Chapter 23
Junyoung pressed his ear flat against the front door of Dahye’s building. It was quiet inside. The previous night, she had returned home with a man. He was a pretty, pompous-looking son of a bitch who had grinned and walked inside with his chest puffed up like a rooster.
At first, Junyoung had tried to convince himself that the man was just a friend visiting for the evening. But when several hours passed, and the man didn’t emerge, Junyoung had returned home, dejected and alone. It felt as though his heart was being torn to shreds.
Junyoung walked down the steps and sat on the curb.
His temples throbbed painfully. He had barely slept the previous night, and all day at work, he had been tormented by the image of Dahye, her naked body entwined with this stranger’s.
It was so obvious to Junyoung that this man was bad news that he couldn’t believe Dahye’s na?veté.
When he found out who the guy was, Junyoung was going to fuck him up.
Already he had waited several hours, but there was no sign of Dahye or the man anywhere. Junyoung buried his face in his hands. Maybe they were too busy fucking each other’s brains out to do anything else. He imagined Dahye, dehydrated, the skin around her mouth shriveled and cracked.
He had just resolved to leave when the door to the building swung open.
Startled, he scuttled behind a trash can as she appeared, dragging a suitcase down the steps.
Junyoung poked his head out. Dahye was dressed entirely in black, a mask covering the lower half of her face.
Only her eyes were visible. She was alone.
The suitcase’s wheels clattered on the cement as she strode briskly down the street, towing it behind her.
Again?
It was late. Where the hell was she going this time?
Careful to keep a healthy distance between them, Junyoung stole after her, his footsteps light.
They walked until they reached a subway station.
Dahye hopped on the first train that arrived, traveled for five stops, and then transferred to another station.
Junyoung had a bad feeling in his chest. He thought they were somewhere near Mapo, though he wasn’t entirely certain.
Dahye seemed to be singularly focused on making it to her destination, wherever that was.
She didn’t look back at him. Not even once.
They walked by the river, toward the bridge, and Junyoung stifled a groan.
His feet hurt. Cars whizzed past them. Junyoung gasped as a bus came close, nearly clipping her, but Dahye yanked on the suitcase and continued on.
In the center of the bridge, Dahye stopped abruptly, leaning over the railing. Junyoung’s heart began to pound.
This bridge, among many others in Seoul, was famous for suicide jumpers.
Years prior, a man had leaped to his death to try and draw attention to a men’s rights group he’d founded.
Junyoung had been young when it happened, but he remembered clearly the headlines that had dominated the news cycle for weeks afterward.
And the images—dozens of rescue teams, diving under the water again and again, trying to recover the man’s body.
“Don’t jump,” Junyoung started to shout, but the wind and the cars whipped his words back into his face.
He watched, horrified, as she climbed onto the balustrade with the suitcase.
Her feet kept slipping. She swayed, her balance uneven, the weight of the bag unsteadying her.
For one terrible second, it looked like she would fall.
A scream tore out of Junyoung’s throat. Dahye caught herself, and then, with a great heave, hurled the suitcase off the bridge.
Dahye climbed down, hurrying away, as Junyoung leaned over the edge to watch the suitcase fall.
Moonlight shimmered across the rippling waves.
The suitcase hit the water with a splash and began to bob away gently.
Junyoung stared at it. He couldn’t wrap his mind around what had just occurred.
No sane person hauled a suitcase across Seoul just to dump it over a bridge.
If he had to estimate, the drop was forty feet. The current was slow moving, and it seemed like the suitcase hadn’t made it very far. He climbed onto the balustrade just as a car slowed to a stop next to him.
“Don’t kill yourself,” a woman’s voice shouted. “Think of everything you have to live for.”
“That’s not what I’m doing,” Junyoung snapped.
Without thinking, he sprinted in the direction he’d come, off the bridge and down the bank of the river, the soles of his feet aching.
There was a smaller drop here, ten feet maybe.
He could see the suitcase floating a short distance away.
Junyoung kicked off his shoes, held his nose, and before he could change his mind, threw himself into the water.
He hit the surface with a smack. It was higher drop than he’d thought, and the pain and cold shocked him. Water flooded his nose and mouth. He had been wrong about the current—it dragged him under without mercy.
Junyoung clawed his way upward, his lungs screaming for air. Gasping, he burst through the surface and looked around as he treaded water, trying to reorient himself. The suitcase was an arm’s length away. He lunged toward it, only for the tide to pull it away.
“Fuck!” Junyoung screamed. He had lost his goddamn mind. His chest hurt. His hands and feet had gone numb from the cold. His clothes clung to him, dragging him down. All he wanted was to lie on the ground, to take a long nap.
“You are not like other men, Junyoung,” his father had once told him. “You are strong. You cannot let a woman lead you astray.”
For years, Junyoung had held onto these words, following them like a beacon cutting through the night. Abeoji had been right all along. If only Junyoung hadn’t allowed Dahye to lead him down this path …
The suitcase knocked against his back, jolting Junyoung out of his thoughts.
While he had been ruminating, it had inched closer and closer to him.
He reached out and grasped the handle. Flooded with relief, he flailed toward the nearby embankment, pushing the suitcase onto the gravel.
Junyoung dragged himself out of the water with the little strength he had left and collapsed.
Everything hurt, but he was desperate to know what the suitcase contained. He crawled toward it. When he unzipped it, he lifted the lid to find … clothing. Junyoung frowned. Somehow, it had all managed to stay dry.
Why had she gone through all the trouble of dumping it in the river?
Junyoung picked up the shirt at the top of the pile.
It was a men’s linen shirt, expensive looking, with mother-of-pearl buttons.
Dark stains covered the front. Junyoung shook it, and something small fell out from between its folds, falling onto the gravel.
Junyoung picked it up and held it to his face, squinting.
It was a finger. Part of one, anyway. Junyoung let out a horrified squeal as he leapt away from the suitcase.
The moon was full and low over his head, and when he looked down at his hands, he saw that his palms were stained with blood.
What had Dahye done? His mind began to race.
Junyoung had assumed the man from the previous night had gone home sometime in the morning. But what if he had never left?
What if that man had tried to hurt Dahye, and she had killed him in self-defense?
In spite of his exhaustion, Junyoung felt a sudden burst of adrenaline.
He had unexpectedly stumbled upon a treasure.
Now that he had the suitcase, he held all the cards.
Dahye was under the impression she had gotten rid of it.
If she agreed to be with him, he would help her bury the secret.
If not … Well, he didn’t want to think that far ahead.
Junyoung’s phone was waterlogged, and his shoes were nowhere to be found, but he trudged away from the embankment and onto the street, the suitcase in tow.
He had a vague sense of his location, and after a long and painful trek, his apartment building swam into view.
He was nearly grateful for his mother when she opened the door.
“Junyoung!” she gasped, staring at his pale face.
“Hello, Mother,” Junyoung said. Trembling with tiredness, he collapsed onto the floor.
+
For two long days, Junyoung was bedridden, drifting in and out of a tortured sleep. Dahye lingered in his dreams, caressing him. “I love you,” she kept saying, though oddly, her voice sounded exactly like his mother’s.
On the third day, his fever broke. Junyoung’s eyelids fluttered open to see his mother’s face hovering above his.
“Eugh!” Junyoung bolted upright. “What are you doing?”
“I was checking your temperature,” she said, looking hurt. “You’ve been sick. I was worried.”
“Don’t touch me.”
“You showed up in the middle of the night, soaking wet and feverish. You aren’t fine. We should go to the doctor.”
“Stop being a nag. I’m perfectly fine.” Memories of Dahye, the bridge, and, most importantly, the suitcase came flooding back. Junyoung struggled to get to his feet. “Where is it?”
“What? You need to lie down, Junyoung. You’re very sick.”
“The suitcase! Where the hell did you put it?”
“I threw it away,” she said quietly. “It smelled awful. Stank up the whole apartment. I looked inside, and it didn’t look important, so I put it out with the garbage last night.”
“Mother!” Junyoung exploded. She cowered.
“It smelled disgusting,” she whispered. “And it was dripping wet and covered in dirt. I didn’t think you would be so upset. I’ll buy you a new suitcase.”
“It wasn’t about the fucking suitcase. It was about what was inside!”
“It didn’t look like your things,” she cajoled. “I wouldn’t have thrown it out if I’d known it was important …”
“This is why Abeoji left you.” She stared at him, a choked sob escaping her throat. Junyoung continued. “He left you because you’re stupid. Worthless. You can’t do anything right.”
He didn’t wait for her to respond. Hobbling to his closet, he found a worn pair of jeans and a wrinkled T-shirt, changing into them before limping to the door.
His mother was crying. It gave him pleasure to know he could still cut her down.
Make her feel small. On the counter next to the door, he spotted his phone peeking out from a bowl of uncooked rice.
His mother. Perhaps this gesture should have touched him, but it only made his irritation grow.
Outside, the breeze brushed past him, chilling his sweat-soaked skin. The weather was growing milder. Soon, summer would turn to fall. If he played his cards right, he could be living with Dahye by the end of the year.
He realized he didn’t need the suitcase. He knew what was inside. And if he needed more proof, all he had to do was break into her apartment. Easy.
He gave his phone a little shake and watched as the screen lit up.
At least his mother had managed to do one thing right.
He called a taxi, inputting Dahye’s address.
A few minutes later, the taxi appeared, slowing to a stop in front of him.
Junyoung climbed into the back seat, listening absentmindedly to the radio.
A woman’s voice crackled through the speakers.
Authorities are requesting anyone with information about the whereabouts of Jang Hyukjoon, 29, son of YS Media Group CEO Jang Insu, to come forward.
Jang Hyukjoon went missing on the night of August 14th and was last seen by his fiancée, Lee Seoyeon.
In a press conference earlier this morning, the elder Jang stated, “If anybody has any information about Hyukjoon’s whereabouts, I beg them to come forward.
Hyukjoon is our loved and cherished son.
We miss him very much and are praying for his safe return. ”
The driver lowered the volume, muttering just loudly enough for Junyoung to hear.
“These rich assholes. Wasting everybody’s time and money.
I bet the bastard went on a bender. He’s probably naked in some club with a bunch of hookers and drugs.
” He slammed his fist against the dashboard and glared at Junyoung in the rearview mirror as though daring him to disagree. Junyoung looked away.
The name was familiar to him. He remembered, vaguely, that this Jang Hyukjoon had come up while he was searching for something else.
What had it been? He closed his eyes, trying to visualize the memory.
His unexpected dunk in the river had made his brain cloudy.
Then it came to him: Dahye’s screaming voice on the phone.
She had been under the impression that he, Junyoung, was this Hyukjoon person.
Was it possible that she had been talking about the same Hyukjoon as the one in the news? Had she killed the Jang Hyukjoon?
It didn’t make sense, but the timing matched. There had been an initial news story involving Jang Hyukjoon around the time Dahye had stopped coming to work. And August 14th—Junyoung counted on his fingers—had been the day he had seen her with the strange man.
Junyoung pulled up Hyukjoon’s picture on his phone.
The man’s face seemed familiar, but Junyoung wasn’t completely certain he recognized him.
He scrolled to the news articles at the bottom of the page.
The most recent were about Hyukjoon’s disappearance; the others were about his engagement.
Junyoung had to go several pages back before finding the ones about his molka scandal.
He tapped on the first link, and a screenshot appeared.
It had been taken from one of the leaked videos.
The woman was blurred entirely, but the background was still visible, and in the corner of the grainy image, Junyoung saw what appeared to be a pink pair of panties.
Dumbstruck, Junyoung paused, his thumb hovering over the screen. Over the past few weeks, he had been rewatching the old bathroom footage he had of Dahye, and he recognized the panties instantly.
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” the nosy taxi driver said, watching him from the rearview mirror.