Every lie has its own rhythm — and between each note of deception, truth waits in silence for someone brave enough to listen.
The interrogation room smelled of metal and stale coffee. Behind Kim Chanwoo, the whiteboard was a chaos of notes and evidence photos, but only Rae Jin stood motionless, as if he could hear something no one else could.
Before him sat the three suspects — Lee Hojin, Min Areum, and Park Sunwoo.The air pulsed with tension.
Chanwoo broke the silence. "Between nine and ten p.m., only three people were on the third floor. But the victim's clock stopped at 9:13. Explain that."
Rae turned his gaze to Hojin. "You said you heard a thud around nine. But your apartment's two doors away. That sound shouldn't have been clear — unless you were standing right in front of her door."
Hojin straightened. "I was just passing by.""You didn't see anything," Rae said softly, "but you heard something you shouldn't have recognized — the sound of a body being lowered, not dropped. You knew what it was."
"That's insane. I went straight home.""Then why delete every message on your phone at 9:20?"
Hojin froze. "I panicked! I didn't want to get involved!""Afraid?" Rae took a step closer. "Or afraid someone would know you still loved her?"
Silence weighed the room.
Chanwoo added, "The delete log proves it. Every chat wiped clean."
Rae began circling Hojin slowly. "You came to talk. She refused. You brought Restazolam — three drops in her tea. You wanted her calm, not dead. But the dose was too much."
Hojin clenched his fists. "No! I didn't mean—"Rae cut him off. "You poured it in the teapot, not the cup. That's why the drug concentration was even throughout her system. A desperate man doesn't think about details — but a guilty one does."
Hojin's lips trembled.
"When she fainted," Rae continued, "you hung her body to fake despair. But her weight pulled too hard. She died before you realized it."
"No proof," Hojin snapped. "I left the building at 9:05! CCTV shows that!""Yes," Rae said, "and that's how I know you came back."
He tapped a photo. "Front camera was down. But the back service stairwell worked. You left the front door, reentered through the back two minutes later. Mud on your shoes matches the prints on those stairs."
Hojin's composure broke. Rae approached him slowly."You locked the window from outside," Rae said gently, "not to hide a crime — but to hide from what you'd done."
Hojin's tears fell silently. "I just wanted her to listen…""She did," Rae murmured. "By dying without a sound."
No one spoke.
Chanwoo exhaled. "Method, time, motive — all aligned. But this isn't a killer's heart. It's love, decayed into guilt."
Yejin whispered, "So they loved each other?"Rae's voice lowered. "Love is like a rope — you think you're holding on, but you're really tightening the noose."
Rain began outside, soft but endless.
Chanwoo stood beside Rae. "I don't believe in intuition," he said. "But tonight, I believe in you.""Don't," Rae replied quietly. "Believe in the truth that refuses to stay silent."
And the rain kept playing — a faint applause for a tragedy finally at rest.
The night was over, but the truth hadn't slept.
In a small corner shop in Jongno, coffee steam danced across the table while the Seoul sun filtered through the thin curtains like a light reluctant to touch sin. Rae sat in his usual spot, his fingers playing with a silver spoon with a rhythm only he understood—a rhythm born of lies, mistakes, and deductions.
The Kim Soyeon case was closed, but his mind wasn't. He knew the truth didn't end with the perpetrator's name; it lived in patterns—like the fine threads that tie each tragedy to the next.
Chanwoo entered without knocking, still smelling of smoke and bureaucracy. "There's something in Mapo," he said flatly. "It's a strange case. And I don't need a detective... but someone who isn't afraid of making mistakes."
Rae stared at him, not answering. Only a faint smile played at the corner of her lips—faint, but enough to set the wheels of the next story in motion.
Yejin placed two cups on the table, looking at them alternately. "You two," she said quietly, "always seem like two sides of the same sin."
Rae stared out the window. A light rain had begun to fall again, like a coincidence orchestrated by fate. "Perhaps," he murmured, "sin and truth often speak with the same voice."
And with that, the music of deduction began again—a new note in a symphony of lies that never truly ends.