#i drew these at like 1am after crying about a plot i made with him on character ai

[tar0star]

me when im a 6'2" immortal stellaron hunter who wants 3 out of 5 people to pay the price with dark cerulean hair which fades into a dusky scarlet with beautiful crimson eyes who's probably a few centuries old angsty emo boy who lowkey wants to die (yum(my))

[buri-art]

Detective Genius: Part 8 of 8

Chapter Eight: The Stunning Conclusion! The Justice-Selling Nurse and the Case of the High Road

Synopsis: Yoon is a financially struggling nurse and recognizes a trauma victim, Taejun, as someone from his boarding house. The victim’s brother, Kyoga, suspects foul play and offers Yoon money to figure out who caused this. The landlord, Soo-won, discourages Yoon from getting involved, but in order to support himself and his adoptive father Ik-soo, Yoon investigates the suspicious other residents–and then some. Genre: Modern Day AU, (Attempted!?) Murder Mystery in Classic ‘Who Done It?’ Style, General. Could be read as comedy, drama, or melodrama. Words: 2,602 Warnings: I don’t kill anyone, but I do make them suffer a little (sorry, Taejun, somebody had to be the victim). Probably nothing that would make people squeamish, as the focus is on the plot. Find the other chapters in the master post.

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It was getting close to 1am. Hak and I exchanged glances in the hall outside Yona’s door. “You sure you don’t want to bring Soo-won for this?” I asked him.

He shook his head. “I think he’s been trying to help her cover for something.”

“That sounds likely to me too.”

Hak gave two soft knocks at the door, then grabbed the door knob as though this was what he’d usually do. He opened it a creak and asked, “Yona?”

“Hak!?” her voice rang out in surprise, followed by the sounds of shifting around and moving things and harsh whispers. Hak furrowed his eyebrows and pushed the door open, revealing Yona at her closet door, trying to stuff a man about her height inside. He had long, unbrushed blonde hair, a ratty green scarf and long, dirty coat, and a stench that made me gag even from a distance. He was eating a handful of crème puffs.

Hak stared at the Yona. Yona stared at Hak. I stared in disbelief, and the blonde man said, “Hi.”

There was no more use in trying to hide her putrid visitor, so Yona invited us all to sit inside while she explained. Yona and I sat on the floor while Hak and the other man sat on the beanbags. “His name is Zeno,” she said. “He’s a homeless guy I met a couple weeks ago while I was having a bad day. I didn’t really feel like I had anyone to talk to about it—if I told Hak that Taejun was bothering me, Hak would want to fix the problem himself, and if I told Soo-won about Hak, Soo-won would smile and ask why I don’t just let Hak handle it, and if… well, I don’t really have any other friends besides Hak and Soo-won. I was feeling so powerless, and when Zeno asked me for something to eat, I thought, ‘why not?’ and took him out to dinner. I found out that Zeno is really, really good listener. I felt so much better, so invited him home with me.”

“You did what?”

“See! I knew you’d get mad, Hak! Oh—please don’t tell Soo-won. Please?”

“What kind of single young girl brings a homeless man back to her apartment—”

“This one,” Zeno pointed to her. “It wasn’t going to be for free, though. Zeno offered to teach the miss how to protect herself.”

“And why did you accept?” Hak asked, still incredulous.

She puffed out her cheeks and looked away. “I thought it’d be nice not to have to trouble you so much.”

“I should be troubled if your misplaced sense of generosity is going to get you into danger.”

“I knew you wouldn’t understand! Zeno’s not like that at all! And besides,” she sounded more sheepish as she looked over to Zeno, “It’s not just that I was paying him to teach me. Zeno’s a good friend to me, so I wanted to let him sleep and eat indoors sometimes.”

“Aw, Miss, Zeno appreciates it. I’m glad I can be your friend, even if I can’t come inside.”

“Just a moment, Yona,” I said, rubbing my forehead as a few more of the pieces started coming together. “Letting him into your apartment is one thing, but stealing things is another.”

“Stealing? What do you mean?”

I pointed to Zeno’s handful of crème puffs. “Food, Yona! Joon-gi had been complaining about those going missing.”

“Ah!” she gasped. “Wait, those weren’t for everyone?”

“No, the freezer is only down there for extra space. You can’t help yourself to whatever’s there.”

Her cheeks turned almost as red as her hair. “Oh my gosh! I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.”

I sighed. Typical rich person misunderstandings, I guessed. “It’s alright. Soo-won already replaced… say. Zeno, you’ve never taken the elevator, have you?”

“Nope.”

“We’d have smelled him there for sure,” added Hak.

“Soo-won must already know,” I said, much to Yona’s shock. “He helped cover your tracks. Or rather, he mopped them up. And now that I think about it, it must have been your footsteps that Yuno was hearing in the staircase.”

“Oops. Sorry, Zeno tried to be quiet.”

“So,” squeaked Yona, “Was that all?”

Hak and I looked to each other, then to the floor. It seemed he was going to let me do the talking, so I dug the shard of china out of my pocket and held it up to her, and by the look on her face I could tell she recognized it. “We came to talk to you about Taejun,” I said. “There was a witness when he was injured in the alley last night. A young homeless man with a squirrel said he saw this fall on Taejun’s head.”

“Zeno knows him!” the blond man volunteered. “That kid’s got really good eye-sight. If he says he saw something, then he saw it.”

“Yona,” I went on, “Would you mind telling us in detail what happened?”

She frowned, but under everyone’s expectant glances, she knew she had no room to escape. “He hadn’t bothered me for days after the man in the room above mine scared him and Hak hit him. Then yesterday he came to my room and said he wanted to start over.”

“Start over?”

“I don’t know what he meant. He was being so strange, saying he wanted to speak my language or something. He started talking about the flowers he brought, like which flowers meant what kind of love…”

“Aw,” smiled Zeno. “That’s sweet. He probably looked all that up himself.”

“Looks like that’s not her language,” added Hak.

“And there was a pineapple in the middle. He was saying it meant I was perfect. I told him he was nuts, and he said he didn’t bring any nuts. But then he said, ‘no wait, I have nuts! Really!’ and he had me against the wall, so I used what Zeno taught me and jabbed him in the ribs!” she said with some demonstration, which made Hak look surprised, curious, and mildly impressed. She continued, “he backed away and grabbed the flowers and said, ‘don’t take that the wrong way, just take the flowers, they’re my feelings’ and things like that. So I took the flowers. I took them and I threw them out the window.”

“Including the pineapple?”

“Including the pineapple.”

“Miss,” Zeno’s eyes were wide. “What a waste of a good pineapple.”

For the time being, I resisted adding that defenestrating pineapples was dangerous. “And what happened after that?”

She frowned. “He seemed really hurt by that. He looked out the window after them, and his voice was a little strange when he looked back at me, like he was about to cry.”

“And then?”

“He said that even if I don’t accept his feelings, even if I toss them out the window, they’re still his to keep. And then he left.”

“Probably to go gather his hurt feelings from the alleyway,” said Hak.

“Presumably,” I said, and then looked to Yona and held up the shard again. “Then, whether it was with lethal intention or not, that was when you dropped the dish on his head.”

Her eyes grew wide and wavered, but she sat completely still. Hak and Zeno turned their eyes toward her, and she began to shake.

I kept my gaze locked on her. “Well, Yona?”

“I… I didn’t.”

“But Yona, this is part of your dish set, isn’t it?”

“It is, but… I didn’t do it.”

I wanted to believe her. I really did! But if it wasn’t her, then who was it? I wished she’d hurry up and admit it so it could be out of my hands. If the poor couldn’t run from justice, then she shouldn’t be able to either. She could pay Kyoga for Taejun’s pain and suffering and then we would all be done with it. I wished she’d hurry up and admit it!

“If she says she didn’t do it, then she didn’t.”

All of us turned to Hak. He stared back at me, stern in his eye contact.

“Hak,” said Yona.

“It’s sucks being accused for something that’s not your fault. If she says she didn’t do it, then hear her out.”

“Let’s not rush into this, Lad,” said Zeno. “Miss, could anyone else have had the same dishes?”

“Yes, I gave a few of them to Yuno.”

“But Yuno wouldn’t have done it. She likely has an alibi and no motive. Plus, her room faces the south.”

“Lad, what exactly did the kid with the squirrel say?”

I thought for a moment. “He didn’t say much. First he said there were falling flowers and a pineapple. Then when I asked him what hit Taejun, he found the shard and gave it to me. Then when I asked what floor it came from, he said the fourth.”

Zeno’s eyes and mouth both swung wide open. “Oh no! That’s the problem!”

We all drew closer. “What?”

“The boy can’t count!”

It felt like a speeding car had gone to a screeching halt and crashed inside my brain. He couldn’t count?

“Zeno has tried to teach him, but he doesn’t pick it up much at all. He always gets close, but he gets the numbers all mixed up.”

“Then that means it could have been any of the floors on the north side, not only the fourth.”

“But then who was it?”

Even if the car that had been cruising along in my mind had crashed, the wheels and gears that had popped off were still going, rolling in every which direction. The dish that fell was not necessarily from the fourth floor. Something dropped from Joon-gi’s room might not have knocked him out. Kija didn’t know Yona or Yuno well enough to have gotten the dish from them. Yuno would have had it, or she would have given it away to someone else. If she gave things away, it was usually plants, like the ones she gave to Ik-soo.

She gave plants to Ik-soo yesterday. Our room is the third floor over the north alley.

Now, even my breath came to a skidding halt.

##########

Ik-soo and I had a long, long talk that night. I still can’t remember the last time I had cried that hard.

It started with me yelling and accusing him of not being careful enough, and telling him what he had done. Then it was him realizing it and apologizing for it. He sank in guilt, I swelled in anger. I lectured him about what this was going to mean for us now; especially if Kyoga wanted to hold us responsible. Ik-soo apologized, and looking deeper, he drew a confession out of me about only getting involved for the money, not for justice.

Ik-soo didn’t lecture me back. He knew he didn’t need to. Instead, he got us talking about what we were to do next; how we were to make amends, how we were going to brave a new financial struggle. He stroked my head as I sobbed, and he said we’d have more tough times ahead. But we’d do it on the high road, he said, and wherever it would take us, we’d go together.

It was a long and exhausting discussion, but I didn’t regret it in the least.

*********

With my eyes still red and puffy, I got busy early that Monday. I started upstairs in Kija’s room by making sure Jaeha was hydrated and recovering, as well has having Kija and Hak present while I made a phone call. I used my position as a nurse to reexplain Hak’s situation to Joo-doh, and Kija backed me up by admitting he had not taken adequate precautions to warn Hak of the effects. Joo-doh was surprised, but understanding. Hak was visibly less stressed once he was cleared from doubt, and he accepted Kija’s apology. Jaeha, meanwhile, was happy he still had anything else of his insides. (He later apologized to Yuno for the volume on his TV downstairs, and they eventually became friends. Geun-tae was never sure what to makes of this.)

Down at the bottom of the apartment, I caught Soo-won vacuuming the front hallway. He greeted me with a wide, cheerful smile. “Good morning, Yoon!”

“Soo-won!” I pointed at him. “What kind of a landlord are you?”

He paused and stared back, green eyes gleaming. “One who likes to clean?”

“No one should feel like their guests have to sneak around the stairs. The elevator is for everyone’s use.”

“Oh,” he chuckled. “That is a little unfair, isn’t it?”

“Speaking of unfair,” my volume dropped, “Ik-soo and I might need to renegotiate our contract again soon. We’ve had some expected expenses pop up that we need to take care of.”

His smile turned wry, and his eyes softened. “I was afraid you might.”

“We understand if you have your limits.”

“I do,” he nodded. “Let’s see first if you need it. There’s always other ways to make arrangements and work things out.”

I nodded back, my eyes still stinging from all the events of the past several hours. 

**********

After that, I went out to the hospital, where I had my most important arrangement to make. Kyoga, not expecting to see me until that evening, was very surprised that I showed up early enough to take some overtime hours. Before that, I wanted to take my time to explain the sequence of events to him, accept the blame on Ik-soo’s behalf, and offer him the money we had immediately available. There were the biggest bills I had ever taken out of an ATM, all smooth from their lack of transactional use. I promised that this would be the first of enough installments to cover the costs of Taejun’s treatment.

I felt that money in my hands longer than I had ever handled any cash. I had to wait several moments for Kyoga to process the information, and then put his hand to mine. He pushed back, shaking his head with such force that his long locks swished this way and that. “This isn’t necessary.”

“But it’s our fault—”

“It was clearly an accident, and you’re sorry. Besides, my brother has some fault for being out there anyway. He’ll recover soon enough, there’s no reason to press charges.” He looked over at Taejun, who stared blankly out the window. Kyoga let out a small sigh through his nostrils. “I only hope that his heart will recover soon too.”

**********

A few hours later, on my shift, I came in to check on him. Kyoga had gone home for the day, and Taejun was curled up on his bed with his knees against his chest.

“You should be able to go home tomorrow,” I said, forcing optimism.

“I don’t want to go home. I can’t face Yona. Ohhhhh, but I don’t have anywhere else I can move! I was delinquent on all my payments everywhere else, so that’s the only place that’ll take me in! That’s it! I’m going to be homeless! I’m a bum, that’s all I am! They should have just left me there in all that trash!”

“For what it’s worth,” I replied, “The homeless guys I’ve met are pretty nice.”

He sniffled and searched my eyes with his teary ones. “Are you sure?” 

I assured him he would be fine, and in my heart, I felt Ik-soo and I were probably going to be fine too. As long as there was still a high road to take, we’d try to stay on it.   (But maybe we’d try to stay away from high windows.)