They attempted to relocate both Chaeyeon and Korain, but to no avail. Now, they wait for Hajun, Seokga, and Hwanin to join them in the bustling Creature Café as they sit in a corner, barely listening to the pleasant jazz music and hardly tasting their drinks.

“It’s them,” Somi says, stirring her boba thoughtfully. The straw is smudged with her red lipstick. “I can’t explain it, either, but it has to be…”

Kisa shakes her head. Facts. They’re what Kisa lives off, they’re what she has always thrived on. She lives and breathes facts—cold, unshakable logic. Comfort can be taken in facts’ unchanging rigidities, and facts tell her that inmyunjo are no more inclined to be Unruly than a mouse is inclined to attack a mountain cat. “I don’t think it’s Chaeyeon and Korain,” she says as she pulls out her notebook, flipping to the Suspects page and nibbling on her pen. “It doesn’t fit.”

“What other context would you take the conversation in?”

She falters. “I don’t know what context to take it in. The underwear…”

“No, that was strange.” Somi sighs as she chews on a boba. She lets Kisa scribble away in silence for some time before asking abruptly, “Do you—do you still like romance books?”

Her pen falters at the startlingly random change in topic. Setting it down, Kisa blinks. “I, well, yes, I do,” she admits slowly. “Did…Hani?” Could a serial killer enjoy something as wonderful as a sweeping love story? Surely not.

Right?

Across from her, Somi smiles a bit bashfully—a startling contrast to her usual confident grins—and reaches into her vintage black YSL purse. “I took a few things down with me,” she says, and Kisa grimaces, reminded of the hell that is turn-around day. “This book was one of them.” From the leather depths she withdraws a book that is in the worst possible condition a book can be in. Kisa, who kept her books meticulously uncreased and had heart palpitations whenever she accidentally cracked a spine, cannot help an offended gasp at the sheer mess the novel is in. Yellow pages that look like they’ve been drenched in water at some point or another, a cover that’s half falling apart, and a distinct smell of mildew.

“Great bloody hells,” Kisa hisses, staring at Somi in ripe offense and wounded accusation. “Did you do this?”

Somi blinks, and then smirks, pushing the book over to her. “I preserved it as best as I could, actually. That was all you, unn—Kisa.”

That is the worst thing anybody has ever told her. “Sacrilege,” Kisa croaks, feeling rather faint, and delicately smooths out the cover as to better see the artwork and title.