Song Minwoo arrived Wednesday at exactly ten.
That already told me something. People who arrive precisely on time to a police interview they didn't request are people who have rehearsed punctuality as a strategy. Too late looks guilty. Too early looks anxious. Exactly on time looks controlled.
Song was thirty-seven and had the look of someone who had risen fast enough that he still didn't quite know what to do with the new space. Expensive clothes worn with discomfort, like a borrowed suit. Hair with too much product. The smile of someone who decided to smile before walking in.
I made him wait twelve minutes in the small room.
Not out of cruelty. But because twelve minutes of silence in a plastic chair facing an empty table tells you more about a person than any opening question.
When I walked in, Song Minwoo had his phone on the table—turned off, which was deliberate—and his hands folded on top of it. Back straight. Breathing steady.
Too steady.
I sat across from him without greeting first. Placed the folder down. Clicked the pen open.
—Thank you for coming, Detective Song. —Neutral tone. Neither hostile nor warm—. As I told you on the phone, we are reviewing cases connected to our active investigation.
—Of course. —His voice was neutral too. He had practiced that as well—. Anything that might help.
—The Park Seolhwa case. September of this year. You were the lead detective.
—That's correct.
—You ruled it a suicide.
—The initial forensic report indicated—
—I'm asking for your personal assessment, not the report. —I cut him off without raising my voice—. What did you see at that scene?
Song paused exactly as long as it takes a man to choose between two versions of the same answer.
—I saw a woman in the Han. No visible signs of struggle. No defensive wounds. Blood alcohol level consistent with impairment. The Han bridges have statistics—
—Did you see the marks on her shoulders?
Another silence. Shorter.
—The marks were evaluated by the on-call forensic examiner as—
—I want to know what you saw, Song. —I set the pen on the table—. Not the examiner. You. You were on scene for forty minutes according to the entry log. What did you see?
Song Minwoo looked at me for three seconds.
—I saw a dead woman in the Han —he said finally—. I saw marks that could have been anything. I saw a scene consistent with suicide. And I closed the case with the information available.
—Did anyone pressure you to close it quickly?
The question dropped without warning and produced exactly what I wanted: a micro-movement in the jaw. Barely visible. But there.
—No one pressured me.
—Did you consult anyone before classifying it?
—I consulted my lieutenant, as protocol requires.
—Only your lieutenant?
Pause.
—Is there someone else I should have consulted?
A question answered with a question. The technique of someone who doesn't want to say no directly.
I opened the folder. Took out the forensic photograph—the enlargement of Park Seolhwa's shoulder with the message on the skin—and placed it in front of him.
Song looked at it.
His face didn't change dramatically. But something in the eyes did. It wasn't surprise. It was something closer to recognition.
—This wasn't in the original forensic report —I said.
—If it wasn't in the report—
—It's in the body recovery photographs, Song. Photo number seventeen from the scene log. Hangul text on the victim's left shoulder. —I let a second pass—. Why isn't it in the report?
Song looked away from the photo.
—The examiner classified it as a preexisting mark.
—And you accepted that classification without questioning it?
—It was the expert's assessment.
—Did you look closely at the shoulder yourself?
Longer silence.
—I'm a detective, not a medical examiner.
I leaned back in the chair. Watched him without speaking for five seconds. That specific silence that asks for nothing but fills the room.
—Detective Song. —I chose the tone—. I'm not here to destroy your career. I'm here because there is a dead woman who deserved a better investigation than she got, and because there are other women in this city who may be in danger if we don't find who is responsible. —Pause—. So I'm going to ask you one more time, directly: was there anything in that case you chose not to investigate? For your own reasons or external ones?
Song Minwoo looked at the table.
The silence lasted long enough to be an answer.
—I have a family —he said finally. Quietly. As if each word weighed something—. A four-year-old daughter. A mortgage in Mapo.
I watched him without changing expression.
—Someone contacted me —he continued—. Two days after I was assigned the case. By phone. I didn't know who it was. Modulated voice—the kind with software. They told me the case needed to be closed. That if I closed it, there would be no consequences. That if I didn't…
He didn't finish.
He didn't need to.
—Did you keep the number?
—It was prepaid. I tried to trace it myself. Nothing.
—Why didn't you report it?
Song looked at me with something that wasn't anger but fatigue. The fatigue of someone who has lived two months with a decision he didn't like.
—Because I was afraid. —He didn't apologize, and paradoxically, that was the most honest thing he had said in the entire meeting—. And because I thought it might be an empty threat from someone connected to the victim. A family member. An ex-boyfriend. Something domestic that didn't want publicity.
—And now?
He looked at the photograph again. The text on Park Seolhwa's shoulder.
—Now I think I was wrong.
I spent the rest of the morning writing the interview report on Song with the precision of someone who knows the document will be read by many people and will determine consequences for a man with a four-year-old daughter and a mortgage.
I made it honest. Included everything he said. But I framed it in the context of what it was: a young detective intimidated by a threat he didn't know how to handle.
I sent it to Park with an attached note stating that, in my assessment, Song Minwoo was not actively involved in the events and that any disciplinary action was a matter for the chain of command, not my investigation.
Park called me five minutes later.
—Are you covering for Song? —he asked.
—I'm documenting what I found. Disciplinary analysis isn't my job.
—Kang.
—Lieutenant.
Brief silence.
—The killer contacted Song to close the case —Park said—. That means he knew Song had it. That means access to internal information or very close monitoring of the case.
—Yes.
—Do you think he has access to our systems?
—I don't know. But I think he has resources we haven't identified yet.
Another silence.
—Is there anything else I should know? —Park asked.
I thought about the messages to my phone. The app conversation. The line don't you feel it too? that difference?
—When there is, I'll tell you —I said.
It wasn't a lie. It was a promise with a margin of time I controlled.
Park hung up.
I stared at the phone for a moment.
Then I set it down and went to get coffee I already knew would be burnt.
Im Suah was in the conference room when I came back, three screens open and her hair tied up with the pencil she used when she'd been working for hours without moving.
—Park Seolhwa's blog —she said without preamble—. I found something Shin didn't mention in his analysis.
I sat.
—In the fifth entry. —She pointed at the screen—. Park describes a conversation where he asked about her work. About what kind of people she studied. And Park told him she analyzed power structures in human relationships—that was her academic field. —Pause—. And then he told her something Park copied almost verbatim in the blog because she didn't know how to paraphrase it.
She slid the tablet toward me.
I read.
He told me: "Real power isn't in controlling what others do. It's in controlling what others believe about themselves. That's what no one teaches because no one wants you to know."
I read it twice.
—That's practically an academic coercive-manipulation quote —I said.
—Yes. But look at what comes next. —Im Suah scrolled—. Three weeks later, the seventh entry. Park says she searched that phrase online. Found it, with slight variations, in a 2018 social psychology paper. Published in a Seoul National University journal.
I looked up.
—Who wrote it?
Im Suah gave me the look of someone who had been waiting an hour for that question.
—The lead author is a researcher who no longer works at the university. Left in 2020. —Pause—. But there's a coauthor. A junior researcher. —Another pause, shorter now—. According to university records, his contract ended in September 2020 and there's been no official employment record since.
—Name?
—Yoo Taejun. Thirty-nine. Bachelor's in Psychology, master's in Psychopathology, doctoral track unfinished. —Im Suah placed a printed photograph on the table—. This is his directory photo from 2019.
I looked.
Male. Regular features. Broad forehead. Straight nose.
I studied it for several seconds in silence, mentally comparing it to the Café Bora frame, to Oh Junho's composite.
Not a coincidence. It couldn't be a coincidence.
—Send this to Jung now —I said, standing—. I want facial comparison with the café frame within the hour. I want full history: address, vehicles, record, family, banking. Everything. —Pause—. And Im Suah.
—Yes?
—Good work.
She nodded. No smile—not the time for smiling. But with the contained satisfaction of someone who had done exactly what needed to be done.
By six in the evening, Jung had the facial analysis results.
Partial match: sixty-three percent with the café frame. Not enough for legal ID. Enough that no one in that room had doubts.
And Yoo Taejun's background.
Born 1984 in Daejeon. Only child. Father deceased 2003. Mother in a Suwon care facility. No known partner. No children. Registered address: an apartment in Mapo-gu that, according to the landlord, had been empty since August—the lease canceled with three months' penalty paid without explanation.
No employment record since 2020. No tax filings since 2021.
No criminal record.
A man who had begun disappearing from the system three years before the first victim surfaced.
—Credit cards? —I asked.
—One. Canceled in 2021. Nothing registered under his name since. —Jung looked at the screen—. Either cash… or alternate identities.
—Family?
—The mother. Kang Suna. Seventy-one. At Hanul Residence in Suwon since 2020. —Pause—. And there's something else. Yoo Taejun's father. Died in 2003 when Yoo was nineteen. Cause: heart attack. —Another pause—. But there's a nurse's note in the hospital file. The nurse recorded that in the weeks prior, the patient repeatedly expressed fear of his own son.
The room went dense with silence.
—Was it investigated? —Lee Chanho asked.
—Barely. The heart attack was natural. No evidence. The note was archived and never followed up. —Jung looked at us—. He was nineteen when his father died.
And a nurse's note no one followed.
I processed the data without moving.
Yoo Taejun.
Thirty-nine.
Psychologist, non-practicing.
Off-grid since 2021.
Empty apartment in Mapo.
Mother in Suwon.
Dead father… who had been afraid of him.
And three women in the Han with the same message on their skin.
I am here.
I felt that internal click again.
The piece that fits too well.
—Jung —I said finally—. I want everything on Yoo Taejun in the last seventy-two hours. Indirect banking movement. Transit cameras. Anything.
—I'm on it.
I nodded.
But I didn't move.
Because something still didn't quite fit.
Not in the data.
In the feeling.
I looked again at Yoo Taejun's photo.
Calm features.
Neutral gaze.
The face of someone who could sit next to you on the subway…
…and no one would remember afterward.
A faint chill touched the base of my neck.
That old instinct that rarely misses.
My phone vibrated.
Everyone in the room went still.
Unknown number.
Seoul prefix.
Slow.
Very slow.
I opened the message.
You're moving fast, Detective Kang.
The air in the room shifted.
I didn't speak.
But for the first time since this began…
…I knew with absolute clarity that Yoo Taejun wasn't just watching us.
He was measuring us.
I looked up.
—Jung —I said quietly—. Triangulate this now.
While he typed, I looked again at the photo of the man we had just named.
And for the first time since I found the bag in the Han…
…I had the uncomfortable certainty that this case was no longer about finding a killer.
It was about seeing which of us would understand the other first.
And that never ends clean.