Chapter 110

It was glaringly obvious to Noh Pil-gyu. This young punk had brazenly shuffled his few cards to pretend he was negotiating, but all he truly wanted was the search. Pure devotion, desperate to recover even the intact corpse of his lover. It was so pathetic he wanted to laugh out loud.

“Answer me. Promise you’ll leave Seoul, live in complete silence without a peep, and die quietly.”

And then, adding another condition, the man lowered his voice.

“Then I’ll let you search for four days.”

Better to kill him once I get the gem. Noh Pil-gyu swallowed down his sinister thoughts.

“If anything goes wrong, I’ll go down there myself and blow that fucking collapse site to pieces. You understand what that means? It means I won’t even let you find a single severed finger of that bastard Gye Do-hyeop.”

“…”

Geum Seoul swallowed dryly. Then he swallowed again. In that swallow lay sobs, sorrow, anger, and deep wounds. He had to suppress every last drop of it with all his might.

“I will.”

His answer had been predetermined. He agreed. As long as he was sent back there immediately, as long as he was allowed to search for the deputy director himself, he promised to hand over the gem and die where no one would ever know. Only then did the man thrust his hands deep into his pockets and begin to walk away.

“Once you find the body, at least you can hold a funeral.”

Tossing one final spiteful remark at Geum Seoul’s gaunt back, the man slid the hospital room door open with a rattle and stepped outside.

Slump.

The strength left Geum Seoul’s body all at once. He collapsed to the floor. The Tungsten Management Bureau director, just stepping through the open door, caught sight of the blood on the tiles and shouted for a nurse. The sound reached Seoul in broken fragments. Voices. Footsteps. Hands lifting his injured palm, asking whether he was all right. He remained folded where he had fallen, staring at nothing and breathing in short, empty gasps.

The man had declared with certainty that the deputy director was already dead. Corpse. Dead body. The words he had spat with such derision hacked through Seoul’s chest like a dull blade, sawing back and forth. The agony was so excruciating that the cut across his hand did not even register as pain. He gulped desperately for air, like a fish tossed onto dry land.

He could not cry. Geum Seoul did not cry. The skin around his eyes trembled violently, yet not a single tear fell. It was as though whatever part of him had once known how to breathe beneath water had dried up completely. He sat stranded there, life flopping weakly inside him, suffocating one gasp at a time.

***

True to his word, Noh Pil-gyu appointed Geum Seoul as the head of the on-site search and summoned laborers. Seoul promised the Tungsten Management Bureau that he would return within a few days, then immediately discharged himself from the hospital. By the time he headed straight for the logistics warehouse, the sun was rising in a pale, bluish hue.

Geum Seoul knew exactly where he had been rescued.

And so, standing on that precise spot, he was able to thrust his body inside first whenever heavy rubble was lifted.

Day one. Unlike the media announcements claiming zero casualties, the on-site laborers had heard that one person remained buried, yet they had no idea that person was the deputy director of the Special Security Department. All they saw was Geum Seoul repeatedly trying to crawl beneath the wreckage. Everyone tried to stop him, but Seoul quietly dug at the ground and hauled away debris regardless. He’s waiting down there. There has to be a way out. That belief was all that kept him moving.

“Please set up the supports centered right here. From here… to here.”

Though it all looked like indistinguishable rubble from the surface, he accurately established the entry path and directed the installation of supports to prevent a secondary collapse.

Hours passed. Behind Seoul’s back, one of the workers tapped his own temple and spun a finger in a circle, but Seoul never noticed. He kept sifting through heavy black dust and dragging aside broken concrete. Whenever small machinery shifted a massive slab far enough for the rescue cell to scan underneath, he clasped both hands together and prayed. Whenever the machine withdrew without finding anyone, he dropped back to the ground and clawed out another opening. Grey grime gradually filmed the lenses of his glasses.

No one worked with anything close to Geum Seoul’s desperation. A few workers muttered that they should simply bring in heavy machinery and clear the site quickly, but no one had the nerve to say it where he could hear. Possessed by a single purpose, Seoul hunted for gaps and forced his body into them. He continued long after sunset, working deep into the night. Only when someone finally took him by the arm and physically dragged him out did he stop. He had not eaten once all day.

Slide.

“Eat this.”

“…”

The pleasant-looking middle-aged woman introduced herself as Jeong Tae-eun, Hwang Gi-dong’s wife. She waved broadly from a distance, then guided the dazed Geum Seoul toward a nearby villa apartment. Stay here for a few days, she told him. Knowing he would refuse the hospital no matter how firmly anyone ordered him back, she settled for insisting that he at least rest somewhere close to the site. Seoul had barely enough energy left to be wary of a stranger. Tae-eun patted his back as they walked and kept filling the silence with trivial chatter and small jokes—the kind of unimportant things people usually forgot before turning the next corner.

The home was a modest one-room unit, but it was warm. She mentioned she had turned on the boiler since the weather was growing chilly. Insisting that someone carrying a baby must stay warm, she directed her gaze to the lunchbox she had just unlatched with a soft click-clack. The savory aroma of toasted sesame oil drifted through the air.

“I heard you didn’t eat a bite at the hospital. When I had morning sickness, it was dreadful, and this was the only thing I could stomach. They’re rice balls made by mashing plenty of tofu and tuna together. Every night, my husband would make twenty of them for me.”

Round little rice balls were arranged in neat rows inside the square container. Seeing how dainty and clean they looked, right down to the light dusting of sesame seeds on top, Seoul stared quietly at the lunchbox before murmuring softly, “Thank you.”

“Oh my. We need to treat your hand first.”

Blood was seeping through the bandage wrapped around Geum Seoul’s left hand. It was the result of spending the entire day hauling stones, clawing at dirt, and shifting rebar with his bare hands. Every time pressure bore down on the flesh sliced open by glass shards, excruciating pain flared, but Seoul hadn’t allowed his hands to rest for even a second. By now, everything below his wrist throbbed with a numb, tingling ache.

Geum Seoul lifted his head, watching as the woman searched somewhere in the house and retrieved a small first-aid kit. Jeong Tae-eun returned, setting down bandages, disinfectant, and ointment with a soft rattle before taking her seat again.

“Back when my husband worked in security, he came home injured every other day. At this point, I’m practically a doctor.”

“…He worked with the deputy director, didn’t he?”

He was referring to Hwang Gi-dong. At the mere mention of her husband, a faint smile graced her face. She nodded, her hands working carefully. The dark red, blood-stained bandage peeled away from Seoul’s hand.

“Yes, back in the security division. Do-hyeop used to visit our house a few times back then, and goodness, he was so prickly, like a jagged stone. Is he still like that?”

This time, the rigid tension in Geum Seoul’s face faintly relaxed. It was the moment he pictured Gye Do-hyeop.

“Still… he isn’t like that with me.”

“Of course he shouldn’t be. You’re carrying his baby, after all.”

“…From the beginning. He was like that with me from the start.”

“My goodness. Then Seoul-ssi must have been special to Do-hyeop right from the start.”

“…”

At her words, Geum Seoul swallowed hard. A faint flush touched his cheeks, and seeing it nearly brought Jeong Tae-eun to tears. A face that had looked like a corpse until now had finally regained a spark of life.

Caked in dust, his soft, rounded features stood out all the more. His youthful face still bore the traces of boyhood, yet throughout the entire time she replaced the bandage on his hand, he remained stoic, without once showing a sign of pain.

“That’s why you have to eat well. If you lose any more weight, imagine how worried he’ll be when he comes back.”

“…Yes.”

“Especially if you’re going out early again tomorrow.”

Only then did Geum Seoul pick up the chopsticks, but his hands trembled so violently that they slipped from his grasp, clattering pathetically onto the floor. Even as he started to rise to pick them up, Tae-eun gently took his wrist, stopping him. What she placed in his hand this time was a spoon.

Even though the rice ball was not large, Seoul cut it into several small pieces with the spoon before bringing it to his mouth.

While he ate two rice balls, nausea did not strike. Even so, he couldn’t swallow another bite, so he set the spoon down. Instead of urging him to eat more, Tae-eun closed the lunchbox lid and placed it on the dining table alongside the fruit she had brought.

“Is there anything else you need?”

“…Ah. I need some notepad paper.”

Geum Seoul remembered Gye Do-hyeop’s words.

“Write down what time and how much you ate. I’m checking it when I get back.“

The deputy director said he would check it when he returned. So Seoul wanted to record everything he ate—and receive his praise.

“Oh, I have that right here.”

Smiling gently, Tae-eun reached into the bag that had hung from her shoulder since she arrived and pulled out a palm-sized notebook with a ballpoint pen. She tore away the first couple of used pages with a crisp rip and handed him what was, for all practical purposes, a brand-new notebook.

“Thank you. I’ll repay you later.”

At those words, Jeong Tae-eun paused mid-motion as she was preparing to leave.

“With me, a simple thank-you is more than enough. There is kindness in this world that doesn’t need to be repaid.”

Geum Seoul looked at her for a moment, but his thoughts did not remain there. Tae-eun told him to wash quickly and get some rest, then stepped out through the front door. Seoul went to the bathroom and, unable to hold back the rising nausea, vomited everything he had just eaten. After washing up, he returned to the living room and curled into the corner of the sofa.

“…”

The moment he took off his glasses and set them down, the empty notebook caught his eye. With his damp face blank, Seoul reached out and picked up the pen. With a soft rustle, he turned the page.

20:12 Two rice balls

20:14 Couldn’t keep it down

As he penned that final syllable, his eyes burned and throbbed with heat. Geum Seoul buried his face into his knees, pressing down hard against his eyelids.

He did not want to cry.

“You’re… really, truly… Grade A?“

Geum Seoul brooded over the gem he had dropped before Noh Pil-gyu. Having heard it from the chief secretary the day he woke up in the hospital, he already knew he was Grade A. But he hadn’t known his detailed subgrade; back then, he had felt an absolute, instinctual certainty that the gem was Grade A-4. It was subtly different from the feeling of a guess simply turning out to be right. It was bizarre.

“Aren’t you curious? Just how brightly you can shine.“

Yet the one person who should have seen this was nowhere beside him. The man who had promised to make him shine brighter than anyone, who had told him to chase after something brilliant, remained trapped in that freezing abyss. If Do-hyeop was not here to see it, then none of this mattered. Seoul could be Grade B or fall all the way back to Grade D; he wanted only to be with him. His hand rose to the nape of his neck. A searing ache throbbed through his limbs. Unable to escape the pain, he trembled for a long time before folding inward and stroking the watch around his wrist. Once—just once—he wished it would vibrate and show 213 again. But no message came through the entire night. The screen remained black, cold, and mercilessly silent.