Chapter 23

“How can you be so sure?” Mu-yeong countered, tilting his head.

Even as he asked, a laugh slipped past his lips. It wasn’t merely to provoke Choi Yook into giving up information. It was because the sheer certainty in the man’s declaration made a wave of nausea surge within him.

“Is it because every single one of those cars belonged to Yeongchwi Moneylending?”

Even though Seo Mu-yeong had not been present back then, he glared at the man who was nothing less than his mortal enemy as he spoke. Stepping closer, Choi Yook looked him up and down. A chill crept into his previously dry gaze.

Choi Yook grabbed the back of Seo Mu-yeong’s hair and yanked it backward. His spine arching back in an instant, Mu-yeong braced both hands against the table directly behind him to barely keep himself upright. Wedging one leg between Mu-yeong’s thighs, Choi Yook pressed in close, cutting off any route of escape with effortless precision.

“What’s got you barking with so much bravado?” Choi Yook asked, his voice dropping low.

He looked down at Seo Mu-yeong, watching his brow furrow in pain.

“Our family isn’t the only one hunting for where the brat we were going to kill ran off to,” Choi Yook growled. “And if you couldn’t even figure out that our household set the fire, your head must be cracked. So what makes that such a brilliant discovery to go barking about?”

His scalp stung as though it were being ripped clean off. Right—it was such a common, simple story. One where he was the only person who found it so terribly hard to bear.

Yet he hadn’t smeared mango over his own face just to do some skincare routine like Choi Sijin. Seo Mu-yeong met Choi Yook’s stare head-on, matching the man’s cold glare.

“Section Chief,” Mu-yeong murmured with a faint smile, “is there something you’d want to kill someone for simply touching?”

The instant the question left his lips, his hair was yanked even harder. Shrouded in shadow, Choi Yook’s face resembled a serpent rearing its neck.

“I let you live all this time, and now you must want to die,” Choi Yook rasped.

It felt as though if he uttered a single word more, the man’s free hand would snap his neck. Seo Mu-yeong arched his back further, willingly resting the weight of his head against the hand clutching his hair, and smiled.

“Of course not. I only ask because of something I heard.”

“…” Choi Yook narrowed his eyes in menacing silence.

“I heard there’s a certain notebook in Yoon Hee-sook’s room,” Mu-yeong continued in a hushed whisper, “an item she threw such a violent fit over whenever anyone so much as touched it that they had to give her a private room. I wondered what could possibly make it so precious, but at the end of the day, if it’s just a notebook kept by an ordinary librarian, the most it could be is the work diary she kept—”

Before he could finish his sentence, Choi Yook released his hair as if discarding trash. His head slamming against the table, Seo Mu-yeong remained lying flat where he had fallen and looked up at Choi Yook, poking the fruit basket beside him with his left index finger.

“The money you spent on me is more than what you spent on this fruit basket, isn’t it?” Mu-yeong pointed out blithely.

“…” Choi Yook looked down at him with an inscrutable, icy gaze.

“Then shouldn’t I be allowed to hear what the apples and grapes already heard?”

Looking at the beaming smile on his face, Choi Yook let out a dry chuckle. He planted an arm on either side of Seo Mu-yeong’s limp frame and leaned over him. Blocking out the overhead light, his broad silhouette cast Mu-yeong entirely in shadow. Though their bodies did not touch, the sheer weight of his gaze was palpable in that sudden shift of light and dark.

Choi Yook broke the stillness, his voice quiet. “Yoon Hee-sook told me something.”

The moment Choi Yook parted his lips, Seo Mu-yeong knew his gamble had succeeded. Choi Yook kept his dark eyes pinned onto Mu-yeong, recounting the account he had heard from her.

“A few days before the fire broke out, some man came into the library and struck up a conversation with her. Said it was already spring, that he just moved into the area, that he liked reading books… And then he asked, since there are no houses around here and it’s pretty desolate, if that little girl who just ran out was going to be alright going on her own.”

Seo Mu-yeong’s eyes wavered for a brief second. Because he could already tell what Yoon Hee-sook had replied. And because he could guess what had happened right after that.

It felt like looking back at the turning point of a story whose ending he already knew. Even so, Seo Mu-yeong forced a smile to his lips, pressing for the answer.

“So, what did Yoon Hee-sook say back to him?”

Hearing him press for it, Choi Yook scoffed softly. It was almost as though Mu-yeong’s eager question was oddly welcome to him. As if mimicking her when she was on her best behavior, the man’s tone grew noticeably softer.

“‘My goodness, what a warm heart you have. That child lives in the shaman’s house right in front, so she’ll be perfectly fine.’”

So Choi Yook spoke—no, it was as if Yoon Hee-sook herself had opened her mouth and let loose a venomous prattle.

“‘Whenever they perform an exorcism ritual, it’s noisy enough to drive me mad. I keep wishing they’d go under, but they never do. Still, they’re taking a break in two days, so at least it should quiet down around here then.’”

Seo Mu-yeong’s mind sank into a freezing chill. The hulking men in suits, trampling muddy feet across the linoleum floor. The vivid sensation of the blade they held against his throat. Choi Yook tilted the corner of his mouth in a crooked smirk.

“And after that, the man vanished for good,” Choi Yook added quietly, a faint sigh spilling from him like a sneer. “She claims that once things turned out that way, she thought about tipping off the police just in case. But she says she couldn’t remember a single detail of that visitor’s face. To me, it looks like she still remembers it clear as day.”

Choi Yook’s pitch-black eyes flashed with sharp instinct. Seo Mu-yeong felt the exact same way.

It didn’t matter that the person sharing that intuition happened to be Choi Yook. In the first place, crushing Yoon Hee-sook was impossible on his own.

A faint thrill even stirred within him at the thought of secretly using Choi Yook, who had no idea of his true identity. Even though it was Choi Yook pinning him down against the table, Mu-yeong could still stand above him—above a member of the Choi family. Submissively pinned beneath the man, Seo Mu-yeong put on a solemn, inquisitive expression.

“Then why didn’t she report it?” Mu-yeong asked softly.

“Because if that man really was the culprit, she’d be held responsible too,” Choi Yook sneered. “Her heart must have shriveled up in fear that a stain might blemish her clean, distinguished life. She spent her entire life as a noble scholar looking down and lecturing others, but fuck, people ended up dead because she wagged her tongue so recklessly.”

The tempo of his sarcastic remarks grew steadily faster. Choi Yook lightly tapped the tightly woven fruit basket.

“Even granting that was how it went back then, when someone shows some sincerity, she ought to know how to give in and open up, even if it’s late,” he continued, his tone abrasive. “With not many days left to live, she must want to depart looking pristine and haughty until the very end. Then again, what else could that old woman possibly have left to wish for, other than watching her grandchildren put on doctors’ white coats?”

“Nothing other than dying peacefully in her nursing home bed, I suppose,” Mu-yeong murmured in agreement. “And for that, she’d have to make sure the journal she wrote about that man is never discovered by anyone.” He held Choi Yook’s gaze with a quiet, knowing look.

In truth, even if Yoon Hee-sook came forward with an open testimony now, catching the culprit would be difficult. Yet she likely wanted to preemptively shut down any possibility that might leave a scratch on her reputation. Seo Mu-yeong carefully studied Choi Yook’s expression.

“Still, it sounds like that man who visited the library was also from Yeongchwi Moneylending,” Mu-yeong pressed. “Wouldn’t asking around internally take care of this? Is there something you absolutely need to confirm from Yoon Hee-sook?”

Choi Yook, who had been staring at Seo Mu-yeong, took a slow breath.

“They say even rivers and mountains change in ten years; do you think our firm hasn’t cleaned house since then?” Choi Yook replied flatly. “Plenty of people died, and plenty walked out. There’s no one left who remembers who was used for such a simple errand.”

If such a simple job had to be tracked down after all this time, there could only be one reason.

“You think that man might be the one hiding the child,” Mu-yeong stated quietly.

“If someone secretly took the brat away,” Choi Yook answered, “the chances are high it was someone who knew beforehand that it was going to happen.”

It wasn’t a bad wild-goose chase. Applauding him in his mind, Seo Mu-yeong lowered his eyes. The ticking of the wall clock’s second hand finally became audible. Slipping his hands into the pockets of his zip-up hoodie, Seo Mu-yeong produced the car key and offered it to Choi Yook.

“Go on down ahead of me,” Mu-yeong said. “I’ll go find Yoon Hee-sook’s notebook and follow. It might take a little time.”

Choi Yook didn’t bother asking how he was going to retrieve the notebook. Straightening up, he merely snatched the fruit basket with the hand holding the car key. Seo Mu-yeong regarded him with curiosity.

“Are you going to deliver that to Yoon Hee-sook?” Mu-yeong asked.

“Of course,” Choi Yook sneered. “She probably doesn’t have many things to be happy about, so she ought to keep this huge pile right by her side until she gorges on all of it alone—commemorating today’s visit.”

That was actually quite a decent thought, coming from Choi Yook. When the man had insisted on going to the old library earlier, Mu-yeong had assumed their wants had merely aligned by chance, but who knew their wavelengths would match on something like this?

Everything was going his way, catching a sudden rushing current that made his heart feel wonderfully light. Seo Mu-yeong pushed himself up, letting out a soft breath of satisfaction.

“Ah, but you have to take out the Shine Muscat grapes before giving it to her,” Mu-yeong reminded him.

“Why is that?” Choi Yook asked, halting.

“If elderly folks accidentally swallow something like whole grapes,” Mu-yeong explained, “their airway can get blocked and cause suffocation.”

About to take a step forward, Choi Yook stopped in his tracks and turned to look back at Seo Mu-yeong.

“I really don’t understand you, Seo Mu-yeong-ssi,” Choi Yook remarked dryly.

“…” Seo Mu-yeong blinked in innocent silence.

“I mean, you just washed your face in crushed mango, and here you are worrying about that,” Choi Yook scoffed. “Are you exceptionally overflowing with love for humanity, or do you have some sick fetish that gets you off on people screaming at you?”

“I just remembered something I overheard once. It’d be a headache for you if an accident happened with something you gave her, wouldn’t it?” Mu-yeong reasoned with an innocent smile.

Seo Mu-yeong offered a sunny, innocent smile to the mocking man. In reality, something like that had actually happened back when he lived in Mangcheon. One late evening, his grandmother had started coughing violently while eating giant Kyoho grapes. Frantic and at a loss for what to do, Mu-yeong had patted her back.

“Grandmother, are you okay? I’ll call 119, I’ll call 119.”

It was just as he was reaching for the telephone with trembling hands. Just when his grandmother seemed to catch her breath at last, she sprang up and snatched Seo Mu-yeong by the nape of his neck.