The room was entirely padded; there was a bed, a desk with two seats facing each other, books.

Everything indicated someone lived there.

Was she a patient or a doctor?

Seung Woo didn’t know what to make of it.

A minute or two past while the doctor swung back and forth in her chair without saying a word; she just sat and stared.

“Eh, doctor Noh,” Seung Woo began.

“1.80cm, no 1.86cm, impatient, maniac you should wear gloves when you clean otherwise, your hands will end up like grated cheese. You haven’t had sex for a few months, and you have to much pride to use your hand. You should release some tension, practice some sport you’ll stop smoking quicker.

“You have a brother complex. You measure every woman you meet to your sister. Oh, God, you just rated me, didn’t you? This habit irritates the girlfriends who leave you for that and the fact that even if they find you attractive, they discover you are dull and empty like a shell. You’re probably a latent sociopath; I’d say the Disempathetic type.”

In a few minutes, the doctor detailed Seung Woo’s profile leaving the man dumbstruck and feeling like Clarice Starling. The only difference was no prison bars separated him from the doctor.

Seung Woo got the impression of being warped into Silence of the Lambs and encountering Hannibal Lecter. Blunt and provocative, the doctor tried to intimidate him, and the method worked. If it weren’t for the white of the walls and light in the place, the inspector would have left.

“You can have a seat, I won’t bite,” the doctor said, pointing her palm upward to the seat.

Seung Woo was bewildered. The woman’s greasy hair and general attire left him perplexed. Everything showed she was a patient; she was probably the craziest person in the ward yet.

“Are you going to sit or not?” Doctor Noh said, tilting her head from one side to the other before releasing a smirk.

A gut feeling told Seung Woo not to approach, there were red lights everywhere in his mind, but his feet stepped forward. The doctor’s smile widened with every step, and so did Seung’s woo heartbeat as if he was about to be swallowed by the big bad wolf.

The inspector took a seat. Now, he faced this woman solicited by the world to resolve unsolved crimes. There were no photos of her, and everybody referred to her as the doctor in the documents. She was famous still everything emanating from doctor Noh hashtagged her as being insane.

Why had not Seung Woo heard of her before professor Jensen informed him?

Why was she not already the police’s consultant?

Nothing made sense, and it seemed it was too late to retreat.

“So what brings you here, Mr. Inspector?”

“How do you know?”

“I ask the questions here, and your badge is bulging your pocket. You better hurry, you’ve got three minutes left.”

Everyone’s obsession with time intrigued Seung Woo, but he left the question to ask the essential.

“I need you to help me catch Stein’s son.”

In a split second, the room’s air seemed sucked into oblivion, leaving a breathless atmosphere as the doctor leaped on the desk and grabbed Seung Woo by the tie. She twisted and pulled him to the edge of the table where his head hung forward while the doctor sat on the floor, back turned to his agony, holding his tie.

“Eh, eh, wae?” Asked the choking inspector.

“I said I ask the questions, Inspector, why should I help you?”

“Beㅡcauseㅡbeㅡcause.”

“What, what? Why should I?”

“Woㅡmen, m-en die.”

“So, they could die hit by a truck, of cancer, suicide, people die every day, why should I help you?”

“Please, jaebal, please,”

“WAE?”

“I need to kill him.”

With these words, the doctor released the man who coughed for the breath of life. The inspector understood why nurse Kim asked him to take off his belt and tie.

Seung Woo rolled off the desk to fall hands and knees on the floor, where he recuperated his breath. Once freed from fright, he lifted his head to find himself facing his gun.

“When did you?” Seung Woo said, touching himself to confirm the gun’s absence.

“If you can’t anticipate this, Stein will kill you before you inhale your last gasp oxygen,” Dr. Noh said before throwing his service gun to the floor.

“Now leave, she’s almost here,” she said, walking to the door and opening it, “nurse Kim he had his gun on him, please be more vigilant.”

Dr. Noh then went to sit back down in her chair, where she placed her hands behind her head and began to swing back and forth again, like when Seung Woo arrived.

As Seung Woo past the door touching his neck, which he imagined scarlet red from the strangulation, he wondered why nurse Kim who displayed the broadest of grins, did not intervene while doctor Noh almost killed him.

Was nurse Kim scared, or did he enjoy seeing the inspector experience the doctor’s moods?

She’s coming, said Dr.Noh, who was she expecting?

“Follow me,” nurse Kim said.

Seung Woo advanced, looking back at the door where he almost met death.

The white walls which scared him upon his arrival appeared as the guardians of salvation. Seung Woo, relieved to be alive, wished to bathe the walls with kisses. Was this how victims felt when they escaped an aggressor? The inspector could not reflect longer as nurse Kim knocked on a door and opened.

“Ah, you’re alive,” doctor Baek exclaimed as Seung Woo entered his office.

“You knew she would attempt to kill me.”

The doctor turned his computer screen, which had different angles of Seung Woo’s altercation with Dr. Noh.

The inspector’s face twisted with anger, “you watched.”

The cop mentally bashed himself; he was in a psychiatric ward; everyone was insane.

“I think Dr. Noh likes You?”

“Like, you say she almost choked me to death,” Seung Woo said, gesturing towards the screen, which had a clear shot of the moment.

“But you’re here with nothing broken, you’re in one piece,” professor Baek said, clutching his hands.

“Yeah, butー.”

“Then it’s settled come back tomorrow at 6:35, not one minute before or a minute after, please, oh, and also bring an apple, she likes apples.”