It was when Sa Gong-hyun exhaled briefly with a chilling gaze. There was a sound of internal metal parts rubbing against each other, as if he was adjusting the heavy alloy.
“Sa Gong… Sa Gong-hyun!”
Jae-young hid his reddened eye rims behind his eyelids. Tears, as if squeezed out, flowed down his temples.
Blood that had seeped out from the wrist, overworked by fingernails, dropped onto Jae-young’s cheek. It was at the moment when, as a last desperate attempt, he pushed up with all his might.
As Sa Gong-hyun relaxed his body, the gun barrel that had been firmly embedded in Jae-young’s forehead without any movement was pushed upward.
His eyes opened instantly. When their eyes met, a breath that couldn’t be controlled escaped. The eyes that had been unfocused now trembled pathetically, as if they had just come to their senses.
“H-Hyun-ssi…”
“…”
Suddenly, a stream of blood flowing down his hand dripped down Jae-young’s wrist. Sa Gong-hyun’s gaze swept once over the gun in his hand and Jae-young’s face.
He roughly pulled his hand away from Jae-young’s grasp. After running his hand through his hair once, he threw the gun forcefully toward the wall.
A heavy boom resonated. Jae-young reflexively shrunk back. Sa Gong-hyun got up. If it hadn’t been for the light, he might have missed how the man slightly staggered.
“…”
Instead of explaining his actions, Sa Gong-hyun left the room. Bang! With the sound of the door closing forcefully, Jae-young was finally left alone.
The mark where the gun barrel had pressed against his forehead might remain, but fortunately, his head wasn’t pierced with a hole.
Though he let out a long sigh of relief, the tension hadn’t fully disappeared, causing his breath to tremble slightly. Pressing his eyelids firmly with the base of his palm, Jae-young let out several unnatural breaths in succession.
“Shibal, really…”
He really thought he was going to die. Why Sa Gong-hyun had suddenly aimed a gun at him while sleeping, what that smile meant—there was no convincing answer to any of these questions.
After lying in the same position for a long time, Jae-young raised his hand. His fingertips trembled slightly. The inside of his nails was filled with a dark color due to blood.
With a trembling body, Jae-young raised his upper body. When he touched his neck that had been strangled earlier, a dry cough erupted a couple of times, as if it had been waiting.
It wasn’t intentional. That much he could barely discern. However, even though he knew that Sa Gong-hyun pointing a gun at him wasn’t intentional, he couldn’t stop the rising nausea. He managed to suppress it by firmly pressing his chest with his palm.
It felt like he had opened Pandora’s box, which he never wanted to know existed, but Jae-young decided not to delve deeper.
***
He spent the night without sleeping a wink. He sat as if nailed to his spot for a long time. Jae-young finally came to his senses at the sound of a dog barking outside.
As he was about to leave the house without even having time to gather his clothes, his gaze fixed on the gun lying carelessly on the floor. With trembling hands, he checked the magazine inside the gun. A hollow laugh escaped. The magazine had been empty from the start. It wasn’t even funny. Leaving behind that involuntary hollow laugh, he hurriedly left the room.
Sa Gong-hyun wasn’t in the house. Since he had been holed up in the room after the incident, he didn’t even have time to know when Sa Gong-hyun had left the house. It was laughable that he had been straining his ears all day.
Leaving the house in a hurry, Jae-young exhaled emptily as he remembered that his wallet was in his coat, which he had left behind.
No phone, no keys, no wallet. His head ached wondering how he would return home and how he would open the already closed door to get in.
He’d been out of sorts since yesterday. Jae-young trudged along the street. The bracelet on his wrist caught his eye, but he quickly shook his head and hurried his pace.
He’d been deliberating since last night. Even while thinking that it was enough that he hadn’t died, he kept having the urge to call Seung-kwon.
Despite knowing full well that if Sa Gong-hyun remained at home and Seung-kwon came over, the operation would fall apart—and despite thinking that Seung-kwon might even die—he was constantly overwhelmed by the impulse to grab the bracelet.
It was a time to endure. Or was it really? After all the time, money, and effort invested in this operation, with nothing to show for it, should he really hold back?
Whenever these conflicting emotions raced against each other, Jae-young hesitated to grasp the bracelet. In the end, he didn’t touch it, and since he had preserved his life, the dispute was somewhat resolved.
If asked whether he had never almost died while working, that wasn’t the case. Jae-young had numerous near-death experiences in this line of work.
There had been accidents, knives at his throat, and beatings severe enough to nearly kill him. Even while thinking he might die, he also had a groundless confidence that he would survive.
In any movie, the protagonist never dies. At one point, he had lived thinking he was the protagonist of this drama, so he could rush into anything fearlessly.
But yesterday was different. He felt it the moment he looked into Sa Gong-hyun’s eyes. Those weren’t human eyes. Reason had disappeared, and a murderer who had gained the upper hand was exuding the smell of blood. The sense of accomplishment emanating from those eyes was chillingly terrifying. Even meeting a wild beast on a narrow bridge wouldn’t have been as frightening.
Feeling pain in his forehead again, he eventually hailed a passing taxi. Since Seung-kwon would be working, he borrowed the taxi driver’s phone to call Ju-yeon.
By the time he got out of the taxi, Ju-yeon was already waiting in front of the studio building. Jae-young lay down on the sofa in Ju-yeon’s studio.
“Jae-young.”
“…Yeah, I’m listening.”
“…And there were a total of three installed inside the house. I was about to contact you anyway, but just then… Do Jae-young?”
“Huh?”
Lost in thought and giving only half-hearted responses, Jae-young suddenly came to his senses. Sitting in a chair, Ju-yeon frowned and looked back at him. Jae-young arranged his bangs neatly and sat up.
“Ah, sorry. What were you saying?”
“I cracked it.”
“What?”
“The CCTV.”
He stared blankly at Ju-yeon, who was smiling broadly with the corners of her mouth pulled up. CCTV? After chewing on her words, his eyes widened. His eyeballs, which had been slowly rolling left and right, turned back to Ju-yeon.
“You found it?”
“Yeah. There are a total of three installed inside the house. One on the first floor, two on the second.”
“First floor? I never saw one there.”
“You wouldn’t have noticed because it’s on the inside. It’s mounted in front of the door leading to the garage. And about the room at the far right of the second floor.”
The room at the far right of the second floor. It was the room where Sa Gong-hyun had stayed for about three hours in the previously recorded video. The place where they suspected the ledger would be if there was one.
“There seems to be some kind of sensor attached there.”
“What kind of sensor?”
“It’s not a camera, but it seems like whenever the door opens, a text is sent to Sa Gong-hyun. I think it might be in that room.”
“…”
“I can hack it by the end of today, so just leave a text when you’re alone in the house. I’ll cut the power at that time.”
“…Got it.”
Although it was amazing that Ju-yeon had already infiltrated the CCTV, he couldn’t be entirely happy. They were just a few steps away from the finish line, but because of what happened yesterday, he was preoccupied with distracting thoughts.
As Jae-young nodded with an ambiguous expression, Ju-yeon’s smile faded. She got up and approached him.
“Did something happen to you?”
Something happen. Jae-young pondered her words as he lay back down on the sofa.
“Just…”
“It’s not ‘just’… Wait, wait a minute. What’s this on your neck?”
Having been sitting in the chair all along, she must have just noticed the hand marks on Jae-young’s neck. So there were marks. Jae-young touched his neck and smiled bitterly. When he shook his head, her face fell even more.
“It’s nothing.”
“…Are you really okay?”
He spoke nonchalantly, but in reality, it wasn’t entirely trivial.
He hadn’t been caught, nor had his life been deliberately threatened, and ultimately, nothing had happened.
He thought it was a fear he could shake off quickly, but recalling the situation still gave him chills. What was more irritating was the uneasiness that had bloomed within that fear.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
