“...that's how it happened.”
Wo-jin's story came to an end. Heavy silence settled over the room. Outside the window, it was already completely dark. Every time the wind blew, dry branches scratched against the window with a tap, tap. The curtain swayed faintly, and only the lamp on the desk cast a yellowish light over the red carpet.
I looked down at the documents in my hand. The words death processing stamped in the middle of the paper were especially red.
I kept thinking of nine-year-old Woojin. The child standing barefoot on the damp factory floor. The child who wolfed down the rice his mother had given up out of kindness, and in the end ran in front of a gun to save her. His mother died in that child's place.
Should I blame Woojin for Mom's death? But it wasn't Woojin who fired the gun or kidnapped my mother. He was just another child trapped there, trying to survive. Not even being able to choose who to resent made everything feel even more miserable.
My fingertips tightened, crumpling the documents. I finally lifted my head to look at Woojin and opened my mouth.
“You never planned to kill me from the start?”
“No.”
A short answer came back. Woojin met my eyes without looking away. Even in that moment, when he had pointed a gun at me with that cold face, he had never intended to kill me. The actions I'd doubted over and over all this time now took on a different meaning.
“Then why did you take the job?”
“To get to the guys who killed your father.”
The sound of scratching at the window abruptly stopped. The room, with the wind gone, was so quiet it was suffocating.
“You know who killed my dad?”
“They're the remnants of the organization that kidnapped your mother.”
Dad had said he'd been betrayed. I'd vaguely thought that day might come someday. It was a dangerous world, and Dad was the head of it. But I never imagined the resentment would be this old.
Woojin went on explaining what happened the day Mom died. Dad had brought that organization down, but not everyone had died. The survivors changed their names and faces and scattered, waiting for a chance to take revenge, one by one sneaking into Dad's organization. It had been fifteen years. They worked at Dad's side, followed his orders, gained his trust. Then, after worming their way in as close as possible, they betrayed him.
“Then Dad... got shot too.”
“Because there was someone inside who opened the way for them.”
My mouth went dry. Dad's coffin from the funeral flashed through my mind. I finally understood why they hadn't shown us his face properly at the end.
I knew nothing. Not how Mom died, not who killed Dad. I didn't know what Dad had been doing in this study with Woojin, either. The room I'd thought was familiar suddenly felt strange. The books crammed into the shelves, the neatly arranged desk, even the small sofa by the bed. Over the traces of the Dad I knew, a life I didn't know overlapped.
“So you were doing contract killings?”
“I had to work my way in from there to catch the tail.”
Woojin said that by pretending to take the jobs, he had slowly worked his way deeper into the organization. If he refused a contract, the contact would end on the spot. He had to move as ordered to meet the next person, and he thought the one who killed Dad would be at the end of it. Then a job came in with my name on it. An order to finish me off because Dad would soon be dead.
“Then the man called the chairman...?”
“He's connected to the side that killed your father.”
Woojin said they were looking for something Dad had left behind. That's why, as soon as Dad died, they searched the house and looked for the safe and the key. As long as they believed I knew the password, they couldn't kill me carelessly, but once they realized that was a lie, there was no reason to keep me alive anymore.
Only then did I realize the attack at the house and the one at the villa were on the same line. The more I heard Woojin explain things one by one, the colder it felt, a chill rising from my toes.
“Then the person who was wiretapping earlier must be one of theirs.”
“Yeah.”
Woojin nudged the bug that had fallen to the floor with the tip of his shoe. The small black device rolled over the carpet.
“You can't set up this much overnight. I think there's someone who knows the villa's layout well, someone who's been coming and going there for a long time.”
“Who?”
“It won't be an outsider.”
Woojin's gaze moved to the closed door. Beyond it, the family had gathered.
“You mean someone in your family is connected to them.”
Aunt, uncle, another uncle, and uncle flashed through my mind one after another. The people downstairs were talking about Dad's inheritance. Gulp. I swallowed dry spit. No way, someone in our family? That's impossible.... The suspicion I couldn't bring myself to say out loud stuck in my throat. The documents in my hand rustled.
At that moment, with a sharp crashing sound, a woman's scream rang out from downstairs. It was Aunt. Without time to think, I ran for the door. Woojin tried to grab my arm from behind, but he was a step too late.
“Aunt!”
I opened the door and rushed into the hall. At the far end of the dark hallway, the light coming up from downstairs flickered between the stair rails. Every time I hurried down the stairs, the wood beneath my feet rang out loudly.
The living room was a mess. The table had been knocked over, and glasses and plates were shattered all over the marble floor. The envelope with Dad's name on it had also been stepped on and crumpled.
Aunt was being held in the middle of the living room. A man in black had his arm around her neck and was aiming a gun at her temple. My aunt's pale, bloodless lips trembled. Several unfamiliar men stood around them.
“Yeoju...”
The moment I heard Aunt's cracked voice, my feet froze. Woojin, who had come down after me, blocked my path. His hand moved toward his waist, and the man holding Aunt shoved the gun harder against her.
“Hands off.”
Woojin stopped moving. Little uncle, uncle, nephew. My family members were lying on the floor. Whether they'd lost consciousness or not, they weren't moving. My uncle-in-law was nowhere to be seen. A strange smell hung in the living room. It wasn't the incense I'd smelled at the funeral, nor the smell of wood soaked into the old villa. It was the sharp stench of chemicals stinging my nose.
Too late, I held my breath, but it was already over. My vision swayed hard once. Just as my weakened knees were about to give out, Woojin caught my body. Woojin seemed to notice the smell too, covering his nose and mouth with his sleeve, but because he had stretched an arm toward me, he was a beat too late.
The men rushed in all at once. Woojin kicked the chin of the first man to reach him. With a dull thud, the man toppled backward. The instant Woojin twisted another man's wrist to try to take his gun, Aunt let out a short scream.
The brief moment when Woojin's attention was stolen, someone brought a heavy blunt object down on the back of his head. Woojin's body lurched violently. The strength left the arm holding me. I was already weak, and I swayed too. Then the men rushed in and forced Woojin to the floor. Woojin tried to get back up, but the blunt object came down again. Red blood splattered onto the floor.
“Woojin...”
I called out while staring at Woojin, collapsed on the floor, but my voice wouldn't come out right. Even if I tried to run, I couldn't move a single fingertip. In that instant, someone roughly grabbed my arm, and a wet cloth was slapped over my nose and mouth. A vile stench surged in with my breath. The chandelier that had lit the ceiling stretched long, then split into several.
The last thing I saw was Woojin lying on the floor. Blood was spreading through his black hair.
*
When I came to, the first thing I felt was pain in my wrists. Rough rope was digging into my skin. When I moved, the wooden chair creaked and swayed. I had to force my eyes open several times. The black blotch covering my vision slowly lifted.
It was an unfamiliar space. Moisture had spread like stains across the concrete walls, and a single light hanging from the ceiling flickered uneasily. There were no windows. A damp smell of dust and oil rose from the cold floor. It looked like an old warehouse.
Beside me, Aunt had her head lowered, tied to a chair. Her face was pale, but her chest rose and fell faintly. A little farther away, Uncle was tied up too. His lip had split, and his glasses were tilted to one side. My other family members were tied up nearby as well. They all seemed to be alive, though some looked a little hurt, as if they'd been hit. In the midst of all this bad luck, I let out a breath of relief.
And on the opposite side was Woojin. Woojin was leaning against the wall with his eyes closed. The blood on the back of his head had dried down to the nape of his neck. But Woojin's hands and feet weren't bound. Why was Woojin the only one not tied up?
Before my head could even start working properly, Uncle thrashed around. The chair scraped across the floor with an ear-splitting sound.
“That's not what we agreed on!”
Toward the other side of the locked iron door, Uncle roared.
“I brought that woman here, all the way here, and the traitor too!”
The blood in my whole body turned cold. Uncle twisted his bound wrists and shouted at the top of his lungs.
“I'm on your side!”
The flickering light went out once, then came back on. I stared at Uncle without saying a word.
Your words from the study came back to me.
'It won't be an outsider.'
'You mean someone in your family is connected to them'
Uncle had betrayed our dad, our family.
Noir is so hard...ㅠ
