When I opened my eyes, the room had already grown dim. As I sat up, the childcare journal I’d been holding to my chest slipped to the side. I hurriedly caught the notebook and set it down on the sofa. When did I fall asleep? It wasn’t surprising that I was tired. I’d already been worn out by the funeral, and then I’d been attacked too. I was tired both mentally and physically. Really, so….
The dried tears stung at the corners of my eyes. I rubbed at them with my palm and looked around. Woojin was standing by the window, looking down outside. Maybe he’d noticed I was awake, because he spoke without even turning his head.
“If you’re done sleeping, go downstairs. Your family was looking for you.”
“……How long did I sleep?”
“About an hour.”
I got up and checked my pants pocket. The silver 2G phone caught on my fingertips. It was still there. I’d even searched Dad’s room, but I hadn’t found a single clue about the password. If I randomly entered the remaining numbers, I might end up erasing what was inside too.
More than anything, the very claim that there was a safe password separate from the phone was a lie. I had to make up a safe password, but I didn’t even know the phone password. My head throbbed like it was about to split open. If I didn’t even know the phone password, there was no way I could invent a safe password too. A lie that would be exposed someday. Wouldn’t it be better to reduce it by even one? Maybe say the safe doesn’t have a password at all, and the phone might not even be under Dad’s name, so we should look for it together. Yeah, it’d probably be better to say it now, while the whole family was downstairs. No matter how much of a killer he was, he wouldn’t be able to openly kill me in a mansion full of people. Especially with my face already revealed.
Woojin headed toward the door, and I followed him out of the room. The heavy door closed, and we walked side by side down the hall. The closer we got to the stairs, the clearer the family’s voices from downstairs became.
I have to say it now.
“Hey.”
“What.”
“About the safe password. No, wait. About the safe password.”
Woojin, who had been walking ahead, stopped.
“Wait.”
“...Honestly, I don’t know either. I don’t even know if there is a password.”
Woojin turned around at once. The hand that came striding over grabbed my wrist. My eyes widened at the sudden grip. I wasn’t sure whether I was surprised because it didn’t hurt and he was holding me so carefully, or because it was the first time I’d ever seen him look flustered.
“Don’t say things like that here.”
His voice had dropped low. Before I could ask what he meant, Woojin took the 2G phone from my pocket. Then, as if nothing had happened, he said coldly,
“If you don’t know the password, I’ll take the phone.”
“Wait.”
“Don’t come out of here.”
Woojin yanked my wrist and pulled me back into Dad’s room. He opened the door, shoved me inside, and added while standing in the hallway,
“I won’t kill you yet, since you might still be useful.”
The door shut on those words.
What kind of one-man show was he putting on? Just a moment ago, he’d been frantically stopping me from saying anything. But then suddenly, like he’d become a different person, he snatched my phone and locked me in the room. And even after learning the password part was a lie, why wasn’t he killing me? That was another question.
I stared blankly at the door, then walked over to the desk. He’d told me to stay put, but I had no intention of doing that. Since I was already in here, I figured I might as well keep looking for anything I hadn’t seen earlier. The drawer at the bottom of the desk was locked. After tugging the handle a few times, I smashed the lock down with the heavy paperweight beside it. After a few blows, the latch twisted, and the drawer opened.
Inside were several old folders. I took out the top one and opened it. It contained a photo of a man I’d never seen before, along with his personal information. Red letters were stamped at the top of the page.
Death processing completed.
The next page had the same man’s photo attached. His hairstyle and clothes were different, but it was clearly the same person. The name and address had both been changed.
Identity change completed. Relocation completed.
The other files were the same. Everyone marked as dead had received new names and gone off somewhere else. In some documents, the same name was written over and over.
Cha Woojin.
Contract assignment completed.
Death processing.
Identity change completed.
My hand stopped turning the pages. A contract killing, and he didn’t kill the person? Then why was this in Dad’s room?
After staring at the files for a long time, I felt my throat go dry. Thinking I should drink some water, I stood up with the papers in hand. Woojin had told me not to go out, but going down to the kitchen right below should be fine. In the first place, who was he to say otherwise? This was our dad’s villa.
I opened the door and stepped into the hall. I had just reached the stairs leading downstairs when I heard the rustle of fabric behind me. Before I could turn around, a black shadow lunged at me. A masked man slammed my body into the wall. My spine hit the hard surface.
“Ugh...!”
Before I could even make a sound, a hand clamped around my throat. I gasped, my mouth opening uselessly for air. The papers I’d been holding scattered to the floor. I grabbed the man’s wrist and tried to shove him off, but he didn’t budge. My toes slid against the floor. My vision began to blur.
At that moment, the hand choking my throat was torn away.
Woojin grabbed the back of the man’s neck and smashed him into the wall. With a dull thud, the man’s body lurched. Before he could even steady himself, Woojin’s fist slammed into his face. The man crumpled to the floor.
I leaned against the wall and slid down, clutching my throat. Air rushed into lungs that had been blocked, and a harsh coughing fit burst out. Woojin looked down at the man sprawled on the floor, then turned his head toward me.
“I told you to stay put in the room.”
“I was... going to get some water...”
“You couldn’t wait even that long?”
“Ugh... my throat hurts...”
When I answered in a cracked voice, Woojin let out a short breath. His expression turned cold the moment he noticed the papers on the floor.
“Get up.”
I grabbed Woojin’s hand and pulled myself to my feet. We left the fallen man in the hallway and went back to Dad’s room. Only after closing the door did Woojin hand the 2G phone back to me.
“You can talk in this room.”
“Then why did you say I couldn’t before?”
“Because we’re being bugged.”
“What?”
“While you were sleeping, I found and destroyed everything that was in this room.”
Woojin pointed under the desk and behind the curtains. Looking closely, I could see broken black devices scattered on the floor.
“Only this room is safe. I don’t know where else they might be outside.”
“Then what I said earlier...”
“They probably heard it. That you don’t know the password.”
A chill finally crept down my spine.
“So that’s why you suddenly put on that act?”
“Anyone listening outside needs to believe I’m still carrying out the job.”
“Then that person just now...”
“Now that he’s confirmed the password was a lie, I guess he no longer has any reason to keep you alive.”
The sensation of the hand choking my throat seemed to come back to life. Before I knew it, I was rubbing the back of my neck. The attack doesn’t shock me as much anymore. I hadn’t known they’d followed me all the way to Dad’s villa, but since it wasn’t known as a villa, I guess there didn’t seem to be any accomplices either. And he didn’t look like he was searching for one, either. Unlike the second attack, I took a few quick breaths and recovered, then rubbed my quickly recovering throat before shifting my gaze to the papers on the floor.
Right. That’s what I was looking at. I bent down and picked up the documents. Then I flipped to the page with Cha Woojin’s name and held it out to him.
“What is this?”
“......”
“Those are the people you handled, right?”
Woojin didn’t answer. He seemed pretty shocked by the files. He’d frozen in place like that. I had no way of knowing whether he was shocked that I found these papers, or shocked simply because they existed.
I swallowed once more and kept going. Yeah, something was off from the start. Why won’t you kill me? At home, and even here. Every time I get attacked, you keep saving me. So much so that I started to think maybe you would’ve saved me even if there hadn’t been a password. The chairman is ruthless, so even without a password he’d kill me, and yet why are you keeping me alive? What do these papers mean? What the hell are you?
I rattled off my questions in a rapid-fire stream.
“It says everyone died, but they’re alive under different names. You didn’t kill those people?”
“......”
“Then why is this in Dad’s room?”
He stared quietly at me as I snapped at him point by point. Then he lowered his gaze again to the papers in my hand and looked at them silently for a long time. I didn’t rush him and waited. After a long while, Woojin opened his mouth.
“I’m someone whose life was saved by your father.”
“What?”
“So I helped your father.”
“......”
“More precisely, I used to. In the past.”
Woojin’s gaze settled on the red letters in the file.
“By smuggling out people who could only survive if they died.”
