Godsent Top Star [EN]: Chapter 255

255. Two Suspects? (1)

I had no idea what Gil Sang-jun was thinking, causing his emotional state to change so drastically.

Meanwhile.

The actor playing the father hesitantly approached after hearing the story.

“Ah, Joo-yong. Yeon-woo said it would be better to reshoot just the second half…….”

“Reshoot? Reshoot that……? That……?”

He looked back at Yeon-woo as if he had heard the sky was falling.

“We’re okay with it, but Yeon-woo said he felt that part was lacking…… We can shoot it and then choose.”

“Sob…….”

[Yeon-woo, that person is crying. Did you torment him too much?]

Fortunately, he agreed to the reshoot.

However, Lee Gyu-han had to quickly run downtown and buy five more boxes of calming pills.

*

After Kim Sun-woo’s first murder flashback scene.

The drama’s flow picked up rapidly.

That’s because Kang Seok finally noticed something strange in a piece of evidence that Baek Ha-yan had brought.

“Huh? I see something……?”

“What is it? What do you see? Tell me everything you see.”

Baek Ha-yan urged Kang Seok.

“Just a moment. Psychometry [the ability to discern facts about a person or object by touching or being near it] isn’t a panacea. I can’t see everything…….”

“So, what do you see?”

“Um…….”

Kang Seok frowned with his eyes closed, holding an old, cheap plastic lighter.

“It’s very…… dark. And sticky. Like a dark reddish color? I see something like that.”

“No. Why are you so uncertain? You should see a person, or a face, or…… a physique!”

“Oh, come on, Ha-yan. I told you, psychometry isn’t a panacea. Do you think I don’t want to see it? I know how serious Ha-yan is about this.”

Kang Seok sighed.

And how could he not want to help Baek Ha-yan?

“That…… might not be evidence, you know?”

“What do you mean?”

“Everything Ha-yan has given me so far hasn’t shown anything, except for Ha-yan’s father’s item. Isn’t it strange that something suddenly shows up?”

“Ah……?”

Baek Ha-yan had a blank expression.

It was as if something had hit her head hard.

“The killer Ha-yan is chasing. You said he’s like a ghost. He doesn’t leave any clues or any evidence. But isn’t it strange that something suddenly appears? Right?”

Kang Seok, who had grown even more after gaining psychometry, offered a rather sharp opinion.

Like Kang Seok said, the killer Baek Ha-yan was chasing was like a ghost.

It was entirely thanks to Baek Ha-yan’s competence that she had grasped the outline of the case to this extent.

She was the only one who had discerned that Kim Sun-woo had thoroughly selected victims to prevent any correlation from being found.

-Baek Ha-yan. Don’t waste your energy on strange things and solve the cases you’re assigned. Serial murder case? Hey. Do you think serial killings happen so leisurely? She’s just picking up strange things and acting cool.

-Ha-yan. The rate of serial killings in our country is significantly low. Do you know why? There’s no country as well-guarded as ours. There are CCTVs everywhere, and dashcams everywhere. Our country is small, so if there’s an empty lot, everyone rushes to park their car, right? Each of those can become evidence. How can you commit murder while being watched by thousands of eyes?

The police did not see each isolated incident as a serial killing.

There were no bodies, and there was a possibility of simple disappearances.

Baek Ha-yan might have thought so too.

If her family hadn’t been victimized.

‘My father would never disappear just like that. He was so strict with his routine that he was called Kant [Immanuel Kant, a philosopher known for his rigid adherence to routine].’

Her father was murdered a long time ago.

It was around the time Baek Ha-yan had just entered college.

She became an investigator to properly investigate her father’s death.

However, seeing Baek Ha-yan investigating cases that seemed unrelated, her colleagues mocked her instead.

That’s probably why.

Baek Ha-yan resigned and started investigating directly.

A murder case disguised as a disappearance, leaving no trace.

Rather, the fact that nothing was left became a clue.

“You said the evidence was found in still-unidentified missing person cases, right?”

“Yes.”

“Bring them all. As many as possible. I need to read them all at once.”

“But you said there’s a limit to the ability you can use in a day.”

“That’s true, but…….”

There were a lot of investigation requests pouring in for Kang Seok as the case resolution rate increased.

Cases that would be incredibly difficult without psychometry.

He had to save his ability points for those cases, but.

“Still, let’s try it. You have to follow your gut when something bothers you, right?”

The protagonist’s ability began to manifest in earnest.

*

The evidence that Baek Ha-yan brought was largely divided into three categories.

One was things that were clearly readable.

Another was a category that didn’t read anything at all.

And the last was a category that appeared dark, sticky, and dark reddish.

“The ones that read clearly are completely different cases.”

“So, are there only two left?”

“They only differ in density and color variation, but I think these can just be seen as one category.”

“They’re divided like this?”

Baek Ha-yan’s eyes were filled with doubt as she looked at the evidence divided according to psychometry’s classification, excluding a couple of completely different cases.

“Hmm. If we divide it just by what’s seen, yes. I think they might be separate cases…….”

“No. That can’t be. At least my father’s disappearance was very similar to the subsequent victims.”

A disappearance like a ghost took them, with no witnesses and no evidence.

All points matched in that each of the missing people had no reason to disappear or were not people who would do things that would cause them to disappear.

You wouldn’t feel anything strange if you separated them and looked at them one by one.

Rather, the too-clean disappearance became a strong clue.

“Then maybe…….”

Kang Seok, who had been pondering after listening to Baek Ha-yan’s explanation, said.

“Could it be the work of two people?”

*

Kang Seok’s words were thrown out casually.

Baek Ha-yan raised her head sharply as if struck by lightning.

“You said two people?”

Kang Seok nodded cautiously at the pressing words.

“The same format, the same method, but what’s being read is different. Then…… wouldn’t it be more accurate to see that there are two culprits and what’s being read is different from each other?”

“You said that even one side has slightly different colors and feelings. What’s that?”

“Hmm…… think of it this way.”

Kang Seok explained.

“Ha-yan is also one person, but you think differently every day, right? You feel differently too. Your emotions are different from time to time. So, the things Ha-yan has also have different feelings being read from time to time. Sometimes happy things are seen, and sometimes angry things are seen. But even if different things are read, that doesn’t mean it’s not Ha-yan, right?”

Kang Seok, who used to barely speak and was always timid, had changed.

With confidence, Kang Seok had changed everything from his posture to his eyes.

Unlike before, he was confident in his own words.

Kang Seok was steadily growing as the protagonist.

There were even staff members who were satisfied, saying, “Our Seok is growing up well.”

Kang Seok’s words continued.

“That’s the feeling. I didn’t see much, so I judged only by feeling, but…… it’s different. It’s definitely different. If this case is all related, as Ha-yan said…… there are definitely at least two culprits.”

“Two people…….”

Baek Ha-yan bit her lip anxiously.

Two people.

It was something she had never thought of before.

Even if a serial killer happened to have an assistant, it was extremely rare for them to form a team and move together.

It’s not a common case, not only in Korea but also overseas.

“Why couldn’t I think of that?”

Baek Ha-yan muttered blankly.

Until now, she had been searching for only one culprit.

The methods, which were a bit clumsy in the early murders but gradually became more sophisticated and meticulous, made her think that the culprit was also gradually becoming more skilled.

But what if there were two from the beginning?

‘What if one of those two was giving orders……?’

Baek Ha-yan’s flashback scenes quickly passed on the screen.

The increasingly meticulous and delicate crime methods were very difficult to identify.

Collecting numerous missing person cases occurring nationwide and extracting only those suspected of being serial murders.

That task was by no means easy.

A vast amount that could never coexist with a job.

That’s why Baek Ha-yan quit her job and focused solely on chasing the culprit.

Even so, it wasn’t easy.

The reason why she came to Kang Seok to borrow the suspicious power of psychometry was also here.

And…….

“Ha-yan. What are you thinking about?”

“Ah.”

Baek Ha-yan, who had been blank, suddenly came to her senses at the quiet call.

At some point, the background had changed.

The quiet thoughts that had only heard tinnitus were broken, and the noisy surrounding sounds suddenly dug into her ears.

“Coffee’s ready.”

“Ah, thank you. I was thinking about something else for a moment…….”

The person who placed the coffee in front of Baek Ha-yan and spoke worriedly.

It was Kim Sun-woo, with a gentle smile.

Seeing the smile on his lips, Baek Ha-yan also reflexively gave a faint smile.

Although it was awkwardly distorted by the thoughts that continued to torment her.

“You look very tired. Has…… Seok been bothering you a lot lately?”

“Kang Seok? No, no. I’m the one who’s bothering Kang Seok a lot. I’m always just getting help, you know…….”

“Seok is the one being bothered, but why does Ha-yan look so tired? Is there something you’re worried about?”

The warm coffee melting her palms warmly in the strongly air-conditioned room.

Baek Ha-yan’s thoughts, which had been complicated by various thoughts, also softened the thorns that had been sticking out at the warm warmth and gaze.

“Just…… I was thinking about a case.”

“Did Seok take on a difficult case?”

Kang Seok and Baek Ha-yan had an implicit agreement.

If Kang Seok helped Baek Ha-yan’s pursuit, Baek Ha-yan would help Kang Seok’s work.

Psychometry can find out a lot, but that doesn’t directly lead to the arrest of the culprit.

Because there is no concrete evidence.

‘I found the culprit with psychometry!’

How about that?

Doesn’t it sound like the ramblings of a crazy person?

You’d be lucky if you weren’t admitted to a mental hospital.

Anyway.

Baek Ha-yan played a role in complementing Kang Seok’s shortcomings.

It was possible because Baek Ha-yan had more experience and career as an investigator.

“No. It’s not that…… I just found a new clue in the case I was chasing. It keeps lingering in my head, so I couldn’t concentrate.”

“A clue……?”

Kim Sun-woo slowly asked back.

The gaze looking at the top of Baek Ha-yan’s head, which was lowered to drink coffee, turned cold for a moment, but Baek Ha-yan didn’t notice.

Instead, she began to explain.

“……So, I think there might be two culprits.”

“Two people…….”

“If there really are two people, there might be progress. If we catch one, we can catch the accomplice together.”

“That might be possible.”

“If it had been read, I would have found out already. The fact that nothing is being read is actually strange, right? Until now, I’ve read almost 99 percent of everything.”

“That’s true.”

“Ah.”

Baek Ha-yan, who said that, blinked as if she had remembered something.

“Come to think of it, you said Sun-woo wasn’t read either…….”

Baek Ha-yan’s gaze turned to Kim Sun-woo.

Softly smiling, but somehow cold eyes were staring at her.