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Join the ServerMu-yun turned his head.
Not far away, there was an apartment building.
“Were there any reports?”
“No.”
The fact that smoke rising from the mountaintop, not even the foot of the mountain, had never been reported was even stranger.
Kang Byeong-jo smiled wryly.
“Actually, people think smoke rising is easy to notice, but that’s not always the case.
In the past two or three years, the spring yellow dust winds have been quite strong.”
He turned his head and met Mu-yun’s eyes.
“And in the report I received yesterday, toluene was found in the component analysis.”
Mu-yun understood what he meant and frowned.
“If he used thinner, there’s a high chance it’s not the bastard we know.”
Using an accelerant meant the scene was managed.
That would be a different pattern from the past.
Kang Byeong-jo nodded reluctantly.
He looked at the incinerator, which used an oil drum as its base material.
“Still, Chief So.
This was made by someone who knows fire very well.
It’s not something made to burn agricultural plastic during farming season.
It wasn’t here until at least a month ago.
The logging work over there due to pine wilt disease was exactly 49 days ago, and the bones of the animals found here were all broken.”
Mu-yun’s gaze turned toward a pile covered with green waterproof tarpaulin, sometimes seen when walking in the mountains.
He examined the incinerator again.
His expression hardened as he looked at the oil drum, which seemed to be assembled from various parts.
“You know that fire is something someone who’s set it several times before sets better.
Unlike before, the National Fire Agency now analyzes data from all fires nationwide.
Among the fires of the past ten years, this is the only one that matches the target, method, and even geographical location—everything—with the characteristics of the bastard we remember.
Is the probability of it being a coincidence really that high?”
If the assumption was that it was the same culprit from ten years ago, it meant the bastard had grown technically over the years, killing multiple lives, and had already become a finished product.
He still knew this neighborhood so well that he wasn’t caught on CCTV.
Mu-yun spread his palm and closed it.
He soon pushed aside his dizzying thoughts and moved his hands.
If a firefighter with ten years of experience said it was a well-made object, there had to be something about the incinerator itself.
Even if most of the evidence had been destroyed by the heat, so they hadn’t yet thought of taking the whole thing for testing.
Mu-yun put on gloves.
Putting on two thick layers just in case, he began collecting evidence.
He also had to check the possibility that the culprit had tampered with the incinerator again in the meantime.
Calmly proceeding with work now familiar to his hands, he took photos and looked inside.
Even if it wasn’t necessarily the bastard, it was a culprit who needed to be caught if possible.
Crunch.
Grass crushed under a heavy weight.
Mu-yun quickly looked toward the sound and readied himself.
Byeong-jo also looked toward where the suspicious footsteps were coming from, his face slightly tense.
The presence grew closer, as if coming directly to their location.
Mu-yun quieted his breathing, waiting for whoever would soon appear from under the dark tree shade.
“Oh?”
It was Kang Byeong-jo who reacted first.
The man who appeared after pushing aside branches hanging below his waist stood still.
“Supervisor Kang?”
Mu-yun flinched at the familiar voice.
“Do you know him?”
From where he was, the man’s face was partially hidden by trees.
Byeong-jo nodded.
The man emerged from the tree shade and stopped within arm’s reach.
Mu-yun looked at the person standing there in hiking pants and a t-shirt over thick, slightly worn hiking boots.
Byeong-jo, his face relaxed, introduced the newcomer to Mu-yun.
“Shin Hae-wan… He’s a senior firefighter at our station, the one who discovered this place.”
Eyes resembling Tae-i’s curved.
“…We meet again?
You’re the person from yesterday, right?
In front of the house.”
This time, a question mark appeared above Byeong-jo’s head.
“Do you two know each other?”
Mu-yun nodded, trying to keep his face calm.
“It seems he moved into… the place where I used to live.”
Byeong-jo let out a long, low groan.
“By the way, how did you get here?”
Mu-yun matched the unfamiliar name Shin Hae-wan with a face so familiar it would be startling to see on the street, and threw out the question.
His voice was monotonous, flat, so the question sounded somewhat sharp.
“Right!
Why are you here?”
Hae-wan glanced at Byeong-jo and smiled awkwardly.
“I came to see that.”
His hand, stretching into the air, pointed at the incinerator.
“The incinerator?
Why?”
When Byeong-jo asked, Hae-wan smiled wryly.
“The construction seems excessive, don’t you think?
It bothered me.”
Kang Byeong-jo snorted and made a slightly twisted face.
“You bastard!
What did I tell you?
I said I’ve never seen anyone who indulges strange curiosity live long!
And what did I tell you to do if you want to investigate a scene?”
“You said it’s not too late, so retake the exam and go to the police station.”
Wearing a slightly sly smile, Shin Hae-wan continued nonchalantly.
Mu-yun could only smile bitterly at Byeong-jo’s words.
He looked back at the incinerator.
He had wanted to ask Byeong-jo in detail about the situation when he first discovered the incinerator, but with another person present, he couldn’t.
Even if he was acquainted with Byeong-jo, Mu-yun couldn’t forget that he was on vacation.
Deciding to ask later, Mu-yun withdrew his gaze, which had been tense and scanning the surroundings meticulously.
“By the way, about this person here.”
Hae-wan, who had only introduced himself and was keeping his mouth shut about Mu-yun’s presence, winked at Byeong-jo.
Byeong-jo opened his mouth, then closed it as if unsure what to say.
Seeing that, Mu-yun spoke instead.
“I’m So Mu-yun from Jeongpyeong Station.”
To be precise, it was Jeongpyeong Southern Police Station, but he glossed over it.
He also omitted saying he was a violent crimes detective.
Hae-wan tilted his head.
“Jeongpyeong Station?
I don’t think I’ve seen your face around our area… Ah!
I guess you’re a police officer?”
Immediately guessing Mu-yun’s identity, Hae-wan smiled as if to say ‘I see.’
He seemed to vaguely guess why a police officer was here.
“Then I guess I can’t see that.”
Instead, he let out a remark full of regret.
“Of course you can’t!”
As if he was about to touch evidence from a crime scene, Byeong-jo snapped and poked Hae-wan in the side.
Letting out a short yelp, Hae-wan shook his head.
“I won’t touch it!
I have that much common sense.
I just came to look.”
He made gestures proving his innocence, as if not lying.
“It’s just so well-made.”
Mu-yun stared silently at Shin Hae-wan.
This was a secluded crime scene.
People who frequent such scenes generally fall into two categories.
Those who have something to find, like himself, or those who need to remove something so it can’t be found.
Even if, due to his job as a firefighter, he was satisfying curiosity or asking questions about fire-related matters, there was something suspicious about him.
Swallowing his doubts without voicing them, Mu-yun deliberately met the gaze of Hae-wan, who was looking at him.
“How is it well-made?”
At his question, Byeong-jo frowned.
Shin Hae-wan let out a short laugh, as if he’d heard something amusing, then shrugged.
“It’s made to burn really well.
If you feed a fire plenty of oxygen, it’s not incomplete combustion—meaning it produces less smoke.
That part is well-made.”
“So it produces less or no smoke?”
Byeong-jo sighed.
“I can’t demonstrate it, but as Senior Captain Shin said, it would produce very little smoke.
Theoretically, the structure is like that.”
Then, even from the apartment, it would have been hard to notice, so he probably would have come at a convenient time, whether day or night, not necessarily on a foggy or hazy day.
Mu-yun threw his gaze toward the apartment.
It was different from the characteristics of the bastard he remembered.
This was excessively controlled.
The bastard from ten years ago had stronger impulsive tendencies rather than being planned.
Of course, given that, he had committed acts that went unnoticed many times, so he had confidence he wouldn’t get caught.
There were no signs of planned harm at any of the scenes.
The conclusion changed depending on how one interpreted this.
Even so, it was either the same bastard or someone else.
Mu-yun looked at Shin Hae-wan, who was still craning his neck curiously, examining the incinerator from different angles.
Then he forced his gaze away again.
After looking around a bit more, they came down from the mountain.
Calling it a mountain hike, their throats were very dry because they hadn’t walked on proper paths until they reached flat ground.
When they reached the car parked in the lot behind the apartment, Shin Hae-wan strode forward, grabbed the trunk of one of the parked cars, and lifted it.
Mu-yun flinched.
It was the car right next to his.
“Supervisor, here.”
Quickly handing bottled water to Byeong-jo, Hae-wan then held out water to Mu-yun.
“Please have some.
It’s lukewarm because I keep it in the car for emergencies.”
“…Thank you.”
He had kindly given water to a stranger yesterday, and now the same.
He seemed very suspicious, but since Byeong-jo had no particular comment, perhaps this was just his usual personality.
Unscrewing the tightly closed water bottle cap and wetting his throat, the heat that had been rising through his body gradually subsided instead of the still-cold early spring chill.
Catching his breath, Mu-yun saw a palm held out in front of him again.
It was jelly.
A bag of jelly with a very sour first taste, packed with sugar crystals, and extremely sweet.
“Have some.”
The eyes looking at him as if it were natural for him to take it were so similar to Won Tae-i’s that Mu-yun stopped breathing for a moment, then barely exhaled.
“No, thank you.”
As if he hadn’t expected a refusal, Hae-wan’s eye-smile paused for a moment, then spread again as he studied Mu-yun’s expression.
“You don’t have to refuse.
I have a lot in the car.”
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