THREE YEARS AGO. POLICE STATION.

Kan's footsteps are still heard all around in the police station, while he’s walking through the empty room thoughtfully.

“So, you say they sent you here, right?”

“Yes, sir!”

A too shy SolHi, is right in front of Kan, standing at attention and looking wherever, but not into the detective's eyes.

“Why?” and Kan’s eyes from thoughtful, suddenly wide opened and stare at her, but what he really wanted to ask wasn’t why, but “where I was wrong that they sent you here?!”

“Because I asked them to send me here” and SolHi finally finds the courage to look into his eyes. “Please, sombe, take care of me!” and she bent in front of Kan and stood like this for a few moments.

“Ah, damn! It’s not exactly what I meant when I said that I need a new one in my team. Well, don’t understand me wrong, but … why you?”

“Because I was the only one available to enter your team, sir?!”

“What?”

“I’m sorry, but the others preferred to enter other teams.”

“Why?”

This time SolHi was the one who stared at him. “Why?” she wondered. “I don’t know why! Just leave me to breathe, please!” but Kan wasn’t ready to give up and to accept her so easily.

“I don’t believe you! My team is the best. There are people who wait for months or years to be accepted here. Don’t tell me that nobody came here, because they didn’t want to and because of this they sent you.”

“I’m sorry, sir, but … I can’t … lie. So, I’m in or I’m out?”

“You are in,” Gi’s voice was heard behind them, to Kan’s unpleasant surprise. “What? You are the one who complains all the time for lack of people. Well, they sent us one. So be grateful.”

“Grateful I am, but not…”

“A girl, sir? Is this what you meant?” SolHi’s voice was heard.

“Yeah, exactly… damn! You are the one who talked to... Well, sorry, but I’m not ready to accept a girl on my team. We are working with tough cases … murderers … criminals. A girl like you…”

“Is this the real reason why you don’t accept me or is it because I was once a suspect?”

“Both. And you are still a suspect. I can’t afford to be criticized for this too, SolHi. I hope you understand me and…”

“Of course, I understand you, sombe, but I’m not leaving. They sent me here and here I’ll stay” and SolHi took the box she brought with her and sat down on a chair, with the box on her lap. “I’ll work from here if I don’t have a desk. So, please consider me at least for some work.”

SolHi’s eyes were fighting with the avalanche of tears that were about to exit the corner of her eyes. She doesn’t want to cry. Not here. Not in front of the two detectives that can consider her a weak person and throw her away from the police station. She can’t go. Not now. Not when she finally had been accepted somewhere to do something and to earn her own money, because she couldn’t stay at Mina’s expense anymore.

It wasn’t true that somebody sent her here. She asked in the Academy to be sent here and this only after she saw that no group that came to choose cadets accepted her. Everybody knew about her past. Everybody was still blaming her and SolHi couldn’t do anything else because Yun Marie was still doing everything to see her dead. But SolHi wants to live. She has to because she’s the only one who can take care of her sick mother and she needs this job.

“We can’t accept her,” she heard Kan’s conversation with Gi. “You know whom she killed. If Prosecutor Yun Marie finds out that…”

“Then, why did you testify in her favor, 3 years ago? You said then that she couldn’t kill Han YuSan. Why can't you accept her now to work with us? You know that she hasn’t anywhere else to go.”

“And why should it be my problem?”

“Because you set her free 3 years ago and if she’s free she must work and she must work with us, Kan. If you don’t accept her as your partner, then I’ll take her in my team, but if she manages to do it well, then don’t ask her back. Ya, Ian SolHi, what about working with me?”

“Huh? With you, sombe? But…”

“Yeah, with me. This ogre doesn’t want to…”

“I’ll take her. I’ll take her,” Kan whizzed through the teeth. "Traitor!”

“Yes, yes, whatever you want. You listen to him. Congratulations, detective Ian. I hope we will work for a long time together and we'll catch real bastards that are hurting this world.”

Gi stretched his hand and SolHi grabbed it right away. She didn’t know if she does it well, but she must force herself to integrate between men, if she wants to survive, even if she is scared of them, still remembering the moment she had been raped.

***

SolHi and Kan are walking in silence on a narrow street. She doesn’t dare to ask where they are going, because she feels that he hasn't accepted her yet, even though she's been working in the team for about three weeks already. But she’s grateful to him that he never said a bad word to her like the other detectives, who couldn’t support her from the first time they saw her.

“That's what was missing!” a detective mumbled when he came back from his mission and saw SolHi sitting at a desk. “An assassin playing the role of a detective” and his words hurt her like Hell. And she cried. She cried a lot that day, closed in the toilet and covering her mouth with her fists not to be heard, but after the storm had passed she washed her face and returned to work because she knew that she hasn’t any other option, but the surprise didn’t end and when she returned to her place, she found a note left on her desk: “get lost, bitch! Your place is in the jail or three meters underground and not between nice people.”

The others’ eyes were still piercing her, waiting for her reaction, and SolHi stared at each of them and then she understood, for the first time, that she must be a hyena if she wants to live in this world and, while she was squeezing the piece of paper in her hand, she mumbled: “who did this?”

No answer was heard for about 1 and a half minutes. Only mockery smiles and hints between the detectives. “Who the fuck wrote this and left this shit on my desk?” SolHi yelled with all her strength.

A stupid idiot, called detective Hon GiSun, stood up, ready for a fight, and walked toward her with large steps. “Ya, how does a bitch like you dare to yell at us?” but when he stopped in front of SolHi and he slapped her twice, the answer wasn't late to come: a hard punch in his nose, one between his legs and a knee in his stomach, made him bent, yelping like a biting dog.

SolHi grabbed his hair and, aiming him with the other fist, she whizzed through her teeth: “you forgot who I am, motherfucker. What? Bitch? Your … it’s a bitch and you, if you know this word so well. What? Are you someone’s “girlfriend” to know what bitches do?”

The other detectives stood up … part of them intended to teach SolHi a lesson, but another part was trying to stop them.

“Listen to this criminal. She dares to…”

“Hey, just stay quiet. I don’t think…

“Let me go! I’ll teach that bitch to…”

“Everyone in place!” Kan yelled when he and Gi entered the room. “What the hell is this?”

SolHi left her “victim” to return to his place, while she stood calm and waited for Kan to approach her. “It’s my fault” she mumbled, hiding the piece of paper in her pocket.

“Give it to me!” Kan told her, but SolHi disagreed and she didn’t give it to Kan, even after a few minutes of him staying in front of her with a stretched hand. “All right then. If you prefer so, then you will manage it by yourself,” and it was so because many shits happened to her since she started to work, but she didn’t complain and now she’s not crying anymore, even if she wants to.

“It’s a murder case,” Kan finally whispered and he stopped, forcing her to stop too. “You are sure you will be, ok?”

“Yes. I’ll be. I have to, because…”

“Catch that mothefucker!” they listened to Gi’s yell from down the street and looking toward there they saw him running after a young man about 18.

“Shit. Again running!” Kan yelled and he turned right after the guy, who, seeing them coming, decided to take another path. “Why are you staying there like a dumb…” Kan shouted, but when he looked behind him, he saw that SolHi wasn’t there anymore. He continued his chase, swearing at four winds. “She ran! I told you that we shouldn’t accept her,” Kan reproached to Gi, when he arrived next to him but still running.

“And I told you not to draw conclusions without knowing the truth. But you are even more stubborn than a donkey, you little…” and both men stopped when they took left at the next corner and they noticed how SolHi grabbed the guy and she turned him upside down, throwing him after her shoulder.

“You have the right to keep silent or it can be used against you in a trial,” SolHi started to read the Miranda Warning.

“I told you to have trust in her, but you never listen to anybody” and Gi approached SolHi, helping her to raise the guy from below.

Still grabbing the guy, SolHi looked at Kan … he was smiling and she smiled too. She finally was in the team and a tear showed up in the corner of her eye, but she hadn’t time to wipe it and she followed Gi to the patrol.

***

PRESENT. DAY

A mannequin head flies toward the opened door when Kan and DooSan enter Mire’s apartment.

“I told you it will be interesting,” Kan joked, and, approaching the sofa, he sat down right away. “Take a seat, prosecutor Han. It will be a nice show to watch them.”

“And they are doing?” DooSan mumbled, looking around at the mannequins thrown on the floor, with the heads broken into pieces, and a few of them were beheaded.

“We? Playing golf?!” Yoon Suk joked, still with the golf stick in his hand.

“Ya, stop talking nonsense and change it. Or what, do you want to hit an imaginary head?”

“Yeah, yeah, however you say” and still mumbling, Yoon Suk changed the mannequin. “Your turn, sombe!” Yoon Suk addressed SolHi, throwing her the stick.

SolHi would have denied it, but she didn’t want DooSan to find out her secret, and, forcing with the shaking of her hand, she took the stick. “Move aside or I’ll confuse your head with his.”

“Don’t worry! It’s not that easy to hit it. I gave it a try, for three hours already, and nothing.”

“Do you mean that this show wasn’t for nothing and all these “guys” suffered for nothing? DooSan stared at SolHi, who was grabbing the stick tightly, but her intention wasn’t definitely to hit the mannikin. “Should I take his place?”

“It will be an idea. This way we will know how dry your head is.”

“Ya, SolHi, don’t start it.”

“Don’t worry, detective Kan. I can handle this” and DooSan approached the mannikin, but when he grabbed it to change its place, SolHi grabbed DooSan’s hand.

“Just keep it in place. No need for stupid jokes.”

“Are you sure?”

“Absolutely. The matter is to find out who killed Li Ha Ni and not to make other victims.”

“And isn't it obvious? Those two…”

“Yes, they are guilty, but it can’t be two killers. One of them is the accomplice and we need to find out who of them.”

“Then tell me what you are intending to get with this.”

“Ha Ni had two wounds: one on the occipital area and the second broke the fifth vertebra that caused the brain death.”

“And this means that she was hit by two different people.”

“Right. I need to find which of them only hurt her and who killed her.”

“Sounds logical. Ok, go ahead! But… careful with my head. I still need it.”

“Yeah, whatever you say!" and SolHi hit, but because of the force used for the hit, her leg slipped and the stick passed next to the mannikin. “Damn!” she mumbled. “I’m sorry for this.”

“Wait a minute,” DooSan stopped her. “It’s too long from starting to hit till you slipped and this could have happened to the aggressor too. Only if he’s a professional player and from what we know none of the two suspects is. It means…”

“She had been drugged,” Kan said and he approached the others. “It could happen to her what they did to SolHi last night…”

“Aaa, about yesterday night…”

“Don’t start,” SolHi growled at DooSan, forcing him to shut up. “It can be, but … I don’t see the point. If Ha Ni came here and Mire wanted to kill her this way, I don’t think that the victim would have drunk something in her house.”

“But she visited Min SinJu first. To get rid of her he gave her a “fake drink” and then the victim showed up in the other’s house. They argued and she was killed.”

“She felt dizzy … she stopped and bingo, the other one took advantage of her and hit her.”

“Sounds plausible, Yoon Suk, but…”

“Sombe, what if she didn’t stop? What if they argued and, in the fight, one pushed the other one and falling she hit something…”?

“No, SolHi. It wasn’t something she hit, but something hit her…” Yoon Suk insisted. “It can explain the wound in the back.”

“But not the one in the occipital. If…”

“Push me!” SolHi ordered DooSan.

“No, thanks! I care my head.”

“Just push me!” SolHi grinned at him and suddenly she was pushed by DooSan … while falling, SolHi was hit with the stick, but it just scratched the mannikin. “It wasn’t…”

“Don’t stand up!” Kan ordered her. “Just hit from where you are!”

“Sombe! I don’t think that she was hit while she was on her knees!”

“Just do what I told you! Prosecutor Han, move aside! We don’t want two heads to fly at the same time. Only if you insist…”

When DooSan took a few steps aside, mumbling something unpleasantly about Kan, SolHi hit and the stick stuck into the manikin’s neck.

“Bingo!” Kan whispered and the manikin fell to the ground, but when Kan bent to lift it, DooSan suddenly hit the mannikin for the second time, after taking the stick from SolHi’s hand, and taking all of them by surprise… the mannikin had a deep wound on the occipital area.

“And we now know how the second wound was made. Bring this to the office. I’m after the Court order” and DooSan left the apartment first.

Checking the mannikin from close, Yoon Suk stared at SolHi, whose hand was still shaking. “I think you were in his place when prosecutor Han hit.”

“I know, but lucky me for still being alive” and SolHi followed DooSan.

Behind her, Yoon Suk and Kan were still exchanging glances and Kan understood for the first time the big mistake he made by forcing her to work with DooSan, but he hadn't another choice: it was already too late.