(Listen to the music while reading. I'll be adding more instrumentals in the story.)
Music: "Approaching the Summit" by Mark Petrie and Andrew Prahlow
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When I was younger, I was intrigued by crime shows and mystery dramas. The way police officers say "Hands up!" and the way the suspenseful music matches the way the actors spoke made me feel like I was in their world. I felt like I was the detective trying to crack a case. Watching these crime shows made me want to be a detective and solve all of the cases that haunt the streets.
I never knew that I would be working with Jaemin to crack an infamous case that is haunting everyone in the world. I was never aware of the 1:27 attacks because once I started watching those crime shows, I started acting "strange," as my parents put it. Apparently, I started crawling across the floors and bought a cheap dollar store magnifying glass with my allowance. I started observing every single thing in the house and claiming that there was a burglar in the house. With my crafty mind, I built traps and they actually worked.
Unfortunately, my parents thought this was crazy. They banned me from watching any crime shows and even threw out my magnifying glass.
Now, here I am, far from home, with a salty partner-in-crime-solving, vulnerable to any danger. It took a miracle to convince them to let me become a rookie detective.
"This is the first house," Jaemin noted. "This house was attacked on...July 6, 2016. It looks pretty deserted to me."
"That's because you only looked at the exterior," I added. "Who knows what's in there."
"There's only one way to find out," Jaemin looked at me square in the eye. "We're going incognito mode. Also known as sleuth mode." He crept into the house, wearing his black clothes.
I was also wearing black clothes. This was my first case and I was so nervous that my veins were popping out of my body. This is for Sanguis, I thought. Think about the millions of lives you're going to save.
Slowly, I slipped into the deserted house. Inside the house, the planks were splintered and the glass was foggy. There were cobwebs that decorated the corners of the walls and the paint was peeling. Glass was everywhere and every door had rusty hinges, making it squeak.
"Do you see anything?" I whispered to Jaemin.
"Not anything," he replied. "Not anything, yet." He had a flickering lantern with him that gave a faint glow.
We moved deeper into the house. Jaemin went into one room and I went into another. "Call through the walkie-talkie if you find anything," I tell him before we split up.
He nodded and carefully went into a room that had a sign hung up that said "Lily's Room."
I went into a room that had no sign, but had a practically destroyed door. Inside the room, there was a bed, a vanity, a carpet, and a closet. The bed's sheets were smeared with dirt and the carpet was shredded. The vanity's glass was cracked and the desk was scratched and chipped. The floorboards were smeared with a red substance, which I really hoped wasn't blood. I took a picture of the smeared floorboards.
Then, I realized that the closet's door was slightly ajar. I took small steps toward the closet, making the floor creak. I didn't get a call from Jaemin yet, and I was waiting in high anticipation. I held onto the knob of the door and slowly opened it.
I jumped in shock. I covered my mouth to hold back a scream. Inside the closet, there was a lifeless body, wrapped in bandages, which were soaked in blood. Only the body's eyes were visible, and I could tell that it was a girl, a small girl. Her eyes were glassy and bloodshot.
In the closet, there was also a message smeared on the wall with a faded red substance.
I'M SO SORRY SISTER.
I felt tears brimming in my eyes and I immediately took a picture and called Jaemin.
"J-Jaemin..." I barely managed to squeak out.
"What? What is it?"
"Come. It's...it's..." I couldn't even finish my sentence.
"Don't worry. I'm coming." Hearing Jaemin's voice made my heart feel lighter, and I felt more at ease.
At the speed of light, Jaemin was in the same room as me. He looked nervous but anticipated.
"Jaemin...it's a dead body." My voice was merely a whisper.
His eyebrows flew up. "What? A dead body?" He came over to look. His gaze turned darker and darker as he observed the scene. "How could the police miss this?" He bit his lip and called the station. "We need to tell the police. They can't let a dead body just stay here."
As he dialed the police, I stood there, anxious. I stared at the dead girl's glassy eyes and I felt sick all over again. Then, as Jaemin was finishing the call, I heard something that made me feel like rocks were falling into the pit of my stomach.
