Korean//English

Silence clouded the already dense air, the clicking of tiny rodents' claws seemingly magnified by the surrounding darkness.

Were anyone to pass over the threshold of the old home, the groaning of its aged hardwood floorboards would surely send the mice scurrying into the walls. As was the case a night prior to the current, the furry inhabitants of the home hid away in their safe havens when an unannounced visitor slipped into the residence, wielding nothing but a gleaming blade.

So thus, although not the longest tale, the owner of the darkened house found his story coming to an unpleasant end.

«-»

A burst of white light appeared in the center of the empty road, in its wake leaving a group of nine standing in the open space.

"Where are we?" one asked, turning to one of the two standing together towards the front. "Somewhere near Boseong, probably" he answered, doing something on his phone. The word "probably" made a few of the group suspicious, but the confident tone in which he said it disoriented those same few.

"What are we even supposed to be doing here?" Minwoo questioned. "We're surrounded by empty fields and there's one house out here" he stated. "Exactly. That house is where we're going." Siwa replied, seemingly staring off towards the horizon. "Why there?" Koushi asked, looking at the seemingly normal home.

"Why? There's a dead body in there." Lucien said, completely nonchalant. The seven behind him stopped thinking about whatever they were thinking about to stare directly at the boy using his phone. Siwa sighed, obviously wishing his friend had a bit more of a filter.

"We're here to figure out why the man living there was murdered, that's it." Siwa explained, turning to the disoriented group behind him. Kyungjin started to say something, instead quickly becoming silent and gesturing for the group to look upwards. Turning their heads, the group followed his gaze to notice large ominous clouds having rolled in.

"It's the apocalypse" Jihyun said dramatically, pretending to feel faint. "Where did those come from?" Haru asked no one in particular. "Guys don't worry, they're just normal clou-" Siwa's reassuring sentence was cut off by the familiar feeling of water falling from the sky.

The boys all shared a look, then turned to the two leaders, wondering how they'd react. "Why don't you go to the house now?" Lucien suggested. A few of the seven's expressions seemed hesitant, until the light drizzle picked up to become decent raindrops.

Lucien leaned towards Siwa, whispering something to him as Siwa nodded in reply.

"Alright, all of you, go inside the house. Stay in the entry room, and don't go anywhere else." Siwa instructed, gesturing for them to move towards the house. "You're not coming with us?" Minwoo asked, giving the pair a confused look. "We'll be there in a second. Go." Siwa said, looking back over his shoulder at Lucien, who was in the process of removing his phone case.

The group hesitated, glancing between the house and the leaders. The rain picked up a notch, the fatter raindrops hitting a few of the boys. "What are you waiting for? Go on!" Siwa urged them, pointing directly at the house. They slowly got moving, a few breaking out into a run after Siwa assured them that he and Lucien would meet them there.

The pair of leaders remained in the middle of the road, Siwa watching the group as the last of them entered the house to shelter from the rain, shutting the door. He turned to Lucien, who seemed either annoyed or tired.

"Any luck so far?" Siwa asked him, looking up at the dark clouds as the rain poured down. Lucien nodded. "I just need a few more seconds. Sorry, but you know I'm useless without this." Lucien shyly laughed. Siwa sighed at his friend's blunt statement.

"Take all the time you need."

«-»

The Seven stood together in the cozy entrance hall of the house. A couple of the boys conversed, but most just kept to their own thoughts, staring blankly at some object under the light from the one quaint lamp in the room.

"Hey, it's been ten minutes. When are they going to come inside?" Haru asked, sitting down as opposed to the other standing six. "They're probably making out or some shit like that." Baumé joked, leaning against the wall parallel to Haru. No one replied except for a snicker from Koushi that quickly stopped.

"Why don't we just find a living room or a place to sit down?" Jihyun spoke, walking towards the doorway at the other end of the small entrance hall. "Yeah, the rain sounds pretty strong now, and I'm pretty sure there's a hole in the roof right above Jihyun." Minwoo agreed, Jihyun startledly looking directly above him and taking a small step to the left in response.

"But- mangled corpse." Kyungjin said quietly, eyeing the two at the door. Everyone turned to him, their expressions spelling 'what.' "He means that you should remember there's a dead guy somewhere in this house. Are you sure you want to just go frolicking around?" Danjong translated.

"I don't think he would've killed him in the living room." Baumé stated, seeming to be leaning towards team 'leave the entrance.' The group shared a few glances, divided between people who wanted to stay like the leaders had told and the ones who felt it wouldn't hurt to leave.

Jihyun looked through the doorway into the dark encompassing the farther rooms. He took a step out of the small space, glancing left and right. "It looks clear from here. Probably fine to-" he was cut off by the front door slamming open, startling the group.

"WE'RE B- Jihyun what are you doing?" Siwa stood in the doorway, staring at Jihyun who was halfway out of the entrance room. "Not... leaving." Jihyun replied, stepping back into the room. "Correct." Siwa replied, keeping his gaze on Jihyun.

"Anyway, we've got to go over our plan for taking this on." Siwa stated, addressing the others now as well. Baumé raised his hand, seemingly waiting for Siwa to say he could speak. "Yeah?" Lucien answered instead. "It's raining a shitload out there, how are neither of you wet at all?" Baumé asked suspiciously, voicing what everyone else was clearly wondering.

The room went silent as the group stared at the two leaders. Siwa glanced at Lucien. "Not yet?" Siwa asked. "No. Later." Lucien responded.

"So, first up we're going to have to examine the body. I know it sounds like something we really should not be doing, but we have to figure out who this guy was before we can understand why he was killed." Siwa stated, a couple of the seven seeming to suddenly regret being there. "You can opt out, don't worry. We might need you though." Lucien commented.

The leaders ushered the group out of the entrance room and up the stairs leading to the bedroom, ignoring the group's protests that they didn't answer Baumé's question.

Well, they'd find out soon enough anyway.

«-»

Dried blood stained the pristine white carpeting, the pattern of which it had flowed as a liquid evident from the obvious circle. The man lay face down on the carpet, his throat having been slit, and a mysterious stab wound to the back visible through his thin white dress shirt.

"Oh my god" one of the seven had commented, probably not expecting what had been revealed. The two leaders sped over to the body, telling the seven that they weren't expected to look if they felt they couldn't handle it. None glanced away.

"Let's see here... slit throat, obviously the killing wound, but what's with the random stab wound on the back? It doesn't seem to be from the same instrument as the throat wound..." the pair examining the body discussed, seeming scarily unfazed by the scene.

"Why do you two seem so calm?" Minwoo asked. "Calm?!" Lucien turned to look at Minwoo. "What about me seems calm to you I've never seen a dead body in my life either how old do you think I am???" he rambled, being the perfect image of someone trying to hide their nervousness. "How old are you then?" Baumé questioned.

"I'm... younger than everyone else here, that's a fact." Lucien admitted, causing everyone to turn to him. "Even Haru?" Jihyun asked, pointing to the maknae of the group. "...yeah" Lucien said quietly, turning back to the corpse in front of him and reexamining the back wound. Silence fell as the chatter died down.

"Kyungjin." Lucien said as Siwa handed him a few items. Kyungjin looked over, walking up to him. "Can you go though this and read out what each item is? This was the stuff in his pockets." Lucien asked him, handing him the small pile of objects before sitting back down and taking out his phone.

"Uh. Here's 5000 Won. And here's a picture of some sort of dog..." Kyungjin spoke quietly, looking up to make sure he should continue. "Here's his iPhone. An older one. Here's a stick of gum. And the last two things are a gum wrapper and a card that says 'Oyster' on it." he stated, setting the items on the ground. After hearing the last two items, Lucien grabbed them from the ground and held them up.

"He's lived in London." he spoke, looking at the card. "How...?" Kyungjin muttered. "OH! In London, England those cards are used to get on and off the subway system. That version of the card isn't produced anymore, and to keep an older card on him means that he used it for a long time, so he couldn't have been just traveling." Danjong chimed in, knowing that somehow despite probably never having used an Oyster Card. The others stared at his random outburst of knowledge, but bushed it off as Lucien grabbed their attention.

He had unwrapped the inconspicuous gum wrapper, revealing a written note on the inside. It read, simply, "We can work out a deal- [email protected]"

"Minwoo. Could you try to get into his email?" Siwa asked, picking up the man's phone off the ground and handing it to Minwoo, who nodded in reply. Siwa had already figured out the phone's password, thankfully the man had chosen something stupid- 1111.

The minutes ticked by as the leaders stayed near the body, every once and awhile asking one of the Seven to assist them with something. They didn't need want to put too much pressure on the Seven, being on their first case, so the two had taken on most of the work themselves.

"I'll be right back. I've almost got the password to his email. I just need to..." Minwoo announced, trailing off suddenly as he walked over to the door of the room. He took a breath, seemingly debating whether or not to do something. He set his resolve and focused on the wall.

"Is he doing what I think he's..." Jihyun trailed off as an aura of soft blue light formed around Minwoo, disappearing to reveal a small white dove in his place.

"OhmYGODHEDIDIT" Lucien squealed from where he was sitting, then awkwardly avoiding the weird looks he got.

The eight stared at the bird, Minwoo, either shocked or excited. "He's the first one who's been able to voluntarily use his power." Siwa whispered to Lucien, who simply nodded. Minwoo, now a bird, turned to the others. "I wonder what he's thinking." Koushi said quietly. Lucien, as if on cue, whipped out his phone, going to the camera app.

"I literally cannot translate what he's thinking, but he sure seems to be excited about it." Lucien laughed, putting away the camera. The others turned, noticing the little bit of info he let slip there. "What?" he asked. The others simply shrugged, not going to bother to question him anymore.

Someone reminded Minwoo of what he had intended to do, and soon enough he had figured out how to fly as a dove, so he took his leave of the room, off to go find whatever thing he had wanted to. "I guess we're going to have to wait for him now" Haru commented.

And so the waiting began.

«-»

The dove had swooped back into the window after approximately an hour. "What took so long?" Baumé had complained at first. After turning back into a human, he explained that he had just been a dipshit and done some random flying around. Regardless, none of that mattered compared to the moment at hand.

The group gathered as they looked through the email app. Minwoo had somehow managed to actually find the password. The man had left the hint for the password to a social media account in the notes, and Minwoo had decided to try the same password for the email.

The hint had mysteriously been "the box in the attic," and as there was no ladder leading from the main house to the attic, there was no other way to get up there than to fly. Turns out he had kept a small box in the attic. What was in it? Turquoise jewelry.

"Turquoise." An interesting password, is it not? But one would question why he would choose such a password.

After scanning through emails, the group had formed a good idea of who the victim was, based off of the correspondence between him and others.

"His name was Park Hyojun, 58 years old. We assume he had a wife, and possibly a child, based off of a friend referring to them. He worked as a geology professor in London, until retiring last month and moving back to Korea, living where we stand. Yet we still don't know why he was murdered. There's three emails we've spotted which we think may contain the answer. Ready to read them?" Siwa spoke, selecting the final emails.

The group scanned through them, reading the correspondence between the victim, Hyojun, and a fellow geology professor he worked with. Although it started off as a seemingly normal conversation, it quickly took a turn as the victim asked the colleague about a "repayment." Piece by piece, the story came together as the colleague demanded his possessions back, and the victim refused to return them until he repaid him. What possessions the colleague wanted back, however, were unknown, until the victim mentioned them by name.

The turquoise necklaces in the attic.

Years ago, our victim, apparently, was asked for money by his colleague. Both being geology professors, they were acquainted and knew each other well. However, our victim was short on money as well, and in order to make sure his colleague paid him back, he requested to keep one of his colleague's valuables to ensure that he paid back the loan, intending to return the valuable once the loan had been repaid.

Being invested in the geology profession, this colleague's most valuable possession was a set of expensive newly made turquoise jewelry, so he gave that to our victim, to keep until the loan was repaid. However, as the years went by, it became clear that this colleague had no intention of repaying the money he owed our victim, so the victim started urging him to finally pay him back. This colleague, however, had other plans to get his valuable turquoise back. And sadly for our victim, those plans didn't involve any profit whatsoever.

"The murderer's name is Christopher Han. A colleague of our victim, 55 years old. Killed him to get back his expensive turquoise, but unfortunately for him he couldn't find it, as it was in the attic." Siwa summarized, setting down the phone on the table with a sigh.

"So, its over?" Koushi asked, looking out the bedroom window. "Yep. All we have to do is report our findings to the society, and they'll take it from there." Siwa replied. "How does the society...?" Jihyun trailed off. "We have police connections, don't worry." Lucien winked nonchalantly, which wasn't helping anyone.

Silence fell over the room as the realization that what they had to do was accomplished.

"If you guys think this was hard, just wait until next time. This was nothing." Lucien said, smiling at the group. Again, he really was not helping. "You might have to sneak into buildings, knock out people, just wait. It'll get more exciting than sitting around in an old house. This was just a test run for you all." Siwa said, a bit more reassuring than his partner again.

"A test run? So this was set up?" Baumé asked. "Oh, no. It was a real murder. But it was pretty simple compared to some of the stuff that happens." Lucien answered.

"Wait, you're saying this was simple?"

«-»

And thus their days at the society began

Marked by bloodshed

Hopefully to end not in parallel ways

«-»

((Heyyy everyone! I hope this chapter wasn't toooo boring, I've gotta get this off to a start somehow and I wanted to involve less cliche dark alleyways and less typical gang fights in the city right now. That'll be later. But with superpowers. Yes. Also it's 3000+ words so have fun reading this giant pile lmao rip.

Anyway I'm sorry if not all characters get equal screen time, but as some characters are more quiet people as opposed to more talkative people, I'm trying to show their personality via actions rather than words, which can be difficult in this kind of crime/supernatural setting when starting off, so please excuse me about that haha

Also lowkey that gif I used gave me wAR FLASHBACKS I CAN'T I've never mourned a fictional character more like Rue and Prim in the hunger games what now nuh uh nothing compared to this guy. If you've watched that anime you'll kNOW TRUE P A I N

Anyway, moving on from that depression, hope you have a nice day/night whatever etc.

P.S. blondejenissi you're a dad making a difference))