By Zephyria 
“Eun-myeong, are you okay?”
The one who appeared hurriedly through the now gaping hole of a door was Ji Jun-il.
“H-how did a customer….”
Eun-myeong stared at him with a blank expression. Feeling a tugging hand beside him, he looked over to see his sister frowning. Her face was clouded with deep suspicion.
“Who is that?”
“A customer who used to come to our sashimi restaurant. He says he’s a civil servant,” Eun-myeong added in a small voice, noting that he was someone trustworthy. Then, he asked the customer, who was breathing heavily.
“How did you find out and come here?”
“I was feeling peckish, so I went to a nearby gukbap place, and the customers were in an uproar saying the house in front of the supermarket was on fire. Eun-myeong, but your face….”
Eun-myeong flinched and rubbed his face with his forearm. Something dirty smeared onto the fabric. He suspected it was black ash.
“Let me see if I have a towel in my trunk.”
Jun-il immediately ran to his car. He was genuinely flustered. However, the way he had found out about the fire was slightly different from what he told Eun-myeong.
Throughout the evening, he had been conducting his own investigation, fueled by sheer rage. He wanted to find out which son of a bitch had smashed his car.
He was almost certain about who the culprit was, but he needed physical evidence. Thus, he had been scouring the shops around the inn.
He had shown a fake civil servant ID, asking if anyone had heard anything during the dawn or if he could view any CCTV footage.
But everywhere he went, the CCTVs were all broken, and all he managed to pick up was a vague comment from someone in the opposite villa who claimed to have briefly seen someone being dragged away in the early morning.
‘What kind of car was it?’
‘I don’t quite recall, was it a black car, or a grey one….’
The witness just babbled and hiccuped. A strong smell of alcohol wafted over. What nonsense—his car was white. Of all people, the only witness he found was a drunk.
And on his way back after the fruitless search, he received a call from his Sunbae.
—Hey, hey! I heard there’s a fire at Lee Eun-myeong’s house.
He couldn’t describe how shocked he was upon hearing that. Even though he knew Eun-myeong was already staying at that hotel with Kang Pyeong-won, he couldn’t help but rush over the moment he heard the news.
Upon arriving at his car, Jun-il opened the trunk with a clatter. However, as he looked inside, he froze like a block of ice.
What is all this?
The trunk was piled high with mysterious photographs.
Standing there dazed, Jun-il slowly reached out and picked up one photo. What was captured in the photo was none other than a pale face.
Lee Eun-myeong?
When he picked up the next photo, it was a picture of Eun-myeong and himself together. The next one, and the one after that, also featured Eun-myeong and him. Occasionally, photos of Eun-myeong alone were mixed in.
Jun-il let his hand drop. Dammit… just how far has this crazy lunatic penetrated into his life?
“Is something wrong?”
As he stood there lost in thought as if he had seen a ghost, Eun-myeong approached and asked what was happening.
“It’s nothing. I don’t have a towel. I must have been mistaken.”
Jun-il quickly slammed the trunk shut.
A delusional psychopath…. Jun-il glanced sideways. He saw Eun-myeong’s face, distorted by sadness.
If the goal had simply been to blackmail Jun-il, the photos would have focused on him. But these were all centered on Eun-myeong.
What an immense obsession.
While he felt he had finally gotten a proper read on the situation, he couldn’t help but curse inwardly. This person was truly, beyond all reason, insane. How on earth had Lee Eun-myeong fallen into such a vicious trap?
A chill ran through his body, and goosebumps prickled across his arms.
“Um, …do you have a place to go?”
Jun-il asked. In the end, Lee Eun-myeong would have to return to Kang Pyeong-won’s side, but since Jun-il had to pretend to know nothing, it was a necessary question.
At the same time, a sudden thought crossed his mind. He wished Eun-myeong could just run away, far, far away. Of course, it was merely a thought born of a terribly human impulse.
Because if Lee Eun-myeong also bore some guilt, he would inevitably have to pay the price.
“Yes, I can go to a friend’s house.”
“Ha, a friend’s house?”
Beside him, Eun-myeong’s sister, Lee Eun-joo, let out a hollow sigh. Her gaze was fixed on Eun-myeong. Her face looked deeply dissatisfied.
“Just come to my place. Don’t go back to that bastard!”
Lee Eun-joo’s jaw trembled as if she found the idea utterly unacceptable. At this, Lee Eun-myeong glanced at Jun-il as if gauging his reaction.
“Noona.”
Eun-joo’s gaze belatedly shifted toward Jun-il.
“Excuse me, we can manage on our own, so please leave now.”
Though he didn’t know where the man had suddenly popped up from, Eun-joo added those words as she ordered Jun-il to leave. As far as Jun-il knew, Lee Eun-joo lived in company-provided housing.
“I told you to leave. There are taxis everywhere; why would we get a ride from someone like you?”
“Noona.”
Lee Eun-myeong tried to stop her, telling her not to be so harsh. Even so, Lee Eun-joo’s eyes flashed sharply.
“I’m sorry.”
Eventually, Eun-myeong bowed his head deeply. He looked completely defeated. Staying any longer would likely only provoke Lee Eun-joo’s hostility. Jun-il knew it was time to retreat.
“I’ll contact you soon.”
Telling Eun-myeong not to feel sorry, he stepped back. However, while he thought he would come away empty-handed today, a clue had appeared. The ill will Lee Eun-joo harbored toward Kang Pyeong-won was evident.
Eun-myeong walked out of the alleyway trudgingly with his sister. Both of them, their bodies stained black, walked in silence, looking completely shell-shocked.
At the edge of the alley, the car the man had prepared was waiting.
“Noona, I’ll tell the driver to take you….”
As he struggled to finish his sentence, his sister suddenly grabbed Eun-myeong’s shoulder.
“Isn’t this something that bastard did?”
His sister’s eyes were fixed intently on the driver. It was as if she were facing the man who hired him directly. Eun-myeong asked blankly.
“What…?”
“There was an article a few days ago about a body washing up.”
His sister lowered her voice even further.
“Isn’t it possible he set the fire on purpose to get rid of evidence left in the house?”
Eun-myeong hesitated. Come to think of it, it seemed entirely plausible.
“Yeah….”
At that, his sister stubbornly insisted that she would absolutely not get into that bastard’s car.
“I’d rather hang myself to death. I absolutely refuse, really, absolutely.”
“Okay, I get it…. I get it, so don’t say such scary things, Noona.”
Only after seeing off his sister, who had insisted on taking a taxi, did Eun-myeong get into the car and return.
He arrived at the hotel looking completely bedraggled. As he tried to open the door with his card as usual, his hand suddenly stopped.
Did the man really burn his house down?
If so, he was deeply heartbroken, but he thought it was inevitable. If the bad things the man had done were discovered, Eun-myeong felt he wouldn’t be able to bear it.
So, let’s check. If that was the case, he felt he could overcome the pain of this loss.
As he cautiously opened the door and entered, the man was sitting on the sofa, crushing a cigarette into the ashtray. Clad in a dark-colored robe, he turned to look at Eun-myeong.
“Boss.”
Eun-myeong felt his heart pounding anxiously in his chest. He was dying of nervousness.
“I hope nothing happened?”
“Nothing happened?”
He was smiling, as if amused.
“My house burned down, and I wondered if you might have something to do with it….”
If that were the case, Eun-myeong wanted to tell him that he would understand.
“That’s right, I did it.”
As expected. The man admitted it was his doing. Admitting it quite readily, he spoke with a cigarette in his mouth. The red glow of the cigarette scratched painfully at Eun-myeong’s eyes.
He felt that the inevitable had finally arrived.
“Was there some kind of evidence…?”
He was asking if some evidence had almost been discovered. There must be a reason why he suddenly did such a thing. He wondered if someone had searched his house to find something.
However, the man relaxed his lips and smiled languidly.
“Do you think I’d set a fire just because I couldn’t handle something as trivial as that?”
These words completely shattered his expectations. Eun-myeong straightened his chest, which had been leaning slightly forward.
“Then…?”
As he looked at the man, drenched in bewilderment, the man added as if sighing.
“I don’t know.”
He let out a low hum in his throat.
“Maybe the fact that you had a place to return to just rubbed me the wrong way?”