Many years ago

Wooyoung tries hard to stay awake in class, his head nearly missing from being smashed against the table a few times as he fights to keep his eyelids open. He tries all kinds of methods, from pinching himself to holding his breath, but he finds that he's only endangering himself as he feels his skin and lungs burning. He takes a look at the board, the mathematical equations making no sense, while the teacher drawls on the topic, which could be chapter 3 or even chapter 9 for all he knows. He looks around the class; it's obvious that most of them are not paying attention. Yunho and his gang are dozing off, some snoring too loud that it echoes through the whole classroom. Even so, the teacher pays no mind. Then he looks to the left, spots San focusing to the front like he always does, as if his life depended on it.

My life does depend on my studies, Wooyoung, San had said one day. If I fail, I won't have anyone else to back me up. I need to get into university, get a good job, then I'll be able to live and maybe one day, people will start respecting me.

"Psstt, Choi San," he whispers, eyes darting to the front to make sure the teacher will not catch him talking to another student in class. "Choi San!" he presses, louder, but still, his friend does not turn to him. Resulting to drastic measures, he picks up his blue eraser and aims it at San's head, putting in a bit too much force when he throws the stationery.

It does hit him, earning a loud 'ouch' from him, before it bounces and hits Yunho squarely on the face. The latter wakes up with a jolt, shouting a loud "I TOTALLY DID NOT SLEEP IN CLASS!" in retaliation. Wooyoung hits his forehead with his palm, cursing at himself for throwing the eraser too hard while San is throwing daggers at him, his mouth twisting because his attention had been interrupted. Yunho looks around and sheepishly realizes that the whole class is looking at him, including the teacher, who by now has his hands on his hips, eyes wide.

The teacher decides that he won't let it slide it this time, pointing a finger at Yunho first, "Jeong Yunho! Get out of this class and raise your hands outside." When he hears snorts from the rest of the students, he says, "I don't mind you not paying attention but don't interrupt my lessons. You," he curls his finger to Wooyoung, "You thought I didn't see you throwing that eraser? Jung Wooyoung, out." When Wooyoung looks at San with puppy eyes on his way out, the teacher gives his final decision, "You too, Choi San! Out now."

The three have their heads down as they file out of the classroom, walking the hall of shame as their classmates watch them. Once outside, they obediently raise up both of their hands, mouths shut. Wooyoung feels responsible for being the one who had dragged both of them together with him, so he trains his eyes to the ground, waiting for the eruption from his friend on his left side and his classmate on his right side.

Students passing by them laugh at them secretly, but soon after he realizes that most of them are girls that are amused to see Yunho. There is even a gaggle of giggling girls passing by their class more than one time to take one glance at him but he stays composed, unaffected by the attention they're all giving him.

"You must be really popular," San finds himself saying. "Look at them ogling at you like they've never seen another decent human being."

With his hands still in the air, Yunho attempts a shrug before replying, "Nah, they're all interested in me because I'm rich. In the end it's always about the money."

"Damn, who hurt you son?" Wooyoung finds his voice, now that he figures they don't seem to be the least bit angry at him. "Are you saying that your gang of friends inside are all with you for the money? It doesn't seem so."

"Oh trust me, I know," he replies. "I've never found at least one person that would be friends with me besides for the money. All of them have ulterior motives, and I hate that."

"Yet you're still hanging out with them," San rolls his eyes. "You don't act like what you just said."

"You've got a point. Well, I guess I'm just too tired to find genuine friends that I end up hanging out with them anyway. It sucks to be alone in high school, so I guess you could say that I'm also using them."

Wooyoung clears his throat and lowers down his arms, already feeling numb from the position but quickly brings it up when the teacher shouts at him from inside the class. He mumbles something inaudible then groans. "What is it with both of you and taking this friendship thing so seriously? You say like it's something sacred-"

"It is," both San and Yunho chant simultaneously, surprising them and eliciting small laughter from all three.

"You see," San angles his body so that he will face both of them, careful not to appear too obvious to the teacher inside. "Friends are someone that you're able to choose, so if you chose to keep them close, that means you trust them a lot. Would even take a bullet for them."

"Uh-uh, okay, Mr. Choi San. I don't think this is a psychology class and what's up with all those cringey words?" He shivers, amplifying his own point. "People come and go, so do friends. Nothing special."

"Maybe if things come to it, you'll realize how you're always digging around for some real friendship," Yunho laments.

"I think I have had enough of this," Wooyoung tries to change the subject, his stomach grumbling. "I can't wait for recess. My favourite subject."

They resume their silence after that, feeling awkward at how they're casually talking, considering that both have never spoken more than a word necessary to Yunho as he is always flanked by his group of friends. They always steer clear of him, figuring that they would want something better than to get tangled up with someone like him.

When their limbs are starting to get numb from the being in the same position for almost an hour, they gratefully scramble up as the bell rings and the teacher passes by them with a glare, but nothing more. He didn't reprimand them further, so they disperse, leaving San and Wooyoung to go to their usual recess spot - the rooftop - and Yunho being sucked into his group like they were a blackhole. They don't talk to each other anymore after that, as if the episode outside of the class never happened, and they never actually had a conversation that revolved around friendship being something that requires a lot of dedication.

Their interaction with each other only consist of Wooyoung and San quietly observing as Yunho and his group of friends come up with countless of pranks for the other students and teachers, mostly harmless but sometimes causing distressing moments that had them sent to detention. From their observation too, they realize that although Yunho seems like he's the leader of the group, most of the time he looks uncomfortable to be among them; like he wants nothing to do with the stupid pranks they pulled on others.

There's one time his friends smeared glue on a girl's table in the class, which caused her to run out of the class crying, her books and stationery stuck to the table, unable to be pried away. His friends had laughed at it, but Yunho looked sullen, silently disagreeing with their actions. Then Wooyoung and San saw him trying with all his might to remove the glue from her table during recess when no one else was around, and went to the girl to apologize. The girl had red eyes and a puffy nose, but she calmed down and he gave her a pat on the back, still apologizing profusely. She only nodded but she sent him away with a smile, and after that day, his gang of friends never disturbed her again. Maybe he had scolded them, or maybe he did something to make them leave the girl alone.

Even when he doesn't conform to the mould of the group, he always hangs out with them, so Wooyoung and San are left wondering why he always keep them around. Then they start to realize, it wasn't him that kept them around, it was them. Yunho is the most affluent student, so of course they would want to keep him around. If they're friends with him, that means that their status is elevated and the other students would look up to them. This is what he had mentioned to them, how the people around him are only using him for his wealth. Yet, he cannot walk away because he himself has his own needs.

That is, until one day Yunho finds one of his supposed friends threatening Wooyoung and San for over something so meager.

It's done behind the school building because apparently, he doesn't want to attract any attention from the teachers or other students, but it might as well be the opposite case. He's screaming his head off, threatening to punch either Wooyoung or San who's crouching below him in the face. They look scared, with San clutching onto Wooyoung as their bodies shake, too frightened to even say a word to fight back. Yunho is brought to the scene because he was curious when he sees students crowding somewhere behind the building, something very unusual.

It's an understatement to say that he was angry; he was infuriated. The bully - his supposed friend, Lee Keonhee - is about to land a kick to Wooyoung's stomach so he finds himself practically jumping to land a kick on Keonhee instead, making him tumble backwards and people gasping in surprise at his sudden intrusion. He looks back to both of the friends crouching on the ground, their uniforms a mess, and asks them whether they are fine. When he receives a favourable answer, he turns back to see the bully sprawled on the ground, surprise and a hint of betrayal painted on his face.

"What do you think you're doing to them?" Yunho asks, his voice hard. He advances towards him, which causes him to retract his legs, as if he's hot lava and his legs are about to touch it.

"Yah, Jeong Yunho, I was just teaching them a lesson-" he splutters, face red from embarrassment as he tries to get up.

"Do you want me to teach you a lesson? Fuck off, before I do," he narrows his eyes, "Also tell the others that they can, with all due respect, fuck off too. I had enough of being your gaudy display." When the bully gets up and the audience part to make way for him, he adds with a louder voice, "Also you better leave these two alone or I won't hesitate to make your life hell if you don't." His answer is only a lame cry from the bully, before he disappears completely from sight.

Yunho waves the audience away, claiming that there's nothing to see. They do, almost reluctantly, and a few girls even look at him dreamily, like they were the ones whom he saved.

As the three of them are left alone, with San and Wooyoung still shaken on the ground, he asks, concerned, "Are you really fine? Do you need to go to the infirmary?"

"We're- we're fine," San manages to say, albeit shakily. "Thank you for- for saving us. We really thought we're about to get beaten up until we can't walk. He was scary."

The taller guy chuckles, before helping them to stand up. "Trust me, he's only all talk and no action. That guy can't even fight to save his life. He's only picking out on you because he thought both of you wouldn't fight back." He places a hand on their shoulders, saying jokingly, "Looks like I'll be breezing through high school with enemies instead of friends now."

"Nah, I think you have two," Wooyoung wriggles his eyebrows as he dusts himself off, fixing his hair and sweeping it back.

"Enemies?" the taller guy crinkles his face, his lips puckered. "But the gang has more than two people," he says.

"Oh gosh," San rolls his eyes so hard that he feels that he could see his brain. "Are you an idiot or an idiot?" he says, but good-naturedly.

"OH!" he makes an O-shape with his mouth before nodding his head twice, "You mean friends?" He sticks out his lower lip.

"Yes," Wooyoung says excitedly. "It's a weird place-" he looks to the walls with algae grown on it, where they are currently behind the building of the school, "-to commence something like this, but it's probably going to be something we look back on and laugh at. "Where did we start becoming friends?" he snorts. "Behind the school building, after Yunho had saved both San and Wooyoung from a bully. A perfect story to tell our grandchildren later on."

"Oh, now look who's excited about this," San laughs, amused at the fact that Wooyoung is the most eager out of them, as if they haven't been threatened to get punched in the face just minutes ago.

"I pondered over what you guys said and I guess it's true. Looks like we're on this shit for life."

---

The abandoned building has become a breeding ground for pests and parasites, but apparently as both Dowoon and Younghyun find out as they arrive there, it's also the perfect place to hide a dead body. Or dead bodies, for this matter.

The car comes to a stop in front of the humongous gates, the signage already past its glory days, the evidence of what it once was stripped down to rust and chipped paint. Vines climb up and cover the stone walls, appearing like snakes slithering up someone's body. The once-prestigious high school has become reduced to an abandoned building, it had to be shut down because of the corrupted administration. Once the staff and students were forced out of the school, the building that was once buzzing with activities became dead, leaving behind a structure with shattered glasses, soiled floors and a smell wafting in the air that seemed to poke at their olfactory nerves brutally.

Ducking and making their way through the shattered main glass doors carefully, they avoid the shards that point at them like sharp weapons. Their shoes squeak and tap on the dirty floors, the sounds echoing throughout the whole building. They feel suffocated from the lack of clean air, and as Dowoon brings up his shirt to cover his nose and mouth, he puts up a fisted hand, ordering Younghyun behind him to stop running. He trains his ears to catch any movement, but hears none. He can deduce that they are the only alive ones here, so they would probably not run into any external threats.

The problem right now is trying to find where Wooyoung could have hidden the bodies. How specific would he be, trying to pinpoint the location of where he and San first met? Would it be at one of the classrooms, or anywhere else in the building? Would he leave them out in the open or cared to take the effort to bury them?

"There is a trail leading to the stairs..." Younghyun points to the floor; there is a trail made by dust that has been wiped off. "Which could point to him-"

"Dragging the bodies across the floor to where they are now," Dowoon finishes for him.

They trace it, their shoes carefully avoiding the man-made trail as to make sure they are following the right path. The trail brings them up the stairs, and more, and more... until they reach the highest floor where there are no more steps leading up. They read the broken, unhinged sign beside the closed door, noting that it's leading to the rooftop.

"It's either we find them or we don't," Dowoon says as he wraps his hand around the flimsy doorknob.

"This is the only time I wish there are actually bodies instead of none. Tired of playing this freaking game," Younghyun agrees.

With their breaths quickening and heartbeats in arrhythmia, Dowoon twists the doorknob, breaking it in the process and they stumble out into the open. Wide-eyed, they feel tears coming to their eyes as they spot two people chained to each other, their backs against each other. Both of them have mouth gags and blindfolds on, their chains secured around a metal pole on the rooftop. As the two detectives burst onto the rooftop, both of them instinctively turn to the source of the noise, which means that they are still alive.

Not murdered, he briefly thinks to himself. In the end, Wooyoung has gotten away with toying us again. He made us believe that he got them killed.

"Yoon Dowoon, they're still alive!" Younghyun shouts in disbelief, rushing over to the victims. He unties the mouth gags and blindfolds, to which the woman, which he has known as Song Mingi's fiancee, sobs loudly and he has to hold her shoulders to say, "It's alright, it's alright. You're safe now, we're with the police."

"There's- there's a dead body buried behind the building. It was a- a young male-" the other victim, Hongjoong's father, stammers. "Before he- he brought us here he buried him first."

"Call the others and request for an ambulance, I'll be looking for where he could have buried him!" Dowoon instructs to Younghyun.

He then breaks off into a run down the stairs, navigating the hallways like he already had the layout of the building at the back of his mind, this time fuelled by the certainty that he would find Seonghwa's buried body. He is no longer treading on thin ice and submerging himself in the cold water underneath, but he is now confidently striding across the surface. He emerges into the open, tracing his fingers along the walls as he goes deeper, deeper into the darkness that could swallow him if he's not careful. The sun is peeking from behind the dense forest, casting shadows on the snowy ground and his shoes are buried deep in the snow as he plows through. As he approaches the location Hongjoong's father had pinpointed, he is ready to drop to his knees and unearth the ground with his own bare hands if he needed to.

He notices a disparity between one patch on the ground and its surrounding, so he is almost sure that there is where Seonghwa was buried. Besides, a bouquet of flowers and a small note is placed on top of the patch of earth. He picks up the flowers - purple hyacinths - and the small note before studying it. As he scans through the letter, a strange feeling comes over him. It was a letter left, no doubt, by Wooyoung and it was a bittersweet feeling: the game they were forcefully pulled into had finally ended, bringing an end to everyone's misery, but too much damage had been done.

He removes his attention from the content of the letter as he hears the sirens first, followed by the rumbling footsteps of the other officers who have arrived at the scene. He signals for them to come over, pointing to the area where he found the flowers and note. He sees a glance of Hongjoong's father and Mingi's fiancee being escorted into the ambulance, relief creeping up on him to know that they are still alive. It doesn't look like they were hurt excessively, except for the fact that they were left out in the cold for a certain period of time. They show no signs of hypothermia, so he's left thanking the skies that they could save the last two victims.

The other officers get down to work quickly, whipping out shovels to reveal what's lying underneath. It doesn't take them long to see a hand sticking out, followed by the lower limbs and lastly, the badly disfigured face of Park Seonghwa. Dowoon risks a glance to see the body for one final time, the only one who's unlucky to have been ripped away from his life, just for the fact that he has an identical twin. They bring him away in a body bag, zipping it until he can no longer see his face.

Yunho's voice rings in his ears, Park Seongjin was a devil, but Park Seonghwa was an angel. In the end, Seonghwa was the one who had his wings cut off, and he became the devil in our eyes. That was why I had to kill him, because he reminded us of the devil that we met in the past. He remembers a chill running down his spine as Yunho mentioned about it nonchalantly.

"What are you doing?" Younghyun puts a hand on his shoulder, peeping at the flowers and note in his hand.

"Trying to find a bit of humanity in those monsters," he looks at the purple hyacinths in his hands, "They are monsters that were created, not born. And we played a role in creating them. We failed them with our law, and we learnt that the hard way. They did a good job in educating us on how crazy the world is and how the law still needs a lot of work."

"Purple hyacinths... is he trying to give a message saying that he's sorry for whatever they did? And what does the note say?"

"They are and never will be sorry for this game they played," he unfolds the letter so that Younghyun will be able to read it too. "Because to them, they are only doing the right thing; paying all of us back. He's only sorry that they became friends in the first place, because to Wooyoung, their friendship was what sparked this mess."

"Huh? I'm still not getting where you're going with this. I'm currently drowning in the ocean and I have no idea when help is going to come to me."

He sucks in a sharp breath, "Okay, wrong choice of words. Jealousy in a friendship is what caused this mess. Yoochan, Jinhan and Seongjin were the tools that were used to relieve the jealousy they had of each other. That was why Wooyoung told me that he was a bad friend, because he was the starting point of what San had to go through."

"You're saying that after all of this crazy game they had to avenge for their friend's death, playing around with everyone like we're their mere playthings, that the cause of what he had to go through was Wooyoung and Yunho themselves?"

He nods. "The reason they are going all out in trying to punish those involved in this case was because they felt guilty. It was some sort of retribution; they thought that if they helped San to get his revenge, both of them would finally be relieved of the guilt. They feel they are in the wrong for being the cause of San's death, so maybe, just maybe avenging his death would make them feel better about it."

"So he was sorry that they became friends in the first place... where it all started, here, at this very high school years ago."

He gives a nod again. "To him, if they haven't become friends in the first place, there wouldn't be jealousy involved and there wouldn't be all this mess."

"It's not like they can see the future; how would they even know their friendship would be rocked until such lengths? And what do you mean when Wooyoung is the cause of San's torturous episode? Was he directly involved?"

"Who knows? They couldn't see the future, but he still felt that he shouldn't have been friends with them in the first place. He's feeling too guilty that he's trying very hard to point the mistake to where it began." He shakes his head. "Well, Yoochan started going for San because he was hellbent on getting his final year project back. But have you ever thought... how did Yoochan actually get his hands on the project in the first place? Who could have leaked the project to him?"

"Oh dear..." Younghyun massages his temples. "This case is a tangled mess ever since from the start." He puts a hand to his lips. "What about Yunho then? What could have made him guilty towards San?"

"It is... a friendship, if the wrong feelings are involved, can turn into something dangerous. It's even worse because they're the ones you are close to, ones that you thought you could trust." He shrugs, "There must be a reason why Yunho felt guilty, but that reason is unknown."

"They were the cause of each other's destruction," the hacker concludes.

He hands the letter to the hacker, asking him to read it. The sun inches further up, illuminating the words on the letter, seemingly making them come alive. As what Dowoon felt when reading it, Younghyun is finding himself feeling the same. Unknowingly, he sheds a tear and he discreetly wipes it off. This is the first time he has ever felt his heart wrenched because of a suspect, so he's not going to show it. Blinking through his tears, he folds the letter as he finishes reading it.

"Frick, why on earth am I crying? We really failed them with our law, didn't we?"

Congratulations, detectives! You've finally reached the end of this game and I've to applaud you for that. It's up to you to decide whether you win or lose this whole game. I'm pretty sure right now you're feeling super pissed at us, but I have to ask you a question. Now that we've showed you everything that we experienced years ago, do you still think that we are the bad guys?

We're doing this all for San. He had always wanted to build a snowman, so we made him one. His favourite flowers were bougainvilleas, so we gave them to him. Detectives, have you ever played a video game before? When the game is over, the game will restart and you get to play another round. That's why I'm bringing you to this place, where everything started for us years ago, to signal the end of this game. The only difference is, we don't get to play another round. We know, because our lives are already ruined and San is no longer alive. We threw away our future years ago because of them, but in the end, I guess it's all our fault. It's our fault we became friends in the first place, when we were nothing but puzzles that shouldn't fit together.

There's only one thing that we would like to ask from you detectives; please don't let history repeat itself and prove to us that the law is not merely some scribbling on a paper that people can trample on. Once is enough, and let our lives be the last ones to get ruined by it. I hope that we will never have to meet again in the future. Not that we can.

Thank you for playing this game.
GAME OVER

---

[A/N: I'm on a roll today lol because I have finished writing this story; once I edit the last parts I will post them. There will be another chapter, and then an epilogue, before we come to the end. Argh writing this broke my heart into a million pieces honestly. Hope you enjoyed this chapter <3]