Chapter 22

“Who are you?” she rasped, shrinking back. “Are you the police?”

It was a remarkably guarded question. Yoon Hee-sook’s pupils darted frantically back and forth as she scrutinized Choi Yook.

Mu-yeong knew that look all too well. It was the face of someone who wouldn’t be relieved by hearing the police had arrived, but would flee instead. The face of people praying their interrogator wasn’t law enforcement because they had something dirty to hide.

Choi Yook propped his elbows on the table and leaned forward. As his long neck stretched past his shirt collar, the gaping maw of a tattooed serpent head was laid bare.

“I’m just a debt collector,” Choi Yook stated, his voice casual and devoid of inflection. “So if you tell the truth, Ms. Yoon Hee-sook, you won’t suffer any harm. In fact, you’ll be compensated. Your daughters’ finances must have gotten quite tight after upgrading you from a double room to a private suite.”

“Are you threatening me with my daughters right now?” Yoon Hee-sook croaked, turning pale.

Her helpless gaze remained pinned to the snake coiled around Choi Yook’s neck. Choi Yook’s expression, however, remained utterly deadpan.

“Threatening you? I’m offering to help right now,” Choi Yook countered. “You’re mistaken about something, Ms. Yoon Hee-sook. The ones who arranged for you and me to meet today were your daughters. They’ve already pocketed plenty of cash to cover their sons’ math, English, and essay academy tuition. And isn’t it your dream too to see your grandsons become doctors side by side?”

He delivered the words without once raising his voice. Mu-yeong glanced around the visitation room. His eyes caught a stack of styrofoam plates and plastic forks resting beside the sink and water dispenser.

After washing his hands and grabbing the supplies, Mu-yeong sat down next to Choi Yook. Pulling out a pocket knife, he sliced an apple mango into three clean sections. As the blade glided around the flat seed, vivid golden juice dripped down his fingers.

“Please, ma’am, think it over carefully,” Mu-yeong urged gently.

His voice was mild and soothing as he scored a neat crosshatch grid into the flesh with the tip of his blade. In moments, the diced mango peeled back from the skin, tumbling down in bite-sized cubes.

“We have no intention of harming the child,” Mu-yeong assured her. “Not a shred of harm will come her way.”

Choi Yook glanced sideways at him. Yoon Hee-sook’s wrinkled eyes also shifted toward the glistening fruit.

They told me not to agitate her and to avoid getting too close, didn’t they? Mu-yeong wiped his hands with a wet tissue and speared a piece of mango with a fork. Remembering how she had looked at him with eyes full of disgust all those years ago, he softened his voice into something even more tender.

“Even a simple memory would be fine. You were a wonderful librarian, so I’m sure you were kind and welcoming to a little child who dropped by. There must be some fond memory that comes to mind when you think of her, isn’t there?”

Mu-yeong smiled warmly, extending the fork of mango toward her. A handspan away, half a handspan, and just as the sweet fruit was about to brush her lips, Yoon Hee-sook’s face twisted into violent revulsion, the gaunt skin over her cheekbones trembling.

“Where did this wretched thing crawl out from?” Yoon Hee-sook shrieked, batting the air. “You slippery, silver-tongued leech! Get out of my face right this instant, get out!”

Yoon Hee-sook hurled the entire plate straight at Mu-yeong. Because he had deliberately leaned his head forward, the diced fruit splashed squarely over his face rather than staining his clothes. It was easily the softest, mushiest impact he had ever suffered in his life.

Picking the mango out of the basket had clearly paid off. Mu-yeong used his tongue to catch a stray piece of pulp sliding toward his chin. Man, that’s sweet. He reached for a wet wipe to scrub his sticky cheeks.

“Go wash your face,” Choi Yook ordered.

“Right away,” Mu-yeong replied obediently.

With a polite nod, Mu-yeong exited the visitation room. His footsteps, however, were not heading toward the hallway restroom, but toward the emergency stairwell. He hurried down the stairs to the floor below. A lone staff member sat at the nursing station. He approached the counter and gave the partition a light tap.

With polite deference, Mu-yeong said, “Hello, I’m here visiting Yoon Hee-sook in Room 302.”

The nurse looked up with a frown. “…Pardon? You can’t just wander down here like this. Visits are only allowed in the visitation lounge.”

“Ah, of course,” Mu-yeong replied with an apologetic nod. “I only wanted to check on how Ms. Yoon Hee-sook has been doing lately. She hasn’t had any issues, has she?”

“Well, mostly,” the nurse mumbled vaguely.

She gave a reluctant, noncommittal shrug. Having never expected much cooperation in the first place, Mu-yeong took a few quiet steps back and leaned his shoulders against the wall.

A look of confusion gradually crept across the nurse’s face. She glanced around the empty station, blinking rapidly in disorientation. As she wiped a hand down her face, another nurse approached her desk.

The coworker asked, “What’s up? Is something wrong?”

“No, it’s nothing, really… Just Grandma Yoon Hee-sook in 302,” the first nurse murmured.

She trailed off, rubbing her brow as if a thought had popped into her head completely out of the blue.

“I was just thinking how quiet things have been since she moved into a private room,” she said.

“Well, that’s true,” the second nurse agreed with a nod. “Though if you ask me, that other elder who insisted on dragging that notebook out to read was out of line too. Why touch someone else’s things when you were explicitly told not to?”

The second nurse lowered her voice and sighed. A notebook. Mu-yeong slipped away without a sound and headed back upstairs. After splashing water over his sticky face in the restroom, he returned to the visitation room, where the atmosphere had shifted entirely.

Yoon Hee-sook was practically groveling before Choi Yook. Ashen-faced, she bowed her stooped waist repeatedly in frantic supplication.

“I swear, I really, truly don’t remember…” she pleaded, her voice trembling.

Choi Yook cut in, his tone flat, “I hear you.” He snuffed out the smoldering cigarette butt into a damp tissue without a flicker of emotion.

“Except my time is limited,” Choi Yook said coldly. “All I want you to tell me is what you saw that night.”

Yoon Hee-sook nodded vigorously. The tissue clutched in her trembling fist was tearing into ragged shreds.

“Well, that day… I was running late leaving the library that night too,” she began haltingly, her stammering voice teetering on the edge of hysteria.

“Organizing the books, checking the checkout and return logs, and writing up the daily journal always took so much time,” Yoon Hee-sook babbled, clutching at her chest as short, ragged gasps escaped her. “I ran the other way to get away from the cars, and then I saw the child sprinting toward the mountain in the distance. I called out to her, but she didn’t listen, like she was entirely possessed. She was moving so fast I couldn’t have caught her even if I tried.”

Her brow creased deeply, just as it used to when she logged records years ago. Then, as if finally solving a puzzle that had nagged at her for over a decade, she nodded slowly with a vacant expression.

“Right… the child was wearing pants, that’s why she could fly across the ground like that,” Yoon Hee-sook murmured, staring into space. “She had never dressed like that before.”

Mu-yeong knew for certain now that she remembered the incident. Sure enough, Choi Yook’s attention sharpened instantly. His gaze sharpened. “She was wearing pants? Are you certain? Not a gray dress?”

“Y-yes, that much I’m sure of,” Yoon Hee-sook insisted, nodding feverishly. “She always wore nothing but dreary dresses or skirts to an unnatural degree, so at first I didn’t even think it was her. I’m positive.”

“What color were the clothes?” Choi Yook asked.

“I couldn’t tell the color… It was dark out, and I was so terrified,” she whimpered, shrinking back. “I was in such a panic I couldn’t even call emergency services… Though someone else called 119 anyway…”

Yoon Hee-sook curled her shoulders inward, her voice trailing away. The sight of the trembling old woman might have evoked sympathy from anyone else, but Choi Yook fixed her with a razor-sharp glare, untouched by even an ounce of pity.

“What else do you remember?” Choi Yook pressed.

“Nothing, that’s really all of it!” she cried out in desperation. “I told you, I don’t remember anything else. Not a single thing!”

Hearing her near-whimpering plea, Choi Yook rose smoothly to his feet. It was abundantly clear he considered staying any longer a waste of his time.

“If you remember anything else, contact me through your daughter,” Choi Yook said. “I’ll pay you handsomely. Should I escort you to your room?”

“No!” Yoon Hee-sook shrieked.

She bolted out of her chair, panic flashing across her pale face.

“No, I can go by myself,” she stammered, backing away. “I’ll walk alone.”

In her frantic scramble to grab the safety handrail along the wall, her arm brushed against Mu-yeong. Yet she offered no reprimand, only bowing her head in repeated flustered jerks before shuffling away as fast as her frail legs could carry her. Mu-yeong walked over and threw every window in the visitation lounge wide open.

“What did you two talk about while I was gone?” Mu-yeong asked casually.

The cloying scent of mango and bitter tobacco smoke drifted cleanly out into the afternoon air. Mu-yeong wiped away the cigarette ashes clumped in the sticky fruit syrup on the tabletop, looking up at Choi Yook. Meeting his eyes, Choi Yook tilted his head.

Choi Yook relayed smoothly, “She claims the child visited under Kang Shim-soo’s name, so she wasn’t on the member registry. Said she’d never once heard the kid’s name. The girl couldn’t speak and was restless, which was the only reason she stood out, but other than that, she supposedly knows nothing.”

Mu-yeong ran his tongue freely along the inside of his cheek.

“How pitiful for a child not to even be able to speak,” Mu-yeong murmured softly. “And besides that?”

Choi Yook met his gaze evenly. “There was nothing else of any significance to you, Seo Mu-yeong.”

A lie.

“Ms. Yoon Hee-sook said so earlier,” Mu-yeong pointed out. “When the fire broke out, pitch-black cars sped right past.”

Mu-yeong set the wet wipe down on the table. No matter how many narrow crises he had navigated around the man, he could not back down from confronting Choi Yook at this very moment. Because it seemed all too obvious that Yoon Hee-sook had committed a terrible wrong.

A wrong against himself, and against his grandmother. Mu-yeong locked his gaze onto Choi Yook, a faint smile gracing his lips.

“I imagine the two of you discussed whose cars those were,” Mu-yeong suggested.

“And why would we?” Choi Yook asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Because otherwise, I can’t fathom why she’d be paralyzed in such sheer terror,” Mu-yeong countered smoothly. “Didn’t you tell her something along the lines of how her grandson’s schoolbag in Daechi-dong could just as easily catch fire while he attends essay academy? It must have been quite convenient to seize that leverage, especially with my face thoroughly plastered in mango.”

“Seo Mu-yeong,” Choi Yook warned, his voice dropping an octave.

Mu-yeong leaned forward, his eyes gleaming as he kept his tone mild and even. “You said you wanted to find the child, didn’t you?”

“That’s why you gave me this job in the first place.” Mu-yeong didn’t flinch in the slightest. “Which means there shouldn’t be anything I don’t know about what happened when the child went missing. I need to know what those cars had to do with the kid, and what they had to do with the fire, so I have a trail to latch onto and dig into. For all we know, one of those car owners might be the one keeping the kid right now.”

“None of the car owners who were there have the kid,” Choi Yook replied coldly.