Chapter 33

“It’s entirely plausible she conspired with gangsters to exploit the kid, only for things to get tangled and leave her to die alone,” Choi Yook remarked, leaning forward. “If someone committed acts that warranted death, it ought to be treated as suicide. Much like how your own life was practically forfeit the moment you chose to play the stalker, Seo Mu-yeong-ssi.”

A chilling weight settled into the cynical edge of his words. Mu-yeong looked down at his liquor cup.

The Choi family had stolen his name and burned his grandmother to death. Atop the ashes of that home, they had erected a public restroom. And as if that weren’t enough, they now appeared intent on swapping out the facts themselves so their consciences could rest easy.

“Then just what was Yeongchwi Moneylending conspiring to do?” Gripping his cup tightly, Mu-yeong pressed the matter. “What did they intend to do with a washed-up shaman and an eleven-year-old girl?”

Draining the cup as he finished speaking, his throat felt so numbed that the burning sensation barely registered. Perhaps because a fire had flared up inside his chest, the alcohol felt almost refreshing. Choi Yook knocked back his own drink, exhaling a measured breath.

“How would I know?” Choi Yook said flatly.

“…What?” Mu-yeong blinked in sheer disbelief.

“I’m only searching because my father ordered it,” Choi Yook continued, unconcerned. “Locating the kid and bringing her in is what matters—what they plan to do with her is none of my business. Why on earth would I care about what happened in the past?”

It was a response Mu-yeong hadn’t anticipated in the least. Far from knowing the truth, the man wasn’t even curious. Even as he watched his cup being refilled, Mu-yeong parted and closed his lips in dumbfounded shock.

“But this is an affair tied directly to your own father,” Mu-yeong pressed. “He even went out of his way to build and donate a public restroom on that land. Has the Chairman never mentioned a single thing about it to you, Section Chief?”

Choi Yook regarded him with cool indifference. “I grew up knowing nothing as a child, and even when I learned of it later, it was hardly pleasant. What would you do with that information anyway?” He closed off any room for rebuttal by viciously prodding Mu-yeong’s loss, leaving Mu-yeong momentarily struck dumb.

“The father I remember—” Mu-yeong began softly.

He was a firefighter, laughed often, and used to hoist him onto his shoulders to sing children’s songs together.

“—wasn’t like that. He certainly wasn’t a gangster, so perhaps that was why.”

Mu-yeong tossed out the words just as they came to mind. Looking at the way Choi Yook was acting, the man was clearly determined to get him drunk. Since physical slaps hadn’t worked, he was likely aiming to ply him with alcohol to coax out his hidden thoughts.

And a touch of reckless impudence was precisely what sounded most sincere. Just as expected, rather than shutting Mu-yeong down, Choi Yook merely poured more liquor into the empty cup.

“He must have been an exceptionally righteous man,” Choi Yook remarked dryly.

Mu-yeong nodded with quiet, unwavering conviction. “I believe he truly was.”

“Then why did such a fine man abandon his own son?” Choi Yook asked casually.

Mu-yeong tossed the drink down his throat. The flavor wrapping around his tongue was remarkably sweet.

“He must have lost me,” Mu-yeong answered, unfazed. “There are plenty of people who fail to find me.”

Choi Yook tilted his cup with an unreadable look. “Then why don’t you go looking for your parents yourself, Seo Mu-yeong-ssi?”

Fuck you, whose fault is it that I can’t even visit their columbarium anymore? Swallowing the vitriol instead of letting it slip, Mu-yeong offered a bright, disarming smile.

“I’ve lived without them for so long that I manage just fine without searching,” Mu-yeong said cheerily. “By the way, why did you claim Kang Shim-soo collaborated with Yeongchwi Moneylending? You just said you know nothing at all, Section Chief.”

“Anyone with a functional brain could deduce that much,” Choi Yook retorted.

Choi Yook refilled Mu-yeong’s cup, shaking out the last few drops of sake as he pressed his conjecture forward.

“If you heard what the shaman academy director said and read Yoon Hee-sook’s journal, shouldn’t that be the obvious conclusion?” Choi Yook argued. “The kid couldn’t even wear clothes suited to the weather, was beaten until her calves bled, and was mistreated without ever setting foot in school. In that case—”

He slammed the empty sake bottle down onto the table with a clatter.

“—common sense dictates Kang Shim-soo raised the child with foul intentions,” he concluded firmly.

Mu-yeong couldn’t tell whether he was speaking from genuine belief or simply continuing to play dumb. With a faint smile curling at his lips, Mu-yeong studied him.

“And so?” Holding his gaze with a quiet challenge in his posture, Mu-yeong challenged softly, “Did the people who think that way manage to find the child over the past fourteen years? Or have you, holding that exact assumption, found her over the past six years, Section Chief?”

A rhythmic lilt crept into Mu-yeong’s breezy tone. Tension hardened the line of Choi Yook’s jaw.

“Seo Mu-yeong-ssi,” Choi Yook warned in a low growl.

With every passing syllable, the corners of his mouth twisted slightly.

“You ought to rein in that confidence. Otherwise, if you fail to find the kid, I might just bury you at the foot of the mountain myself.”

“I’m merely suggesting we look at this from a fresh perspective,” Mu-yeong countered with easy composure.

Obliging the man’s unspoken wish, Mu-yeong knocked back another cup. What was the alcohol content of sake again? It felt roughly comparable to soju.

In that case, I could probably handle about ten more bottles.

At his company welcome dinner, he had drunk roughly that much before stopping only because his stomach was bloated. Cupping his vessel politely with both hands, Mu-yeong held it out toward him.

“I happen to believe Kang Shim-soo met a truly pitiful death,” Mu-yeong stated evenly.

To test how much Choi Yook truly knew, he had to push this far. Chuckling with dry disbelief, Choi Yook opened a fresh bottle of liquor.

“Why? Because a shaman counts as religious, so you view her favorably?” Choi Yook scoffed.

“If Kang Shim-soo and Yeongchwi Moneylending had truly been deeply entangled,” Mu-yeong pointed out, “your father wouldn’t have set you searching for the child with only the meager information you have now.”

Along with the crisp pop of the bottle opening, Choi Yook’s hand came to an abrupt standstill. Mu-yeong stared intently into his face.

“No matter how taciturn a father may be, wouldn’t he have shared something more? Now, think back to how Kang Shim-soo handled things. Keeping the child confined to the house meant the girl was always under Kang Shim-soo’s watchful eye. It minimized the chances of anyone else ever catching sight of her.”

Choi Yook said nothing, offering only a heavy, unyielding silence.

Seo Mu-yeong leaned in slightly. “I’m saying that in her own way, she might have been protecting the child. Because she was certain something terrible was going to happen, she took precautions in advance.”

Choi Yook snapped coldly, “Stop talking nonsense.” He tossed the bottle cap aside, his voice turning ice-cold, his lips curled into a sneer. “If Kang Shim-soo had the ability to foresee the future, she wouldn’t have kept the child tucked under her wing in the first place, protection or no protection. Nor would she have burned to death alive. Setting up an absurd premise is why you reach such garbage conclusions.”

Seo Mu-yeong studied him closely. Choi Yook genuinely seemed angry.

Why? Was it because Mu-yeong had challenged an assumption Choi Yook had taken for granted for years? Because he had unilaterally painted Yeongchwi Moneylending as the villain?

If so, then his claim of knowing nothing might actually be true. Yet Seo Mu-yeong could not bring himself to believe it so easily.

Could Choi Yook truly have been ignorant of the fire, the death, and the sudden transformation of his own younger brother? No matter how you looked at it, this was his own family’s affairs.

Seo Mu-yeong tilted his head. “Does Sijin really know nothing, either?”

Choi Yook demanded coldly, “Why bring Sijin into this all of a sudden?”

To provoke you, of course. Seo Mu-yeong merely shrugged.

“Just because I thought Sijin might know something,” Seo Mu-yeong replied smoothly. “He was sick when he was little. And the girl who vanished happened to be the exact same age as him.”

Seo Mu-yeong accepted the sake Choi Yook poured and smiled genially. He then rested his chin on his palm. “I don’t know much about shamanism, but you see it all the time in dramas—taking the brunt of a deadly curse in someone else’s place, or using a scapegoat to absorb misfortune. Since Kang Shim-soo had lost her divine touch, they probably brought in another shaman and performed a ritual with two children. Once the used-up child was disposed of, they burned down the site, then built a respectable public restroom over the ruins so Kang Shim-soo’s spirit wouldn’t harbor a grudge. If it was all done for Sijin, every piece fits together like clockwork.”

Noticing the gradual blankness overtaking Choi Yook’s face, Seo Mu-yeong raised his cup. Since Choi Yook would die for his brother, playing along with that devotion would probably soften his mood. Piecing together what Kim Jeong-seon and Choi Sijin had said, a sympathetic defense for them flowed effortlessly from his lips.

“It’s completely understandable. I get it. How heartbreaking it must have been for Sijin’s parents. To watch such a radiant, lovable child dying, having some mute girl go wrong in his place is hardly—”

Seo Mu-yeong could not finish his sentence. With a burning pain across the back of his hand—crash! The cup slammed against the floor, shattering into pieces. Choi Yook had violently struck Mu-yeong’s hand down.

Caught completely off guard by the sudden turn, Seo Mu-yeong froze in place. He could neither open nor lower his recoiling hand.

Why? What was the problem?

There had been no intention to provoke him in those words. If anything, Mu-yeong had only tried to humor the man and gauge his reaction. Unable to fathom why Choi Yook was enraged, Mu-yeong had no idea how to act. His mouth, thoroughly soaked in sake just moments ago, went bone-dry.

Seo Mu-yeong barely managed to look up at Choi Yook. The man’s face was chillingly placid, without a flicker of emotion, which made it all the more terrifying. Pitch-black irises captured Mu-yeong as dryly as camera lenses.

“What are you doing?” Choi Yook addressed him calmly, as though nothing out of the ordinary had occurred and pointed at the table. “You’re supposed to drink.”

There had been only two sake cups at the table. Aside from those, the only vessel was a water glass.

Seo Mu-yeong hurriedly reached for the water glass. But Choi Yook snatched Mu-yeong’s wrist and twisted it without hesitation. It was a deft, effortless motion, as simple as folding a cigarette pack in half.

Seo Mu-yeong gasped. Choi Yook did not even seem to be exerting much strength, yet Mu-yeong’s ligaments stretched to their limits, his joints on the verge of dislocating. A sharp, heavy throb surged through him, incomparable to the sting on the back of his hand. Swallowing a groan, Mu-yeong strained to explain himself.

“You… told me to drink, so…” Seo Mu-yeong rasped.

“I already poured your drink.” Choi Yook’s cold gaze raked down Seo Mu-yeong’s trembling frame as he demanded smoothly, “What are you dragging your feet for, Seo Mu-yeong? You’ve never had trouble understanding plain Korean before, so don’t start playing dumb now. I only said one thing.”

“What are you dragging your feet for, Seo Mu-yeong?” Choi Yook demanded smoothly. “You’ve never had trouble understanding plain Korean before, so don’t start playing dumb now. I only said one thing.”

Seo Mu-yeong clamped his mouth shut. “…”

Choi Yook demanded flatly, “Drink.”

The low voice pressed down on the back of his neck like a physical weight. Drawn by the rising scent of alcohol, Seo Mu-yeong looked down at the floor. Clear sake was pooled among the sharp ceramic shards.

It was the alcohol he was expected to finish.

“Yes,” Seo Mu-yeong murmured obediently.

Upon receiving a compliant answer, Choi Yook loosened his grip. Seo Mu-yeong prostrated himself flat on the floor for the time being. Fortunately, the room had floor seating rather than chairs, and the shattered cup had broken into relatively large pieces. There seemed little danger of cutting his tongue while lapping up the alcohol.

Even if Choi Yook had intended for him to get hurt, Seo Mu-yeong sucked up the sake pooled on the floorboards without hesitation. The cup had been small, so the volume was not overwhelmingly large.

Choi Yook watched Seo Mu-yeong while refilling his own glass. A clear, trickling sound like spring water echoed through the room.

“Why on earth would that girl have gone wrong?”