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“Your car is gross, hyung.”
Jungkook’s face twists at the smell as he hops into Yoongi’s car. It looks like Yoongi has been living here for weeks, observing from the empty ramen cups and packs of cigarettes scattered in the back seat. Yoongi looks no better, hair disheveled, face unshaven and smelling so stale like he hasn’t gone back to his apartment to bathe for days.
Yoongi sits on the driver’s seat, reclined all the way back. He looks so pale like a man with some kind of terminal illness. The only thing that makes him different from a sick dying man is his eyes, sharp and unforgiving, glaring at the second floor of the apartment at the end of the block. They are bloodshot, looking as if he hasn’t blinked for days.
Yoongi doesn’t answer Jungkook and just takes another drag, ashes falling off the tip of his cigarette onto his raincoat but he’s not bothered to brush it off.
Jungkook sits in the passenger seat, handing his senior detective a paper bag from the hamburger shop nearby. Yoongi takes it, takes a look inside, picks up a single piece of french fries and gives the rest back to Jungkook.
“Anything new?”
Jungkook asks though he can already tell what the answer is from the way Yoongi looks. He’s been here for more than two weeks, his car parked right where he can take a good peek at Kim Taehyung’s apartment, trying to catch anything suspicious.Yoongi just grunts and throws his cigarette on the floor, which Jungkook immediately picks up and puts in the ashtray that’s already overflowing. As he does so his finger brushes against a piece of plastic.
“Gross!”
Jungkook screams and throws it in the air as he realizes that it’s a mummified piece of used condom. No wonder his wife left him. As much as he respects his senior detective who has a ridiculously high record of solving cold cases, Jungkook wishes truly from the bottom of his heart that this is not the life that’s waiting for him.
“I have some new information, though it’s not much.”
Jungkook takes out a piece of paper from bag. It’s a report that he got from his fellow detective. Yoongi doesn’t even ask before he snatches the piece of paper, scratching his hair as he reads the paper like a starving man.
“RM? Who the fuck is he?”
He says, clearly sounding frustrated, though Jungkook can sense the adrenaline in his voice from this new information.
“No idea. He’s not in our database. Apparently one of the witnesses heard the victim talking about him before he got shot.”
“And why the fuck are we hearing this information now?”
“The witness just came back from honeymoon.”
“Honeymoon, huh.”
Yoongi snorts and for the first time he looks at Jungkook. Jungkook briefly explains how the witness, a young escort named Park Jimin, was sitting next to the victim when he heard he talked about RM and how RM was "was trying to fuck with him” so he had to run. Jimin then took three shots of soju and went home to his fiance, Kim Seokjin, before they left for a tropical island. The trip was brilliant, the best one in his life, so fucking good that he totally forgot about the conversation he overheard. It didn’t help how he didn’t open his phone to check the news about the very same man being brutally murdered in that club later that night.
As Jungkook finishes explaining, Yoongi is already stepping on the gas, honking and yelling at teenagers skateboarding on the road ahead of them to get the fuck off.
“Where are we going?”
Jungkook asks, quickly pulling the seatbelt. Yoongi scoffs again, his eyes glaring at the road ahead.
“We’re gonna find out who and where this RM is.”
The drive is about twenty minutes, and Jungkook has to look twice before he gets out of the car. Yoongi is already walking ahead of him, entering what looks like an ice cream parlor. It’s one of those shops that have exteriors that looks like a fairy tale castle, wall painted baby pink with rainbow unicorns. Inside is even worse, because everything is pink, from the walls to the floor to the chairs to the ceiling. The girl pop song is blasting inside the shop, and as soon as they enter the girl at the counter beams at them, waving her hand and doing a twirl to show off her pink frilled apron.
“Welcome to Unicorn Bon Bon! How can I help you today?”
She smiles, acting as if finding absolutely nothing strange about having two men dressed in long dark navy coat standing there. Yoongi just grunts and does not say anything, and it suddenly makes Jungkook panic as he reads the menu hanging on the wall, finding absolutely nothing that makes any sense or sounds edible. He looks up at the girl, feeling completely helpless.
“Um. I’ll just have coffee. You have coffee, don’t you?”
The girl keeps smiling at Jungkook, but completely ignoring his question. She then throws a glance at Yoongi, who takes out his wallet.
“Two grande size rainbow froyo with cherries and cream. Extra sprinkles.”
He says, and Jungkook almost screams as Yoongi abruptly puts a bunch of 50,000 won bound by rubber band that is probably worth triple the amount of Jungkook’s monthly rent.
“Thank you!” The girl chirps and puts the money in the cashier.
The froyo that comes out a few minutes later looks a little smaller and less fancier than the pictures on the menu but no less menacing. Yoongi walks across the empty shop to the back of the store and takes a seat at the heart shaped pink fluffy couch. Jungkook follows, with two froyos in his hand. He looks around, and immediately notices the “closed” sign hanging on the front door they just entered. The air conditioner is too strong, making Jungkook shiver.
Then, as he looks around the shop once more someone comes running from the stairs at the back of the store.
“Yoongi! I missed you!”
It’s a man, wearing the same pink apron as the girl who is now nowhere to be seen. He waves at Yoongi and rushes towards them, a bright smile on his face.
In fact, it’s not just his face that’s bright, but everything about him is so bright and colorful, it almost hurts Jungkook’s eyes. The man is probably around their age but looks younger, with his long and curly hair that is bleached blond. Though he’s not wearing heavy make up there are glitters and small silver stars around his eyes. His lips are pink and shiny, like he’s put too much grease on.
“Oh wow.”
Jungkook cannot help but to stare at the tiny denim shorts and the tanned legs, and as he looks up he finds a name tag on the man’s chest, a pink glittery one that reads “Hoseok”.
Hoseok stands right behind Yoongi and starts massaging his shoulders. Jungkook notices his painted nails, some in pink glitters, others in baby blue. Yoongi is absolutely motionless, his expression looking plain bored. Hoseok does not look phased by the silent treatment at all, and hums the pop song in the background happily.
Despite being pretty young as a detective, Jungkook wants to believe he has a quite good sense when it comes to reading people. He can tell what kind of a person they are just by their initial impression and small details that he sees. He can tell if someone is professionally trained in combat, or if they are wealthy, or if they come from toxic household. He can tell if someone is on alert or nervous, or if they are at ease and being honest.
But this man? Hoseok?
There is nothing about him that gives out any such information.
Everything about Hoseok’s appearance and his demeanor is too random, too contradictory and all over the place to grasp any pattern or character traits. His eyes are way too bright, smile too wide and unguarded. While everything about this encounter screams abnormal, Hoseok simply looks happy to see Yoongi.
It leaves something unsettling in Jungkook’s stomach. Normal people are easier to read. They follow certain patterns. They leave clues. People only become unreadable when they are either mentally retarded, or if they are doing it deliberately.
“Rainbow froyo. Great choice!”
Hoseok beams, looking at the froyo and licking his shiny lips. Jungkook immediately looks away, feeling like he’s been caught seeing something he shouldn’t have. Then, Hoseok abruptly walks away, waves his hand small in front of his chest before he goes back upstairs. A few seconds later Yoongi stands up, with that piece of paper in his hand.
“I’ll be back in a few.”
“Wait, what about these?”
Jungkook points at Yoongi’s froyo which is already starting to melt. “You can eat them.” Yoongi shrugs, takes the cherry on the top and throws it in his mouth as he follows Hoseok upstairs. Jungkook tries to protest but Yoongi is already gone. He licks his froyo and scrunches his face at how grossly sweet it is.
Ten minutes later, Yoongi comes back to his seat. Jungkook is feeling nauseous from eating two froyos. His stomach is already starting to hurt and fingers are shaking from what feels like mild hypothermia. The shiver gets worse as Jungkook sees Yoongi’s swollen lips and a massive hickey on his neck, nausea intensifying at the smell of sex.
“Gross!”
The image of Hoseok’s ass in those tiny shorts grinding on his senior detective’s dick is overly too gross, though the damage is already done and now Jungkook cannot unthink it. On contrary, Yoongi looks annoyingly refreshed, his face gaining back its healthy shade of pink. He rubs his finger off his raincoat and Jungkook definitely doesn’t want to imagine what it is Yoongi has just wiped off his finger.
“Come on. Let’s go.”
Yoongi says, face monotone but voice slightly sounding happier. Jungkook follows behind and gets back inside the car. Then, as Yoongi turns on the key, Hoseok comes, running out of the store.
“You forgot something!”
He knocks on the window of the passenger seats, and Jungkook panics as he quickly opens the window. Hoseok literally throws something at Jungkook, which he barely manages to catch. It’s an envelope. Jungkook looks at Hoseok and for the first time since he had walked into that store, Hoseok looks at him, as if he has finally recognized Jungkook’s presence.
“Good luck!”
He winks and blows kisses at both Yoongi and Jungkook before he runs back to the store and it sends another wave of goosebumps on Jungkook’s skin. Yoongi doesn’t even look at Hoseok as he reaches over and closes the window, silently jerking his chin at the envelope and waits for Jungkook to open it.
The envelope is pastel yellow with an excessive amount of gold glitter, sealed with what looks like a fresh mark of lipstick Hoseok was wearing.
“Well? What does it say?”
Yoongi says impatiently. Jungkook shivers and takes extra caution not to touch Hoseok lip stain as he opens it. Inside, there are two pieces of paper and a few photographs.
“Fuck.”
Jungkook rubs the bridge of his nose, trying to comprehend the information on the paper and all the crazy turmoil that happened in the past thirty minutes. THe paper. It has a very detailed history and profile of Kim Namjoon, code name RM, and his photographs which were taken in the past few weeks from the dates printed on them. His fingers tremble.
“It says he is in Busan.”
Jungkook reads out the address written on the paper. Yoongi grunts and types the address in GPS.
*****
The next time Jungkook sees Hoseok is a few weeks after they arrest Kim Namjoon for the murder of Lee Gi-tae. All these time, Jungkook has been thinking about Hoseok and their strange encounter at the ice cream parlour, but strangely enough every time Jungkook tries to remember his face or voice, his memory becomes blur (or more precisely, becomes all pink and glittery and yellow pastel cloudy).
He tries asking Yoongi about it, but the only response he gets from his senior detective is an annoyed grunt. He does manage to get some information out of his other fellow detectives, finds out that Yoongi has his very own channel of getting information he needs, and that their department has a budget that is specifically dedicated for that purpose.
Just when Jungkook started to not think so much about that strange encounter, it happens, in the morning when Jungkook goes to Yoongi’s apartment to pick him up so that they can go to the crime scene.
As he knocks on the door, once, twice, the door opens and a young boy with damp blond hair appears. It’s obvious that he just came out of the shower, wearing a clean white t-shirt and grey sweatpants with a towel hanging on his shoulder.
“Oh, good morning?”
The boy asks, his voice soft and looking a little shy and scared. Jungkook feels a little awkward but bows politely. WHile it catches him off guard, it’s not his business that Yoongi has a roommate or boyfriend or whatever.
“Uh. Hi. Is Yoongi hyung here? I texted him.”
He says, and the boy nods eagerly as he smiles.
“Yes. Hyung is just getting changed. He’ll be ready in a minute.”
“Okay. Cool.”
Jungkook smiles back, feeling something odd in the pit of his stomach, though he cannot quite figure out exactly what. Then, the boy smiles, a smile so much brighter than before. He winks and blows a kiss.
“It was nice seeing you, Jungkookie.”
The boy then yawns, his hand covering his mouth. Jungkook stands there, dumbfounded, staring at the pink glittery nails.
“What the,”
The next moment, Yoongi appears from behind, dropping a quick wet kiss on Hoseok’s cheek and walks out of the door. “Bye-bye!” Hoseok sing songs and closes the door right in front of Jungkook’s face.
“Wait, hyung. I mean, that was,”
Jungkook stands there speechless, looking back and forth between Yoongi and the door. Yoongi shrugs, but then, there is another hickey.
“Come on, we’ve gotta hurry.”
Yoongi has already grabbed the paper from Jungkook’s hand, describing the details that they need to know about the victim before they get to the scene. Jungkook sighs, frustrated and confused, his mind filled with the images of pink glitter as he follows behind.