quick to notice it.

"I want to write songs whenever I see something beautiful so I need to have a keyboard here." Her sparkly eyes were filled with affection towards the instrument. "I kind of was inspired to write one after seeing your friend Jaemin for the first time but maybe that would've been cliché."

Renjun wanted to tell her that she was stupid. While he was thinking about it, Chaewon walked to her bed and reached her arm underneath it.

"I hid the papers here", her cheek was against the floor while she was getting the documents, "Just in case."

Renjun looked around the room deliberately. "I don't think that anyone other than you would find anything from here even if they tried."

"That might be true." Chaewon came back to him and dropped the stack of papers and folders in front of him before sitting down on the floor as well. "So, what are we looking for from these documents?"

While he wanted to forbid her from touching the papers, Renjun knew that it might be useful for two pairs of eyes to go through them, even if he didn't want to tell her any additional details on the case.

"For now, you can go through the files and make a compilation of some key aspects of every person mentioned in the folders", he started, skimming through the papers. Based on what he saw, there were profiles of people with wide variety with no clear connections between each other. "Name, age, profession - stuff like that. And if there's something else that seems important. I need to get some basic understanding of the people in these papers to see if there is anything connecting them."

Chaewon fetched a notebook and pen and then sat down again but this time she sat next to Renjun.
He moved away from her automatically. "Why did you sit there?"
She showed the notebook to him and tapped its cover with a finger. "Now we can use this together."

They got to work, going through folders and jotting down notes from them. After maybe fifteen minutes, Chaewon got up again and fetched a bag of shrimp snacks from one of the piles of random objects. She stood next to him, dangling the snacks in front of his face.

"I forgot that I was supposed to bribe you. Is this good enough?" she explained when he looked up to her.

Renjun scoffed and pushed the bag away from his face. "That costs like 1,000₩ in Daiso."
"Yeah."
"It's a very cheap bribe."
"Don't complain. Do you want it or not?" She pushed the bag towards him again while sitting down again. He looked at her for a moment before finally accepting the snacks.

Chaewon sucked in her cheeks and looked like a hopeful goldfish. "Does this mean that you have forgiven me?"
Renjun rolled his eyes and didn't reply.

They got back to work again. Occasionally Chaewon would tell him about some random things that just happened to come to her mind while reading through the documents, and once or twice she got up to look out the window or get some water but otherwise they were quite productive.