Chapter Text
Anton was feeling over the moon. He finally finished a difficult case, and then granted a week of vacation, enabling him to finally spend some time with his parents in Jeju, and then departing to Busan to have a summer vacation in their beautiful beaches. It was fun and refreshing to be paid off-duty after being cooped up in the office for a month solving a difficult case.
He entered the coffee shop with light steps, throwing smiles and greetings to the waiters that were customized to seeing him early in the morning, grinning from ear to ear when he saw the familiar back of his partner ordering in the counter.
"Please add one tall cup of iced americano, less sugar," Anton said as he slung an arm on the man's shoulder. The man looked back in shock but grinned nonetheless before offering his card to the confused cashier.
"Yeah, please add that to my order."
The two men waited for their order before walking back together to the precinct, coffee in hand.
"How was your holiday, Lee?"
"Great. It's a pity that I could only visit them for 4 days, but hey, better than nothing. It's good to see my parents again. They were healthy and happy in their new house."
"Still trying to convince them to go back to Gangnam?" Anton teased.
"Nah, I've given up on that a long time ago. They preferred Daegu. Their new home was nice and comfortable too. Much better than the apartments here," the man, Lee, or Sohee, answered. "Anyways, how's your vacation, hyung? Busan, eh?"
Anton grinned, "Marvelous. A lot of seafood and beach volleyball. Finally, I got to unwind. I hope we don't have to work on a case anytime soon. Strangely, I'm okay dealing with paperwork for a while."
"It’s weird to hear you say that you prefer a desk job rather than going in the field but after our previous case, I second to that," Lee nodded with a grin as they entered the precinct ground.
He was just opening the front door when one of the officers from the IT department ran towards them in distraught.
"Detective Lee! Detective Lee!" Anton recognized him as Officer Osaki Shotaro, one of the newest recruits from the IT department.
"What's wrong, Officer Osaki?" The man panted and fanned himself,
"Someone… sent something to your desk!"
"A package, you mean?" Anton raised his brows. The young officer nodded vigorously. "And so? Is it some food gone bad that I received while I was off-duty?" Anton blinked confusedly.
No one ever gets agitated about incoming packages unless it's a food gone bad. Man, the smell will kill the office. He rarely got sent mails or packages into the office. Mostly, his packages are documents or mails from other detectives in other precincts asking for assistance. So, nothing major that would require a rookie officer to go berserk like this.
"No! Er… You gotta see it yourself. The new chief went nuts!"
Anton turned to Sohee who looked equally as confused as him.
The new chief went nuts? If anything, Chief Qian was much calmer and more patient compared to their previous chief. It would take great lengths to agitate him. There's definitely something wrong. He took a sip of his coffee and walked briskly inside, finding a hoard of officers crowding his desk.
"What's with the commotion?" He wondered out loud.
People are piled around his desk and the usually calm Chief Qian is barking orders left and right. Even the twins from CSI who loved their basement more than anything are here.
Weird.
"Detective Lee!" Anton recognized the guy as Detective Song Eunseok from the Narcs division. The man waved him over and the crowd turned silent and opened up a path for him to walk. His nose caught an unpleasant putrid smell and he found a big blue box sitting atop his desk.
"What is t—What the fuck?!"
Anton balked when he saw what was inside the box. It was a body.
Twisted in an inhumane way to fit into the box, halfway through the decaying process. For the mighty
Detective Lee Chanyoung.
p.s catch me if you can; i can't wait to see you again:)