By Zephyria 
The mansion, located in a quiet suburb where few people passed by, was so silent that it felt desolate, as if a ghost might appear at any moment. Chrissy, who had driven there in the car he stole from Nathaniel, looked up at the building with an unpleasant feeling. This was the very mansion where Anthony had died.
Perhaps because no one had visited since the accident, the place had turned into something resembling an abandoned house. The tape marking the crime scene had been torn and ripped, leaving little intact. After taking a deep breath, Chrissy stepped inside the mansion.
With a creak, the door opened, and the scent of damp dust immediately hit him. As he walked slowly, his footsteps echoed eerily through the silent interior. Chrissy continued forward, visualizing the floor plan of the building he had researched beforehand. While white dust had settled everywhere in the house, the various stains remaining here and there allowed him to easily imagine the frenzy of that day.
Passing through the hall where the party had been held and climbing the stairs, Chrissy reconstructed the situation in his head. He kept moving, following the emotionless descriptions written in the documents. Past the hall where everyone had been a tangled mess, intoxicated by drugs and alcohol, and toward the room where the incident occurred.
At first, the atmosphere had been good. Anthony and Jonathan had intended to spend time together, but some kind of trouble arose. An argument broke out, and Anthony tried to hold onto Jonathan, but Jonathan was out of his mind on drugs, and then the tragedy happened. Until now, he had focused on the tragedy that occurred, but now…
What was the cause of the fight?
No one had talked about it, nor were they interested. Chrissy had been the same, but his direction was wrong. That incident wasn’t a matter of romantic entanglement. It was…
♬♬♪♩♩♩♪♪……
Suddenly, the sound of music rang out. Startled, Chrissy stopped in his tracks, then quickly regained his composure and pulled the phone from his pocket. It was a new phone he had acquired only a few hours ago. Who could possibly know his number and call him? After staring at the phone for a moment, Chrissy pressed the answer button with a reluctant feeling.
“Chrissy Jin.”
As soon as he heard the voice on the other end, he let out a short breath, confirming that his unpleasant prediction had hit the mark.
“You certainly have a lot of time on your hands, stalking a mere prosecutor.”
As Chrissy sneered, Nathaniel’s sharp voice immediately followed.
“Stop talking nonsense. Where are you right now?”
Startled by the rough tone he was hearing for the first time, Chrissy momentarily paused and pulled the phone away from his ear. After glancing at the screen, he put the phone back to his ear with a frown, and Nathaniel continued.
“Come back right now. This isn’t something a low-ranking prosecutor like you should be handling.”
There were plenty of points to refute in his words. However, Chrissy chose only one to speak on.
“Do you think you have the right to say that to me now, after you kept your mouth shut despite knowing everything?”
“Chrissy Jin, I’m warning you, drop this.”
Nathaniel finally spat out, sounding as if he were grinding his teeth.
“This isn’t something you can handle. I know you want to flaunt your sense of justice, but now is not the timing. Learn to read the situation before you start something.”
He sounded anxious for some reason. He seemed to sincerely want Chrissy to stop, but that only served to convince Chrissy that he had finally drawn closer to the truth.
“Thanks for the concern, but I don’t want to listen to someone who fed me dog food.”
Following Chrissy’s cynical reply, an unexpected silence lasted for a few seconds. With a short sigh, Nathaniel continued.
“Chrissy, listen to me. I’m trying to help you right now.”
“Don’t tell me you’re confessing that you did that ridiculous thing just to protect me?”
Chrissy still had no intention of backing down. Eventually, Nathaniel took a step back.
“Fine, I admit I went too far. Now stop this and come back, otherwise, you’ll regret it.”
“Thanks for the advice. I’m hanging up now.”
“Chrissy Jin, if you don’t come back this instant…”
Nathaniel tried to say more, but Chrissy simply hung up. To ensure he wouldn’t waste any unnecessary time, he turned off the power entirely and continued exploring the mansion. Since the search team had already taken everything that could serve as evidence, he had to grasp the situation based solely on the traces remaining in the mansion.
He checked from the first floor to the fourth, but saw nothing special. There were no hidden doors either. After finishing the search of the last room, Chrissy stood there, stroking his chin with a serious expression.
It’s strange.
What was suspicious wasn’t the interior of the house. It was the structure. Why build a house with four floors? The size of the mansion wasn’t that large. Why build upward instead of expanding sideways using the empty land? For a mansion with seven rooms, two floors would have been sufficient, yet it was a four-story mansion, not even three.
Returning to the first floor, Chrissy stood in the center of the hall and looked up. The stairs on both sides were divided by floor, leading up to the fourth floor in intervals. While standing still and slowly scanning from the first to the fourth floor, something suddenly caught Chrissy’s eye.
“…Oh.”
Startled, an exclamation escaped his lips unconsciously. His eyes, which had been looking at the end of one staircase leading to the second floor, shifted to the end of the opposite staircase. Then to both staircases on the third floor, and finally to the fourth.
There was a large painting hanging at each spot; some depicted animals, some people, and some landscapes—all different—but they shared one commonality.
The moon.
He looked again and again, but it was the same. Every painting had a moon. The shapes were irregular, ranging from a new moon to a waning crescent, but it was clear that they were all moons.
If so, could there be a secret in the shapes of those moons?
The floor where the painting hung, whether it was on the right or left, the different sizes of the moons—each must have a reason. As evidence, on the fourth floor, a painting hung on only one wall. Chrissy immediately ran up the stairs and stood before the painting. If he could figure out just one secret, he would be able to understand the rest.
There were five paintings with moons. Perhaps five characters, or a specific sequence…
After examining the painting closely, he took a few steps back and scanned the whole thing. No matter how he looked, he couldn’t find anything special other than the moon. If it wasn’t the painting, could it be somewhere else…?
Following the previous lesson, he widened his field of vision and looked around outside the painting. His guess was correct. He discovered Roman numerals engraved on the corner of the frame.
If he arranged the shapes of the moons according to the sequence engraved on the frames…
A zip code.
The moment the region indicated by the numbers came to mind, an absurd gasp escaped his lips. The party he had attended upon the invitation of the Chief Prosecutor. It was the zip code of the region where that villa was located.
Was he imagining too much?
Anxious, Chrissy pressed the accelerator of the car. The expensive sports car roared as it raced down the road, but to him, it felt slow. There had been no suspicious signs at the party that day. He didn’t know if another party had been held. But Nathaniel had been there. The man who was Jonathan’s lawyer. And the words exchanged there. Things like investments, losses, and prospects. Since those weren’t topics he was interested in at the time, he had let them go in one ear and out the other, but no matter what was said, it wouldn’t be suspicious. If they shared a more clandestine secret among themselves…
Since it was his first time attending, it was certain that Chrissy hadn’t been able to get that close. Considering the faces of the people gathered there, it was only natural that Nathaniel Miller was a member. Nevertheless, Chrissy continued to feel a sense of dissonance. He had said he didn’t know about the ‘Son of the Moon.’ That was surely a lie as well. Because Nathaniel Miller often uttered lies as if they were nothing.
If whatever Detective Simmons found was related to them…
It was entirely possible to receive a warning. However, the fact that Nathaniel Miller was the one who warned him bothered him. Why bother? For what purpose?
It certainly wouldn’t be because he was truly worried about me.
‘Prosecutor.’
Suddenly, his low voice calling him tickled his ear. Startled, he accidentally took his foot off the accelerator. Flustered, Chrissy hurriedly shook his head and regained his composure. This was no time for useless thoughts. He had to get there quickly.
Feeling a complex mix of hoping Detective Simmons was there while simultaneously hoping he was wrong, he increased his speed and raced forward.