That night, Detective Kim couldn't sleep. No matter how hard he tried, he kept pacing his room, as he always did when a case became tangled in his mind.
His steps were steady, but his thoughts were chaos.
He kept replaying the witnesses' words… all of them… as if they were speaking at once, their voices overlapping endlessly inside his head.
All witnesses inside the filming studio agreed on one thing:
There had been a suspicious woman there.
The director said he heard Woo-jin arguing with a woman.
A woman who threatened him—loudly, sharply, with defiance:
"If you think you'll get rid of me like the others… you're wrong."
But… no one saw her face.
Who was she?
Very thin… very tall, about 1.80 meters…
Pink hair.
Everyone agreed on her appearance:
A black cap… a black mask.
So she was hiding her identity.
But… why?
Only two possibilities existed…
Either she feared Woo-jin's fame would damage her reputation…
Or… she was famous herself, hiding who she truly was.
Detective Kim let out a slow sigh and sat on the sofa.
He closed his eyes and began reconstructing the case… step by step… as if watching a film in his mind.
The murderer…
Had cut the body into equal parts.
This wasn't just murder…
It was execution.
Everyone who knew Woo-jin said something strange:
He was obsessed with the "perfect weight."
He dated women in their early twenties…
And all of them had one thing in common…
They were extremely thin.
And he kept their identities hidden.
All his ex-girlfriends agreed on one thing:
Being with him was impossible.
He monitored what they ate… what they drank… what they wore…
He wanted them… like living plastic dolls.
One of them said he forced her to eat half an apple a day.
Another said he exploited her desire for success and ordered her to survive on vitamins and almost no food every few days.
Another… weighed 37 kilograms… yet he still wasn't satisfied.
He kept pushing her to lose more weight.
And another…
Suffered severe iron deficiency… and was hospitalized.
And in the end…
He was always the one who left them.
Because they failed to reach the "ideal image" he had created.
Detective Kim slowly opened his eyes.
Was the girl with pink hair… the killer?
Did she carry out her threat and kill him?
Or…
As soon as dawn broke, Detective Kim rushed to the investigation unit.
There was very little time left…
To save an unknown woman… fighting to survive… in the hands of a merciless criminal.
A butcher… if nothing else.
Inside the unit, he gathered his team:
Assistant Lee…
The forensic expert…
And the data and surveillance analyst.
Without preamble, he said:
"We need to identify the girl with pink hair."
Then he scratched his head in thought:
"There is a 50% chance… she is the killer."
Assistant Lee asked:
"And the other 50%?"
Detective Kim raised his eyes and replied in a calm, chilling tone:
"That she is the one with the strange fingernail…
She is… the next victim."
A heavy silence filled the room.
"She was different…
She threatened him.
That means… she had something on him."
He continued, recalling the ex-girlfriends' testimonies:
"He demanded complete secrecy in relationships…
Extreme caution… even from those closest to him.
Meetings… only at his house."
He lifted his head toward the ceiling… as if connecting invisible threads, then suddenly said:
"The back door of Woo-jin's house."
The surveillance analyst replied:
"As you mentioned before, there are no nearby cameras covering the back door except one…
It belongs to Woo-jin's neighbors…
Who left the country two years ago."
The lights dimmed slightly, and the large screen lit up.
Surveillance footage appeared… three kilometers from the victim's home.
The analyst began explaining:
"As the ex-girlfriends stated…
They never went to Woo-jin's house using their own cars.
The meeting was once a week.
Their faces… always covered.
They used public transport.
Entry… through the back door."
He pointed at a spot on the screen.
"After careful tracking…
The girl with pink hair visited Woo-jin's house weekly… for nearly a year.
She stayed for about two hours… then left."
The footage changed.
"In the last month… before the body was discovered…
Her visits became irregular…
And she started leaving earlier."
The images sped up:
Taxi…
Dark street…
Subway entrance…
External camera…
Stairs…
Inside the train…
Then the street…
Then… disappearance.
Detective Kim said quietly:
"The only remaining lead…
The neighbors' cameras."
Then he added with cold certainty:
"We will find a way soon."
The forensic expert stepped forward:
"We lifted thousands of fingerprints from the studio…
It's impossible to identify the girl."
A pause.
"We hoped to find a strange print in the victim's house…
But… unfortunately…
We found none.
Even Woo-jin's own fingerprints… were gone."
A heavy silence filled the room.
Then…
Detective Kim laughed.
But it wasn't ridicule…
It was admiration.
"We are not dealing with an ordinary criminal…
But a sadist… of a different kind."
He added slowly, as if weighing each word:
"And to catch him…
We must… think like him."