The smell of alcohol and surgical steel cradled the corridor of the infirmary. The detective followed until the last stretcher, next to the windows. Amélie had been silent since she had finished reading the previous case files, her crimson lips crimped.

According to the message they received from Brown, when they parked in the underground car park of the hospital, the girl who had survived was called Tsui Amoto. She was about twenty years old, and the two murdered women were her mother and grandmother, respectively. The three lived in the limits of Longino and were a family composed only by them. Three women. Now with only one survivor.

Tsui was cringing, her thin arms embraced her knees and her gaze seemed lost staring at the white walls of the infirmary, where the sun beat precariously through the half-closed blinds. The light threads on her head tangled in the snot, which stuck the thin threads to her cheekbones, her dry lips moved in a silent prayer.

Na-moo only could imagine that, for the girl, that must be the worst day of her life. Not even the few rays of sunlight on the wall she was looking at would be able to shine through the storm she was in. And this feeling of helplessness was familiar to him.

“Are you from Miss Amoto's family?” One of the nurses, approached the two newcomers, putting the medical records on the small table in the opposite corner of the medical ward.

“I'm Detective Hwang”, informed the brown-haired man, taking his badge out of his pocket. “And this is…”

“Your partner?” The blond man tilted his head, a half smile arching his fat lips as he extended his hand to the young woman, who squeezed it, corresponding his kind smile.

“I’m Dr. Amélie Zhou. Can we talk to Miss Amoto?”

“I’m Miles Parker, and I don't know if she'll be able to say anything that can help you. She's been like that since she arrived.” Parker looked at the patient over his shoulders, his green eyes showed concern when he saw that the young lady kept babbling the same verses without moving. “She's going to the psychiatric ward as soon as the exams are completed.”

“We'll be brief.” Na-moo promised.

Parker nodded briefly before going to check on another patient.

The detective approached Tsui cautiously. She looked like a cornered wildcat, capable of attacking him at any moment if he made a sudden move. And he didn't want to find out what the sharp gel nails in the girl's hands could do in his skin.

“Hello, Tsui. I'm Detective Hwang and…” Na-moo smiled softly and moved a little closer. He bent down to listen to the words she was muttering quietly to herself. Only then he realized that her words weren’t a religious prayer, as he thought they were.

“… The mum or the granny… Who will you choose, Tsui?… This… Or that?… Choose one. The other dies.”

Na-moo and Amélie looked at each other. The doctor's face was pale, she twisted her hands in front of her body. Na-moo closed his jaw with a low groan.

“Tsui… what are-” Na-moo's words were interrupted by Amélie, who held him by the wrist with her whisky-brown eyes wide in silent alert. She pulled him to the far corner of the infirmary, while Tsui Amoto continued to ruminate those words as if a broken record was spinning in his skull.

“Could you let me talk to her alone for a moment?”

“I don't know if we'll get anything relevant from Miss Amoto's testimony.” He scratched his chin, thoughtful.

With every step he took in search of evidence about who was responsible for the recent murders, Na-moo felt even more immersed in the quicksand of suspicion in his mind about whom they might be dealing with. And the suspicions solidified more and more, gripping the detective's core.

“I'm a psychologist, maybe I can get something by talking to her. But for her to trust me, we'll have to talk alone.”

Na-moo stared at her, his hands on the waist. Did she have any experience with witnesses of murder? Wasn't that her first job away from her professors?

Before he could say anything, Timothy, the former forensic psychologist at the Longino Police Department's of Violent Crimes, suddenly came to his mind. The young man had dealt with a few cases at the time he specialized, studying theses and carrying out voluntary research in the field. His commitment made him such a good profiler that he was promoted to one of the country's metropolises with a high rate of violence after a few months of volunteering in Longino.

“Right. I'll wait outside.” He finally agreed, earning a slight smile.

Na-moo couldn't help but regard her half-smile as a breakthrough in their professional relationship. It was a good decision not to mention that she had no experience on her own in the field, as this would only make things even more awkward between them. Besides, his speciality was interrogating criminals. The victims, for the most part, registered complaints and testimonies without too much difficulty at the police station. Tsui was, in many ways, a special case. In his years working as a detective, since graduating from the academy with Hector, Na-moo had never come across serial murders.

Until that moment.

Nurse Parker left shortly after him and exchanged brief words with the detective about the patient's medical condition before leaving for lunch, which left Na-moo alone in the beige corridor again.

While checking the messages sent by his partner, the name Sol flashed on the screen:

Na-moo laughed, but his mind quickly turned to Dr Zhou, which made him stop smiling.

Did the doctor have someone to send her messages complaining about her work, like Sol just sent him? What if he was the reason for her complaints of the day, for being so hostile towards her? Perhaps Amélie thought he was annoyed by the fact that a woman was his new forensic partner. She may even think that his displeasure was amplified by the fact that she is the same person he had an unsuccessful date with last night.

Holy shit.

The detective didn't have long to reflect on his thoughts, as another message popped up on the screen:

Na-moo almost laughed. If he hadn't known that Hector and Sol didn't have each other's numbers, he would have sworn that his friend had told the blonde about Amélie Zhou.

“We need to get back to the police station.”

His mobile phone slipped from his fingers as he jumped up in fright. Na-moo held it close to touching the ground.

“Are you trying to give me a heart attack?” He exclaimed, the arteries pulsing in his eardrums. “That way, I'll think you really want to kill me!”

“I'm sorry.” Amélie placed a lock of hair behind her ear in a vain attempt to disguise her flushed face.

“Did you get anything from Tsui?”

“Erm… I need to look at some archived cases about the… incident that happened in Longino twelve years ago.”

“Why?”

“She didn't see the killer's face, all she could gather about him was that he was probably around 1.79 cm tall and that he wore a ski mask. Tsui was heading out to meet some friends when someone attacked her from behind. When she woke up, she was already in the shed tied to a chair, while her mother and grandmother…” Amélie pressed her temples. “Well, you know how they were. The difference is that instead of immobile corpses, as we found, they were alive at the moment the killer turned to Tsui… forcing her to choose which one she wanted to save.”

Amélie didn't have to finish telling Tsui Mamoto's testimony. The fact that her mother and grandmother were dead meant that she couldn't choose one of them to save, perhaps because she feared the horror in the eyes of the one who would die. Na-moo sighed heavily and brushed his fingers through his dark hair, turning his face to the left side of the corridor.

Patients staggered up and down with the help of their families, oblivious to the danger surrounding Longino. Possibly their homes.

“The victims who committed suicide may not have been able to bear the pain of losing their loved ones, believing that it was their fault for not being able to choose just one to survive.” Completed the doctor. “The killer doped Tsui again after murdering her family, and when she woke up, her cell phone was there. That's when Gina received the call about what happened.”

“Did he say anything else to her? Like his code-name, for example?”

Amélie denied it with a slow nod.

“I know what you're thinking. But as you pointed out yourself, we shouldn't jump to conclusions. We need to look at the records of the cases archived twelve years ago and compare them with the cases that happened recently. It may not be the same person.”

“Okay.”

Na-moo was tempted to ask the doctor how much she knew about the murderer who'd terrorized Longino in the past. But even those who hadn't grown up there knew about the most heinous cases filed by the small town's police, she must surely have known the bigger picture and why they were filed. He was also curious to know how she'd got Tsui to speak when Tsui hadn't seemed able to articulate anything coherent before he left them alone. However, he decided that such questions were irrelevant at the moment.

It wasn't as if they had time to waste discussing frivolities, so he held out his hand, which made Amélie arch an eyebrow before realizing that he was asking for her car key.

“Don't get used to it.” Amélie grumbled, depositing the key in the palm of his hand.

“It's just today, Doctor. Don't think you'll have a handsome guy behind your wheel every day”. Na-moo retorted, grinning sarcastically. Before she could reply, he turned his back on her and headed for the lift.

He didn't have to look back to know that the brown-haired woman followed him, cute grimaces behind his back. However, at that moment, he couldn't appreciate her facial feats. The detective's heart was beating deafeningly, his brain hammering against his skull with increasingly tortuous doubts.

Were they dealing with some fanatical copycat, or… or had he returned to Longino?

In the darkest depths of his mind, as he passed some patients on his way out of the car park, a silent warning pinpricked him…

Perhaps that crazy psychopath was choosing his next victims at that moment.

Just as he'd done with the Hwang family in the past.