Chapter Text
Rain glossed the black pavement as streetlights blended into pale streaks across the slick blacktop. Officer Park Chanyeol kept the patrol car crawling at an even pace, the wipers slicing steady rhythms that felt too loud for the empty hour. Midnight patrol on a weeknight was usually dull besides an occasional drunk staggering home or a car alarm tripped by the wind, but his pulse carried the hum of someone still chasing adrenaline.
He should have gone home after the incident earlier in the night. He could still hear Junmyeon’s stern voice "You don’t run in blind. You wait for backup.”
Chanyeol had been certain he could catch the fleeing suspect on his own. Certain enough to ignore protocol. Now, he’d been benched with a warning that the captain wanted to “talk” in the morning.
The reprimand sat like gravel in his stomach. He hated waiting. Hated standing still.
A soft crackle from the radio startled him. Static, then silence. He adjusted the dial, but only the rain answered. The city blocks beyond his windshield were a blur of shuttered stores and dim apartments. He eased the car to the curb.
That’s when he saw it…a single window on the fourth floor of a distant building, glowing warmer than the rest. Curtains fluttered though no wind reached that high. A figure stood silhouetted, slender and still, face turned toward the street as if watching him.
The next blink of lightning erased it.
Chanyeol exhaled a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding.
He left the car, rain needling his hairline, and walked a short circle on the deserted sidewalk. His boots splashed through a puddle, the ripples breaking into tiny rings of reflected light. He told himself it was nothing. Probably just a shadow, his tired mind replaying the night’s failure.
Still, when he finally returned to the driver’s seat, the world felt fractionally…off. The radio hissed again. A whisper of words that dissolved before he could catch them.
By the time he made it back to his apartment, the sensation lingered, as if something was watching.
He set the case files Junmyeon had thrown at him on the kitchen table, intending only to skim before sleep. The folder smelled faintly of old paper and of the outside rain.
A photograph slid free when he opened it.
A young man looked up at him, brown hair falling across gentle eyes and a box shaped smile setting on his face. Beneath the image it read, Byun Baekhyun, age 22. Homicide.
Chanyeol’s fingers tightened on the edge of the picture.
Outside, the rain slowed to a hush. And somewhere deep in the quiet, he felt the picture calling to him. Telling him that he had to find the man that had done this to him.