Title: Sunggyu/Woohyun

Prompt: Sunggyu is a butler to a mysterious man, who throws a dinner party one night that involves fancy cocktails, gourmet food, and murder! The butler and the six guests attempt to solve the case before they are murdered themselves (a fic based on the 1985 movie Clue, which is based on a board game).

Genre: murder mystery, woogyu, supposed to be a comedy, OT7

Word Count: 35,760

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Clue: Infinite Edition

 

Life is a funny thing. Not really the ‘funny’ that provokes laughter, but the odd kind of ‘funny’ that is unexpected and makes one corner of your mouth to turn up and a snort blow out of your nose. Take Sunggyu for example, the way his life turned out made him smirk. However, if any of his acquaintances saw him, they would probably roll on the floor with laughter. Why? Sunggyu left his job as a leader of a small team at a trading firm for this, a life of a butler. He went from being a leader to having to refer to someone as ‘master’ and adhering to an even stricter dress code than a suit and tie. His old interns would have a field day if they saw him serving tea to his master with coattails and white gloves on. But what was ‘funny’ to Sunggyu was that he was making twice the amount of money that he used to and was working shorter hours. And that was the exact price that his dignity was going for at the moment.

At the firm, Sunggyu was gradually losing both his physical and mental health. Working at a place that he had dreamt of all throughout his college career turned out to be a nightmare. Sunggyu had been climbing up the corporate ladder at a reasonable pace, but with every rung, he felt like he was leaving a part of himself behind.

So he left it before he became another person entirely.

Which was another reason why this was ‘funny’ to Sunggyu: he felt more like himself being treated like chattel than he did at the firm.

Why was that? His master was rarely ever there. Sunggyu spent most of his day, lounging around the mansion in a tuxedo, waiting to be called on. And some days, that never happened.

Sunggyu’s master was incredibly secretive and busy. Sunggyu never really saw his face nor did Sunggyu think that he was actually allowed to look at it. What was even his master’s name? Sunggyu didn’t know that either. All he knew was that he was being paid a crap-ton of money to live in a mansion and occasionally serve tea. And Sunggyu was okay with that.

Sunggyu felt like he was mostly a status symbol for his master, like a sports car that just stays in the car and never gets driven. And Sunggyu was more than okay with that. His ‘garage’ was quite luxe.

He could really get used to this life.

But that life soon took a turn when his master announced sudden that he was going to host a dinner party and Sunggyu’s life went from ‘funny’ to ‘hysterical.’

 

Sunggyu prepared all week for this party, and he handed very detailed instructions, which could be rather odd. For example, he sent out invitations that told the guests to dress accordingly to their codenames that they were given. Sunggyu assumed that it must be a theme party, a weird one, but hey, this wasn’t his party.

Sunggyu was also required to put padlocks on every door that led outside and to nail shut the windows. That seemed like a fire hazard, but Sunggyu didn’t think he invited any fire marshals so who cared?

Sunggyu wasn’t the only one with weird instructions. The chef (his aunt who got him the job) had some too. She had to make gluten-free and vegan dishes. They looked weird.

All while these two were prepping, the master, as usual, was away for most of the day. He said that he was busy gathering some last-minute items for the party. And then he asked Sunggyu where one could purchase a lead pipe. Sunggyu laughed. He thought it was a joke. His master was a ‘funny’ man, indeed.

So ‘funny’ that when the day of the party finally arrived, it started while the master was still away. Sunggyu was so shocked when the doorbell rang. He wasn’t even at his station, awaiting it. But instead, he was busy in the bathroom, looking at his own reflection.

So he sprinted towards the door, nearly tripping over his own two feet as he was doing so. He steadied himself with the doorknob and answered the door at the same time.

“Scarlet CEO, I presume,” Sunggyu greeted the guest. As part of his instructions, Sunggyu was told to greet them by their codename. As this man had hair the color of ketchup, the butler guessed at the name. And he was right, to the other’s shock.

“I am,” Scarlet answered with wide eyes. “Am I dressed accordingly?” he whispered to the butler, while his large eyes scanned for the master of the mansion. “I don’t own a ing garish red suit, and I wasn’t about to buy one. Is this good enough?” he asked, fiddling with his hair.

“You are appropriate, CEO,” Sunggyu responded. He then stretched out his arm. “Please, allow me to show you to the lounge, where you can have a drink and await my master.”

“Your master? He’s not here now?” Scarlet asked as he followed the butler into the room.

“I am afraid that my master is away at the moment. Please, step inside,” Sunggyu replied and tried to usher the other inside of the lounge. But the man wouldn’t budge from the threshold.

“What kind of person is your master? Who is he?”

“You don’t know?” Sunggyu accidentally dropped into casual speech, but it was too shocking. The guest didn’t know the host. What kind of party was this?

“Not a clue,” Scarlet seemed timid as he gave that reply, like he should’ve known.

“Well, neither do I,” Sunggyu answered, trying not to sputter into a laugh but fail and did so anyway. Scarlet cocked his head and looked at the butler curiously out of the corner of his eye. “But tonight, like you, he will be going by a codename as well. For tonight only, he is Mr. Boddy.”

“Mr. Boddy?”

“That is correct, Scarlet CEO,” Sunggyu replied. “Now, please, step inside,” he spoke through clenched teeth. Although he was smiling, Sunggyu was wondering if the rest of his guests were going to be as ornery as this one.

Scarlet loosened the tie around his neck. “I guess, I could go for a drink,” he mumbled lowly. He then took a seat at the couch, stiff as a board. “What do you have?”

“Alcohol. Lots of it. Good stuff too. Really expensive.” Needless to say, Sunggyu never butled for a fancy dinner party before nor did he have any bartending experience. But he knew how to read labels and how to pour a glass without spilling. He was hoping that would be enough for tonight and nobody would ask him to make a martini or anything like that.

“I’ll take whatever is decanting in there,” Scarlet said, nodding towards the decanter full of wine. “It should be good if you’re going through the trouble of decanting it, right? What kind of wine is it?”

“It is a red, CEO,” Sunggyu answered with a smile while he poured the glass. Fortunately for him, Scarlet was stunned by his reply, and when he served the glass, the doorbell rang. “Ah, that’s the door. Excuse me,” he pardoned himself and scurried out of the door.

He took in a deep breath, straightened his coat, before opening the door. Oddly, he wasn’t met with the faces but the backs of the guests. However, he could tell who one of the guests were. After all, he was dressed from head to toe in his color. Although from his back, the man sure didn’t look like a colonel.

“Colonel Mustard, welcome,” Sunggyu greeted him. “Are you already acquainted with…” Then the two men turned around and the words were lost on his tongue. He lowered his head and folded suddenly into a bow.

“Peacock-hyung,” the man supplied. “And no, we were not. We met on the way in.”

“As I was telling you,” the other man, Colonel Mustard, resumed the conversation from outside. “Peacock is a shade of blue. You didn’t need to come dressed like this.”

Sunggyu slowly raised his head as he closed the door once the guests stepped inside. Once he caught sight of Peacock’s outfit, Sunggyu once again could not fight down his laughter. The man was dressed in a blouse adorned with peacock feathers, a peacock feather-printed tie, and tucked in his pocket was an actual feather. Peacock whipped his head around towards the butler and Sunggyu averted face, gesturing silently for the two to follow him.

“It would’ve been nice to be told that in the invitation,” Peacock grumbled below his breath at Sunggyu’s back.

“I did not think that I’d need to,” Sunggyu replied in a different tone than usual.

“You sent the invitations?” Colonel Mustard asked.

“Yes, at the request of my master,” Sunggyu responded. “He will join us at any moment, hopefully,” he muttered the last word under his breath. “Please come inside, and I will fix you a drink.”

“I’ll have a martini,” Colonel Mustard answered as he went past the butler, who sneered at his back.

Sunggyu then sighed and pulled up a smile on his face as he turned to Peacock. “And what will you have, Peacock-hyung?”

“Hyung?” the other repeated, barely moving his lips.

Sunggyu laughed and his smile grew uncomfortably wide. “No, you are mistaken. I am just a humble butler. I buttle. You are the hyung, Peacock-hyung,” he reminded the other. “So what would you like to drink?”

Peacock scoffed and his eyes flew all over the room in disbelief. They fell on the man who was still sitting uncomfortably at the edge of the couch. “What are you having?”

“A damn good red,” Scarlet responded.

“I’ll have that then,” Peacock ordered without looking at the butler and went to join the colonel at the other side of the room. They might’ve not known each other, but for now, they were acquainted with no one better than each other, or that was Sunggyu’s take on it. He felt bad for Scarlet, who was ignored on the couch and was watching the other two make small talk. But Sunggyu felt bad even more so for himself. He didn’t ing know how to make a martini. So he poured some vodka in a martini glass, threw in an olive, and thought it to be good enough. While he was making it, the doorbell rang again. So he quickly served the drinks to the guests and excused himself before the colonel could throw his poorly made drink at him.

The next guest appeared to take his codename almost as literally as the peacock did. “Doctor White,” Sunggyu greeted him as soon as he caught sight of the man in his long, white coat. The butler winced. The coat was obviously the man’s own and even had the hospital insignia on it, along with his name: Kim Myungsoo. “Please, allow me to take your coat, doctor,” Sunggyu very forcefully offered and started taking it off. At a party where no one seemed to know each other (mostly) or the host and where everyone was given a new identity, Sunggyu guessed that this coat would be a party foul.

“A-are you sure?” the doctor stammered.

“Yes, your shirt is still white. I am sure that this will be fine,” Sunggyu said as he folded the coat in his hands. “Now, Dr. White, please follow me into the lounge to join the rest.”

“Are you the host?” the other asked timidly and followed the butler down the hall.

Sunggyu turned back towards him and shook his head. “No, I am merely a butler.”

“Oh,” the man looked disappointed, but he appeared more on edge than anything else. His fingers were twitching and his eyes darting everywhere. It was like he thought he was walking into a trap. Sunggyu stopped in front of the lounge for a moment, just holding onto the door knob. What kind of party was this? He started to have a bad feeling about all of this. The doctor’s eyes finally fell on Sunggyu’s face, and the butler forced a smile onto his face. He opened the door.

“Please step inside and I will fix you a drink,” Sunggyu ushered him inside.

And the man just barely stepped inside of the room before stopping again. He exclaimed in shock, “Oh? Sungyeol, what are you doing here?” Sunggyu slapped his forehead. He didn’t know who this Myungsoo person was, but he was horrible at keeping secrets.

“Please!” Sunggyu raised his voice and stepped in front of Myungsoo, but he directed his words towards everyone, “Mr. Boddy requested that you all go by your codenames this evening. I am sure that there is a reason why.” Everyone looked down on the floor and nodded, looking as if they were being scolded. He then turned towards the man behind him. “Now, Dr. White, what would you like to drink?” Sunggyu was well aware that he was sounding more stern than a butler should, but he didn’t care. He wasn’t a very good butler.

“I’m not thirsty,” Myungsoo answered, not even sparing a glance at the butler. Instead, he marched straight towards Scarlet, who looked just as stunned as the doctor did. “What are you doing here?”

“Me? I was about to ask you the same!” Scarlet (apparently named Sungyeol) whispered harshly at the other. The doctor pulled him towards a dark corner in the room. It wasn’t as secluded as he thought it was. The other guests stopped whatever they were doing and were watching the pair have a “secret” conversation.

“Do you know this guy?” Doctor White asked.

Scarlet shook his head. “No, I don’t know anyone except you.” Sunggyu quietly stepped closer to the pair because he wanted to know what was going on too. And with the way Myungsoo just let things slip past his lips, the doctor was just about to reveal everything.

But then his eavesdropping was rudely interrupted by a shout from the hall: “HELLO? IS THERE ANYONE IN HERE? HELLO?”

“, I forgot to lock the door,” Sunggyu cursed as he ran out of the lounge. Once outside, he immediately ran into a man in an emerald green suit, who had opened the door to the bathroom in his search for people. Sunggyu groaned. What man just wandered around a stranger’s house like this? “Mr. Green, it is so nice of you to let yourself in,” Sunggyu called the other while he went up to the front door and locked it.

“I knocked but there was no answer,” Mr. Green defended himself and closed the bathroom door.

Sunggyu walked up to the guest and gestured at the man to follow him. “Pardon, I was a bit busy tending to the other guests,” he apologized and led him towards the lounge.

“Other guests?” he asked. Sunggyu opened up the door to the lounge and waved his hand over everyone in the room. “Oh! Hey, what’s up guys?” Mr. Green greeted everyone as he burst into the room.

“Do you know them?” Sunggyu asked.

Mr. Green shook his head. “Not yet, but I think by the end of tonight, we will all become good friends,” his cheery voice did not match the dark and gloomy atmosphere of the room. But not even the somber faces staring back at him could dampen Mr. Green’s spirit. “Hello, everyone! I’m Mr. Green, and it’s a fiery Saturday night, isn’t it?”

Doctor White suddenly raised his hand and looked towards the butler. “I’m thirsty now,” he announced.

“Me too,” Sunggyu muttered under his breath as he walked towards the wet bar. “What will it be, Doctor?”

Colonel Mustard was leaning against the mantel above the fireplace, and Sunggyu didn’t know if it was the warmth from the fire that made the colonel’s cheeks red or the alcohol. But the man was glowing and giggling. “This guy makes a great martini. So great,” he recommended as he took another sip from his glass. He teetered a bit from knocking his head back too hard while drinking. Luckily, Peacock-hyung was there by his side and steadied him. Yep, it was definitely the alcohol making him red.

“Really?” Myungsoo remarked, smiling at the colonel. But when he turned towards the butler, the doctor said, “I’ll take whisky. On the rocks.”

Sunggyu snapped his fingers and gave him a thumb’s up. “That I can do,” he proudly stated with a smile. He knew fully well that “rocks” meant “ice,” but then he ran into another dilemma. How much should he put in the glass? Sunggyu figured that less was more, meaning less ice meant more whisky and what could be wrong with that. So he put two ice cubes in and filled the rest of the glass with liquor.

He must’ve done something wrong because when he handed the glass to the doctor, he looked confused. Doctor White opened up his mouth about to say something, but his friend cut him off. “Um, there’s someone at the door,” Scarlet spoke up. When Sunggyu headed towards the front door, he was stopped by a hand on his shoulder. It belonged to Sungyeol, who pointed over to the other side of the room. “No, that one,” he revealed.

Sunggyu really wasn’t a very good butler or well acquainted with the house. He’d forgotten that the lounge had a door that led outside. But to be fair, he’d never used it or expected anybody to use it. These guests were strange for sure. Why didn’t this guy just go to the front door like a normal, civilized human being?

“Professor Plum, you can’t come in through this door,” Sunggyu shouted through the door as politely as one could with their voice raised. But the man outside, dressed in deep purple sports coat and black slacks, just squinted looking confused. Sunggyu shook his head, pointed at the door, and made an “x” with his arms. Professor Plum nodded, as if he understood, but he didn’t and tried to open the door again. The butler groaned, “No, Professor, this door is locked.”

“Can’t you open it?” Sungyeol suggested from over the butler’s shoulder.

Sunggyu turned towards him. “No, it’s nailed shut,” he explained. Those were his master’s instructions, and as odd as they were, Sunggyu still carried them through.

“What?” and apparently that seemed strange to the rest of the guests, who stopped whatever they were doing and gasped.

The butler didn’t have the time (or energy) to explain himself, and the professor was still jiggling at the door handle. When Sunggyu looked over, he saw Professor Plum suddenly raise his arms in the air, at a loss. Sunggyu sighed and then screamed, “Come in through the front door, Professor! I will meet you there!” Finally the professor understood. He nodded and began to head towards the front door, and Sunggyu went to go meet him there.

As he was walking out of the room and passing by the others, he heard one of them mutter, “Did he just say the door was nailed shut?”

“What is this? An escape room?” another one of them tried to joke.

“I hope not. I always fail those things.”

Sunggyu sniggered at that behind his gloved hand. He was sure that they would not have to worry about anything like that. Even though he’d sealed off all of the exits aside from the front door, Sunggyu was sure that it was because his master didn’t want to be disturbed, like always. His master was just a strange guy, much like the guy at the front door right now or those in the lounge. Sunggyu plastered a smile on his face before unlocking the door and opening it. “Welcome, professor,” he greeted the man in purple.

“Sorry, I’m really late, and…” the man began apologizing.

The butler politely interrupted him, “Do not worry, Professor Plum. Mr. Boddy is not here yet. Please follow me to join the other guests.”

“Mr. Boddy?” Professor Plum repeated.

“Yes, your host and my master,” Sunggyu explained and gestured at the other to enter the lounge. His arm swept over the room and the other guests. “And here are the others: Dr. White, Scarlet CEO, Mr. Green, Colonel Mustard, and Peacock-hyung. Everyone, this is the last guest: Professor Plum,” he introduced. The professor walked inside and waved to everyone. Sunggyu entered too. “Can I get you anything?”

“An explanation?” Professor Plum responded. “Why are we all here?”

“To have dinner, I presume,” Sunggyu replied with a slight and embarrassed laugh. “Professor, I am merely a butler. I do not know what men like you and my master do for fun.”

Mr. Green popped up from his seat. “I like to dance. Can we do that?” he asked. Then something in the corner of the room caught his eye. “Oh, a record player! I’ll get us started,” he exclaimed, and he went over to start the music without even waiting for the butler to give him the ‘okay.’ It didn’t really matter. Sunggyu didn’t mind. In fact, he was just perplexed. He had no idea that there was a record player in the room.

Although he was in a daze and distracted by Mr. Green’s dancing, Sunggyu noticed something out of the corner of his eye. It was a hand, Myungsoo’s hand, raised high into the air in question. Sunggyu nodded at him. “Do we have to dance?” the doctor asked.

“No, you do not, and Dr. White, you can stop raising your hand,” the butler answered and then the doctor slowly lowered his hand, rubbing the back of his neck in embarrassment. “Just make yourself comfortable,” Sunggyu then addressed the whole room, now noticing how stiff everyone was. Well, everyone except Mr. Green, who was dancing like an octopus to the big band music blasting from the record player.

“In that case,” Colonel Mustard began as he slunk across the room and sank into a spot on the sofa right next to the professor. “How you doing?” he asked smiling so wide that his red cheeks puffed up.

The professor looked the other up and down with an eyebrow cocked. He seemed amused. “I’m doing alright,” he answered.

But the butler’s attention was torn away from that interaction with a tap at his elbow. It was Sungyeol. “I think I’m going to need more of this,” he said and showed him the empty wine glass in his hands. Sunggyu took the glass and went to refill it. But Sungyeol wasn’t the only one who followed him towards the wet bar.

“I think we all do,” Peacock joined in the conversation and placed his own glass on the bar. He then cringed and looked over at Mr. Green, who was still dancing alone and having a good ole time. “What kind of music is this?” the man muttered lowly.

“Mr. Boddy is a man of peculiar tastes,” Sunggyu replied and handed Sungyeol’s glass back. He then took the other one.

“Impeccable taste in wine, though,” Sungyeol retorted and took a sip. “When are we going to meet him?”

“Not soon enough,” Sunggyu answered and slid Peacock’s glass over to him. But he didn’t look at the man. Instead his gaze went over to the other guests. Doctor White kept stepping closer to Mr. Green, wondering if he should dance as well and was swaying a bit to the beat. The colonel and the professor appeared to be in conversation, but all Sunggyu could notice were the colonel’s shoes on the coffee table. “Colonel Mustard, please keep your feet off of the furniture. I just polished that,” he muttered the last bit while still glaring at the man, who was cowering slightly as he lowered his feet back onto the floor.

“How did you come under Mr. Boddy’s service?” Peacock asked.

“Huh.” The butler looked over and now the other was averting his gaze. “Well, how does anyone become a butler?” he answered vaguely. He didn’t owe an answer to this kid. He didn’t owe him anything.
Peacock turned his eyes onto Sunggyu and sipped at the wine while holding the other’s gaze. “I don’t know. You tell me,” he grumbled after he lowered the glass. But his eyes were steady.

“I didn’t even know that people still had butlers,” Scarlet intervened and laughed to himself.

Sunggyu gave a small smile to that man. “As you can tell by his taste in music, my master is old fashioned,” he joked.

“I’ll say,” Sungyeol spoke with a scoff.

“Sunggyu-yah!” a gruff shout came from the hall along with a slam of the front door which sent shivers through the butler’s body. He still wasn’t used to that voice.
“Who’s Sunggyu?” Scarlet asked.

“That would be me,” Sunggyu replied and began walking out of the room. As he did, he noticed that he had 6 extra shadows following him. He turned around and saw all of the guests only a step or two behind him. “Ah, no, please stay here,” Sunggyu insisted. “Go sit back down.” But none of them moved. So he gave up and went to meet his master who was calling for him again. “Yes, Mr. Boddy.”

“, it’s him,” he heard someone mutter. And Sunggyu spared a glance back and saw the 6 men with their heads peering out of the room. He almost began laughing, but it caught in his throat when his master approached. He immediately went down into a deep bow.

“Sunggyu, make sure all of the doors are locked and then meet us in the dining room for dinner,” Mr. Boddy instructed him and handed the house keys over to the butler.

Sunggyu took them with both of his hands and answered, “Yes, sir.” And he lifted his head slightly enough to see the guests duck back into the lounge and to see Mr. Boddy follow them inside with a smirk on his face.

Sunggyu would’ve liked to see how the men meet with each other, but he had a job to do. He tossed the keys in his hands a few times, eyes still on the lounge, as he made his way to the front door. He couldn’t see or hear anything. A pout played upon his lips. He guessed that this was what it was like to be a butler. You’re integral to the party, but not really part of the party. And Sunggyu was beginning to feel envious. He didn’t like missing out on things. And as he was checking the doors and windows of the house, he saw the party file into the dining room. Only one of them looked around the hall, for Sunggyu. And the butler had to pretend like he didn’t notice. He had a job to do.

Eventually, he did finish and was able to meet with everyone in the dining room. “Are all of the doors locked, Sunggyu?” Mr. Boddy asked as soon as Sunggyu creeped into the room and slid alongside of the wall. He was startled that his master noticed him so soon.

“Yes,” Sunggyu answered. He then remembered another part of the instructions that his master gave him earlier. Sunggyu tapped his pocket gently. “The keys are here, sir. You can have them over my cold, dead body,” he repeated the lines from those instructions.

“Good,” Mr. Boddy said, looking up at him and giving an eerie smile that sent shivers down Sunggyu’s spine. He still couldn’t meet the man in the eye and so all he could see was that smile. Sunggyu didn’t even think that his master was capable of smiling, and one as eerie as this, he wouldn’t forget it. “Serve the first course,” his master commanded.

“Yes, sir.”

The first course was soup. Sunggyu didn’t know what kind, but it smelled great. But this time, he wasn’t jealous of the party-goers. It was unnaturally quiet and incredibly awkward. The guests just barely muttered out a “thank you” to him, as if speaking was forbidden. And maybe it was because when he set the soup bowl in front of his master, Mr. Boddy didn’t say a word. But then again, he normally ignored Sunggyu.

After serving everyone, he waited alongside of the wall again. All of the guests still had their hands in their laps and eyes on the host, who paid as much attention to them as he did to Sunggyu. It was weird. He was acting as if he alone and not like he had a party of 6 right in front of him. But the guests couldn’t act as comfortable. They only ate once Mr. Boddy started.

Someone else at the party, much like Sunggyu, couldn’t stand the silence any longer. And Sunggyu really wasn’t surprised to see who it was. “Well, someone's got to break the ice, and it might as well be me,” Peacock-hyung started. Everyone now turned towards him, astonished. Well, everyone except the host who continued ignoring them. But the peacock continued, “I mean, I'm used to filling up dead air; it's part of my work. It's always difficult when a group of new friends meet together for the first time, to get acquainted.”

Mr. Boddy finally looked up from his bowl. “Friends?” he repeated with an amused smile.

The man swallowed harshly before responding with a forced smile. “Yes, friends,” Peacock said again. “I have no reason to think we’re enemies.” Everyone’s heads whipped over towards their host who was now hiding his smirk behind his spoon. Not knowing how to take that, Peacock just continued, “Well, I'm perfectly prepared to start the ball rolling. I mean, I-I have absolutely no idea what we're doing here. Or what I'm doing here, or what this place is about,” he paused and everyone turned their gaze back onto the host, who was too busy picking something from his teeth to pay attention to the rest. A few of them sighed out of aggravation. “And I will continue to have no idea because our gracious host doesn’t seem to want to divulge,” Peacock dissed their host but with a cheerful tone, surely something that he’d learned to do from his job, to play things off as a joke. Or maybe this whole thing was a joke? “But I’ve been involved in enough hidden cameras in my life, and I can spot one from a mile away. So I am determined to enjoy myself.” Peacock picked up his spoon again and ate. “This soup's delicious, isn't it?” he spoke with his mouth full, before he even swallowed.

Now the others weren’t looking at Peacock-hyung or the host but around the room. Sunggyu too. A hidden camera? He hadn’t thought of that. But he wouldn’t put anything past his master. He didn’t even know him or his real name. Maybe all of this, even his butlerdom, was just one big joke.

“Is this really a hidden camera?” Scarlet asked the host directly. “Is it?”

Mr. Boddy sniggered. “No.”

“Good then I can eat the soup without fear of being poisoned,” Professor Plum spoke up. And Sunggyu guessed that it was supposed to be a joke. But just like the hidden camera, it now seemed plausible to everyone. They all put their spoons down, except Mr. Green who was looking rather red in the face as he launched into a coughing fit. All of the other guests turned white as they watched him. Dr. White was about to get out of his chair to help, but Mr. Green waved him off.

“I’m okay,” he wheezed, while smacking his chest. “It went down the wrong pipe” Mr. Green somehow still managed to smile while coughs tore through his throat and tears ran down his cheek. “Soup delicious by the way. And really hot. I think I scalded my throat.” He winced and shook his head, while wiping his tears away. “Everything’s good,” he muttered lowly before starting to eat again.

Dr. White sat back down, eyes still on the man. “I think I’m done,” he said with a quick glance over at the butler. I’d be too, Sunggyu thought. The soup seemed rather risky now. The butler would be happy to save the doctor from uncertain death. But what was this? Myungsoo actually finished. He ate it all to the last drop. Sunggyu looked up at the man quizzically. When did he eat it all? Where did it all go?

“Me too,” Sungyeol told the butler too. And his dish was nearly full. “It, um, didn’t agree with me.”

Sunggyu picked up the bowls and was about to walk into the kitchen but then felt a tug on his coattails. It was Peacock-hyung. He offered his bowl to the other, saying, “You can buttle this too.”

 

Sunggyu dropped the three bowls into the sink once he entered the kitchen. “You can buttle this too,” he mocked the other. His lip curled up into a sneer. “I’ll buttle your right out of this house. That’s what I’m going to do.”

“Are the guests giving you a hard time, Sunggyu?” his aunt asked him as she was plating the other dishes.

“Yes,” Sunggyu answered with a deep pout. He walked up closer to her, with his hands in his pocket, playing with the key. “Auntie, do you know any of these people?”

“Yes, all,” she answered in a distracted voice.

“All?” he asked. He didn’t find it as uninteresting as she did. “How?”

She smiled at him. “I have my ways,” she gave a vague answer.

But that was how his aunt was, evasive. She never really told him how she got her job either or how this butler position suddenly was available just when Sunggyu needed a job. He figured that there was a reason for her hiding these things from him. After all, he hid things from her, like why he quit his job, among other things.

“They are all a bit…odd,” Sunggyu changed the subject as his gaze went towards the kitchen door, imaging the people sitting in the dining room.

“Well, they are all people, Sunggyu. We’re all a bit odd. It’s the ones that don’t seem odd that you have to watch out for,” she responded.

He whipped his head back. “Do I seem odd to you?”

“A man that left a career at a large trading firm to become a butler? Yes, Sunggyu, you’re very odd,” she .

“I guess,” Sunggyu admitted, barely. He was still pouting as he responded, “But you don’t seem odd, Auntie. You at least studied to become a chef.”

Her smile reappeared. “The next course is ready,” another dodge and another dish for Sunggyu to serve. And this one looked very unappetizing. Salad. Gross.

“Yes,” he chirped and picked it up.

 

The soup was probably the highlight of the whole dinner. It went downhill from there. Professor Plum kept making awful puns in order to lift the mood, but instead of laughing, the whole table ended up cringing. Colonel Mustard kept asking for his wine glass to be refilled. It seemed like he decided the only way he could survive this night was with liquid courage. Fortunately, Sunggyu knew from the martini incident that the colonel didn’t know his alcohol well, and so when he replaced the wine with almost expired grape juice, the colonel did nothing except praise the vintage. Then there was Scarlet who continuously asked Mr. Boddy questions about the evening but received no straight answer. And now he was seething in his seat, temper flaring as brightly as his hair. He snapped at Sunggyu once or twice when the butler tried to take away his plate before he was done. And then there was Scarlet’s friend, Dr. White who only focused on eating. He finished his dishes before everyone else and then politely wait for the next course to be served. Although he ate quickly, at least he didn’t eat as chaotically as Mr. Green who got food everywhere and kept choking on it.

Finally, there was Peacock-hyung, who wasn’t speaking a word to anyone now in spite of the big speech he made at the beginning. It seemed like his confidence had waned after the response to his speech wasn’t good. Sunggyu couldn’t tell if he was sulking or just disappointed. But the butler could tell how the other felt like he was suffocating. Peacock had tried to talk again but always missed the opening somehow. So he’d choke on the words much like Mr. Green was choking on his food.

And Sunggyu felt he was suffocating too. He couldn’t do anything to improve the situation except clear the table. He himself was dying to talk and improve the atmosphere. But he just buttoned his lips and remained silently against the wall.

Sunggyu finally spoke again after his master told him, “Sunggyu, go get the bags from the hall and meet us in the lounge.”

“Yes, sir,” and with that, he scurried out of the room, grateful to get away from the tense atmosphere. He felt like he could breathe again, which was good because the bags in hall were really big. Sunggyu sighed as he took off his gloves, held them in his mouth as he rolled up his sleeves. He tried lifting them. “, these are heavy,” he mumbled, teeth still clenching tightly on the gloves. He tried walking with them, but he quickly decided that this was not worth hurting himself. So he put the bags back down, wiped the sweat from his forehead, and began dragging the bags along the floor down the hall until he reached the lounge. He let go of the bags again, took his gloves from his mouth, and placed them on his hands again while straightening out the rest of his uniform. When he was done, Sunggyu lifted up the bags and entered the lounge.

“Ah, Sunggyu, I was just telling them about the lovely gifts that I prepared for them,” Mr. Boddy seemed incredibly delighted to see his manservant again. It was weird. Sunggyu just nodded in response and showed the bags to everyone else in the room, who were all crammed on the couch and loveseat that was positioned across from Boddy’s armchair. “Please, hand them out,” now that was even stranger, his master saying “please.” But he didn’t dwell on it and handed out the gifts as he was told. And now he realized why the bags were so heavy. They were filled with manila envelopes and gifts weighing a few pounds each.

Everyone else seemed as equally surprised by the bulging envelopes and heavy boxes, except Colonel Mustard seemed pleasantly surprised. “Oh! I love receiving gifts from strange men,” he squealed.

Scarlet, who was sitting next to him, leaned over and asked, “Just how often do you get gifts from strangers?”

“Not strangers,” Colonel Mustard replied and corrected him, “Strange men.” He placed the gift on his yellow lap, fingers fiddling with the bow. “And that happens quite often.” Mustard shook the gift and exclaimed excitedly, “I wonder what it could be!”

“Don’t shake yours too hard, Colonel,” Mr. Boddy warned him. “You might maim the person next to you.”

The colonel smiled broadly and put the gift back down. “Ah, so you do know what I like,” he responded with a laugh. Sunggyu shot a glare at him as he handed the last, and heaviest, gift to Dr. White. What a strange thing to say!

The doctor thought so too. Myungsoo asked the colonel, “Do you know him?” Him, being Mr. Boddy.

The colonel shook his head. “No, but he seems to know me very well,” he answered. And all the host had to add to that was a knowing laugh, which almost sounded maniacal.

“Can we open these?” Mr. Green asked the host, but his fingers were already working on the wrapping paper.

“No, not yet. Patience is a virtue, Mr. Green,” Mr. Boddy chided him. He must’ve been waiting for all of the gifts to be handed out, but there seemed to be an extra envelope. It was smaller and lighter than everyone else’s. And unlike the others, it had no name on it.

Sunggyu went up to his master’s side and whispered into his ear, “Who is this one for, sir?” He showed the envelope to him.

Mr. Boddy whispered back to him, “That one is for you.”

“What?”

His master laughed again, just like he did before, and it sent chills down Sunggyu’s spine. Sunggyu looked down at the envelope. It was for him? Was it more instructions? Money? No, that cackling laughter made Sunggyu believe that there was something else inside.

“Everyone, you don’t know who I am,” Mr. Boddy finally came out with it, when he addressed the whole room. He leaned back in his armchair, crossed one leg over the other, and brought his finger up to his smirking lips. His eyebrow arched. “Or you don’t think you do,” he continued. The host then waved his hand. “Please, open the envelopes first.” And the guests did. Sunggyu didn’t. He was waiting to see what everyone else had in theirs first.

And whatever it was, it didn’t seem good.

“What the…”

“How?”

“What’s in yours?” Professor Plum asked as he tried to take a peek at the inside of Peacock-hyung’s envelope.
“Don’t look!” the other yelped back, hugging the envelope to his chest. His eyes then went from the professor to the butler, filled with terror.

Scarlet flared up once again. “Why do you have these? Who are you?” he growled.

That laugh, it happened again. “I am the man that knows all of your secrets,” Mr. Boddy revealed, hiding his broad smile behind his hands.

“You’re…you’re the one that’s been blackmailing me?” Doctor White stammered.

Blackmail? Sunggyu clenched onto the envelope in his hands.

“Not just you,” Mr. Boddy spoke in a cheerful tone. “All of you.” His arm waved over the room, and as he did so, the dread, fear, and panic awashed over all of the guests. Some of the scrambled to hide their envelopes. Professor Plum sat on it. Mr. Green was nervously tearing at the corner with his teeth. All of them were too occupied with themselves to notice Boddy say, “My butler excluded...for the time being.” Oh, but Sunggyu heard that loud and clear.

The butler swallowed harshly as he looked down at the envelope in his hands. Thousands of images flashed through his mind as he guessed what could’ve been inside. What was in there? It could really be anything. There were so many possibilities. And they all added up to…

Blackmail.

Kim Sunggyu had nothing and this man was blackmailing him for it. The butler quickly stuffed the envelope inside of his coat, still unopened, and he raised his eyes up to his master, who was watching the chaos he created with great delight. Sunggyu too looked at the guests then, as they squirmed about. I’m not like them. They have a lot more to lose, he thought. Then his attention snapped back towards Mr. Boddy who started chuckling and glanced over at his butler.

“This is fun, isn’t it?” he remarked. And Sunggyu couldn’t respond back with anything that wasn’t a garbled string of noises. So Mr. Boddy put his fingers to his lips and his eyes drifted down to Sunggyu’s chest, right where the envelope was.

And that’s when Sunggyu understood why he was being blackmailed. Mr. Boddy didn’t want his money. He wanted his loyalty, his silence.

Sunggyu closed his eyes, wishing that he was anywhere else but here now and that he was still at his old, ty job in which he didn’t have to pretend that he knew how to make a martini or how to buttle. He’d just hate his life like most people. But he wouldn’t be hating his life and being blackmailed like he was now.

“Please, open the boxes next,” his master instructed the guests. And they did, to Sunggyu’s surprise. Why listen to the guy who was blackmailing you? They all seemed a bit naïve.

“Okay, so he doesn’t know me very well,” Colonel Mustard said as he pulled out a long knife from the box. He inspected it carefully as he muttered, “What am I supposed to do with this?”

Professor Plum nudged the colonel. “I’ll trade you,” he offered and showed the other his lead pipe. And Mustard looked like he was considering it, but his thoughts were interrupted by a loud shout.

“Oh! It’s really going to be a fiery Saturday!” Mr. Green exclaimed as he flourished his candlestick gift. The people around him ducked as not to get hit accidentally. “Let’s light it up!”

But there was one person who remained still, just staring down at the contents of his box, not taking anything out of it. “This really what I think it is?” Peacock-hyung mumbled to himself.

Scarlet, while playing with his new wrench in his hands, leaned over and peered into the other’s box. “It looks like a noose to me,” he remarked with a nod.
“Then it is exactly what I think it is,” Peacock muttered as he lifted the noose from the box, shook his head, and slowly put it back down. “I hope it’s not a hint.”

Sungyeol shrugged. He was more curious about what everyone received as a gift rather than why they received them. Turning towards his friend, he asked Dr. White. “What did you get? I got this dumb thing.” He casually showed the other his wrench as if it was a simple trading card. Myungsoo tilted his box for the other to look inside. “Holy !” Scarlet exclaimed and his jaw dropped.

That was when someone finally dared to talk to their host. “Mr. Boddy, what is the meaning of this?” Dr. White as he removed the revolver from his box and placed it on the coffee table. The loud clank of the metal hitting the glass echoed ominously throughout the completely silent room. Everyone stared down at the gun, except for Myungsoo whose dark eyes were boring into the host, drilling for an answer.

An answer which Mr. Boddy was now willing to give. He stood up from his seat, with his arms behind his back as if he were some Joseon king. “In your hands, you each have a lethal weapon. If you denounce me to the police, you will also be exposed and humiliated. I'll see to that in court,” he revealed. Mr. Boddy then glanced over at the butler with an eerie smile. And Sunggyu’s heart began racing. “But, if one of you kills Sunggyu now, no one but the seven of us will ever know,” he turned to the others and spoke in a loud whisper, as if to insure the secrecy of it. But Sunggyu couldn’t care less about that! Screw secrets! His master just put his head on the chopping block! He looked over to Mr. Boddy in shock. Maybe he had misheard. Why would they kill him? “He has the key to the front door, which he said would only be opened over his dead body. I suggest we take him up on that offer.” That was why! That was why Sunggyu was going to die! He scrambled to get the key out of his pocket and throw it at the others. He wasn’t going to die over a ing key. But before Sunggyu could find it (how many ing pockets were in his butler’s uniform? How many pockets does a butler actually need?), Mr. Boddy had walked over to the wall and continued, “The only way to avoid finding yourselves on the front pages is for one of you to kill Sunggyu. NOW!”

Mr. Boddy flipped the light switch and plunged the room into darkness.

And Sunggyu hit the floor.

He didn’t fall to the ground because he was shot but because he wanted to save himself. He curled up tightly into a ball, making himself as small as possible, and hid his precious head behind his hands. However, he didn’t make himself small enough because he felt someone’s hands on him. Whimpering, he slapped his attacker away the best he could, and then the hands stayed off.

But the hands were the least of his worries. There was a gunshot, followed by screams, lots of them. Sunggyu screamed too. Who wouldn’t? A friggin’ gun just went off!

But once Sunggyu gathered that he himself hadn’t been shot (which took longer than it should’ve because he lost his mind), he risked his life and stood up on his knees. He was too curious now. If he didn’t get shot, then who did?

Everyone else seemed to be just as curious.

“What? Who was that?”

“No one move!” another yelled, most likely Scarlet. “Someone turn on the lights!”

“How can anyone turn on the lights if they can’t move?” that sounded like Professor Plum.

“Really? Someone just got shot and you want to talk about semantics?” Yeah, that was definitely Scarlet.

“Everyone just be quiet!” Sunggyu snapped as he got onto his feet. If anyone was going to turn on the light, it seems like he was going to be him. He went over to the wall and patted it until he found the switch. He flipped it and the room was flooded with light. The only people standing were Sunggyu and Scarlet. Everyone else was currently getting up from the floor, except for Colonel Mustard who was still sitting down and casually drinking as if nothing had happened. The butler sighed and shook his head at everyone (as if he wasn’t just fearing for his life a few seconds ago). “See, everything is fine. No one died.”

“Then what’s that?” Dr. White asked as he pointed down at the floor, right next to Sunggyu’s feet. And when the butler looked down, his heart leapt into his throat. And he leapt a good foot or two away.

“That’s just a dead body,” Scarlet said casually, until he realized what had just come out of his mouth. “Holy ! It’s Mr. Boddy’s dead body! Mr. Boddy is dead!”

“Let me check,” Professor Plum offered his services. He walked over and knelt down. He rolled Mr. Boddy’s body over. The man’s eyes were still open wide, unblinking. The professor’s hand hovered over the host’s mouth to check if he was breathing. “Yep, he’s dead.” Apparently he’d felt nothing. Plum closed the man’s eyes and then stood up, while wiping his hands furiously because dead bodies are gross.

Sunggyu’s eyes were still glued to the dead body. But his mind’s eye flickered everywhere. His boss just died. He was unemployed now. What was he going to do? Could he even list this job on his resume with his boss dead? Would he really want to go on a job interview and say that his last job was buttling? He thought he’d have this job for much longer. He thought he’d be set for life, but now with his boss’ life at its end…wait a second…Sunggyu could potentially get blamed for this. He could get charged with murder!

Now he was livid.

“Y-yah! Who’s responsible? Which one of you punks did this?” he yelled at the guests, pointing at the body.

“Punks?” Peacock-hyung picked out while cocking his eyebrow.

Sunggyu ignored him. “Which one of you guys had the gun?” he asked.

Everyone pointed to Dr. White and shouted in unison, “He did!”

Well, except for Dr. White who had his hands up in the air, and no gun in them. “I didn’t do it!” Myungsoo exclaimed in shock. “I placed the gun on the table. You all saw me! I put it down, and I never picked it back up. I swear,” he stammered through his defense. Everyone looked down at the coffee table. There was no gun laying on top of the table, but it had been cast down onto the floor. Sunggyu looked back up to the doctor who swallowed harshly and repeated more earnestly, “I never did.” He then held out his hands to the butler. “You can test me for GSR.”

“GSR?”
“Gunshot residue. Which would be a good idea if anyone of us knew how to do that,” Sunggyu answered. “Wait…does anyone know how to do that?” Everyone shook their heads.

“We can google it!” Mr. Green suggested. He whipped out his phone. “Butler, what’s the wifi password?”

“There is no wifi,” the butler answered. Everyone groaned. “He’s…old fashioned.”

“What kind of hellhole is this place?” Colonel Mustard muttered, still sitting down in his seat with his legs crossed.

“There’s no service here either,” Peacock added. He had his phone out too. Everyone else soon followed suit and muttered some swears when they saw that they didn’t have service either. This was already old news to Sunggyu. At first this seclusion had bothered him, but he spent much less money on micro transactions for phone games so he thought it was for the best…until right now. Now they were cut off from all contact, with a dead body in the room. This wasn’t good.

A few of the men wandered about the room, desperate to find a signal.

Dr. White didn’t. He fell back down to his seat, with his eyes on the body. And Sunggyu’s eyes stayed on him. Out of all of the guests, Myungsoo had the heaviest envelope, which meant that he was getting blackmailed for quite a lot of things. And the fact that Myungsoo had received the gun as a gift, that wasn’t random. It was planned. He was given the easiest method to kill probably because he had the most to gain from it. So did he?

“Wait!” Someone exclaimed. It was Professor Plum again. He snapped his fingers and ran back over to the dead body. “He’s not bleeding. There’s no bullet wound!” he pointed out, gesturing around the body. He then knelt down again and flipped the body over, showing the pristine back. He looked up at Sunggyu, shocked. “He wasn’t shot!”

“Are you sure he’s dead?”

The professor lifted Mr. Boddy’s arm and let it go. The arm flopped back down like a limp noodle. “Yeah, I’m sure. Don’t need to be a doctor to figure this one out,” he retorted.

Sunggyu rolled his eyes at the professor so dramatically that something caught his eyes, near the light switch. “Wait,” Sunggyu muttered. He walked over to the switch. His hand grazed against the wall, over the rip in the wallpaper and the fresh hole in the wall. “There’s a bullet hole right here. And if he was standing here…” The butler stepped over the body and tried to get into the position that his master had been just moments before. But no matter how close that he got to the body, it wasn’t close enough. The bullet hole was too far away from where he was standing. That had to mean that…

“It missed!” Mr. Green yelped.

Sunggyu had already bent down to examine the body with Professor Plum. But the professor found it first. “Yup, it clipped his ear,” he said, pointing at slightly blooded mark on the shell of the ear.

“If the bullet didn’t kill him, then what did?” Peacock-hyung asked the question on everyone’s mind.

“Maybe he was poisoned,” Mr. Green suggested.

Colonel Mustard, who had been a little too calm this whole time, apparently had just reached his limit. He choked on his wine, and his already large eyes overtook his entire face. “ARE WE ALL GOING TO DIE?” he yelled. He dropped the glass onto the floor and his hands flew to his face, looking like the ‘Scream’ painting. “OH MY GOD! WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE! WE ALL ATE THE SAME THING! WE’RE GONNA…”

Slap!

Sungyeol looked over at everyone, who were all shocked that he’d just slapped the colonel. “It stopped the screaming,” he defended himself. And to be fair, it did. The colonel didn’t even seem offended by it. He actually seemed grateful for it. He just sat there in a daze, holding his red cheek.

So Sunggyu decided not to be bothered by it either. “Right, we’re all still alive, so that’s good,” he said.

“And probably not poison,” Professor Plum added.

“True.”

“What about an aneurysm?” Dr. White suggested. A few of them looked at him blankly, and so he explained, “A vessel in his brain just popped, and it killed him.”

“Now?” Peacock challenged.

Myungsoo shrugged. “Why not?”

“Is there a phone around here?” Peacock asked. He walked towards Sunggyu. “We need to call the police or an ambulance. We need to call something to deal with this.” He grimaced down at the body.

“No,” Sunggyu answered with a shake of his head.

“No?” they all repeated.

“Well, who has a working landline anymore?” the butler responded.

“I thought you said he was old-fashioned,” Scarlet reminded him.

“He’s also reclusive,” Sunggyu responded. He then looked down at the body. “Or he was.”

“I’m still not getting any reception.” Sunggyu looked up from the body and at Mr. Green who had been talking and who currently was wrapped up in the curtain by the window, still searching for a signal.

“It’s hopeless,” Peacock murmured and let out a heavy sigh as he watched Mr. Green fight to get himself free of the curtain. “Let’s just get out of here and call for help,” he said to everyone else that wasn’t a curtain burrito. He then turned to Sunggyu, who flinched. “Can you unlock the door please?”

“Oh right, the key,” Sunggyu mumbled as he searched his pockets. His many pockets. There were a lot of pockets in his uniform, in his jacket, in his pants, in his shirt, in his vest, in his coat…again. But in none of them was the key. Sunggyu’s eyes went wide and looked about the room. “I don’t have the key. I don’t have the key!” His head swung around as he looked around himself on the floor. “Where did they go?”

“Retrace your steps!” Scarlet suggested.

“Right!” Dr. White came up to his friend’s side. “Where were you today?”

“Okay,” Sunggyu mumbled as he chewed his lips and walked out of the lounge. Everyone followed him outside, even Mr. Green did once he got himself free of the curtain. The butler looked up and down the hall and stopped in his steps. A few of the guests crashed into his back and into each other, not expecting the butler to stop so soon. But Sunggyu didn’t mind because his mind was already tracing his steps that night. He turned towards everyone, who were watching him with their utmost attention as a tightly packed crowd. “At the start of the evening, my aunt, the chef, was in the kitchen, by herself, cooking the dinner. I was in the hall,” he began. He placed his hand over his heart. “I know because I was there.”

“Not that far back!” Scarlet snapped, rolling his eyes.

“Then when?” Sunggyu asked.

Colonel Mustard poked his head from around the doctor. “When did you last use the key?”

Sunggyu glanced over at the door, with his hands on his hips. “I…don’t know,” he stammered.

“It was when we were eating dinner,” Sungyeol interjected. “I remember because of the ‘over my cold, dead body,’” he ‘mocked’ the other, or just spoke in a deep voice with a lisp that Sunggyu knew didn’t sound like him. But it wasn’t time to argue over that stuff.

“I was told to say that,” the butler defended himself. “At dinner…” his voice drifted off to when he realized the last time he’d held the key.

“So we should look in the dining room!” Mr. Green exclaimed and jumped up from the crowd.

Sunggyu shook his head. “I came into the dining room and greeted everyone. And then I went into the kitchen. I know I had it in there.”

“THE KITCHEN!” Myungsoo shouted while pointing up in the air. He then darted into the kitchen and everyone followed him, except Sunggyu. He walked into the kitchen while still checking his pockets. Where could’ve the key gone? And these guests, none of them appeared to be guilty of murder…yet. But he also didn’t know them that well. Heck, he didn’t even know the real names of three of the guests. And he wouldn’t know two of them if Myungsoo was more aware of what a terribly dangerous situation that he was in.

But then again, were any of them aware that they’d meet their blackmailer tonight?

Sunggyu walked into the kitchen and stood near the doorway while watching everyone search frantically for the key. Why did any of them come tonight? Did one of them suspect that he’d meet Mr. Boddy tonight? Maybe he came ready for a confrontation, ready to kill.

The butler rubbed his temples and groaned. His brain was about to burst. He thought he’d escaped a stressful life when he left the corporate world behind but now, he was the most stressed out that he had ever been in his whole life.

Right now, he could be in a room with a killer. And worst of all, he couldn’t even begin to tell who it was. They all seemed so normal…except for the fact that each of them were being blackmailed.

Sunggyu shook his head. He could think about which one of them did it later. But for now, he had to find the key. “It’s probably somewhere around here,” he announced as he walked inside. He then pulled Myungsoo by the shoulder and out of the fridge. “And it’s most likely not in the fridge.”

“Stress makes me hungry,” the doctor mumbled with a chicken leg wedged in between his teeth. Sunggyu sniggered at that and decided to let the doctor be. He began surveying the kitchen again. He stopped at the sink and peered inside. There were stacks of bowls and plates, along with piles of silverware, but nothing that resembled a key.

A low whistle came from behind him. Sunggyu whipped his head around. “That’s a lot of dishes for you to buttle.” Peacock-hyung remarked as he strutted by. Sunggyu bit his tongue, turned his head back to the sink, and acted like he didn’t hear it. It’s not worth it. I just need to find the key, get out, and put an end to this awful night.

“What does the key look like?” Mr. Green asked as he walked out of the pantry.

Sunggyu spun around and leaned against the sink, arms crossed over his chest. “It’s gold,” he said after humming in thought for a few moments. “And has ridges,” he quickly added. “And a hole at the top so that you can put a ring through. It doesn’t have a ring though.”

“So it looks like a key,” Professor Plum retorted with an arch of his eyebrow.

“What else would it look like?” the butler snapped back and lifted himself from off the sink. “Just help me find it.”

The butler then crouched down onto the floor. Maybe it had slipped underneath the island. He brought his head close to the floor and crawled forward while still looking under the island. Nothing. He saw nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing…Something!

He hit that something with his head. Rubbing the sore spot, Sunggyu raised his head and saw Peacock doing the same. A ‘sorry’ had slipped past his lips before he realized who it was. Now he wanted to take it back.

Peacock-hyung opened his eyes, and they darted all over the other’s face, and then around them. Sunggyu’s eyes followed them. Everyone else was a good few feet away, distracted. Sunggyu swallowed harshly, knowing what was going to come next: a low whisper, “Hey, Sunggyu-hy…”

“I found it!”

Sunggyu immediately jumped up. Colonel Mustard was holding something small and golden in his hand. The butler squinted, and then he groaned once he made out what the colonel was holding. “That’s a tiny fork!” he cried.

The colonel looked down at his hand and then giggled when he realized what he was actually holding. “Oh, it is,” he sounded terribly amused by it. “I must be drunker than I thought.” He then flicked the prongs with his fingers. “But, look. Ridges.” And he began giggling uncontrollably again.

“Yeah, he’s drunk,” Scarlet remarked with shake of his head as he walked by the giggling man.

“Hey, wait, the ridges!” Mr. Green exclaimed and hopped over towards the colonel. He took the tiny fork from the other’s hand. He squinted at the fork as he held it up. “I mean, the prongs,” he corrected himself, but apparently that didn’t sound right to him either. “The fork tails?”

“Is he drunk too?” Peacock whispered to the butler.

But Mr. Green had heard it and belted out, “No!” He brandished the fork at the colonel next to him, who wasn’t even startled but was amused. “Maybe we could use it to pick the lock!” Mr. Green suggested with a smile.

“It won’t work,” Sungyeol dismissed it as he was searching through a drawer. He smirked to himself while searching. “But maybe this might!” he exclaimed as he pulled out a skewer.

Myungsoo popped by his side. “TO THE DOOR!” he exclaimed and began pushing his friend out of the kitchen.

 

All of them were gathered at the front door, watching impatiently as Sungyeol tried to pick the lock. Sunggyu stood behind the rest. He still didn’t quite trust all of them yet. He especially didn’t trust that one. The one who was looking at him right now, the one who looked like he was contemplating whether he should walk over to him or not. When it seemed like he would…

Click!

Every eye fell on Sungyeol, who turned back towards them, half the skewer in his hand and the other stuck in the keyhole of the door.

“It broke,” he confessed.

Everyone groaned.

Professor Plum turned towards the butler. “So it wasn’t in the kitchen. Where else have you been?” he asked.

“The dining room,” Sunggyu answered.

“TO THE DINING ROOM!” Myungsoo exclaimed. He was about to bolt again into the dining room but he buffered when he saw that everyone else didn’t have the same sense of urgency. No, in fact, everyone seemed more sluggish, hopeless. The doctor looked around slightly confused. “Oh, are we not doing that anymore?”

“It got less fun after I broke this,” Sungyeol remarked as he got up from the floor. He then began walking, leading the group at a slow pace back into the dining room.

“Are we allowed to have fun when someone gets murdered?” Myungsoo whispered lowly when he rejoined his friend’s side.

But the colonel was the one to answer: “It depends.”

Mr. Green was intrigued by that. “How about now?” he asked.

“This is…interesting,” Colonel Mustard concluded in a more serious tone. He was slowly sobering up and it was evident by his expression. He picked up his step and overcame Sungyeol as the leader of the group.

Sunggyu then felt a tug at his sleeve. He didn’t look over because he felt like he knew who it would be. But when the person tugged him a few more times and pressed into his side, the butler knew it was someone it. It ended up being Professor Plum. “Don’t you think if anybody was the killer, it’d be him?” he hissed at the butler and nodded towards the man in yellow. “He seems a bit…unhinged.”

Sunggyu pulled his arm away from the other. “He didn’t have the gun,” he replied. He didn’t want to defend the colonel. He found the man just as suspicious as the professor did, but Mustard didn’t seem to have the opportunity.

Professor Plum cocked his eyebrow. “So you think the doctor did it?”

“I don’t know,” the butler mumbled. This conversation was starting to make him feel uneasy. Just concentrate on finding the key and getting out.

“I don’t think it was him,” Peacock-hyung interjected. He appeared at the other side of the professor. “I don’t think it was the doctor either.”

The professor scoffed, “Then who do you think did?”

Peacock looked the professor up and down. “You,” he said and then walked more quickly to join the colonel in the front.

“Wait…what?” the professor was stunned and stopped in his tracks for a moment, before joining everyone else again.

Sunggyu was stunned too. That man, in the front, he must’ve sensed something about those two that Sunggyu hadn’t…or was he just trying to confuse him? If it was the latter, it worked.

Just what are you trying to do?

What are we all trying to do?

Escape.

 

They had checked the dining room, the hall, and even the bathroom in the hall, but there was no key to be found. Now they were back in the lounge, where they found nothing except Mr. Boddy, still dead and still where they left him. And a great sense of dread washed over Sunggyu. He might know where the key was.

“The key isn’t here either!” Sungyeol shouted as he flipped down the toilet seat and got back onto his feet.

“I was nowhere else!” Sunggyu snapped. He was losing his patience along with his sanity now. This wasn’t good. It really wasn’t good. His mind flew back to that dark room. Was it before or after the gun fired? He couldn’t recall. But the hands, those hands searching his body, he remembered those so well.

He took it.

And that realization slowly dawned on the others too. “Somebody must’ve stolen them,” the doctor was the first to say it.

And the next person to speak was the one to say what they all feared: “That same person probably killed Mr. Boddy and is lying in wait to make their escape.”

It was obvious now. The killer had the key.

“Everyone, turn out your pockets,” Sunggyu commanded. Surprisingly, everyone obeyed, and turned out all of their pockets. Or what seemed to be all of their pockets. And nothing was in them aside from phones and car keys.

“This won’t do,” Professor Plum pointed out. “You might as well strip search everyone,”

“Let’s not go that far. Just give me your weapons,” Sunggyu ordered them around again. If they listened to him once, they’d probably do it again.

“What? Why?” Or not.

“Well, obviously I’m not the killer because I don’t have the key,” the butler reasoned. “I’ll lock up the weapons so that we could all be safe.”

At that, Peacock-hyung walked away from everyone else and towards the boxes. He picked up the noose from his own box, came back to the group, and handed the knotted rope over to the butler, who didn’t really want to touch it but still accepted it with both hands. “Fine by me. I’m glad to get rid of it,” he muttered below his breath. He faced the other guests. “I trust him.”

“Fine.” Everyone else relented and went to pick up their own ‘gifts.’

“Good,” Sunggyu remarked as he twisted the rope nervously in his hands. He gave the guests a tenuous smile. “Follow me. We’re all sticking together.”

And no one objected to that at all.

With weapons in hand, they filed into the study and one by one placed their weapon into a safe. Sunggyu took the key that was on top of the safe and used it to lock the door. When he finished, he faced the guests again. “There. All safe.” Now there was no way for the killer to kill again, at least.

“But are they really?” Sungyeol protested. He looked very uneasy. “Can we really trust you with the keys? You lost the other one.”

“Good point,” Professor Plum agreed and came up to the butler, holding out his hand. “I can take them.”

The butler recoiled, “Why you?”

“Because I’m not the killer,” the professor reasoned, weakly. The only person that Sunggyu could trust not to be the killer was himself.

“Isn’t that what a killer would say?” Scarlet didn’t like the idea either, or seem to trust the professor.

“How do you know what a killer would say?” Professor Plum rebutted.

“I don’t. I was just assuming,” Sungyeol replied, with his hands up in the air.

“You mean, you were just giving yourself away,” the other retorted.

“Shut up!” Sunggyu interjected. He couldn’t take it anymore. It was giving him a headache. “Just be quiet, or I’ll flush the key down the toilet,” he threatened while trying to rub away his headache.

“Actually,” Mr. Green popped up. He was beaming and it confused Sunggyu. “That’s a really good idea. Let’s do that.”

“Oh.” Sunggyu lowered his hands. He smiled too. “Well, I guess we could.”

Now all seven of them were in the bathroom, or most of them were in the bathroom and two of them had to poke their heads into the bathroom while standing in the hallway the hallway. And Sunggyu unceremoniously plopped the key into the toilet and flushed it. Everyone was silent as they watched the key flow into the drain.

“Did it go down?” of course Professor Plum was the first to speak up.

Sunggyu snapped and pointed into the toilet, “Do you wanna check?”

The professor waved his hand. “Nah, I’m good.”

“Well,” Sunggyu began as he pushed his way through the others to get out of the bathroom. Once out in the hall, he turned around and saw six faces waiting attentively for what he had to say. When did I become the leader of this thing? His eyes glossed over the guests’ faces and lingered on one in particular. Well, if I’m the one calling the shots…“There’s another liquor cabinet in the study. Let’s go there and have a talk,” Sunggyu suggested.

“Talk?” Peacock-hyung pulled himself through the crowd of guests. He looked the butler over curiously. “About what?”

Sungyeol stepped up to join them. “I assume we’re going to talk about motives,” he asserted. Sunggyu pointed at Scarlet and nodded. The butler then ushered everyone into the study.

“We’re all being blackmailed,” Myungsoo interjected as he walked into the room. He spun around and gestured to everyone else who was filtering into the room. “We all have motive.”

Sunggyu made his way over to the liquor cabinet and poured himself a drink. “Some motives are stronger than others,” he responded while narrowing his eyes on the doctor. Myungsoo swallowed nervously and adverted his gaze. Guilt was etched all of his face. Was it you? Sunggyu took his drink and walked towards the center of the room. He gestured over to the cabinet. “If you want a drink, go make it yourself. I’m not a butler anymore. You guys killed my boss.”

“Technically only one of us did,” Professor Plum retorted. The butler glared at him while taking a long drag from his drink. The professor flinched. “I’ll shut up and go get my drink now. Anybody else want one?”

“Yes,” Colonel Mustard was sitting down already and rubbing his forehead. “Something strong.”

Peacock-hyung walked over to the colonel and nudged him. “You okay?”

“No,” the other answered honestly. He lowered his hand and looked up at Peacock. “It’s not every day that I get blamed for a murder that I didn’t commit and meet my blackmailer.”

Peacock cocked his head. “A murder that you didn’t commit? Have you—”

“So why are you all being blackmailed?” Sunggyu cut the other off. He knew how that guy’s mouth could land him into trouble. But at the same time, he understood. He was just looking for answers. They all were. And that’s when it dawned on him. One answer, or one absolution: “Oh! I’m not being blackmailed! I’m not the killer!” Sunggyu cheered and threw his hands up in the air. His drink splashed Mr. Green who was next to him and was now coughing.

“Isn’t that something you should’ve already known?” Myungsoo asked with a slight laugh. He found it more amusing than suspicious.

“I know!” Sunggyu replied. “It’s just more proof for you guys to trust me.”

“You know,” Professor Plum began as he walked up to the butler. Sunggyu inhaled sharply, preparing himself for what was coming. Plum gestured at him while looking at the others. “The more he says to trust him, the more I don’t want to,” he said before taking a drink from his glass. He then walked over to the colonel and handed him his drink.

And Colonel Mustard was closely analyzing the butler’s entirety. His gaze paused at the glass in Sunggyu’s hand. “He’s wearing gloves,” Mustard muttered.

“I am a butler! This is my uniform,” Sunggyu defended himself.

“Sure it is,” Scarlet was adding fuel to the fire and enjoyed watching Sunggyu’s anger burn.

“Whatever, I don’t have motive,” Sunggyu dismissed them all as he stomped over to refill his drink.

“Except that Mr. Boddy said we should all kill you if we wanted to leave,” Mr. Green pointed out and because it came from him, Sunggyu couldn’t get upset. It was the truth.

“, I have a motive,” the butler admitted, hanging his head and his supported himself on the cabinet. He knew he wasn’t a murderer and he had a feeling that the others did too. But realizing that he had a motive, a pretty strong one, didn’t sit well with him. It was feasible that someone could think Sunggyu would kill Boddy. And that someone could be a cop. And Sunggyu could get into some deep . The severity of the situation was starting to sink into him again. And he felt heavier and heavier.

“He wouldn’t have gotten to the gun in time,” Peacock-hyung reasoned as he walked up to the cabinet and made himself a drink, seemingly ignoring the distraught butler.

“True,” was murmured from the rest as they settled in the room.

Sunggyu glanced up at the other with a small smile, but Peacock was still busy making…whatever mess of a cocktail that he was making. “See, I didn’t do it.” He stood up again and faced the rest. “I’m innocent!”

“Good for you,” Colonel Mustard remarked with a sly smile. He was starting to look relaxed again. Perhaps seeing Sunggyu having a mental breakdown put him more at ease.

“What if…” Mr. Green started suddenly and seemed almost surprised when everyone faced him. But he continued nonetheless, “What if the person meant to kill Sunggyu but killed Mr. Boddy instead?” Sunggyu froze. He really didn’t need a reason to be freaking out even more. Me! He wanted to kill me?!?!

“Wouldn’t matter,” Sungyeol dismissed it. “The motive is still the same. Whoever is the killer had a lot to lose and didn’t want whatever they were being blackmailed for to get out in the open.” That was true, and Sunggyu let out a sigh as he leaned up against the lounge chair the colonel was sitting in. Losing the key ended up being fortuitous. It took the target off of his back. Scarlet continued, “So, what are you all being blackmailed for?”

Peacock-hyung had finally finished his bizarre cocktail and started drinking from him. “How do I know that you won’t blackmail me?” he asked.

“Eh, it’s obvious why you’re here,” Sungyeol retorted and waved him off. “Your name gives too much away.” The other glared at him, but Sungyeol was unfazed. “Hey, can you make me one of those? It looks fun.”

“Pea…?” Mr. Green picked out. “Is that something really worth blackmailing over?” Sunggyu spat out his drink and snickered uncontrollably. Everyone did, except for the man over at the cabinet, who was growing redder by the second and looked like he wanted to die.

“Depends on the size of one’s pride,” Professor Plum joked while nudging Mr. Green until the latter got the joke.

“Oh! Size!” Mr. Green exclaimed when it finally dawned on him.

“No! He’s flamboyant!” Sungyeol raised his voice and tried to get them all back on track. “Blind item! Blind item!” He stood up and gestured over at Peacock-hyung. “He’s an idol!” Scarlet said out of exasperation, like he couldn’t believe that no one else had noticed.

And to Sunggyu’s surprise too, that fact did escape the notice of some of the guests. Colonel Mustard leaned forward and gave the idol a good look. “You are?”

Peacock sighed. “It’s kind of sad how little you all recognized me,” he undercut his hurt with a slight chuckle, but the butler still caught it.

“Well, you look different in person,” Professor Plum excused himself for not recognizing the celebrity.

The idol sighed again and rubbed his eyes. “I didn’t sleep well last night,” he defended his appearance.

“I’m confused,” Mr. Green interjected. He was talking to Sungyeol, “Which blind item is this? Is it the one about the two male idols dating each other or the one about the sponsor?” But Scarlet could only answer with a shrug. He then turned towards the idol. They all did. Except Sunggyu. He was just staring down at his drink as he swirled it around in the glass. A large part of him didn’t want to hear the answer to that question.

Luckily for him, Peacock-hyung didn’t want to answer the question either. “Which do you think?” he posed to them all like a challenge. He drank from his cocktail again.

Sungyeol was the only one to answer: “You could be both.”

“I’m not dignifying that with an answer,” the idol retorted and put down the glass, opting to fold his arms across the chest.

“Sounds like answer enough for me,” Scarlet replied. And indeed, it was. Peacock-hyung did not deny either accusation, which probably meant that one of them was partially or entirely true. Sunggyu sighed and then finished his drink. What happened? He was about to press the matter further even though Peacock was determined to squash the matter, but Sunggyu had to know. What happened to you?

But he was interrupted. “What about you?” the question was directed towards Mr. Green.

“I could tell you his secret,” but Professor Plum answered for him. “This bastard scammed me himself. He said he was going to sell me a car but then…”

“Really? A scammer?” Dr. White interjected while laughing in disbelief.

“Right,” the colonel added. “He looks more like a type that seems like he’d get scammed. Not that he’d scam people.”

“That’s the trick!” Mr. Green exclaimed, looking proud of himself. “Deception!” He then went over to Sunggyu who flinched at his approach. “And a slight of hand.” Mr. Green raised his hand and brushed it behind Sunggyu’s ear. The butler blubbered in shock as Mr. Green pulled a coin from behind his ear. “Oh ho ho! Where did this come from?” Where did that come from? Sunggyu wondered as he felt behind his ear. He stopped and looked up at the other, and they both laughed. What is with this kid?

“Seriously, how did you get scammed by this guy?” Sungyeol asked the professor with the click of his tongue. Obviously, he wasn’t impressed by Mr. Green’s magic trick.

“I don’t know. It’s more embarrassing than what I’m getting blackmailed for,” the professor admitted.

“Which is…what?”

“He admits people into his university for a price,” the colonel answered this time. “That’s how I got my cousin into college. Thanks for that.” He gave the man a bright smile, that looked almost sinister. Sunggyu glanced down at the colonel. How does he look so innocent and evil at the same time?

“Thank you for telling everyone,” Plum snarled through gritted teeth at Mustard. He then addressed everyone else, “Look, it’s not that bad.”

“There are two things that Korea is most sensitive about: army service and university acceptance,” Scarlet pointed out. “If word got out, you’d be a goner.”

“Geez, really?” the professor responded sarcastically. “What I was about to say before I was interrupted…” He swung his head over to Scarlet to glare at him one more time (but the man seemed impervious to glares and instead was pestering the idol to make him a cocktail, who gave in and got up to make it). Professor Plum then looked up to Sunggyu, as if he was the actual leader and had any sort of authority, “…is that I do it so I have enough money to sponsor a poor student to go to the school.”

“Sponsor?” the butler picked out. His gaze went over to the idol. “Do you know him?” Sunggyu asked jokingly (but secretly hoping to prod the other into finally giving him an answer).

“Very funny,” Peacock-hyung growled and he sliced into a lime with a loud thud. Maybe I should lock away that knife too, Sunggyu thought.

“I scam people because my father died, and I need to support my mom and my two sisters,” Mr. Green suddenly revealed. Sunggyu’s eyes fell onto him now. The man suddenly looked somber and serious, moreso than he had been the whole night, which is saying a lot because they all had just witnessed a murder in the next room.

“Aw really?” Myungsoo said as he scooted closer to the scammer.

“Yeah,” Mr. Green mumbled with a small nod.
“And I smuggle…never mind,” Dr. White stopped himself from exposing things for once. He anxiously looked up around everyone, knowing that they had all caught it.

“That was close,” Sungyeol whispered over to his friend, who only pursed his lips and nodded in response.

“Well, I’ll expose myself before anyone else does,” Colonel Mustard suddenly announced, standing up from his chair with a slight wobble as he was still mostly intoxicated.

“Here? Now?” Professor Plum asked with wide eyes. His hand flew over and pointed at the bartending idol. “You’re going to expose yourself with him present?”

The joke fell flat. And Peacock-hyung began chopping up a lemon violently. “Not like that!” the colonel denied, rolling his eyes. “I’m an arms dealer. That is all. Thank you,” Mustard revealed and bowed, almost tipping over, and fell back into his chair. And Sunggyu took that as his cue to get the hell away from the most dangerous man in the room. Instead he walked back over to the bar.

“Give me that,” the butler ordered as he wrested the knife from Peacock-hyung’s tight grip. Once he had the knife, he placed it down onto the counter. “Just finish the cocktail,” he muttered lowly so that the others couldn’t hear. “And chill out.”

The idol’s eyes lingered on the knife before they flew up to Sunggyu’s face. “Easy for you to say, hyung. You’re—”

“So that leaves you two,” Mr. Green’s voice boomed throughout the room, cutting him off unintentionally. “So Red and White, what are you guys being blackmailed for? What bad thing did you do?” Both Scarlet and Dr. White were hesitant to answer. Instead they looked at each other, as if they were silently debating about what to do next.

“I can guess what Red did,” Professor Plum spoke up yet again.

Sungyeol narrowed his eyes on him “Try,” he challenged. Luckily, Peacock finally finished his drink and handed it over to him, so he could take the edge off. Nothing is as nerve-wrecking as having your dirty secrets exposed to a room full of strangers.

The professor looked over at Sunggyu again, deferring to him once more, “I’m a regular of his, and this guy’s chicken restaurants have a habit of burning down.”

“Yeah, it’s a real hazard,” Sungyeol remarked before taking a drink.

“You should get that insured,” Mr. Green suggested.

Plum sputtered into a chuckle. “Oh, I’m sure his buildings are insured very well,” he stated with a knowing smirk.

“Huh?” Mr. Green was still lost.

Colonel Mustard leaned forward again and wondered at the other, “You’re a scammer. How are you not getting this? It’s an insurance scam. He’s the one setting fire to his own businesses for money.”

“Oh!” Mr. Green gasped, finally understanding. “It’s hard for me to follow other people’s scams. This is why I work alone,” he confessed. He started to look sad again. “It’s lonely.” Sunggyu felt a pout form on his own lips as he watched a dark cloud hang over the man in bright green. But once he realized it, he smacked his pout away. No, Sunggyu. Don’t pity criminals, he chided himself. They did this to themselves. They have to deal with the consequences. His eyes drifted over to the idol who was trying to squeeze himself onto the loveseat with Sungyeol and Myungsoo. They all are bad people.

The butler cleared his throat. “So you said you smuggle things. Since you’re a doctor, I assume it’s drugs,” he said what had been lingering on his mind. “What are they? Opioids?”

The doctor gave the butler a small, guilt-ridden smile. “Experimental drugs that are banned here,” he answered honestly. “There are chances for people to get better, but our government considers these drugs too risky and bans them,” his voice got louder and higher as he defended himself.

“Maybe for a reason. It sounds dangerous. It could be deadly,” Sunggyu fought back, still refusing to give any of them pity and accept their excuses.

But Myungsoo wouldn’t have it. “But they are already dying! They want to do anything that they can and so do I,” he was practically shouting now and Sungyeol had to hold him down on the couch.

“Wait,” the idol interjected. His eyes were screwed shut as he thought something through. “I thought you were just a plastic surgeon? How did you get into smuggling those kinds of drugs?”

“Oh! How did you know he was a plastic surgeon?” Sungyeol caught the other.

Professor Plum slapped his knee. “That’s why he looks different! You had work done!” he accused.
“I only got whitening injections! Tell them that!” Peacock-hyung looked over to the doctor to back him up.

And Myungsoo followed through, nodding immediately. “He did”

“Really? That’s it?” Sungyeol pressed. The idol nodded. “Eh, I don’t believe you. I’ve seen this guy’s work. He does things that look so natural that you’d swear that they’d been born with it.” Everyone was now scrutinizing Scarlet’s face, and he could feel it. “He did my cousin. Not me. I was born like this,” he added.

“And so was I!” Peacock spat back. “Except a bit darker,” he amended in a small voice before taking a sip from his drink.

A loud sigh came from the other side of the room. Colonel Mustard was still sitting in the lounge chair, alone because everyone had walked away from him after he admitted to his occupation. “Great, now we all know, and we all could blackmail each other,” he grumbled. His mood had taken a drastic turn for the depressed when everyone began avoiding him. Sunggyu thought for a half-second about whether he should rejoin the colonel, but he valued his life too much for that. That yellow boy was scary.

Instead, Sunggyu tried to acknowledge the other with his words. “No, now we know everyone’s motive,” he corrected. “And I have a feeling that one of us had something more to lose than the rest.” The butler looked around the room and landed on the man, whom he suspected the most. While the arms dealer might’ve seemed like the obvious criminal, the colonel seemed a little too okay with his criminal behavior. He probably wouldn’t kill over it. But smuggling drugs was also a serious offense and Myungsoo seemed to have a temper and a strong sense of justice. Not only that, Sunggyu felt like the doctor was still hiding something else. That envelope was a little too big just to be holding that one secret.

Myungsoo noticed Sunggyu’s gaze and froze. Had he just been caught?

“I got to pee. I drank too much,” the colonel suddenly announced, cutting the tension in the room.

Sunggyu watched the man get up from the chair finally and head towards the door. “Yah,” he called after him, and Mustard turned around. “Take a buddy. It’s dangerous to go alone.”

The colonel smiled again. “Good plan. I’ll pick…” he looked about the room for anyone willing. But everyone was avoiding his gaze, except for one person who was staring straight at him with his arm raised high in the air. “…you, Mr. Green!”

“Woot!” Mr. Green cheered as if he’d just won a contest. “Let’s go, buddy!”

 

“Holy Siberian Husky!”

Only a few minutes after the pair left, there was that shout echoing through the hall. Everyone stopped talking. Sunggyu stood up. He didn’t dare to go out and check, but he could look safely out into the hall from where he was standing.

“Guys, guys, guys, guys, GUYS!” Mr. Green’s voice grew louder and louder until he reached the study. And only Mr. Green was there.

The butler walked up to him. “What? What? What?”

“There’s no body in the lounge!”

“Of course not. We’re all in here, except Colonel Mustard who’s making some yellow,” Professor Plum joked. He glanced around at everybody. “Get it?”

“This is no time for bad puns, Professor!” Mr. Green snapped back. “Mr. Boddy’s body is gone!”

“WHAT?!”
Myungsoo sprang to his feet and yelled, “TO THE LOUNGE!”

 

Everyone stood at the threshold of the lounge, too afraid to go inside. Even though there was nothing there. Nothing at all. But how was that possible?

“It’s gone!” Professor Plum exclaimed. He then screwed his face in thought. “He’s gone?” he amended. “What pronoun do you use for a dead body?”

“Really?” Sunggyu barked. “That’s not what’s important here.”

“Wait guys!” Sungyeol exclaimed, and he was the first to enter the room. But he only did so in order to stand in front of everyone else. And to Sunggyu’s surprise, he looked elated. “No body, no crime!” Scarlet shouted, throwing his hands into the air. “They can’t blame us for something that they didn’t know happened.”

Sunggyu cocked his head. That was a good point. Their troubles could be all over!

“That’s great, but we still can’t get out of this house,” Peacock-hyung pointed out. And it was a good point too.

Sungyeol looked crestfallen, “Ah, true.”

“Guys,” Mr. Green’s head popped over the butler’s shoulder. “What if he became a zombie…or a vampire…or…”

Sunggyu stopped that nonsense by placing his hand over the other’s mouth. “Okay, that’s enough,” he told Mr. Green, who pulled the hand away from his face and stared up at the butler, serious as the grave.

“But he got up and walked away,” Mr. Green reasoned with a small voice.

“Ah true…” Sunggyu dropped his hand as his voice drifted off and his eyes went down to the floor, where Boddy’s body once was. Dead bodies don’t just disappear on their own.

“Or someone moved him,” that voice came from behind them. Everyone flinched, stiffened, and then slowly turned around to see who it was. It was Colonel Mustard, returning from the bathroom. He was still rubbing his hands dry as he cocked his head. “What’s up?” he asked, wondering at everyone’s surprise.

“Sunggyu,” Sungyeol called to him. “Am I right in thinking there's nobody else in this house?” That was a good question.

“Um... no,” too bad Sunggyu didn’t have an answer for it.

“Then there is someone else in this house?” Colonel Mustard asked.

The butler spun around to answer him: “Sorry, I said ‘no’ meaning ‘yes.’”

"’No’ meaning ‘yes?’” Mr. Green was now speaking. Sunggyu spun and faced him next. The scammer looked confused. “What do you mean? Is there someone else, or isn't there, yes, or no?”

Sunggyu shook his head. “No.”

“No there is, or no there isn't?” Dr. White asked.

The butler turned towards the doctor and his head was spinning with this constant turning. “Yes,” he muttered, gripping the sides of his head. And so was everyone else, pulling out their hair and not understanding what the butler meant. Was there someone else in the house or wasn’t there?

To Sunggyu’s knowledge there wasn’t…but that didn’t mean that there couldn’t be someone lurking in the dark recesses of this mansion. Sunggyu crouched down. Now his head wasn’t just spinning; it was slowly breaking down piece by piece. Someone else could be in the house. Some murderer could be in the house, murdering (like murderers often do). And they all were locked inside. They couldn’t escape.

“I think we broke the butler.” A hand cupped his shoulder and there was a warm body crouching down next to him. Sunggyu lowered his hands and glanced over to the person next to him. What this feeling shooting through him? Disappointment?

Myungsoo gave him a small smile. “You okay?” Sunggyu could only nod as he stood back up. His eyes stayed on the doctor as he did. If there’s someone else in the house…then it wasn’t him, Sunggyu concluded. He started to feel guilty for accusing the doctor (in his mind) earlier. But that’s when Sunggyu reminded himself: If there was a someone else. He still had to be on his guard.

Which is probably why he yelped when someone called his name again.

“Sunggyu-hyung,” Peacock spoke up. He had a weird look on his face. Whatever, it was Sunggyu wasn’t quick enough to read it because he averted his gaze. “There is someone else in this house.”

“What?!”

“How do you know?”

Sunggyu’s eyes grew wide as he remembered. There was someone else: “My aunt!”

“An ant?” Professor Plum misheard. “Is there a bug? In a house like this, there must be a bunch of them!” Everyone ignored that remark.

“AH!” Scarlet exclaimed and snapped his fingers. He realized it too. “The chef!”

“TO THE KI…” Myungsoo began to shout but it got caught in his throat. He lowered his hand from the air too. His face screwed in confusion. “Wait, she wasn’t in there when we were looking for the key.”

“Ah, no, she wasn’t,” the butler sputtered. However, he hadn’t the faintest idea of where else she could be. “But she could be there now.” It couldn’t hurt to look again.

“Okay,” the doctor replied, smiling too widely at the moment. “THEN TO THE KITCHEN!”

They didn’t exactly sprint to the kitchen, nor was it a leisurely stroll. Seven urgent footsteps thundered through the hall, booming, oddly enough coming before the lightening that was about to strike them all down.

“It doesn’t look like she’s here,” Mr. Green remarked as he dropped onto his hands and knees to look under things for the chef like they had with the key. Sunggyu sighed as he watched the man crawl around, and sighed again when he saw the doctor ‘search’ for her in the fridge again. How did these two manage to pull off the schemes that they did? He found himself shaking his head at them as they were the only ones who kept searching for the chef in the kitchen (or as the doctor searched for food). The other guests were filtering out of the room again, and Sunggyu was about to join them. But then he saw Myungsoo make a move to raid their pantry while he was sipping on some yogurt that he found in the fridge. How much does this kid eat? Sunggyu was about to snap at him and tell them both to leave with him but then…

“Yeah this kitchen is completely empt…OH MY GOD!”

Thud!

The doctor fell to the ground almost as soon as he opened the pantry door, and he let out a higher scream than Sunggyu ever thought him capable up. Sunggyu wasn’t the first to rush over to him. He was too stunned. Instead, Sungyeol had slid past him and went by his friend’s side. Myungsoo’s eyes were already closed, tightly. “Myungsoo-yah! Myungsoo! Are you okay? Talk to me!”

The doctor coughed as he tried to get enough air in his lungs in order to talk. But when he tried, all that came out was this thin, wheezing voice: “Please…please, don’t tell me there’s a corpse on me.”

“Okay, I won’t,” Sungyeol promised. “But let’s get this dead lady off of you.” And with that, Scarlet shoved the chef’s lifeless body from off of Myungsoo. Sunggyu watched as his aunt flopped unceremoniously onto the floor. Death’s rigor had sunk in yet, which made since because Sunggyu had seen her alive and well in this kitchen not even two hours prior. And now he’d just seen her fall out of a pantry and smother a man with her lifeless body, with a knife sticking out of her back and a dishtowel stuffed in .

His aunt was dead. No, she was murdered. And Sunggyu had forgotten that she was even in the house. He dropped his gaze to his feet, unable to look at anything else. Not his aunt, not the guests, nothing. He shut his eyes tightly, wanting to wake up and this all would be just some horrible dream.

A hand cupped his shoulder again, more tightly this time. “Are you okay, hyung?”

Sunggyu opened his eyes again, and the first thing that he saw was Peacock. This surely wasn’t a dream. It was a nightmare. “I’m okay. Just…in shock.”

“She was your aunt,” Professor Plum stated as he came up to Sunggyu’s other side. “Shouldn’t you be more upset than this?”

Sunggyu’s gaze darted over to him and narrowed. “Well, she knew all of you,” he responded.

“Yeah so?” the professor replied along with a shrug.

“So I’m guessing that she wasn’t a very good person either.”

“Oh,” the other muttered and then went away.

Sunggyu’s eyes followed him a bit and then fell on his aunt, which now had a small crowd gathering around her. He hated to admit it or speak ill of the dead just moments after she died, but his aunt did know Mr. Boddy better. After all, she had worked for him for years. So just how well did she know him? Did she just look the other way whenever Boddy did his nefarious activities or…did she help? Sunggyu chewed on his lip. His aunt had gotten him this job. She was the one who sent him to this murder house.

The hand at his shoulder gave a tight squeeze, just to remind the other that it was there. And, oh, Sunggyu hadn’t forgotten about it, not at all. If his aunt knew all about Mr. Boddy, then did she also know about…Sunggyu could feel the envelope still tucked into his suit coat pocket, weighing it down, weighing him down. Such a heavy secret lurked inside.

“Wait! This knife was mine!”

“Don’t touch it! It’s evidence!” Sunggyu snapped out of it and barked at the colonel before he could touch the handle of the knife, which was in fact the knife that had been gifted to Mustard earlier in the evening.

The arms dealer pouted all too cutely. “But it’s mine,” he whined. The colonel’s gaze dropped to the knife again. “And it’s getting dirty, before I could even use it.”

“He just wants his knife back and not in her back,” Professor Plum joked and was met with only groans. “Oh come on! That was a good one.”

“Wait,” Sungyeol turned towards the butler as he muttered. “Shouldn’t that knife be in the safe with the other weapons?”

“OH! ! THE SAFE!” Sunggyu yelled.

And Myungsoo managed to find his voice again: “TO THE SAFE! IN THE STUDY!”

 

“Well, it’s opened,” Sunggyu spoke in a very aggravated tone as he stared at the safe that had its door wide open for all to see. This night, this damned night, everything was just going wrong no matter how hard he’d tried. We’d even flushed the key down the toilet. What more could we have done? He spun towards the guests and pointed at the safe. “Who went into the toilet?!” he barked.

All of the guests immediately through their hands up into the air. And Mr. Green was the only one brave enough to make a sound, albeit in a weak voice: “None of us.”

“This makes no sense,” Sunggyu groaned as he crouched down onto the floor against, fists balled up against the side of his head. Even if he made it through this night alive, Sunggyu doubted that he’d have any sanity left. With every passing minute, another part of his mind broke down.

“From what I gather, there has to be someone else in this house,” Sungyeol concluded, boldly too. He, perhaps, was the only one of them that was sure of anything. “That person picked the safe and killed the chef.”

Peacock too. “And took Mr. Boddy’s body,” he added.

“That’s one thing I don’t get,” Sungyeol yielded. “Why would somebody do that?” He then looked towards someone who he thought would have the answer. And everyone followed suit, including Sunggyu. He looked up at Colonel Mustard as he stood back up.

“Why are you looking at me?” the colonel asked, with an uncomfortable smile on his face and his hands in the air. “I have no idea. I collect and sell weapons, not corpses.”

“Well then, ,” Scarlet cursed. “Are we ever going to figure that out?”

“Yes,” the butler spoke up again. He was slowly gathering this fractured mind, regaining his senses, starting with his sense of curiosity (he’ll leave his sense of cowardice for now). “The answer is somewhere inside this house. So I suggest that we split up and search it,” he proposed.

Of course, someone wouldn’t like that idea. “Wait, you want us to look for the killer?” Professor Plum sounded shocked that it was even suggested.

“It’s just like a horror movie,” Mr. Green chirped, excited as always. “Slasher.” He then mimicked someone getting stabbed with a knife, while making creaking noises with his mouth.

“If we have to go in pairs, can I not be with him?” Scarlet asked, pointing at Mr. Green and getting away from him at the same time.

“Choose whoever you go with. I don’t care,” Sunggyu said, but he spoke too soon.

“Then I’m coming with you,” Peacock-hyung announced, fastening a steady gaze on the butler. Sunggyu swallowed harshly. The other wouldn’t let him go this time. There was no escape, not this time.

“I’m with him,” Myungsoo quickly spoke up and clung onto Scarlet before anybody else dare to claim him as his partner.

“Then that leaves us three,” Mr. Green said excitedly to his two ‘partners’ and opened his arms wide for them. But the colonel and the professor stayed where they were. Mr. Green chuckled and lowered his arms. “This is going to be good. I know it.”

I wish that I had that attitude, Sunggyu thought in admiration of Mr. Green. He glanced over at his own partner. This is going to be . Sunggyu let out a sigh and faced the rest. “Okay, I’m going downstairs in the basement,” he declared. He then pointed at the trio. “You three, look around down here on this floor.” Now at Scarlet and White. “And you two upstairs.” Now towards the safe. “Take a weapon and let’s go,” that was his last command.

And Sungyeol took to it as quickly as he could and took the revolver from the safe, holding it close to his side as he hurried out of the room. Myungsoo ran after his partner, taking nothing else with him. Dang it, Sunggyu cursed. He had wanted the gun. He went to the safe next and stared at the remaining options. He took what looked most useful, the wrench. If he couldn’t protect himself with it, then at least it could also do some plumbing. The butler then stepped aside and watched Mr. Green take up his candlestick and Colonel Mustard pull the pipe out of the safe and into his hands, twirling it around. They left the room and Professor Plum followed after them with his hands in his pockets.

Now it was just Sunggyu, Peacock-hyung, and the noose in the safe. The other’s eyes went from the knotted rope over to Sunggyu. He sighed and then left the room too, with his arms tightly crossed against his chest.

Sunggyu closed the door to the safe. A part of him was relieved that he was the only one of the two of them with a weapon. He had no clue how this would go, but knowing how they were, it could go very very wrong.

 

“Why did you choose the basement? That’s the creepiest place of the whole house,” Peacock whined as he followed Sunggyu down the stairs.

The butler didn’t look back at him. No, that’s what he would’ve wanted. “My bedroom is down there, and I want to change,” he explained himself.

“What?” the other gasped. “You sleep in the basement?”

This time, Sunggyu stopped and turned around, glaring at the idol. “Not all of us can afford to live in luxurious apartments downtown,” he retorted. Then he descended the rest of the stairs with a quick step.

Peacock had paused for a few moments. “Ah, right,” he mumbled and then followed the butler. But he didn’t get too far. Sunggyu had slipped into his bedroom, slammed the door in the other’s face, and locked it. The idol knocked on the door lightly and cautiously. “Uh, hyung?”

“I’ll be out in a minute,” Sunggyu shouted from the other side of the door. “I want to change.” And changing he was, he already tore off his gloves and was clawing at his bowtie. It was too tight, too suffocating. It’s not like he needed more reasons to have a hard time breathing.

“Okay, I’ll wait for you.”

Sunggyu scoffed. He had heard that one before, many times.

His name was Nam Woohyun. The idol outside of his door right now, he was Nam Woohyun. Sunggyu had met him years ago when he had first entered college. He needed a part-time job to help him pay for college expenses, and he had picked one up at a bbq place near the campus. Woohyun’s family owned it, and Sunggyu actually was the only non-family member to work there. Because of that, it felt awkward at the beginning. He felt like an outsider. But after a while, he was treated as if he were part of the family. Woohyun’s parents took as much interest in his schooling and grades as his own parents did. Boohyun, the eldest son, he didn’t feel as much like a brother as he did a friend. And as for Woohyun, well, he had felt like a younger brother…at first.

Woohyun was only a high school student at the time, two years below Sunggyu. But even given that gap between their lives, they had a lot in common. The both of them were quite lost in life. Neither of them really knew what to do. Woohyun was starting to think about which college and department to apply to in the following year. And Sunggyu had to start thinking about what internships he should aim for, what companies.

But neither of their hearts were in it. They were in music. Because of music, Woohyun was considering forgoing school altogether in order to become a singer. And because Sunggyu was told he couldn’t pursue music as a career, , he ended up at a department that he didn’t care for, and he was worried that he’d end up with a life that he didn’t want (which was exactly what happened).

So he fully supported Woohyun and urged him to pursue his passion unlike he did.

The two of them got closer by talking, about issues like those and, well, just about anything. There was a lot of downtime at the restaurant, and Woohyun would help him close up shop often. When business was slow, the two of them would sit at a table and watch the television. And they’d talk. They’d always talk.

Sunggyu had spent a year like that with him. For a year, he had a little brother. But then things changed during Woohyun’s final year at school. Woohyun began auditioning for companies, and failing them. With the auditions came the mood swings. Woohyun would come home from an audition all confident and cocky. And a few days later, Sunggyu would find the boy slumped over a table, depressed. Woohyun would either be talking excitedly, boasting about every little thing he did or be completely reticent and not even look at Sunggyu or anyone else. Eventually, Sunggyu found himself following Woohyun’s moods. If Woohyun was happy, he was happy. If Woohyun was ignoring him, then Sunggyu, being petty, would ignore him right back.

They had a connection.

And then, Woohyun came of age. Of course, he didn’t look like it still or act like it at all. But it did change things. Woohyun could drink now, which Sunggyu found fascinating because he still seemed too young to do that, and also Woohyun wanted to take charge of his own life, be the ‘adult’ that he was. So he didn’t work in the shop as much anymore. He was going to use his free time to take extra singing lessons. He was going to be a singer. He was determined, and Sunggyu knew that he could do it.

Sunggyu also started missing him too, more than he thought he ever would.

So one night, when Woohyun came home from his lessons and Sunggyu was closing up, he asked the younger if he wanted to hang out, to come over to play some games. Woohyun readily accepted. He’d missed Sunggyu too. So he came over and they played. But the games soon stopped and they began talking again. And they were talking about things that they had never talked about before. They began to do things that they’ve never done before. One thing led to another thing which all led to the bedroom.

Him and Woohyun, it wasn’t really something that just ‘happened.’ It was a long string of ‘happenings’ that brought them to that point. And after that night, Sunggyu couldn’t consider the other as a little brother anymore.

No, not after the hot and…

There was a knock at the door, which dragged Sunggyu away from memory lane.

“Hyung?” the idol whined from the other side of the door. “Can you hurry up? It’s really creepy out here.”

“Oh,” Sunggyu muttered as he pulled on a shirt over his head. He then unlocked the door and opened it to see Nam Woohyun, who did look older but still very much looked like the teenager that he knew, except that creepy smile on his face. Sunggyu hadn’t seen that before and he didn’t like it. “What?”

“I didn’t say anything,” Woohyun replied while cocking his head. “You’re being weird.”

“I’m being cautious,” Sunggyu said as he pushed past Woohyun. “Let’s go.”

“Cautious? Do you seriously think that—”

“Did you really have a sponsor?” Sunggyu cut him off with that question, and he made the mistake of looking back at the man behind him. Woohyun looked hurt.

He glowered at the elder. “Do you think I would?”

“I don’t know because I don’t know you,” Sunggyu remarked and turned around, but he still couldn’t escape the other.

Woohyun walked faster and Sunggyu could see him out of the corner of his eye. But he wasn’t about to face him. No, Woohyun was still glaring meanly. “You don’t?” his voice was cold.

“I don’t,” Sunggyu repeated, holding his ground. Earlier, Sunggyu had to pretend not to know Woohyun because he wasn’t Woohyun then. He was Peacock, and Sunggyu was the butler. And now, well, it was just easier (and safer) just to keep pretending. However, it was hard to. Some habits died hard. “In any case, you were paying Mr. Boddy to keep quiet. Why?” the butler pried.

Woohyun finally stopped glaring and sighed. “It’s easier to keep the media quiet. My company gives them money or gives them an exclusive, and the headline goes away. And sometimes, the media knows it would ruin your career, so they won’t release but rather hang it over your head,” he explained.

“Sounds like blackmail to me,” Sunggyu remarked.

“Yes,” Woohyun admitted with a chuckle. “But it’s blackmail I could trust.” He then cleared his throat and became serious again. “A stranger blackmailing you, that’s really what you need to be wary of. You can’t trust strangers. They can go rogue,” he explained, but it didn’t really clear anything up for Sunggyu, who was staring at the other inquisitively. So Woohyun shed some more light for the other, “They can post anywhere at any time. The internet makes it so easy to tear someone’s hard-earned career down with a word taken out of context or a picture taken of you at the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“Wrong place. Wrong time. Was that you and the sponsor?” Now everything was as clear as day to the butler.

Woohyun nodded. “Had I known that she was one, I wouldn’t have met with her at all. I was told she was a board-member. I’d assumed that it was a board-member of my company. She was not,” he ended with a sigh. He then glanced over at the elder, but he didn’t seem satisfied with Sunggyu’s expression (whatever it was) and sighed yet again. “And it doesn’t matter if I didn’t do anything with her because there are still pictures of us together, and my word against the words of hoards of angry netizens,” he was grumbling so lowly that Sunggyu got closer to hear him. “It doesn’t matter if I’m innocent. It won’t change their minds once they made it up.”

“Woohyun-ah, I…”

“Ah,” Woohyun gasped and his whole demeanor brightened. “So you do remember me!”

Sunggyu stopped in his tracks and stared at the other for a few moments before he answered, “You’re a celebrity.” He kept his face as straight and still as possible so that Woohyun would…

“Then don’t address me like you know me.” So that Woohyun would react just like that. The idol frowned and stomped ahead of the other.

“I said ‘Woohyun-ssi.’ I did!” Sunggyu called after him. Woohyun stopped and turned around, raising an eyebrow. “You need your hearing checked, Woohyun-ssi. Should we go through this door, Woohyun-ssi?”

The idol scoffed. “Shut up,” he growled and then opened up the door that he ended up in front of. Woohyun turned back around. “, is this?!” he exclaimed as he looked through the doorway, which was a long and dark hallway, filled with cobwebs and ominous vibes.

Sunggyu came up to the other’s side. “It looks like a secret passageway, Woohyun-ssi,” he emphasized the last bit.

“Sunggyu-yah,” Woohyun spoke his name through gritted teeth, “stop it.” With that, Woohyun stepped inside of the dark secret passage with the light of his cellphone to guide him. And Sunggyu sighed, watching the idol’s back getting further and further away from him until it was swallowed into the darkness.

This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. This wasn’t how any of this was supposed to go. This night was supposed to be a simple dinner party. Sunggyu was supposed to be a butler and not some makeshift detective, hunting some murder. And they weren’t supposed to meet up again like this. They weren’t supposed to meet again at all.

They were supposed to be a fling.

As a ‘fling,’ they had met up several times at Sunggyu’s place. Sunggyu had thought that this was something that they needed to get out of their systems. Or he did, at least. He needed this before he went to live the life that his parents wanted him to. The life with the desk job, and later a wife and kids. A life without music, without…this. Once he ‘grew up,’ Sunggyu thought he’d look back on these moments fondly as ‘dumb things’ or even as mistakes that he did as a kid.

But Sunggyu wasn’t a kid then. And he wasn’t dumb. Neither was Woohyun. They knew full well what they were doing. And the moments that they shared weren’t ones that he could fondly reflect back on now. Honestly, Sunggyu regretted them. Sure, Woohyun wasn’t the first man that Sunggyu had these moments with, nor was he the last. But Woohyun was Woohyun, and he wasn’t a mistake.

The true mistake was Sunggyu thinking that he wouldn’t develop feelings for the younger.

“Why aren’t you a girl?”

When Sunggyu had blurted that out one night while the both of them were still in bed, Woohyun was obviously hurt by that, but still gave a small smile. “You like me better this way, right? So that’s why,” he responded.

Sunggyu scoffed. “You’re speaking as if you were made for me.”

“Am I not?”

Sunggyu’s head didn’t know what to make of that, but his heart came to all sorts of conclusions, racing towards them. Woohyun sounded like he was joking but at the same time...Was Sunggyu reading too much into everything?

So Sunggyu tested him: “We can’t be. This won’t work. This is just…”

“But what if we tried,” Woohyun cut him off with a whisper so low that Sunggyu didn’t catch it all. “What if we actually tried?”

Now Sunggyu’s head was jumping at the same conclusions as his heart. He does mean it! Sunggyu rolled onto his side and stared at the other wordlessly, trying to read what he could in the younger’s face in the scant light. But Woohyun didn’t give him much of a chance. He rolled away and out of bed. “I have to go home now. I have to get up early tomorrow,” Woohyun announced as he was slipping into his underwear.

Sunggyu sat up and watched him dress. “For another audition?” he assumed. “Good luck.”

“Yeah, something like that,” the younger mumbled as he pulled his shirt on. He then turned to face the other. Under the scarce light from the streetlamps outside, Sunggyu could finally make out the other’s face. Woohyun’s expression seemed sad, almost despairing. Did he not want to leave? Was he nervous about tomorrow? Sunggyu was about to open his mouth to say something but Woohyun spoke first: “Goodbye, hyung.” He then walked up to the elder and kissed him, harder and longer than the usual peck. And Sunggyu let him, even though he was perplexed by it. Something was definitely off with the younger, especially when Woohyun lingered at the threshold of the bedroom and looked back at Sunggyu one more time. He had looked like he wanted to say something else. He was chewing his lower lip, biting those words back.

So Sunggyu tried to ease the other with a warm smile. “It’ll be fine,” he assured him. “Goodbye, Woohyun.” After that, Woohyun had taken his leave, without a word or another look.

The following day, Sunggyu was anxious for work the next day. He was equally as excited as he was frightened. What Woohyun was he going to see that day? How did the audition go? Was this thing between them going to turn into something more? It seemed like Woohyun had wanted it to the night before and was discouraged when Sunggyu didn’t encourage or indulge him. But this day, Sunggyu had planned on giving him all of the encouragement. Or at least he would have if Woohyun was there.

“I’m afraid that Woohyun can’t play with you anymore, Sunggyu,” Woohyun’s mother announced that evening. “His contract with the company started today. He even moved into the dorms this morning.”

“What?” Sunggyu nearly dropped the dishes in his hands at the news. “He didn’t even tell me that he’d been accepted anywhere.”

“He didn’t?” she asked. And Sunggyu shook his head in response as he put the dishes away. “Well, he probably had a reason not to.”

Because we were just ‘playing,’ was the conclusion Sunggyu finally arrived at and settled on. Woohyun had just been playing and joking with him. They weren’t dating, and so Woohyun wasn’t obligated to tell him anything. So the younger chose to tell him nothing.

Sunggyu felt less hurt by it all when he realized that even Boohyun didn’t know about it either. Both ‘brothers’ were in the dark.

So Sunggyu stayed at his job for a few more months, working as if nothing had happened. And nothing did happen. Woohyun would stop by the restaurant but always ‘just miss’ meeting Sunggyu, which was interesting because Woohyun definitely knew when Sunggyu’s shift started. But Sunggyu didn’t want to put much thought into it. Woohyun was a busy trainee, just like Sunggyu was a busy student who worked part-time. And when Sunggyu left, it was to pursue his own career, and he became an intern at a small company.

And he never thought he’d see Woohyun again.

But here was Woohyun, right in front of him, in the flesh. Or well, Sunggyu supposed Woohyun was in front of him. But the passageway was too dark to see anything beyond his nose and the now idol was too far ahead of him. Sunggyu couldn’t even see the light of his cellphone anymore.

Which suited Sunggyu just fine. He didn’t want to see Woohyun. And Sunggyu didn’t want Woohyun to see him, especially not like this. On the verge of breaking down.

A part of Sunggyu thought that after their ‘play’ together, Woohyun would begin dating women. As an idol, surrounded by beautiful women and adoring fans, Sunggyu thought there would be much opportunity for that. But Woohyun had turned it all down and dated a man. He was dating a man now even though he wasn’t willing to date Sunggyu then. Which might’ve meant that Sunggyu being a man wasn’t the problem, it was Sunggyu himself.

And with that realization, Sunggyu really felt like crying. It was all really too much right now. All of this.

And the tears spilled out when Woohyun shone his cellphone’s light onto the butler’s face. “Hey, are you okay?” he asked.

“I’m fine. Keep going,” Sunggyu growled as he roughly wiped his eyes. But Woohyun didn’t budge, nor did the light beaming onto his face. With his eyes still covered, Sunggyu pushed the other with his elbows and he moved past him. “Go.”

Woohyun and his light was at his side again. “I’m sorry,” he said.

“Huh?”

“About your aunt. I’m sorry,” Woohyun elaborated. And Sunggyu let out a deep breath, disappointed. “No one should see family like that,” he added, which was followed by a grunt as he pulled the door at the end of the passageway open. It had opened into the kitchen, into the pantry to be exact. And Sunggyu’s aunt still lied lifelessly on the floor in front of them. Woohyun sighed. “And there she is again.” He put his hand up to cover the butler’s eyes. “Don’t look!”

“I already saw her,” Sunggy snapped as he batted away his hands. He walked away and into the pantry. “At least no one took the body this time.”

“Yeah, I guess that’s good,” Woohyun added but he still lingered in the passageway.

Sunggyu, however, went further into the kitchen and stepped over his aunt’s corpse. He knelt by her side, still careful not to touch her. He then looked up at Woohyun, who still seemed stunned by the dead body, even though this was their second time encountering her and their second dead body this evening. Then again, was this something that one should get used to? Sunggyu glanced down at the gruesome, bloodied back of his aunt. And he wanted to vomit.

But he choked it down and said, “We should probably do something about her.” He then got up onto his feet again. “Let’s get everyone together.”

“Okay,” Woohyun agreed with a nod and finally came into the kitchen. “EVERYONE, COME IN HERE! COME TO THE KITCHEN!” he yelled on top of his lungs.

Sunggyu covered his ears while he did so. “Not like that,” he whined. “What if the murderer comes?”

“Oh, that was quick!” Woohyun sounded proud of himself as he pointed across the room. There was a staircase along the wall which led up to the chef’s quarters. And coming down those stairs were two pairs of feet, followed by the faces of Myungsoo and Sungyeol. The both of them fiddling with things in their pockets. “Since when were there stairs in the kitchen?” and now Woohyun sounded amazed.

“I was about to asked the same,” Sungyeol remarked as he gestured into the pantry at the steps leading up to it from the basement. “Is that a secret passageway?”

“Yeah, from the basement,” the butler answered.

“There were other hallways in there. So it probably leads all over the house,” Woohyun added. Sunggyu looked at him incredulously. Really? I didn’t notice. Why don’t I know anything about this house?!

“That’s probably how the killer got around without us noticing,” the doctor guessed.

“Probably,” Sunggyu concurred with a shrug. “Hey, can you two help me with —”

“WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!” a shout from outside of the kitchen cut him off.

“What the–”

A loud thud echoed through the hall, quickly followed by, “What did you do?!”

Sunggyu raced into the hallway to see what had happened. And when he did, he wanted to run back into the kitchen.

He had come upon the colonel, the professor, Mr. Green, and oddly enough Mr. Boddy, who appeared to be re-murdered. His head was now bloodied, bludgeoned to death with the candlestick in Mr. Green’s hand.

“I didn’t do it!” he shouted with both hands up in the air, candlestick still held in one.

Sunggyu wasn’t going to be taken by the scammer so easily. “If you didn’t do it, then why are you holding it?” he challenged.

“I was going to show you guys,” Mr. Green insisted and tried to offer it to the butler. But Sunggyu wasn’t that foolish.

“You know, your fingerprints are all over it now,” Sunggyu pointed out. Mr. Green brought the candlestick back down and began rubbing it nervously in his hands.

“Aish!” Sungyeol cursed. “You’re ruining the evidence! Stop!”
“Why can’t I stop touching this?” Mr. Green lamented as he jumbled it in his hands.

The colonel sighed and pulled out his pocket square from his coat. With the pocket square, he pulled the candlestick away from the other’s grip. He then offered it to the butler. “Polish it,” he commanded.

“What?”

“That’s what butlers do, right? Polish?” Colonel Mustard asked, almost innocently. He then smiled and tried to push the candlestick onto the butler again.

“I think they do,” Professor Plum added. “Yeah.”

“I’m not going to tamper with evidence,” Sunggyu stayed firm.

“Mr. Green didn’t kill him. He was with us, and we found Mr. Body already dead. But he will get dragged into this because his fingerprints are on it. And if he gets dragged into it, we all might,” the colonel explained. He stepped closer to the butler. “What we need to do is to get rid of all of the evidence that this night ever happened.”

That…that actually made sense. Sunggyu looked down at the candlestick being pushed into his chest. He took it from Mustard, making sure to grab it by the pocket square. “We should get rid of all of the evidence?” Sunggyu asked, with his eyes still transfixed on the candlestick.

“Yes, all!” the colonel exclaimed.

“Well then…” Sunggyu drawled out as he made a show of looking at the dead body right in front of all of them.

“Not it!” everyone shouted, except for one.

“,” the professor swore as he looked down at Mr. Boddy, at his new responsibility.

“No body, no crime,” Sungyeol said that as if it was encouragement. He patted Plum on the shoulder and walked away. The rest went with him, not wanting to help with ‘getting rid of the evidence.’

“More like, no Mr. Boddy, no crime,” Professor Plum yelled after them.

“How long have you been holding onto that pun?” Sunggyu asked the professor.

The professor frowned. “For too long.”

“Buck up,” Sunggyu encouraged him and patted him on the shoulder before taking his leave. There was no way that he was going to touch the body either.

Besides he had some silver to polish.

 

“You seem to know your way around a candlestick.”

With the exception of Professor Plum, they all had relocated into the lounge. Sunggyu had his polishing things in a cabinet there. After gathering his things, he polished the candlestick at a table along the edge of the room. The others were sitting on the couches, talking over what to do next while sipping on drinks (or draining them in the colonel’s case). So Sunggyu thought he was alone until he heard that coy remark.

Sunggyu scoffed. He didn’t need to look behind him to know who was approaching. “Aren’t you being a little too obvious for someone still in the closet?” he retorted.

“About that,” Woohyun drawled as he walked up to the table and leaned against it, sliding into Sunggyu’s vision. But the idol kept his eyes down as he continued, “What do you think of me…coming out?”

“What?” Sunggyu nearly dropped the candlestick at that question.

And Woohyun finally raised his eyes. He scooted down the table and whispered lowly to the other, “I’ve always wanted to be open with my fans, and if I do that, the whole sponsor thing wouldn’t be an issue. Why would I be with an old woman when I was really dating…my bandmate?”

Sunggyu hissed right back, “Isn’t this something you should discuss with your boss?”

“I have,” Woohyun admitted. “He says it’s too risky.”

“It is very risky,” the butler concurred. He pulled away and kept polishing the candlestick. “But so is living a lie,” he added lowly. “Look at us. There’s a killer in the house. And I’m ing polishing silver.” He put the candlestick down and sighed heavily while gripping the edges of the table.

A hand fell on his back. Sunggyu raised his head and saw Woohyun, closer than ever. “So should I stop the lie?” the younger asked.

Sunggyu picked the candlestick back up and kept polishing it, even though the task was complete. But he had to concentrate on something else. “I didn’t say that either,” he grumbled. “Keeping a secret doesn’t always mean you have to lie. Sometimes it’s easier just to…not be completely honest.”

“A lie of omission is still a lie,” Woohyun hissed back.

Sunggyu slammed his hands down on the table, along with the stick. “Why are you asking me this anyway? We’re nothing,” he whispered.

“Are we really?” Woohyun responded hotly right back. “Am I the only one that remembers? I don’t think so,” he spoke with a sly smirk playing on his lips.

Sunggyu brought his face closer to the other’s. “Don’t make your secret mine too,” he spat, and perhaps physically spat on Woohyun’s face based on how the younger flinched at his words. He might’ve flinched, but he didn’t back down.

“We’ve already had our fair share of secrets together. Didn’t we?” Woohyun reminded him and finally breached the issue that the both of them had been avoiding all night. He cocked his head. “This isn’t a coincidence, us meeting like this.”

“It’s fate?” Sunggyu asked as if it were ridiculous.

“Eung,” but it had only seemed ridiculous to the butler. Sunggyu hazard to look up at the other. Woohyun looked like he was honest, like he’d meant it. But then again, Sunggyu knew that Woohyun the idol promised to marry his fans with that same sincerity. And with that sincerity, Woohyun had whispered sweet nothings into his ear all of those years ago. So Sunggyu tried his best not to be swayed by such words and eyes.

“Isn’t that a line you should be telling your boyfriend?” the butler retorted.

“It was,” Woohyun mumbled almost inaudibly. But, oh, Sunggyu had caught it all.

“Was?” he repeated.

“He left,” Woohyun answered, while staring down at his twiddling thumbs. “Me and the band at the same time.”

“It was him?!” Sunggyu exclaimed a bit too loudly.

“Yeah,” Woohyun replied while raising his head, revealing the smile that was blooming on his face. “By the way…How did you know what member I was talking about? Have you been keeping tabs on me?” he pointed out.

The butler blinked at the other a few times while recollecting himself. Once he did, he placed his hands on his hips and plainly stated, “It was on the news.”

“Ah, so you watch the news now,” the idol responded while nodding and looking away again. “You’ve changed.”

“Changed?” Sunggyu challenged with a scoff. “You don’t even know me to begin with.”

Woohyun scoffed himself and glanced at the butler out of the corner of his eye, as if he couldn’t believe that Sunggyu was trying to keep up with this ‘you-don’t-know-me’ charade. And honestly, Sunggyu didn’t know why he was either, but the words came out of his mouth before he realized it. It was a defensive reflex, a stupid defensive reflex. And Woohyun saw right through it. He slapped the table suddenly, making Sunggyu jump, while he raised his voice, “Ah, I get it now! You do remember! You remember everything! You’re just being sulky!” Sunggyu put his fingers to his lips and looked about the room. Yup, everyone was watching them now. But Woohyun didn’t care. He was too busy revealing the butler to anyone that had ears: “Wah! You’re so petty. And all of this time, I thought you were someone so wise and mature.”

The butler raised the candlestick up threateningly. “You know, this was just used to murder someone,” he growled through gritted teeth.

“I know, but you’re not a killer,” the idol responded while pushing Sunggyu’s raised arm back down. “But I am,” he added. And Sunggyu’s heart stopped. What? Did…did he…“They call me a noona-killer. Bang bang!” Woohyun joked while firing off finger guns.

Sunggyu let the candlestick drop against the table with a thud while he whined, “Woohyun-ah.”

“Hm? What is it?” the younger responded at the mention of his name, and with that dumb, cute smile he used to give the elder years back, when he was a teen. Sunggyu groaned. This isn’t good. “Are you done pretending like you don’t know me? Are you done ignoring me?” he asked, with that smile shaking slightly in apprehension, a tick that hadn’t faded over the years.

Do I look the same to him too?

Woohyun leaned in closer, growing noticeably more nervous as he did. “Hyung, I have something to tell you. I—”

The doorbell rang. Being the butler and needing an excuse to extract himself from this situation, Sunggyu had to answer it. He practically jogged up to the door. When he reached it, he realized that he didn’t have the key to the front door. “,” he swore and then looked through the peephole. Depending on who it was, Sunggyu could ignore them. And it was probably better to do that. There was a murderer in the house after all! Not answering the door could save a life! “!” Unfortunately, Sunggyu saw a policeman on the other side of the door and he couldn’t just ignore that.

“What is it?” The butler turned around to see all of the guests approaching him.

“There’s a ing policeman at the door!”

“WHAT?!”

Several of the guests rushed over to the peephole to see it for themselves. “Yup, that’s a policeman,” Mr. Green agreed as he walked back over to the butler’s side.

“He looks familiar,” Myungsoo added when he pulled away from the door.

“He looks impatient,” Sungyeol corrected him. And right on cue, the doorbell rang a few more times, followed by a bellowing from the policeman to open the door. Everyone jumped at that. “What are we going to do?” Once again, the question was directed at Sunggyu. Why are they doing this? I’m not in charge. I’m a ing manservant.

“I don’t know,” Sunggyu murmured, backing away slightly from everyone else, and he backed right into someone.

“Here.”

“The key! Where did you find it?!” Sunggyu exclaimed as he took the key from Professor Plum.

“When I was moving Mr. Boddy’s body, the key fell out of his pocket or something,” the professor explained.

Sunggyu rolled the key in his hands. “Well, that solves one problem,” he mumbled. He then turned to look behind him. And once he did, he groaned loudly. Boddy’s corpse had only moved a few feet down the hall and was contorted in such a way that it was glaringly obvious there was a dead body in the middle of the hall. Professor Plum hadn’t done a damn thing to hide him. He didn’t even try to shove the body under a rug. “YAH! Why didn’t you get rid of the body?” Sunggyu shouted.

“I was trying!” the professor defended himself, with hands and shoulders raised in the air. “He’s…a bit heavier than I thought he would be.”

“OH! Is that what they mean by dead weight?” Mr. Green asked while slipping past them to get to Mr. Boddy. He then tried to lift the host’s body. And he only managed to drag it a foot down the hall before dropping the body down with a loud thud that made everyone cringe. “Yup, that’s heavy,” Mr. Green concluded.

“You’re a doctor,” Professor Plum addressed Myungsoo. “Can’t you just…” his request drifted off.

But the doctor wasn’t following. He cocked his head. “Just what?”

“Get rid of it?” the professor elaborated by making a sawing motion with his hands.

“Ew, no,” Myungsoo quickly denied and moved away from the professor.

The professor followed him, not letting him off. “A ing cop is at the door and…”

“We have no time to chop up bodies!” Colonel Mustard cut him off. “Just put him in the billard room.”

“Fine,” the professor gave in and went back to his task of corpse-removal. But before he did, he reminded them. “Don’t forget the chef! I’m not doing that one.”

“Aish, right,” Sunggyu grumbled while rubbing his head, hoping that it would help form a plan in his mind. But he had none. They’d have to play it by ear. He looked up at them all about to give commands. “Alright, Colonel Mustard…, aish, I just remembered. We don’t know each other’s names, and those stupid codenames will be a dead giveaway that something’s up,” he remembered. “Quick! What’s your name?” he prompted the others while snapping his fingers. He started with himself. “Kim Sunggyu.”

Peacock-hyung introduced himself next, “Nam Woohyun.”

“Lee Sungjong,” Colonel Mustard revealed.

Scarlet raised his hand and said, “Lee Sungyeol.”

“Kim Myungsoo,” Doctor White replied.

“Lee Howon,” Professor Plum shouted from down the hall, followed by a great groan. He was still struggling with the body.

Now there was only one left: “Batman.” Sunggyu glared at Mr. Green after that answer. The scammer giggled. “Right, this isn’t the time. There’s a cop at the door.” He then shook the butler’s hand. “I’m Jang Dongwoo.”

“Great,” Sunggyu grumbled. “I’m not going to remember any of that.” The cop behind them rang the doorbell again, more insistent this time, and he threatened to call back up if they continued to refuse him entry. Sunggyu sighed. “I’ll distract him. You all take care of this,” he waved around generally as he said that.

“How are you going to distract him?”

“By doing what I do best?” Sunggyu answered with a slight laugh. And it was true. He had planned to talk his way out of this mess. And he’d always had the gift of gab. Speaking of which, he couldn’t let them go without issuing a few more commands: “Someone help out Hoppang before he breaks his back! Dongwoon, you do it.”

Sunggyu waited for those two to shove the body into the billard room before he unlocked and answered the door.

“Sorry for taking so long to answer. I couldn’t find the key to the front door,” the butler apologized to the cop.

Who raised an eyebrow, curious. “What do you mean? You were locked from the inside?”
“Yes,” Sunggyu answered honestly with an embarrassed chuckle. “It’s a party. An escape room themed party! Did you come because we made too much noise? I promise we’ll keep it down from now on,” he lied through his teeth. He then was getting ready to close the door. “If that’s it…”

“I was told to come here.”

“Eh?”

“Yes, the owner of this household asked for police assistance to come at this time,” the cop revealed. Sunggyu really struggled to keep his polite smile and not give into his shock. That bastard was trying to coerce them to murder me and then have them all arrested. What kind of vigilante justice is this? “Are you the owner of this house?”

“Ah, no, I’m the butler,” the answer slipped past Sunggyu’s lips before he realized how odd that sounded, especially since it was the 21^st century and he was dressed in sweatpants. “I’m off duty…to enjoy the party!”

“Sounds like you have a good employer,” the police replied.

“Well, he’s good at some things.” Like blackmail and stabbing us all in the back from the great beyond. Sunggyu stretched his fake smile even more tightly across his face. “Please come in, I will show you around and introduce you to my master.” Maybe I could get Woohyun to pretend to be Boddy…no, no…that’s a bad idea. Dongwoon? He’s a scammer! Ah, no, he’s a bit too slow. The colonel! He’s more stately…and drunk…we’re all screwed! Sunggyu’s mind scrambled to come up with a proper plan as he turned back to smile at the cop. “Please, this way,” he said as he ushered the policeman down the hall.

As they walked down, the door to the billard room slammed shut.

“What’s going on in there?” the cop asked.

“Wind,” Sunggyu answered. “Or ghosts. It’s a really old and drafty house. Doors are always slamming shut like that. Come, I’ll show you to the dining room. Maybe my master is in there. It’s hard to keep track of people in such large houses. I lose myself sometimes too. Ahahahahaha.”

“Aren’t you the butler?”

“Yes, but I am a bad one. I have a feeling that I’m going to lose my job soon. Ahahahaha,” Sunggyu confessed. He then opened the door to the dining room. “Well, this is it. And over here is the…” he walked over in order to open up the door to the kitchen. After opening it slightly, he saw the feet of his aunt being pulled into the pantry. Sunggyu slammed the door shut. “Kitchen! Ahahahahaaha! Who needs to see the kitchen? Everyone has one of those. But a conservatory? Wow! I’ve been working here for a few months, and I still don’t know what that room is for,” Sunggyu said as he practically pushed the cop back out of the door.

The butler showed the cop as much of the house as he could, and he’d bought the guests enough time that when he was finished coming down from upstairs, the billard room door was open again and Sungyeol and Myungsoo were there to greet them.

Sunggyu handed the cop over to their care and went to help out the others in the lounge. Well, he thought other people would be there, but it was just Woohyun, sitting on the couch and waiting for his orders. In his hands he was playing with an old cellphone charm that couldn’t even be used anymore on newer phones. The pokemon at the end of the charm was barely recognizable as its face and features had rubbed away over the years. But Sunggyu could recognize that childish, little pink ball anywhere because Woohyun has had it since he was a child. Sunggyu knew because he was the one that gave it to him.

“You still have that thing?” he asked the idol.

“It’s my lucky charm,” Woohyun answered, twirling the charm around his fingers even more quickly. He then unfurled it and showed it to the elder, who was sitting down next to him. “You gave this to me, didn’t you? Before my audition?” his statements were more like questions, since the both of them were still unsure about how to address their shared past. Those things did happen between them; the both of them were willing to acknowledge that now. However, even given that, neither of them were sure if it was right to talk about these things. Could they talk about these things? Woohyun thought it was: “It brought me a lot of luck.”

Sunggyu chuckled. When he had won it from the claw machine, Sunggyu didn’t mean to give it to Woohyun as a good luck charm. Sunggyu gave the charm to Woohyun so that the younger didn’t forget him. It was supposed to be reminder of Sunggyu and their time spent together. But now, it was a lucky charm. Woohyun had given it new meaning. Did he forget what the charm was supposed to be?

“Why did you laugh?” Woohyun asked, interrupting Sunggyu reverie again.

“What luck?” the butler challenged. “You pretend to be someone you’re not for most of your life. You’re on the verge of a major scandal and being blackmailed. And now you’re going to be murdered.”

“I achieved my dream of becoming a singer,” Woohyun argued, with a pout on his face. He then hung his head, looking down at the charm. “And I got to meet with you again,” he added in a smaller voice. After lifting his head, the idol flashed the other a smile. “Now I get to die with you. Isn’t that what all couples aim for? ‘Til death do us part.”

Sunggyu laughed. “Most couples don’t die before they get together,” he pointed out.

“Is that so?”

The butler kept laughing. He recalled that Woohyun used to say some ridiculous things and becoming an idol seemed to have worsened that habit rather than cure him of it. If it was possible, Woohyun was more like himself now more than ever. Sunggyu looked down at the charm in the other’s hands and sighed. Back then, Sunggyu was the cool and mature hyung, who doted on his ‘little brother.’ And now he was a burn-out butler in sweatpants, who had multiple breakdowns already tonight (and there were definitely more to come) and who tried to pretend to not know his former ‘fling’ because he was too embarrassed to face reality. This wasn’t who Sunggyu was, but it is how he is now.

“You haven’t changed, hyung, oh, except you watch the news now,” the idol joked. And out of all of the ridiculous things Woohyun had said that night, Sunggyu thought that was the most ridiculous: ‘you haven’t changed.’

So the butler was going to say something ridiculous himself: “Woohyun, since we’re probably not going to get out of here alive, did you ever think of me? Did you think of me at all?”

“I did,” Woohyun admitted. “A lot,” his voice was quieter. “At first everyday and then…”

“Less,” the butler filled in.

The idol looked at the other out of the corner of his eye. “I couldn’t pine over you forever, hyung,” he retorted.

“Why not?”

“Did you?” Woohyun turned the question around.

“No,” Sunggyu confessed honestly and burst into a great peal of laughter when Woohyun glared at him.

“That’s not fair!”

“How is that not fair?! You didn’t pine over me either!”

“That’s because I—”

“Hey!” a shout interrupted their spat. It was Howon, and he was crippling under the weight of something on his back. “A little help here?”

And Sunggyu recognized that white chef’s uniform quickly. “My aunt!” he exclaimed and leapt up to help the professor. Along with the professor, they carried her body over to the couch and flopped it down onto it.

“How should we do this?” Howon asked, gesturing at the disarrayed body on the couch. “Dongwoo is trying to convince the cop that Boddy is passed out drunk, so…we can’t do that.”

“I have an idea,” the idol spoke up. “But it involves you picking her up again, professor.”

Howon pouted. “But I’m dead tired.” The other two walked away from him. “Do you guys get it? Dead tired? Eh, my puns are the real killer here.” The professor looked down at the chef. “Let’s get cooking, shall we?”

“What does he even teach at the University?” Woohyun whispered to the other as he placed a record onto the gramophone. “Bad puns?”

“I hope not,” Sunggyu replied. “I would hate to think that there are more like him out there.” That comment elicited a small chuckle from the idol, but mostly he was distracted, trying to get the gramophone to work. “What’s the plan anyway?”

Woohyun finally got the record to play and faced the other with a bright grin. “We’re going to dance.”

“What? No, no. I’m not going to dance.”

But in spite of his disagreement, Sunggyu found himself in the middle of the lounge with his arms around the idol and the younger’s arms around his neck. They swayed only a bit so that they wouldn’t appear just to be standing. They at least looked more natural than the ‘couple’ next to them. Howon was doing all that he could to keep his knees from buckling under the weight of the chef’s body. So he was bouncing more than swaying, which made her head bob up and down. Sunggyu chuckled at the sight, but his laughter stuck in his throat when he turned back around and his eyes fell on Woohyun.

The butler cleared his throat and asked, “You did this just so you could dance with me, didn’t you?”

“No I did this so I could watch the professor dance with that,” the idol revealed, nodding towards the professor and the corpse. The both of them started laughing, which once again was short-lived because an unfamiliar voice could be heard booming over the loud music:

“What’s going on in here?”

Sunggyu craned his neck back to see the cop with Dongwoo in the threshold of the room. He quickly whipped it back around and tried to play up his part, gripping onto the other more tightly and moving more quickly. Luckily, Woohyun’s arms pressed down against his shoulders to control Sunggyu’s erratic movements. The butler was no dancer and it was starting to show.

“Follow my lead,” Woohyun whispered and rearranged them a bit so that he’d have more control.

The idol might’ve danced before, but he was no choreographer. And it showed. Sunggyu doubted that this looked much better than what he was doing.

“It looks like dancing, officer, or at least trying to,” Dongwoo shouted over the music. “Aw, I was hoping those two would get together! Look at that, officer!” Sunggyu would’ve froze at that comment, but Woohyun was moving him around too much and was spinning him for the third time already.

“Isn’t she a little old for him?” the officer asked the other. Good, they were talking about the professor.

“Love is love, officer. It’s no crime,” Dongwoo answered.

It might’ve been because Woohyun heard that comment, or he was tired of leading, but he stopped and they went back to the swaying, with his head on the elder’s shoulder. Sunggyu couldn’t help but to let a soft sigh out. He didn’t know if Woohyun was really trying to sell this, or if it was because…Sunggyu closed his eyes and went back in time again.

Sunggyu had gone to one of Woohyun’s concerts. He didn’t know what he was expecting when he went. Did he expect for their eyes to met and to be recognized by the younger? No, he wanted closure, but he didn’t get that at the concert. All he got was an empty feeling, worse than the post-concert-depression that fans often talk about. He regretted going at all.

Sunggyu guessed that same feeling would revisit him again tonight. No, the feeling would definitely worse this time because he was holding Woohyun and there was no way this night could end well. Suddenly, the butler could feel the heat of the cop’s gaze, and the weight on his stomach. The envelope that he received earlier that night, he’d stuffed it in his hoodie. He still didn’t know what was inside for certain, but maybe he was starting to have an idea.

Was it a picture is of the two of them from their younger days? Or of Sunggyu at the concert? Or was it of Woohyun coming to see him? Okay, maybe not the last one. But wait, maybe Sunggyu was in Woohyun’s set of photos?

Oh, Sunggyu stopped himself from going down that route. We happened before Woohyun was a trainee. Most likely, Boddy didn’t know. Then what could be in the envelope?

“Hyung,” Woohyun called him out of his head again.

Sunggyu opened his eyes and Woohyun was already staring right into them. The younger appeared to want to say something, but he couldn’t really bring himself to do it. He was just opening and closing his mouth, then tucking in his lips into his mouth. He gave up on trying to say anything and lowered his head, watching his fingers pick at the holes of Sunggyu’s old hoodie. Sunggyu suddenly had the urge to nudge his head back up and…Oh, he’s speaking.

“I…”

There was a ring again. Not from the front door though. But the ring sounded vaguely familiar. Sunggyu hadn’t heard a ring like that in years. It sounded like a landline phone. In the room, there was a landline in the room!

“Aren’t you going to answer that?” the cop asked the butler directly.

“No,” Sunggyu answered and peeled himself away from the idol. I don’t even know where it is. Let alone who could be calling!

The butler raised his eyebrow. “Then do you mind if I do?” he proposed. He was already walking over to where the phone was, which was inside a secret cupboard along the wall.

“Uh, sure. Go ahead,” Sunggyu yielded.

None of them knew what to expect. All of them were holding their breaths as the officer answered the phone. “Hello. May I ask who this is? Huh? What? Can you repeat that?” The policeman had to tear the phone away from his ear because the woman on the other end was shrieking. A second later, he placed the phone back onto his ear. “Choi Soon-sil?” he repeated what he had heard. He pulled the phone away again because the woman kept shrieking. But the cop instead turned his attention back to the butler. “Why is Choi Soon-sil calling you?”

“She seems to ask favors from everyone. Why can’t she ask me?” Sunggyu replied. The cop was not pleased with that answer. The butler waved his hands frantically in the air. “It’s not like I’d do it. I love Korea. I wouldn’t betray it for money.” He saluted. “Loyalty!”

“Loyalty!” Everyone else echoed in the room except the cop who was eyeing them all suspiciously.

“Okay,” the officer said and hung up the phone on Choi Soon-sil without a care. But to Sunggyu’s surprise, the cop picked it back up. “I’m going to make a call of my own,” he announced. “I need to report back. If you excuse me.” He tried to shoo everyone else away with his hand.

“Ah, yes, please feel free to use the phone,” Sunggyu said while bowing his way out of the room. Dongwoo and Woohyun followed him out the door. He almost shut the door on the professor and his aunt. “Hurry! Hurry!” Sunggyu hissed at Howon as he carried the chef on his back and out of the room. Once Sunggyu closed the door behind him, Howon dropped the body onto the floor.

“We’re so ed!” the professor exclaimed to the butler in a panic. That shout brought the rest out of the billard room.

“Aish, I know. What are we doing?” Sunggyu wondered. “Maybe we just should’ve told him the truth from that start,” he concluded. “Do you think we can now?”

“How?” Sungyeol argued. “Do we say ‘ah! It’s a hidden camera! These bodies were dead the whole time! Also there’s a killer in the house’?”

“Wait. What’s going on?” Sungjong asked.

“The cop is reporting back to the station.”

“About what?” Sungjong pursued.

“You know what? I don’t know,” Sunggyu answered honestly. “He didn’t say.”

“The cop…isn’t he in danger too?” Myungsoo spoke up. Everyone turned towards the doctor, wondering what he meant by that. So he explained: “There’s a killer. It could be one of us or…hiding somewhere in the house.” He reminded everyone of that little fact. They all had been too worried by getting caught by the cop that no one had worried about putting the cop in peril. And Myungsoo seemed really distressed by it all. “Obviously the killer knows the house well enough to escape our notice and kill the chef. Why can’t the same happen with the cop?” he brought up. “He’s the biggest threat right now!”

“Maybe we should really tell him then,” Woohyun added.

“But then…we’d all get into trouble,” Howon told them. “There’s evidence of our crimes all over this house. There’s no way we all wouldn’t go to jail.”

“I think I’m going to be sick,” Myungsoo announced, and he really did look pale and out of sorts. “Where’s the nearest bathroom?” he asked the butler.

“Down there,” Sunggyu answered and nodded towards the door. The doctor sprinted in that direction. The butler sighed as he watched the bathroom door slam shut and shook his head. He then turned to everyone else. “Well, let’s go into the billard room. We might as well keep both bodies in there and keep things tidy.”

“Any chance that you’ll help me carry this?” Howon asked and gestured at his aunt on the ground.

“Nope,” Sunggyu answered. “Let’s go, everyone! Hurry!”

 

After all going into the billard room, Sunggyu closed the door and leaned against it, facing the rest of them who, once again, were all looking towards him for the answer. “I have no freaking clue as to what to do! I don’t want to be the leader anymore,” he grumbled the last statement under his breath, not sure if anyone else heard it.

“Well, it’s been a fiery Saturday,” Dongwoo interjected. “So let’s really light this place up.”

“Uh….Oh!” Sunggyu gasped after realizing what the man in green was getting at. “You mean that we should burn all of the evidence!” Dongwoo nodded. “Well, that’s better than anything I can come up with right now. Call!”

However, not everyone else appeared to be in such agreement. There were murmurs of dissension everywhere. Except from one place: “I agree,” Sungyeol spoke up. “At least that way…some of us will be safe,” he added while striding over to the idol and patting him on the back. It was true. Woohyun could escape from this situation without any harm, as long as he got rid of the photos.

“You’d be safe too,” Woohyun pointed out to Sungyeol. “All you’re guilty of is insurance fraud.”

“Uh, eung,” the other answered without moving his frozen smile. He then cleared his throat and dropped his hand from the idol. “Well, I’ll get the fire started because that’s what I’m good at,” he announced, pulling out a matchbox and a lighter from his pocket.

“Well, let’s start the fire in an actual fireplace first,” Sunggyu responded. “There’s one in the study. Let’s go.”

Woohyun came up next to him. “I thought you said that you didn’t want to be the leader anymore, so why are you still giving out commands?” he teased.

“Shut up.”

 

On their way to the study, they met Myungsoo in the middle of the hallway. “Where have you been?” Sungyeol asked.

The doctor covered his mouth, looking like he was going to retch. “You don’t want to know,” his voice was muffled behind those hands. And Sunggyu didn’t want to know. The doctor was sickly pale and sweaty. His breathing was labored. He had a rough time in the bathroom, didn’t he? Sunggyu didn’t want to know, but he couldn’t keep his mind from guessing.

“You smell funny,” Sungjong revealed after giving the doctor one long sniff. “What is that?”

The doctor backed away. “Don’t get too close,” he warned.

“Don’t worry. I don’t want to,” Sungjong retorted while backing away himself. “Whew!”

“Hey, wait a second!” Sungyeol exclaimed. Everyone stopped in their tracks and faced the red-head. “! ! All of evidence is in the lounge with the cop! Unless…” he gaze landed on the butler, begging him, “Please tell me that you buttled it. Please tell me that you did!”

Damn, Sunggyu swore in his mind. I really am the worse butler ever. The envelopes and the empty boxes were still strewn all over the lounge and only the Lord knows where all of the weapons were. But he couldn’t bring himself to say that to everyone. So he just gave them an apologetic smile and laughed as if it was funny joke.

No one else found it funny. “So what now? Is the cop still on the phone?” Woohyun asked, trying his best to salvage the situation and stick to the plan. “Maybe he didn’t see the evidence yet.”

“Yes, yes!” Sunggyu jumped in. “He hasn’t seen them yet! All we have to do is go in and get them!” he encouraged everyone. “But we should wait until after the call is done.”

“Okay,” Dongwoo said, but went to the lounge’s doors anyways. However, he didn’t open them. Instead he laid his head against it, trying to listen in on the cop’s conversation. “Hm? I don’t hear anything,” he revealed to the others, who then all scrambled over to hear that nothingness for themselves.

“He’s not saying anything,” Sungjong whispered.

Sunggyu was the first to pull away, frustrated. “I don’t hear anything either,” he grumbled.

“Maybe he left,” Dongwoo suggested.

“Without saying anything?” to that question, Dongwoo only shrugged in response.

“Well, everyone step back. I’m gonna open the door,” Sunggyu warned and barely gave anyone time to move before he opened it. He cracked it just enough so that he could see, but he felt some others pry it open even further so that they all could get a good look at the cop’s body lying on the floor. Sunggyu sighed. “Well, I’m not sure if that’s one problem solved or another problem added. Aish,” he ended with a swear. He then stepped inside. “We might as well grab the now.”

The guests trickled into the room and took their respective envelopes. Some left as soon as they got theirs, but others lingered, like Sungyeol who was scanning the room. “Ah! There!” he exclaimed while pointing excitedly to the larger-than-life sized portrait of Boddy hanging on the wall. Sunggyu spun around and saw that the ‘painting’ wasn’t a painting at all, but a door, leading down to another secret passageway, which he could now see since the ‘door’ was ajar. “That’s must’ve been how the killer got inside!”

“Frankly, Scarlet my dear, I don’t give a damn,” Howon quoted as he took his envelope. “Let’s just deal with these and go.” And with that he left the room.

The butler watched the excitement being drained from Sungyeol, who started to realize that no one was interested in solving the mystery anymore. They all just wanted to leave. He just stood in his place, flicking the lighter on and off in his hands, dismayed. “Come on, Sungyeol. We need you to start the fire,” Sunggyu reminded him.

“Yeah, let’s finish this.”

 

Now, they were all in the study with a fire blazing in front of all of them. Sungyeol was a bit too good at setting fires and nearly scorched the eyebrows from his face, and everyone else’s. But once it died down, one by one, they threw their envelopes into the fire, except for Sunggyu. The guests appeared to have forgotten that the butler had one too, and Sunggyu didn’t want to remind them. Instead, he kept it to his chest, literally, and watched while the evidence became ash.

Woohyun was the last to throw his into the fire. For a few moments, he watched the flames while he tenderly fiddled with the edges of the envelope. Woohyun wasn’t just getting rid of evidence, but the final traces of a broken relationship. It was harder for him to part with. And Sunggyu watched his old friend carefully as the idol wavered in front of the fire. Does he still love him?

And right as Sunggyu asked himself that, Woohyun tossed the envelope into the fire and spun around to face everyone else, grinning. “Well, that’s it! It’s over!” he declared.

But he wasn’t right. “No, there’s more of our traces around the house,” Sungyeol reminded all of them. And even Sunggyu forgot about that fact. More of our traces…more evidence…“We need to make it look like the dinner party never happened.”

Just the dinner party?! I’ve been here longer than that!

“Good plan. I like it!” Myungsoo chirped. “TO THE DISHES!” he shouted and him and Sungyeol scampered off towards the kitchen, dragging Sungjong behind them.

My aunt…she’s the chef…and she’s dead. My aunt has been murdered! The realization hit him like a ton of bricks and knocked Sunggyu onto the floor, gripping both sides of his head. I can’t…I can’t…I’m ed!

“I guess I’ll pick up the boxes and whatever else,” Howon announced. “Are you coming?”

“I will, buddy!”

“I’ll stick with him for a bit.”

“Yeah, you clean up that mess and we’ll deal with the rest,” the professor said before taking his leave with Dongwoo.

And Woohyun stayed behind and crouched down next to Sunggyu, who was losing his mind yet again. He placed an arm around the other’s shoulders and tugged him in closer. “Hyung, are you okay?” he asked.

“Yeah, I’m just trying to think about how to do this,” Sunggyu muttered. He then began thinking out loud: “I could pack everything up. Clean my room. But…there’s too much. Too much evidence. I was on his payroll! That’s my aunt. I can’t…I can’t escape, not like you can.” Sunggyu finally raised his head and their eyes met. He gave the other a sad, small smile. “You could probably go out of that door right now, and it’d be like you were never here.”

“Then…I won’t leave either,” Woohyun declared as he sat fully down on the floor, settling and getting comfortable. Sunggyu sputtered into a chuckle. He had seen this stubbornly determined side of Woohyun several times before.“I’m not going to let you take the fall for this. The others might, but I won’t. I won’t leave your side. I’ll fight for you. You’re innocent.”

“No, no, no. Go.” But as determined as the younger was, Sunggyu wasn’t willing to drag the other down with him. And he could be stubborn too. “You need to go. You have your career. Your fans,” Sunggyu argued. “I’m just an old hyung that you used to have. I’m not worth it. You know that. I’m a lost cause.”

“You’re not,” Woohyun insisted, not backing down. “You’re worth it. And I’m staying.” He let go of the other and crossed his arms over his chest.

“Aish. Woohyun, don’t be a fool,” Sunggyu whined, kicking his feet. He didn’t feel like he could live with himself if he dragged the idol down with him (even if Woohyun did it willingly).

“But I am a fool,” Woohyun retorted, flashing the other his silly grin again. He unfurled his arms in order to place one of his hands over the other’s. “Us meeting like this is a blessing, hyung. I really thought we’d never see each other again.” He then squeezed the hand before wrapping both arms around his knees and bringing them to his chest. “I’ve even tried to see you once,” he revealed, refusing to face the butler as he did. “I tried looking for you after I debuted. I wanted to show you that I made it.”

“You did?”

“Eung,” the idol grunted and then sputtered into a small chuckle. “Seoul…it’s a big place. It never used to seem that big before, with so many places.”

“I moved away from Seoul,” Sunggyu confessed. By the time Woohyun debuted, Sunggyu had already graduated and took a job at a small branch of a large company. It wasn’t necessarily in a small town, but everything seemed small in comparison to Seoul. Everything seemed quaint (and empty).

“Ah, of course,” Woohyun muttered below his breath and chuckled again. “See, I’m a fool. I didn’t even consider that.” He then let go of his knees and slid himself around until he faced Sunggyu head on. And Sunggyu, his eyes were on the fire, swearing that he only felt hot because of it. “In any case…I don’t want to lose you again.” Sunggyu heard him clear his throat before he started again: “I missed you. A lot.”

At that, Sunggyu finally turned towards the younger. He placed a hand on Woohyun’s knee and squeezed it while giving him a warm smile. And Woohyun grinned brightly right back, thinking that they had finally reached an understanding. But they didn’t. “Go,” Sunggyu urged him again, but more kindly this time. “With the way things are going, you’ll know exactly where I’ll be.”

“Or,” Woohyun drawled out dramatically before offering an alternative, “We could share a jail cell.”

Sunggyu burst into laughter and reached his arm up to pat Woohyun on the back of the head. “You really are a fool,” he cooed while he continued patting the other’s hair. It was just like old times, when teenage Woohyun would say something silly to lift his spirits and Sunggyu would react like this, more gently than he thought himself capable of. The two of them fell back into their old habits quickly, as if years didn’t pass and they never parted. But they did. Sunggyu took his hand away and balled it into a fist. No, there’d be no happy ending for them, Sunggyu was sure of it. Unlike Woohyun, he wasn’t a fool.

“Why—”

The doorbell rang once again. “Who could that be?” Sunggyu asked, and the idol only responded with a shrug. Of course the fool wouldn’t know. None of them would. The only person who did was lying dead under the billards table. But whoever was at the door was impatient. The doorbell rang a few more times, followed by knocking.

“Why isn’t someone answering the door?” Sungyeol shrieked from the kitchen.

“Isn’t this why we have a butler?” Howon hollered from the next room.

Sunggyu groaned and rolled back onto his feet. “You don’t have me!” he yelled right back. “Besides, I’m pretty sure that I’m not a butler anymore! One of you killed my employer and ruined my life! I won’t forgive you for that! Never!”

“He means it!” Woohyun joined in on the shouting. “His greatest skill is holding grudges!” His gaze then met with Sunggyu’s and he pouted. “I should know.”

Sunggyu gave him a light shove. “Shut up!”

“Well, his greatest skill is surely not answering doors!” the professor shouted, trying his best to drown out the incessant ringing of the doorbell with his voice.

“I’ll answer it!” Dongwoo offered. And Sunggyu could hear the scammer lumber over into the hallway.

Nope, Dongwoon answering the door is a bad, bad idea. He’d gladly let in a serial killer. Sunggyu finally moved towards the door. “No, I’ll do it!” he yelled. And when he entered the hallway, he saw Dongwoo juggling boxes while trying to grab the door knob. Sunggyu gently pushed him out of the way. “I’ll deal with this. You deal with those.”

“Okay,” Dongwoo gave in and walked away.

When he did, Sunggyu looked through the peephole first, and then he pulled away scrunching his face. It was a young woman, and a rich looking one at that (or at least one that could give of that vibe). But something about her...Sunggyu looked through the peephole again…Yeah, something about this woman looked awfully familiar. Was she an idol? The butler turned around and asked the man slowly approaching him, “Namu, do you know who that is?”

“It’s been a long while since I heard you called me that,” Woohyun replied, his expression was a mix of shock and elation. But as soon as he glanced through the peephole, only shock could be seen. “Holy crap! Wait,” after cursing he checked again. Confirming his suspicions, he faced Sunggyu, eyes wide with fear. “It’s Chung Yoora!” he hissed.

“What?!” Sunggyu could scarcely believe it. “The Chung Yoora?”

“Yep, that’s the one.” At that, the both of them tried to look through the peephole again and obviously failed to do so. They really were both fools.

“Her mother called us and now this?” Sunggyu whispered. He didn’t want the woman on the other side to hear. “How many bad people did Mr. Boddy know?”

“He’s not the only one,” Woohyun confessed with that shaky smile of his. He let out a heavy sigh and his eyes dropped to the ground. “She…she knows about me. Of course, her family is somehow connected to my company. I’ve had to meet with her a few times during company functions. She might not be book smart, but she’s astute. She called me out. She knew about me and my boyfriend. She also knew about the sponsor-mishap because the woman was a family friend and complained about me to her and her mother.”

“Woohyun!” Sunggyu whined and stamped his foot. No wonder why Woohyun wasn’t afraid of going to jail. He was already surrounded by people who belonged in there. “Are you serious?”

“Yes,” the idol barely gave any voice to his answer. But he spoke the following more strongly, only slightly so: “I don’t have a lot of good people around me now. And that’s why…” He raised his eyes, and their gazes met. Woohyun truly seemed more desperate now than ever. “I need…”

Yoora pounded on the door once again and demanded that she be let it, as if she had as much authority as the cops (and she probably had more power too). “I should get that,” Sunggyu told the other as he opened the door. “Hello,” he greeted her. “Come on in.”

“Who’s at the door?” Sungyeol asked while striding out into the hallway.

“Is it another cop?” Sungjong popped out too.

Yoora then walked in and handed Sunggyu her bag and coat, smiling at the other men in front of her. “Nope, it’s just another criminal,” Sungyeol remarked and then went back into the kitchen.

“Yah!” Yoora shrieked and stamped her foot. “Is that anyway to treat an invited guest?”

“Invited?” Sunggyu picked out while he hung up her coat in the nearby closet. “I didn’t send you an invitation.”

“I have one! It’s right here,” she kept her voice raised high as she waved the envelope in her hands. And indeed, it was like the others that Sunggyu had sent out. Boddy must’ve given it to her, but why? Yoora scoffed. “I belong here more than you do. Seriously, is that how you dress for a dinner party?”

“Well, the party is pretty much over,” Sunggyu retorted.

“Yeah, we were all getting ready to leave,” Woohyun revealed.

“What?” Yoora was stunned and actually seemed sad. “B-but I was told to come at this time,” she stammered. She pulled the card from the envelope and showed it to Sunggyu, pointing at the time specified on the card. The butler looked from the card to the clock in the hall. Yoora was right on time.

“So she was,” Woohyun stated as he peered over Sunggyu’s shoulder and at the card. “But…” he let his statement drop. Sunggyu knew very well what he was about to say. But the night is over and we should just turn her away.

But they didn’t end up doing that. “I’ll take care of her then,” Sungjong proposed. He then walked up to the young lady and offered her his arm. “Yoora, come with me. I’ll fix you a drink.”

And she gladly accepted, but the arm and the drink: “Okay, oppa!” And Sungjong led her into the study.

“Oppa?!” Sunggyu exclaimed incredulously. He couldn’t believe that fresh-faced arms dealer could be anyone’s ‘oppa.’ He really knows all of the dangerous people, doesn’t he?

“Is Chung Yoora here?” Myungsoo asked as he stormed out of the kitchen.

“Yes,” Sunggyu answered carefully. “Do you know her?”

The doctor nodded. “My wife, she’s an actress, and her company—”

“Has dealings with her mother,” Woohyun completed. “I know. What company doesn’t?”

“True,” Myungsoo admitted. “I, uh, also know Yoora through my job too.”

“Not surprising.”

“Yoora knows that my wife…also met me through my job,” the doctor confessed in a small voice, rubbing the back of his neck. “Her company claims that she’s a natural beauty but…”

“I said his work is good,” Sungyeol interjected, also coming out of the kitchen. “His wife is my cousin.”

“Should I say ‘hi’ to her?” Myungsoo asked his cousin-in-law.

“You’re really too nice for your own good,” Sungyeol replied. He then glanced over at the professor who was slinking out of the lounge. “And let me take a wild guess about what university you work at.”

“Please don’t,” Howon begged. “That girl was the biggest mistake of my life.”

“I’ll bet.”

Dongwoo then poked his head out of the lounge. “Is Chung Yoora really here?” he whispered too loudly.

“Yes.”

“Don’t tell her that I’m here,” he begged. “I was supposed to give her a car.”

“You scammed Chung Yoora?! Are you crazy?” Sunggyu hissed right back.

“Yes,” Dongwoo replied without any qualms. “So don’t tell her that I’m here, okay? Okay!” He the closed the door again, hiding behind it.

“Am I the only one here that doesn’t know her?” Sunggyu asked everyone in the hall.

“Yeah, pretty much.” “Seems that way.” “I wish that I didn’t.”

“So it’s like that,” Sunggyu said with a groan, rubbing his temples. “Boddy probably wanted you to kill her like he wanted me to be killed. Something else to hang over your heads.”

“Well, it worked,” Sungyeol replied after peering into the study. “She’s dead.”

“Are you kidding me?! Sungjong-ah! What did you do?” Sunggyu bellowed as he stomped into the study. Once inside, he saw Sungjong standing up, twirling the lead pipe in his hands. And Chung Yoora was sprawled out on the couch, with her limbs in disarray and her tongue hanging from out of her open mouth.

Sungjong raised his arms up in the air, dropping the pipe, after being confronted by the frustrated mob. “She isn’t. I got her drunk,” he admitted. “It’s her habit. After a few drinks, she falls asleep. So I made her a strong one.” His gaze fell on the butler. “I used your martini recipe.”

Sunggyu sighed and continued to rub his temples. “This is getting terribly out of hand,” he grumbled. He then lowered his hands and told the guests, “Now that I know where a phone is. I’m going call the police and…explain the situation.” Several of them opened their mouths, readying their arguments, but Sunggyu cut them off: “If you object, leave. I’m still going to do it. But you do whatever you want. It’s your life.”

It wasn’t until Sunggyu reached the lounge when he dared to turn around to see all who followed him. He had heard some footsteps, but he still was too timid to look behind, in case it was only one person with very loud steps (Woohyun to be specific. Sunggyu knew that he couldn’t get rid of him as much as he tried). Sunggyu finally craned his neck back as he dialed the phone. And he was surprised to see how many were standing by his side. Of course, Woohyun was next to him, but Sungyeol, Myungsoo, and Sungjong were there too. And Dongwoo, after the others told him what Sunggyu was doing, he stayed as well. Howon wasn’t in the lounge, but he was wavering out in the hallway, debating whether to leave or stay. And then he got out of the butler’s sight, heading for the front door. Sunggyu sighed and finished dialing the number. You can’t win them all.

“Wait! Hold on, Sunggyu!” Dongwoo exclaimed. Sunggyu swung his gaze towards the man in green and caught him crouching down next to the cop, who…who was breathing! “He isn’t dead! Someone just knocked him out and tied his hands together with the noose.”

Sunggyu hung up the phone after saying he dialed the wrong number. “But who would do something like that?”

“I…I was the one who did this to him,” Myungsoo stepped forward and exposed himself. “I really thought he was in danger so…I thought if he looked dead that no one would try to kill him. Gosh, it’s so stupid, isn’t it?” His face got really red as he confessed. He tried to cover it with his hands, but it was still glowing through. Eventually he gave up trying to hide it and lowered his hands, choosing to wring them instead as he further explained himself, “I noticed that there was some chloroform when I was upstairs, and I took it. It was to protect myself but…” He paused to groan loudly and covered his face again, this time with his shirt. “It was a dumb idea, wasn’t it? I wasn’t thinking. I wasn’t thinking at all. It’s just like…” He stopped himself again and exposed his eyes, checking to see if anyone had caught that.

And Sunggyu had. “Just like what?”

The doctor sighed as he revealed his face again. The redness had faded from his face, and he looked pale once more, and scared. “You were right to suspect me at the beginning. I had the most to lose,” he admitted. “My wife, she was being…hurt by her father and used. He took most of her earnings, and...” he gulped, too afraid to finish.

“Did you kill him?”

“Yes,” Myungsoo was honest. “He was a drunk, and I had proscribed him medicine for an ailment he had that doesn’t mix well with alcohol. I told him that, but…I knew he wouldn’t listen. I could’ve given himself something else. I should have, but I didn’t.” After sighing and shaking his head, he continued, “And he then he died because of it.”

Sunggyu narrowed his eyes on the doctor, wondering if he could really be found liable for the man’s death. But whether he was liable legally or not wasn’t the issue. Myungsoo felt guilty, incredibly guilty, and Boddy had preyed on that. His former master was truly a devious man. “Does your wife know about this?” he asked.

“Yes,” Sungyeol answered for him. “I do too. He was an awful man, and no one misses him. All of our lives are better without him. Or it was until we both started being blackmailed for it.” Sungyeol walked over to his friend, placed a hand on his shoulder, and addressed Sunggyu. “I’m just as guilty as Myungsoo is. I helped. I made sure my uncle took the medicine, and I took him out drinking.” He let go of Myungsoo and placed that hand over his heart. “And it was me who shot the gun earlier. I wasn’t aiming for you but for that bastard,” he confessed and gestured over to the billard room. “I felt like I did back then. Like all of our lives would be better if he just…disappeared,” he mumbled, barely moving his lips. He was ashamed of his impulsive reaction. But then he snapped his head up and looked about at everyone with wide, pleading eyes. “But I didn’t kill him! You all saw that the bullet missed! It clipped his ear!”

“I know you didn’t kill him,” a voice spoke out from behind all of them. They all jumped and turned towards the entrance of the room. Howon was standing there. When he stepped inside, everyone else took a step back, except for two of them. “Because I killed Mr. Boddy. Sungjong and Dongwoo were nice enough not to rat me out,” he finished and nodded towards the men who were closest to him.

“Why did you do it?”

“He got spooked,” Dongwoo answered for him.

The professor cursed under his breath. “I was only spooked because you kept saying that he turned into a zombie!” he shifted the blame onto the other. He then faced everyone else. “When I saw Mr. Boddy walking out of the bathroom, I thought he was a zombie and threw the candlestick at him. And it killed him.” He puffed out his cheeks and hung his head, shaking in. “I killed somebody because I already thought he was dead. That’s not going to hold up in a court of law, is it?” No one answered that question. Probably because they all thought it was rhetorical, but the professor was genuinely looking for an answer. “Really? A room full of wealthy criminals and not one lawyer? Huh, interesting.”

Woohyun stepped forward, glowering. “What I am isn’t a crime,” he grumbled.

“Well, in some countries—”

“Hoppang, stop while you’re ahead,” Sunggyu cut him off.

“What about the chef?” Sungjong reminded everyone about the second corpse lying in the room next door. “Who killed her?”

Myungsoo raised his hand. “I confessed to what I’ve done. It wasn’t me,” he stated.

“Me too,” Sungyeol followed suit.

“Me three.” As did Howon.

Which only left the rest of them as suspects. Sunggyu put his hands on his hips as he faced them. “Does anybody have anything else to say?” he asked, hoping that would be intimidating enough to elicit another confession.

“Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.” Well, that wasn’t the revelation that Sunggyu was looking for, but it was what Dongwoo gave him. He then quickly added, noting the butler’s disgust. “Also it wasn’t me either.”

“Okay.” Sunggyu would have to believe that for now. He then devoted his attention to the yellow man. “Do you?”

“Look, I just deal dangerous and lethal weapons. I don’t use them,” Sungjong answered as if he were above it all, but he was still playing with the lead pipe like it was his new toy. And he raised his toy in the air and waved it around. “How would you even use this to kill someone?”

“Ow!” the professor yelped. While Sungjong had been waving the damned pipe around, it’d hit Howon right on the shoulder.

“Oh! I found out! That’s how!” Sungjong exclaimed excitedly. Sunggyu eyed the odd man. What kind of arms dealer was he?

He then felt a nudge in his side. “What about him?” Sungyeol whispered to him as he pointed at Woohyun.

And Woohyun always had a sixth sense that detected whenever he was being talked about. “What? Me? Why would I?” the idol argued.

“Maybe she was the sponsor or something like that,” Howon guessed.

“That’s ridiculous,” Woohyun dismissed it with a scoff.

“Is it?” the professor wouldn’t let it go. “You said that your aunt knew us. How is that? And with the type of person Mr. Boddy was, maybe it was a trap.”

“Did you know her Woohyun?” Sunggyu asked the idol directly.

“No,” Woohyun answered adamantly. “Believe me. I didn’t do it.”

“I don’t believe him,” Howon stated, which earned a nasty glare from the butler. “What? If it wasn’t him, then who else could?” he defended himself as he raised his hands in the air.

“We did think that there was someone else in the house,” Sunggyu argued lamely.

“Do you seriously still think that now?” even Sungyeol found it lame.

But as if on cue, a loud thud came from who-knows-where. And everyone was scared out of their minds. “Wh-what was that?!”

Sunggyu pushed Woohyun off of him, who had jumped on him at the sudden sound. “I’m going to make the call now,” he announced. “I can’t take this anymore. The cops will figure it out. It’s not our job to do it. This isn’t a game.”

“I’m going to make myself a drink in the study, while he makes the call,” Sungjong announced. “Who wants to join me?”

Everyone did, well except for the snoozing cop at his feet. So Sunggyu was left in silence to make the most life-changing call in his existence. “Hello? I’d like to report two murders. Yes, two. It’s been a horrible night.”

 

After he hung up the phone, Sunggyu dragged his feet over to the lounge. He couldn’t look at everyone as he reported, “I made the call. So whatever happens, happens.” He raised his head. “You guys can leave now, but I can’t guarantee that you’d be safer that way. I’m going to tell the truth about tonight.”

“We all are staying,” Myungsoo announced.

“Mostly because we’d look more suspect if we left now,” Howon stated before taking a sip from the night’s signature martini. And he choked as it burned his throat. “How can you drink this?” he asked Sungjong.

“It’s an acquired taste,” Sungjong said before draining his own martini.

Myungsoo put down his martini, still full, and got up from his seat. “Well, I’m going to try to wake up the officer…and profusely apologize,” he said and then left for the lounge.

“I’m going to help him out. And cover his mouth if he tries to say anything more about this evening,” Sungyeol said and sat up from his seat with a groan. He followed his friend out of the room.

“Good,” Sunggyu said as the man passed by him, knowing full well about the doctor’s habit of letting things slip past his lips.

However, Sungyeol wasn’t the only man that came up to him. Woohyun did too and whispered to him, “Can I talk to you? In private?”

Sunggyu glanced over at the other three, who were all busy chatting and sipping on their ‘martinis.’ None of them were paying attention to him. So he gave in, “Okay.” And Sunggyu followed Woohyun out of the room.

Oddly, Woohyun led the man straight into the hall bathroom. He had Sunggyu enter first, and he went in second, closing the door behind him and locking it. When he did that, Sunggyu felt his own throat closing. His heart was racing. “What do you want to talk to me about? In the bathroom?” Sunggyu asked the other with an uneasy smile. Woohyun checked to make sure that the door was safely locked. “Woohyun, what are you doing?” And when Sunggyu called him by name, the idol finally faced him. There was a weird look in his eyes, unlike Sunggyu has ever seen before, as he was approaching closer and closer…“Woo-woohyun?”

But Woohyun didn’t stop. Sunggyu backed away until his back hit the sink, unable to escape. And Woohyun kept approaching. He pulled his hand from his pocket…and cupped Sunggyu’s cheeks before kissing him.

Sunggyu pushed Woohyun away. “Hey! What the…what?!”

“Sorry,” Woohyun muttered, ashamed as he stumbled backwards from the shove. He kept his eyes on the floor. “I know that I’m skipping steps, but, , I don’t know what’s going to happen to us. I just found you. And I don’t…” he stopped because he was having a hard time breathing. Woohyun? Are you…He was. Woohyun raised his head and he appeared on the verge of tears. “I don’t want lose you again. You’re the best thing to—”

Sunggyu muffled the rest with a kiss. A short one, but damn, it was probably the best thing that he did all night. “I don’t either,” Sunggyu admitted in a low voice. “I missed you, Woohyun-ie.”

“Me too,” Woohyun confessed. He kissed Sunggyu again, his fingers gripping at the fabric on his shoulder. “So much,” he whispered on his lips, clutching at the shirt more tightly. He then pulled away a bit. His breathing became labored again. So was Sunggyu’s. Somehow, watching the younger break down like this, made him want to do the same. “Just, …I don’t wanna die. I don’t want you to die,” especially now when Woohyun gave voice to their fears. They then clung onto each other desperately. Sunggyu tucked the other’s head under his chin. And Woohyun hugged his waist tightly, maybe too tightly. But for right now, it felt good. They needed this. They were given a second chance. And they’d be damned if they let it pass. Even though Sunggyu had been stubborn all night, he’d hoped, he wanted this to happen. However, he still knew that their future was bleak. Given that, he still wanted this, to hold Woohyun again, and to have Woohyun love him again.

“Me either, , I really don’t wanna,” Sunggyu confessed in a low voice. He nuzzled his cheek against the hair. “And I don’t want to go to jail.”

“Let’s hide out in here,” Woohyun responded, his voice muffled into the chest.

“Okay,” Sunggyu murmured back and kissed the top of his head. Woohyun was crying now. Sunggyu could feel him shaking and the tears soak his shirt. Woohyun knew it too. He had to. They were going to lose each other again after tonight.

And with that thought, Sunggyu started crying himself. Life was so unfair.

And it was truly unfair when this moment was cut all too short by a knock at the bathroom door. “Hey, is there someone in here?” it was Dongwoo. “I have to pee.” The couple let go over each other a little to look at the door. “Please? I see that the lights are on.”

Even though he didn’t want to, Sunggyu let Woohyun go. “Come on, let’s go,” he urged the other, who wasn’t so willing to let go. He was trying to pull the butler back into the hug, but Sunggyu grabbed his hands. “Everything will be okay.”

“Really?” Woohyun asked.

All Sunggyu could honestly say was: “I hope.”

“Okay,” Woohyun replied and took his hands away from the other. He was the one to finally open the door for Dongwoo.

“Huh? Both of you were in here? What were you guys doing in here?” Dongwoo asked as he slid into the room, slightly jumping as he really had to go.

“Buddy system,” Woohyun excused them. “You shouldn’t go to the bathroom alone. Just in case…the killer…”

“Oh,” Dongwoo muttered. “Then can one of you stay with me?”

“Yeah, I will,” Woohyun volunteered. He then turned to Sunggyu. “I’ll see you back in the study, hyung.”

“Okay.” And with that, he left Woohyun and their last chance behind.

 

A few minutes later, all of them were in the study, still waiting for the police to arrive. Most of them were on the two couches in the room, squished together. Dongwoo announced that it was past his bedtime, and seconds later he was passed out on Sungjong’s lap. Sungjong didn’t mind. He found a new toy in Dongwoo’s face and took great joy at playing with his cheeks. Myungsoo, on the other side of the couch, was watching them, laughing. Sungyeol was sitting on the adjacent couch with the butler and the idol, but he seemed more interested in what was going on at the couch next door. He joked with Myungsoo, commenting on the scammer’s contorted face. The professor seemed more interested in the books lining the study than anything else. He appeared to have enough of the rest for that night and wanted to be alone. However, for Sunggyu, he liked being close to the others right now. It made him feel comfortable, safe, especially with Woohyun holding his hand, which he did as soon as he came back from the bathroom. Woohyun wasn’t going to let go anytime soon. He was making that clear. And was making it clear to everyone else as he brought Sunggyu’s hands up to his lips and kissed it.

Normally Sunggyu would be upset, but he was going to jail in a few hours so he didn’t give a anymore. He kissed Woohyun’s hand right back.

“Yah,” Sunggyu heard Sungyeol hiss to his friend. “When did that happen?” And Sungyeol’s finger was practically poking Sunggyu’s face.

“You didn’t notice? I think they know each other from before,” Myungsoo whispered back.

“Oh…OH!” Sungyeol finally caught on. “Really? Wow! Hey, do you think Mr. Boddy did that on purpose? He hired Sunggyu and then invited Woohyun. Like a set-up,” he guessed.

“No, I don’t think it was a set-up,” Myungsoo replied. “It was fate.”

And Sunggyu would like to think it was fate too.

 

When the cops came and when they stumbled on the dead bodies heaped under the billards table, they immediately shoved Sunggyu and the guests into the police cars and brought them into the station, while some cops stayed behind to process the scene. All of them were separated from each other so that they wouldn’t corroborate each other’s stories, although they had ample time to do so. Regardless, Sunggyu finally had to say goodbye to Woohyun, not knowing if they would ever see each other again.

And they definitely wouldn’t see each other any time today because Sunggyu was held in for questioning for hours. He only was let out when it was midday (and he was told not to leave town). However, Sunggyu was able to see him that day because Woohyun was waiting for him outside of the station.

After greeting each other, Woohyun had a surprising question for him: “So, what’s your secret?”

“What secret?” Sunggyu replied.

“The one in your pocket,” Woohyun responded. “I remember you got an envelope from Boddy too.”

“I don’t know. I was too scared to open it,” Sunggyu confessed. In fact, it was still in his pocket right now, unopened. Surprisingly the cops didn’t find the envelope suspect enough to give it much attention. And so if they didn’t think it was a concern, Sunggyu shouldn’t either. “There’s no harm in opening it now, is there?” he said as he ripped the envelope open. And inside of it was only one photo. It was a picture of Sunggyu, in his bedroom at the mansion. Boddy must’ve set up a hidden camera in his room because there was no way Sunggyu would’ve taken off his clothes if he knew someone could be watching.

“Oh, what do we have here?” Woohyun asked peering over Sunggyu’s shoulder, not even masking his interest in the photo of a shirtless Sunggyu. He was chuckling ertedly. “Is that what I think it is?”

“Yep. It was a mistake,” Sunggyu responded as he stuffed the photo safely back inside of the envelope. He didn’t want Woohyun leering at his lower back tattoo anymore.

“That. That is your big secret?!” Woohyun exclaimed in disbelief.

“Yes,” Sunggyu admitted. And honestly, it was the biggest secret he had recently. “My mom would be so disappointed if she knew.” He put the envelope in his pocket. “But it’s not exactly blackmail material.”

“Yeah, but sometimes it’s the fear that makes you feel like your secret is scarier and riskier than it actually is,” Woohyun said. Sunggyu cocked an eyebrow. “I’ve decided, while I waiting for you. I’m coming out,” he declared with a proud smile.

“Are you sure?”

Woohyun gave a short nod. “I’m convinced that it’s the right thing to do now. And you can’t change my mind. I’m doing it,” he took his stand. He would not be moved.

And Sunggyu didn’t want him too. He supported his friend: “Okay then, do it.”

“I will,” Woohyun replied, smiling even more broadly now. He didn’t think Sunggyu would agree so easily, but he liked it. And he hoped that Sunggyu would agree to this too: “And when I do, would you like to go out with me?”

But instead, Sunggyu showed a bit of resistance. “Are you sure? I’m unemployed and could be going to jail,” he pointed out while laughing.

“Yup. I’m a fool,” he answered with a laugh. But he quickly sobered up and yawned. Suddenly, Sunggyu noticed how tired the younger was, and how tired that he was. He yawned as well, a great big one. When it was done and he opened his eyes again, he saw Woohyun trying fruitlessly to rub the sleep away from his eyes. “And what does it say about my life that even given that, you’re one of the best people that I know?” he mumbled. He lowered his hands and looked up at Sunggyu. “You helped us all out. Last night.”

“I had to. You all were good people, even if you did bad things,” Sunggyu replied and was amazed at how quickly his opinion of people changed. Before last night, Sunggyu wouldn’t dare to interact with such delinquents, but today before he left the station, he exchanged phone numbers with a few of the guests from last night because he wanted to meet up with them again. And he himself was charged with obstruction of justice and contaminating evidence. But he didn’t regret doing what he did. Sunggyu smiled and laughed to himself at how everything turned out. When Woohyun eyed him curiously, Sunggyu distracted him with a joke, “Except I’m not so sure about Sungjong. He gives me the creeps.”

“Same,” Woohyun agreed. “But…that still doesn’t answer my question.” His grin shook nervously. “Please don’t make me ask again. Do you know how hard it is for me to ask when you—”

Sunggyu shut him up by wrapping his arm around the other’s shoulders, bringing him in closely, and pecking him on the cheek. “Only if I avoid going to jail,” was his answer.

“Okay,” Woohyun took it, a bit unhappily. But then again, he always tried to make the best out of every situation that he was given…or manipulate it: “I’m going to get you a really good lawyer then. I’ll even do a concert and free hug event for the jury if I have to.”

“That’d be bribery,” Sunggyu pointed out.

“Then I’ll go to jail too, and we can share a cell,” the idol retorted.

“Stop saying that!” Sunggyu whined. “There’s nothing romantic about it.”

“It would be if I was with you,” Woohyun insisted and gave the other a squeeze.

Which Sunggyu squirmed out of and he shoved the other away. “You’re a fool!” he exclaimed while laughing.

“A fool for you,” Woohyun replied and came up to his side again. When he did, Sunggyu took his hand and they continued walking down the street.

“You really didn’t change…that much,” the elder added the last part quickly. He couldn’t deny some changes in the younger (and they were for the better).

“I became more handsome, didn’t I?”

Well, Sunggyu wasn’t going to admit that, even though it was true. Woohyun’s skin had cleared up since his teenage years, and it looked lighter, smoother. And his lips…an unnatural shade of pink. Wait a second…Sunggyu stopped, tugging Woohyun back until he stopped too. The idol glared at him curiously wondering what was going on. “Are you wearing make-up?” Sunggyu asked, sputtering into a laugh. He rubbed his thumb roughly against the other’s cheek and the corner of his lips. Woohyun squirmed under his touch and tried to shove the other away. But it was too late. Sunggyu swiped some of the make-up off and it collected on the pad of his thumb. He stared at it and laughed incredulously. “You are!”

“Stop!” Woohyun whined. His hand went up to pat down where Sunggyu had ruined his face. He glared at the other and frowned. “You’d wear it too if you were an idol.”

“Eh?” Sunggyu challenged with a of his head. “Would I wear thick black eye-liner all of the time? Say that I can’t live without it and it’s a part of who I am? No, I don’t think so.”

“That was awfully descriptive,” Woohyun pointed out, smiling wickedly. “Have you thought about it?”

“A little,” Sunggyu admitted. “Just to define my eyes. They’re small but they are a pretty shape, aren’t they?”

Woohyun only responded with a few voiceless chuckles and he shoved the other lightly with their joined hands, which he then gripped tightly and stuffed into the pocket of his coat. He gave the other a half-smile, which slowly dipped into a frown as he was saying, “I’m going to get you a really good lawyer, hyung. I like this too much. It’s like what it was before.”

“It does feel like that,” Sunggyu concurred and let out a heavy breath. He closed his eyes and added. “But things are different. Really different.” He opened his eyes again, glancing over at Woohyun. “Are you sure?”

“Are you?” the idol turned the question around. “You keep asking me, but…” His voice drifted off. He was frustrated because Sunggyu wouldn’t give him a straight answer. But there was a reason for that.

“I’m not sure about how things will pan out,” Sunggyu revealed. He tried to keep a smile on his face as he spoke, but it pained him. “You might lose your fans and your career if we date. And I might never get a job again if I get convicted. I like you, but I have too much pride to depend on you for the rest of my life.” At which, Woohyun mumbled an ‘I know’ and averted his gaze. Now Sunggyu was able to smile genuinely. “But I’m sure about you. I’m sure that I want…I need you in my life,” that was harder to say than he thought it would be, but it needed to be said. The bright grin on Woohyun’s face at the moment was proof of that. “Happy?”

“Eung.”

 

It was nearly the end of the year when everything was finally sorted out. The cops concluded that Boddy had pretended to be dead, and while the others were in the other room, he snuck out and killed Sunggyu’s aunt, who had indeed been his informant, spying on and stalking the guests for information. And the guests from that dinner party weren’t the only ones that Boddy had been blackmailing. His victims ranged from foreign political figures to grade school teachers. The police were still processing through all of the blackmailing evidence in his house. He was also sharing information with his dear friend Choi Soon-sil, a relationship which automatically made him an evil villain in everyone’s mind.

Because of that, even though Howon did deliver the fatal blow, the judge ruled that it was in self-defense. By killing the chef and trying to coerce others to kill Sunggyu, the judge believed that Boddy had intended to have everyone murdered that night. It was all just a twisted game to him.

And although the cops knew that all of the guests were being blackmailed, there was no evidence to support it. So they let it slide. The guests had been punished enough for their wrongdoings. After being showed such mercy, Dongwoo turned over a new life and opened up an octopus shop with Sungyeol. Howon went to work at a different school. And Myungsoo became just your average plastic surgeon to the stars. As for Sungjong, Sunggyu didn’t want to know what he was up to, but he did let Sungjong teach him how to make an actual martini.

And a week after the dinner party, Woohyun came out. The response was a mixed bag of praises and curses. He’d lost many fans and gained a few. His career isn’t over, not by a long shot. He’d always been favored by the gay community anyway for his face. Now he was their poster boy.

As for Sunggyu, today was his hearing. The cops found his case of low priority in comparison to the others, so it had been placed on the backburner while they dealt with everything else. That meant Sunggyu spent months in anxiety, contemplating the several awful or Sunggyu was under ‘duress’ and was not thinking clearly. The judge sentenced Sunggyu with community service and warned him to never do it again. Sunggyu promised and felt like skipping out of the courtroom with elation.

However, the skipping didn’t happen. When he turned around after the sentencing, his eyes met with Woohyun’s, who attended the trial. Sunggyu walked up to him.

“Congratulations. You’re a free man, hyung,” Woohyun said and gave the other a hug.

And Sunggyu squeezed him a little too tightly because he was all too excited. “Thanks.”

When he let go, they began to exit the courtroom, and Woohyun asked, “Now what’s your verdict?”

Sunggyu let out an exaggerated sigh and hummed as if he were in deep thought, but he did reach for the other’s hand and hold it tightly. “Let me think about it,” he said coolly even though his actions gave him away.

“Is it our first day?” Woohyun asked excitedly. “Do you want to date?” Sunggyu gave no answer and just kept walking. So Woohyun continued with his barrage of questions, “Do you want to date me? Want to hang out? Be my friend? Do you want to be in my general vicinity?”

Sunggyu chuckled at how silly the other was being. “Do you want to eat?” he asked a question himself. “I’m starving.”

“Is it a date?”

Sunggyu pecked the other on the cheek and finally gave him a straight answer:

“Yes, Woohyun, it’s a date.”