When Dong Koo read the text message that Ba Reum had send him he felt his stomach drop. He immediately tried to call Ba Reum, but the phone was turned off.
Dong Koo stared at the screen of his phone, debating what he should do.
On the one side his friend was an adult and should be able to make these kind of decisions for himself. On the other side, he was recently injured badly and seeing the state he had been in yesterday didn't inspire confidence in his decision making abilities.
Dong Koo looked at his watch. It was still the middle of the night. Chi Kook and Bong Yi will still be asleep, but he knew that they would want to be informed as soon as possible. He opened up his contact list and called Chi Kook, already dreading the conversation that was going to follow.
Ba Reum yawned while he was driving. It had taken him a couple of hours, but he was almost at his childhood town. He still had a couple of hours night left and he knew for the plan he had, he wouldn't have to wake up at dawn. He could sleep a couple of hours extra in the morning, for which he was grateful.
He made sure to park somewhere no one would really look, just that he could sleep a bit in his car without anyone being disturbed by this and calling the police.
He felt absolutely exhausted. He took out his reserve phone and set the alarm at 9 o'clock and made himself comfortable in the back seat of the car.
But, before he went to sleep he took out the files about his disappearance. Even as exhausted as he was, he had been very curious about how come he hadn't been found. He took the folder and flipped it open.
The first thing he saw was a large portrait photo that he remember was made in the school. He was about 8 in that photo.
He snorted when he saw the photo. He had run away when he was 10 years old, already 15 years ago.
This photograph had been already 2 years old, so it had resembled him but not completely, having already grown quite a lot in those two years.
His parents probably didn't have any more recent photographs of him than that one.
His stomach churned a bit when he thought back about how his homelife was, but he shook his head and flipped through the pages. They had searched the school and his house. They had noted the money he had stolen and had rightly concluded that it was a runaway case.
He saw a personality assessment of himself, made by the statements of his teachers and parents.
Silent, reclusive, estranged from the world, made his peers feel scared, cold.
He turned the page. It contained information about where they had spread the information of his disappearance and he saw that the case had been cold due to a lack of tips. He hadn't left a note either.
They had a total of three children who could have been potentially Jae Hoon. Two were found dead on the streets and the third one had been in a car accident. At the time of the report he had been in a coma.
All three DNA tests had been negative.
Even his? He checked the file again. They had done one on him, but how come it was false? Was it a false negative?
The case was put aside after that, no other persons had been found that could have been the runaway child.
He put the file away and put his jacket over him as makeshift blanket and tried to get a couple of hours sleep.
All too soon his alarm clock went off waking him. He opened his eyes slowly and stretched a bit. Once he was fully awake, he got out of his car and quickly changed his outfit after he made sure that no one was around to see him change. He didn't want to be found half naked by someone who took their dog out for a walk.
He took out his razor, which always stayed in his car and shaved himself. He looked at himself in the car mirror and decided that he looked good enough.
He opened up the secret compartment of his car and took out a notebook and a Dictaphone, a small camera and also a fake ID and a fake reporter card. He hoped that his parents still lived in the same house, because he had forgotten to check that on the computer system.
He drove towards his old house, swallowing the bitter memories that came to the forefront of his mind. He hadn't realised how much he hated this place and how glad he actually is that he had left this all behind.
He parked his car and went to the front door. He swallowed slowly and schooled his face into a mask and then he rang the bell. He heard footsteps coming towards the door.
It was his mother that opened the door. He hadn't seen the face for more than a decade but he still recognised her. She had more wrinkles and the grey in her hair was more pronounced.
"Can I help you?" she asked. He bowed to her. She looked at him, but clearly didn't recognize him, good.
"Good morning, sorry to disturb you. I'm Cha Dal Gun. My assistant called you about the interview right?" he asked. As expected he got a puzzled face back.
"Interview?"
"Didn't my assistant call? He said that he made an appointment with you."
"No, no one called. May I ask what this is about."
"Well, you see, we are from the TV show Hong Ju sherlock, and for the new episode we are doing a special about children who disappeared and were never found." He explained, taking out his files, "our sources stated that you lost a son 15 years ago, Jae Hoon?"
His mother blinked slowly. He could see her swallowing and thinking.
"I indeed lost a son. We, … we don't like to talk about it." She looked back inside and tried to close the door.
"I'm very sorry to disturb you. The assistant should have called you. Is it possible to reschedule an appointment? If it is a possibility I can return later today."
"I'll have to check with my husband. From which show did you say you were?"
"Hong Ju Sherlock."
"Oh, but that's a long way driving." She gasped.
"It's not that bad. I can always return another time if it's easier for you. I would be very grateful for a change to interview you. My boss is really interested in this case." He hoped that she would pity him and save a poor guy a few hours driving and an angry boss.
She seemed to think it over.
"Can you wait here for a second." He nodded and she disappeared back in the house. He waited for her to return, grateful for the small break. This meeting was more emotional for him then he thought. Somehow he still managed to miss his mother. The feeling was making his guilty because his new mother was a much better mother who loved him more. Not one who looked as if he would try to strangle the dog anytime he got annoyed.
After five minutes she returned, followed by her husband. Seeing that man again left a bit of a bitter taste in his mouth. He had always been beaten by him, and he still remembered how he always had called him a monster. Still he smiled friendly and bowed and introduced himself again.
"Yes, my wife told me about the interview. You just want an interview?" the man looked wary.
"I would be very grateful. Our show deals with a lot of cold cases. Some times we get a new lead, but this show we will try to focus on trying to prevent children from disappearing and seeing the warning signs. It is possible to do this interview completely anonymous if you prefer." He handed them an official agreement for them to look through.
"It seems to be in order. We don't mind doing the interview, but we would prefer to do it anonymous." He followed them inside, glad that his lie had worked. He hadn't been sure that they would have let him in.
"Can I put up my camera? If we'll show fragments, we make sure to blur the face and alter the voices."
"Please set it up then. I'll make some tea." His mother said. His stepfather in the meanwhile took a seat on his opposite side. He pretended to fiddle a bit with the camera and then aimed it for the sofa. In the meanwhile his mother had returned with tea and they were all seated.
"Okay, I'll just start with some questions. If you ever don't feel comfortable, you don't have to answer them, or if you want to take a break, we can edit the video later." Both of them nodded.
"You lost your son about 15 years ago. He was 10 years old. Can you explain about how he disappeared?"
"The day before he had gotten in trouble in school. It hadn't been the first time that this happened and his behaviour got progressively worse. We had grounded him that evening. We didn't hear anything from him anymore that evening, but when we got up the next day, he had disappeared and he had taken all the cash in the house with him. He even stole some jewellery of my wife."
Ba Reum tried not to frown at the explanation. He remembered being badly beaten. The bruises had taken weeks to completely fade. And he had never stolen jewellery before, just cash.
"How did you feel when you found out he disappeared?"
"We were not sure that he had ran away at first. We thought that he had been avoiding us, but when we called the school he wasn't there either. We started to feel panicked and called the police. I cried for days after he disappeared. His brother and sister missed him greatly. We never knew why he actually ran away." His mother told him, but he could see that she was saying that because there was a camera there. Her voice sounded emotional, but no tears appeared in her eyes.
"There was no note?"
"No, nothing. He just left without saying anything. We checked with the school, but they hadn't seen it coming either. We would have checked with his friends, but like I said before, he was a troublemaker at school and he didn't have any."
"Did he ever mention that he was being followed?"
"No, never. The police didn't think he was kidnapped either." His stepfather frowned at the question.
"He was never found, nor any leads?"
"No. The police said that they suspected that they had found him 3 times, but all three times the DNA didn't check out."
He asked some more inane questions about the investigation, but the most important part was done. No one knew that he had been followed, and the DNA didn't' check out.
"Thank you for taking the time for my interview." He said, bowing a full 90 degrees.
"If I may ask one more favour. I would like to use your restroom before I go back. It's quite a long ride back." He smiled sheepishly.
"Yes, it's in the hallway, the second door on the right." His mother said. He nodded and went about his business, but instead of going in the hallway he sneaked up the stairs and went inside the bathroom. He stole some hairs on his mother's hairbrush and quickly went back down.
Suddenly, out of the corner of his eye he saw a family picture, a recent one, his mother, stepfather, sister and brother. His brother, who he had met not so long ago apparently. Intern lawyer Min Jae.
He had recognized him. Now he knew why. He filed this information to the back of his mind, perhaps he would also visit him later. First he had to find out why the DNA didn't match.
He said his goodbyes to his parents, even though they didn't even know he was. He wanted to ask if they actually miss him, but he didn't think that they would answer truthfully.
He decided to drive towards his old school and see if his teacher perhaps knew about the guy who had been following him. He had been there at the school. Ba Reum clearly remembered seeing him multiple times when he was at the rabbit hutch, but there was never anyone around back then.
He waited until school was over, quickly stopping at a local shop to get something to eat and drink.
He got in there easily enough, using the same excuse as before that he was here to conduct an interview about Jae Hoon.
"He was a scary kid. He always scared the other children. He even killed the school rabbit one day." His old teachers said and Ba Reum didn't flinch when she said that, but he felt bad about it. He had been curious and, now he understood, easily manipulated. He had never really fitted in with other people, but no one had tried to befriend him either.
It had all been a vicious circle.
"Did Jae Hoon ever mention that he had been followed, or did you see someone following him?"
"He never really talked to the teachers. I don't recall seeing anyone strange around him. If anything, he was always on his own." Ba Reum held in a sigh. He hadn't expected it, but it would have been so much easier to have a lead.
"But," the teacher said and he looked up.
"But?" he repeated.
"It was not Jae Hoon, but another child that mentioned he was being followed."
"Can you tell me who it was."
"What was his name again? Just a minute." She looked something up in the computer.
"Here he is. His name is Sung Yo Han. He became a doctor." Ba Reum looked at the old picture and then at the latest picture from the last school reunion.
Dr. Sung Yo Han, old classmates indeed.
Moo Chi was swearing. He had brought back the new medical files from the hospital, but they were the same as was in the system. Perhaps Ba Reum had been wrong and it had been correctly inputted in the system. All this work for nothing.
He looked at the time and quickly packed all these documents with him. He had agreed to meet with Hong Ju about one of her shows. He would take the documents to his place to study better.
When he arrived at her office, she quickly noticed that he was agitated about something.
"What's wrong?" she asked when he sat down. He hesitated a bit, but she kept on looking at him.
"It's just these medical files about the current case. Ba Reum told me some of the reports were missing, but I got a new copy and they are all the same as the ones we already had in our system."
"Can I look at them? Perhaps I can give you a fresh perspective?" Moo Chi looked torn. He knew she wasn't a police officer and he technically should not give her access, but he really wanted to catch the killer.
"Oh whatever, here they are." He bounced nervously with his legs while he waited for Hong Ju to quickly glance through them all.
"These should be all of the medical files?" Hong Ju asked.
"Yes, their complete medical records."
"Then Ba Reum is right. You are missing reports." Moo Chi's eyebrow went up.
"How can you be so sure?" he asked sceptically.
"Because, there are no gynaecologist reports in there. None. If you are a woman, most of us go the gynaecologist for a smear test every few years."
"Not all woman." Moo Chi grumbled, "perhaps they chose not to."
"It might be, but here, in this report, it mentions an gynaecologist procedure in the medical history."
Moo Chi took the report from Hong Ju and looked at it. Goddamn, Ba Reum was right. Someone was playing them.