So I called her phone. I met her family at a café near the school.
Deciding to meet her family over this issue wasn’t an easy choice. Dozens of times, I wanted to dismiss it as just suspicion, a coincidence, that I couldn’t judge anything based on KakaoTalk alone, that her accident wasn’t my fault. If I were a little weaker, I probably would have hidden away.
But what if the stalker really did it…?
For that reason alone, I met her family and showed them the stalker’s messages.
Her parents didn’t say a word after I finished speaking. They just stared at the phone screen with sunken eyes. After a few minutes of expressionless staring, her father’s face twisted. I got slapped hard on the left cheek and was pushed back against the table. I knelt down, expecting this reaction. If I were her family, I’d be angry and resentful too.
“You should’ve never dated anyone if you were being stalked!”
I wanted to defend myself—that I thought the stalking was over, that I never expected this—but I clenched my jaw and stayed silent.
My slapped cheek swelled red. I was already half-terrified.
The café buzzed. The staff didn’t know what to do and whispered among themselves, keeping their distance. Her father took several angry breaths, then sat down and buried his face in his hands.
I knelt, biting my lip. I didn’t have the face or the courage to look at her family.
After a long silence, her mother, speaking stiffly, asked for me:
“Even if you could have just ignored it, thank you for telling us. So, Siwoo… you’re saying our Su-yeon’s accident might not have been an accident?”
“That’s right. I’m sorry.”
The apology came out naturally. Now, all the blame was on me.
“Let’s go to the police station and talk in detail.”
After that, things moved quickly. Even as I wrote my statement, even as I submitted the KakaoTalk messages as evidence, and perhaps forever, I was a criminal in her family’s eyes. My gums tore and bled, but as long as her parents were there, I couldn’t show any sign of pain.
When I submitted the KakaoTalk messages as evidence, the police scolded me for never reporting it, even though it was serious.
The police, who had initially concluded it was an accident, reopened the investigation based on my messages. The fact that she had said she was going to take the bus but went out the back gate, where there was no bus stop, and specifically went down the slope. And the fact that the stalker had mentioned her name. They started the investigation with these points in mind.
But the police said that unless they could rule out the possibility that her accident was just a coincidence, the KakaoTalk messages alone weren’t enough evidence to pin it on the stalker, and the investigation might be difficult.
The one who was thrilled when the investigation was reopened under the possibility that her accident wasn’t just a coincidence but a deliberate act was Mr. Park, who had been drinking at the supermarket platform near the slope where the handcart was left.
He had been considered unable to make judgments due to being drunk, and all his previous statements had been practically dismissed. But with the reinvestigation, his statement was re-examined.
×× Year, ×× Month, ×× Day. Incident time: 9:42 AM.
He had placed bricks on the handcart and drank a bottle of soju with the supermarket owner on the platform nearby. The handcart had been left in a flat alley between the slopes, and with the bricks on it, there was no way it could have rolled down. However, there was no CCTV footage in the narrow alley to confirm this, and the next day, the bricks he claimed to have placed were gone.
Moreover, since the witness was drunk, his testimony was deemed unreliable.
The dozen or so IDs that had sent me messages were traced back to fake accounts created with overseas IPs. Since the accounts were created using shared overseas IPs, tracking them down proved difficult, and the investigation into the stalker hit a wall.
For several days, I went to the police station whenever I was called to give my statement. I was told to contact them immediately if the stalker reached out again or came to my house, but I doubted the stalker, who knew my every move, was unaware of my frequent visits to the police station. Meanwhile, the detective in charge of the investigation seemed visibly annoyed by the reinvestigation.
A man who liked muscular male students, and that man might have tried to kill his girlfriend? This wasn’t some internet novel. Throughout the investigation, I had to listen to the detective grumbling. With the presidential election coming up, he seemed annoyed to be stuck with such a far-fetched case during a busy time.
Even so, I was still a student. As final exam notices went up, group projects and reports piled up.
“……So, the final exam will be replaced with a report. If you write about future engines according to the criteria here, you’ll get extra points, so refer to it……”
I absentmindedly jotted down the professor’s grading criteria. I felt like my mind was elsewhere. I had been mindlessly following other students, and before I knew it, I was already in the next lecture hall. I recognized the familiar professor’s face and belatedly gasped.
Ah, today was the mechanical engineering class.
It was the class where we had to pull all-nighters to complete high-difficulty assignments. Of course, I had a reliable ally, Baseok sunbae, in the same group, but I had ignored his messages several times because I was so busy. Sure enough, when I turned my head, I met the eyes of Hae-joon sunbae, who was sitting in the back because there were no seats left.
He was glaring at me.
……He’s mad. He must be. After telling me not to avoid him, I hadn’t responded. He might think I was avoiding him. Plus, he didn’t know anything about my situation.
We were in a group project, and I hadn’t replied to his messages. Would he exclude my name? Maybe I should just take a leave of absence. Run away to do manual labor and save money until everything calmed down. Or maybe fleeing to the countryside would be a good choice. I just wanted to escape from my current problems. I wanted to run away and forget everything—the stalker, the accident involving my girlfriend. It felt like I was trapped in a dark box with no way out. There was never a clear answer. Frustrated, I grabbed my head and shook it.
The class, which I had hoped would last a little longer, ended. As soon as class was over, Hae-joon sunbae walked toward where I was sitting. I covered my eyes and sighed.
“Hey, I told you to at least keep the days we work on the project together free.”
“I’m sorry……”
“Why didn’t you reply to my messages? ……Baek Siwoo, what happened to your cheek?”
Ah, he noticed the bruise. He absentmindedly reached out to touch my cheek.
Even though we were working on a project together and I was trying not to make things awkward, if what Heon said was true, Hae-joon sunbae was still the stalker, and he was gay. Above all, with the stalker causing me so much trouble, I couldn’t possibly welcome Hae-joon sunbae’s touch. I slapped his hand away, and his expression stiffened slightly. I avoided his gaze and muttered in response.
“I just… got hit.”
“…….”
Hae-joon sunbae stared down at me. His eyes were fixed on my cheek. When I looked up at the silent Hae-joon sunbae, he covered his mouth with his hand and narrowed his eyes.
I looked at him quizzically. Did he just… smile?
What was so funny? As if he had never smiled, he quickly hardened his expression and spoke as if nothing had happened.
“Anyway, there’s not much time left until finals, so don’t think about running away. Stay in the workshop together. Before I take your name off the list.”
“……Yes.”
Did I see wrong? The expression had flashed by so quickly that I doubted my eyes. Normally, no one would smile at a swollen cheek.
I thought I must have seen wrong, but it kept nagging at me.
Hae-joon sunbae and I stayed in the workshop to work. Acquaintances who only knew me by face came over to say hello. We even pooled our money to order fried chicken for a late-night snack. Hae-joon sunbae flatly refused the offer to eat with the underclassmen.
The underclassmen knew that I didn’t usually stay late in the workshop with Hae-joon sunbae. On the other hand, Hae-joon sunbae seemed to stay late often, and it was already common knowledge that he didn’t get along with others.
Leaving Hae-joon sunbae in the workshop, I went out to the lounge with six underclassmen. As I picked up a piece of meat coated in red sauce, one of the underclassmen, looking genuinely curious, asked:
“Siwoo sunbae, is it true you’re on the basketball team?”
“Our school doesn’t have a basketball team.”
“They said you played basketball during the sports festival. That you were the best.”
“There’s no basketball team, but there’s a basketball club. I’m a starter there.”
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
