AR Ch 6 part 2

The day her father had discovered the base of a criminal organization that dealt with organ trafficking, he charged in to save a victim’s life and ended up getting his stomach sliced open by the mob. The new recruit who had been with her father that day had been plowed with alcohol by the police chief, and he caused a ruckus when he came to the wake. He said that he had frantically requested backup, but by the time they arrived, the culprits had already fled the scene, and the base had been emptied.

Seokju softly told Jiwon to get a hold of herself for the sake of her mother, and he stayed by her dazed mother’s side so that she wouldn’t collapse as she greeted the mourners.

The wake came to a close after seven days. This was because there were a lot of people who had come to visit. They received a wreath from some higher-ups whose names they did not recognize. Those who came to see her father off were not limited to the police force.

During that entire week, Jiwon was able to see all the footsteps her father had left behind. The victims of the criminals her father had caught, family members of victims who had passed away… All these people came to burn incense for her father after they heard the news. There were over a thousand contacts stored in her father’s cellphone.

As the endless stream of mourners came and went, they were able to share memories of her father together. Although they were so tired that they felt like their bodies would collapse, Jiwon and her mother believed this was their duty. They wanted her father to walk his final path with as many people as possible.

“Hello.”

That man appeared at a time when the mourners had stopped coming: 3 AM. The unfamiliar man came on the last day before her father’s cremation. Jiwon’s mother looked pale with exhaustion. Jiwon looked up with sunken eyes and stood up from her mother’s side.

“Hello.”

Jiwon thought he was just one of the people who had heard the news later than most. But it all changed when the man, whose buzz-cut hair was peppered with white strands, gave her a smile.

“Baby, have you been well?”

The moment she heard his gravelly voice, her throat closed up and a shiver ran down her spine. Jiwon reflexively stuck her back up against the wall and gasped.

“Baby, Ahjussi lost his way. Can you help me?”

Shards of memories began to burst out of Pandora’s box without warning and filled her head. That unique tone of voice. The ahjussi who was as thin as a scarecrow. She had approached him to help him, but her mouth was promptly covered as she was dragged into a delivery truck on a summer’s day.

“Ugh…”

When Jiwon began to tremble, her mother woke up from her restless sleep.

“Jiwon, what’s wrong?”

Jiwon unconsciously blocked her mother from the man’s line of view. Seokju, who had gone out to buy some coffee for them, finally returned. Their eyes met.

“Aigoo, so you were here?”

The man’s voice held a slight Chinese accent. He approached Seokju and lightly tapped his mourning clothes.

“What are you doing here?”

Seokju remained frozen for a moment, but he quickly returned to his senses and glared at the man.

“I should be asking you that. How did you come here?”

“Where did you learn to speak like that, you rascal… Are you afraid of being identified as a prostitute’s son? Is that why you’re talking like that?”

Seokju threw down the plastic bag and grabbed the man by his collar. His trembling hands oozed anger and rage. Jiwon couldn’t hear what he was murmuring to the man. However, the man’s bone-chilling voice was clear.

“Apparently, they let convicts serving a life sentence out for vacation when they’re on their deathbeds. I came here with a detective. I wanted to come here no matter what.”

Jiwon’s mother grabbed Jiwon, who was frozen to her spot, and pulled her back. She had definitely caught on that something strange was going on.

“You, step back.”

Jiwon’s mother began to approach the man. Her steps faltered as if she were on the verge of collapse, but her voice and gaze remained firm.

“Who are you, sir? Why are you speaking like that to our Seokju?”

“Ma’am, please stay back.”

When Seokju moved to force the man outside, the man writhed and shouted out curses.

“Fuck, let me go, you retarded son of a bitch!”

Jiwon’s mother looked at them with a pale face and grabbed onto Seokju’s arm.

“Seokju, what’s going on? Do you know him?”

The man looked at Jiwon’s mother and cackled.

“Can’t you tell by looking? Your daughter sure grew up well. Thanks to me.”

“Who are you?!!”

Jiwon’s mother shouted out in a shaky voice. The man could not reply. Seokju had grabbed his throat with both hands and began to strangle him. A murderous aura oozed from Seokju’s narrow eyes.

“S-Seokju… Seokju…!!”

The detective who had been standing by in the corridor and several people who had been awakened from their drunken sleep began to run over to them. The man’s ruddy face looked like it would burst at any moment as he was held up against the wall.

“Die…”

Seokju hissed out through clenched teeth as his body began to shake. As he tried to kill the man, several men rushed in. They barely managed to drag him away from the man. Seokju writhed and struggled as he shouted out.

“Die!! Die!!”

The man coughed as if his organs were going to burst out of his throat. Then he burst into laughter.

“Seokju, you should have stabbed a pair of scissors into the belly of the detective who put your daddy in jail. What are you doing here, aah. Were you waiting to slaughter those two bitches? Is that it?”

Jiwon trembled as she covered her mouth with both hands. She swung her head to Seokju, and their eyes met. What am I going to hear next? Seokju’s eyes slowly turned into a scowl.

“Yeah. That’s my boy. Hahahaha. Go get me a bowl of yukgaejang and a bottle of liquor.”

The black eyes of the boy in the rain overlapped with Seokju’s. They were filled with a mixture of humiliation, pent-up anger, and shame.

“Shut up…! Shut your mouth!!!”

Tears streamed down Seokju’s face as he cried out like an animal that had had its stomach sliced open. Jiwon felt like she heard his carefully stacked world crumble in an instant. She now understood why he had used all his strength to stay on the top of the line. Below him was a dark abyss.

* * *

Her mother said that she already knew that Seokju was not Youngkyun-ahjussi’s son. This was because after Youngkyun-ahjussi had lost his wife and emigrated to a different country, they had been in frequent contact.

“Did you really think I wouldn’t know the surname of the man who helped our family in our time of need?”

Seokju’s last name was definitely different from Youngkyun-ahjussi’s. However, she deliberately refrained from nitpicking her husband’s shoddy lie and feigned ignorance. She believed that her husband had found a child who came from unfortunate circumstances and brought him home, unable to leave him alone. She believed in his words that if they did good now, they would be rewarded tenfold in the future, so she did not kick the child out.

“Jiwon’s father’s hoobae told me. You’re the child who helped my Jiwon escape when she was young.”

Afterwards, Detective Hong came and explained everything to Jiwon and her mother. Seokju’s father was an illegal immigrant from China. While he was working in a fresh meat factory, he got entangled with a tea shop waitress. They made a family without getting married and lived together. They finally registered Seokju’s birth over a year after he was born.

Unable to endure the beatings and verbal abuse from Seokju’s alcoholic father, his mother ran away in the middle of the night. That was when Seokju’s father settled down in Chinatown and began to participate in illegal activities. As punishment for kidnapping Jiwon, he had been imprisoned for eight years. When he was released, he was deported back to his country, but he smuggled himself back in a boat. He robbed houses and raped women, and ultimately, he killed people in exchange for forty million won.

He was the culprit of Jiwon’s father’s case last year. A case involving a mutilated torso that was whispered about in every household in the country. And the one to turn the culprit in was none other than the man’s own son.

“I heard that you’re the one who reported him to the police. Is that true?”

If Seokju had spoken up for himself at that moment, would something have changed? If he said that those disgusting crimes were committed by his father, but it had nothing to do with him, would their current situation be any different?

However, Seokju didn’t say a word as his dark past was revealed to Jiwon and her mother. Instead, he merely gazed at Jiwon as he stood behind her and her mother.

“…I’m sure it’s true. If it’s you. Yes. But Seokju…”

Jiwon’s mother’s eyes were dazed as she murmured. She frowned as her voice faded away. Her hands clenched around her jeogori as if something was bursting out of her chest.

“I can’t look at your face anymore.”

“…Mom.”

“Be quiet, Park Jiwon!!”

Her mother looked at Jiwon with bloodshot eyes as she shouted out. Her strained voice was mixed with anger and dread as the words began to flow out of her mouth.

“You and Jiwon’s father… I cannot forgive either of you. How… How can this be? I… With my own hands, to you, I… The son of the demonic bastard who kidnapped my daughter!!!”

“I understand.”

Seokju’s low voice cut off her mother’s wails.

“Please let me leave after the cremation ceremony.”

That was Seokju’s first and final request.

“Please, I beg you.”

Seokju knelt down on the cold floor of the corridor and lowered his head. Jiwon’s mother saw this and bit her lips.

“Don’t ever appear in front of us again.”

After saying those words, Jiwon’s mother passed by him. Seokju slowly pulled off the mourner’s band on his arm and left the funeral home.

Jiwon burst up and followed him out. It was 6:30 AM. Underneath the deep blue sky, Seokju stood awkwardly like a man who had nowhere to go. Jiwon stood in front of him with tears in her eyes. Her hair whipped around in the cold wind.

Nothing left her trembling lips. She didn’t know what to say. Her father’s horrible death, the torrent of terrifying memories, and the dark past that Seokju had been hiding. It all overwhelmed her at this moment. Jiwon couldn’t hold onto him or push him away, so she clenched her fists and merely gazed at him.

“…Say something.”

She spoke up in a shaky voice. She wasn’t expecting anything from him. However, she had a hollow hope that he would be able to handle this much more wisely than her. Tears trickled down both cheeks before drenching her lips.

“Say something… Huu…”

And then, after staring at her in silence, Seokju opened his dry lips.

“…你还喜欢我吗.”

For the first time, Jiwon heard an unfamiliar language flow out of Seokju’s mouth. Jiwon unconsciously lowered her eyes. Avoiding his eyes was a reflex. It was just that, with that one sentence… The moment he said something that she was unable to understand, she felt strange. Because she felt strange, she could not look at his face. It was completely different from the times he read her questions in English with his near-fluent tone.

“Aren’t you going to ask me what it means?”

Seokju asked in a raspy voice. Jiwon looked up a beat later, but her dry lips were sealed shut, and she could not answer him. Her head was a jumbled mess.

She definitely knew that the Seokju in front of her now was not the same as the disgustingly terrifying man from before. She had seen just how hard Seokju had worked to prove himself. But suddenly, she felt like the ground between them had split into a widening rift.

Why? How? Why do I feel like you are completely different from the man I’ve known all along? Why do your eyes seem so unfamiliar and scary… Why do I hate them?

“Go.”

Seokju broke the silence and pushed her away. He might have seen into her heart and realized that she would never be able to come to a decision. Above Seokju’s neat, handsome face, she saw the scary man’s face flash by. 

“…Shin Seokju.”

“I’m fine, so go.”

His voice was calm, but he could not hide the slight tremor that exposed his despair. Jiwon quickly opened her mouth.

“Seokju, I…”

“Fucking bitch, get lost before I fucking kill you!!!”

His cruel shout broke her out of her thoughts as they pierced her heart. Startled, Jiwon began to run back to the funeral home. Her tears had stopped, and every single strand of hair on her body stood on end as she shivered. Seokju’s angry roar continued to echo in her head. Afraid that he’d chase after her and grab her by the back of her head, Jiwon clenched her teeth and ran. To a place where there were people. A place where she was safe.

If she knew that this would be the last time she’d ever see him, what would she have done? Would she have been able to refrain from turning her back on Seokju?

No. Whenever she left him, she killed him in her heart. Back when she ran away in the rain, and now underneath the blue sky of dawn as she ran away again. It was all the same. Even though she knew it would be the end for Seokju as he was left behind, she let go of his hand and ran. She was still a coward.

Eleven months later, they received a call from Detective Hong. It was news that Seokju’s father had passed away in prison. He told them that there was nothing left for them to worry about, and that they could finally be at peace. Jiwon wanted to ask him if he had heard any news about Seokju, but she wasn’t able to bring herself to do it. It wasn’t because she was scared. It was because she felt sorry for what she did to Seokju.