Chapter 21 Monroe
We step out of the abandoned building and onto the empty street, doing our best to look as inconspicuous as possible. The sun has set and night has fallen in the last half hour since we lost control of ourselves.
The cool air brushes against my flushed skin in reminder of what we’ve just done. It’s a wakeup call I’m not yet ready to receive.
Neither of us speak. Jin’s dark and steady gaze is focused straight ahead as if he’s already concerned himself with surveilling the street and our surroundings. He walks at a pace slightly faster than mine, staying a step or two ahead.
His posture’s rigid, and his expression unreadable in the flickering streetlamps.
I follow with a couple side glances left and right and my hand passing over my once styled curls. My legs quake, and my mind still reels from how sudden and intense things got between us. It’s left my pulse racing in a way it hasn’t in weeks.
It really is a reminder that Jin and I have a hunger for each other that’s almost unreal. It’s so obviously addictive I quickly lose my wits about me.
What the hell was I thinking?
…you weren’t thinking, Moni. That’s the problem.
It was a mistake that can never happen again.
I sigh and wipe my eyes as my internal battle goes on.
The moment he grabbed me outside Dok-su’s bar and I realized who it was, it was as if all bets were off. Even as I tried to fight back against him, the second his hands were on me and his mouth was kissing me so hungrily, I was a goner.
He pinned me against the wall, and every rational thought in my head evaporated like morning mist.
My body betrayed my resolve, responding to him the way it always does, and before I knew it we were tearing at each other’s clothes like the weeks of separation had never happened.
Jin’s car is parked down the block—the same sleek silver Genesis G80 Sport he’s driven since I’ve known him. He opens the passenger door and holds it for me without a word, his dark eyes finally meeting mine.
But only for a fraction of a second. For the brief instant it takes to communicate how uncertain we both feel. Yet still enough to send a sharp shiver down my spine.
Then his gaze is sliding away, his jaw as angular and hardened from tension as ever.
I climb in, and he closes the door with a thud that sounds deafening in the silence. He settles behind the wheel, and we take off from the seedy neighborhood in Jangnim-dong, almost as though we both hope to leave what just transgressed between us behind.
It follows us anyway, thickening in the air and making it impossible to breathe.
The drive to Seomyeon feels long and suffocating; the city lights streaming past the windows in blots of bright color.
In need of distraction, I fuss with everything from the sleeve of my sweater to my phone. Jin grips the steering wheel with more force than necessary, his knuckles large and rounded against the leather material. He glares out at the roads as if angry, but I know his thoughts are as jumbled as mine.
This is just as confusing and difficult for him as it is for me.
When we pull up outside my building, I grab at the door handle to get out, then realize he’s doing the same.
“You don’t have to walk me up. I can make it inside just fine.”
“You admit you feel like you’ve been followed. I’m not letting you out of my sight.”
“Yeah, because you’ve been following me—you and Sang-cheol. If I’d known it was just you being obsessive and stalkery again, I wouldn’t have even been concerned.”
“This is more than just me and my habits, Tokki-ya. If you sense something amiss, then that means there are threats lurking.”
“Is this about Black Shell again?” I ask bluntly, then I scoff with a shake of my head. “You know, Jin, I’d hoped you’d get your story straight after so many weeks apart. Am I in danger or not? Is there a threat after me or not? Why can’t you just…”
The frustration boils over and then suddenly gives out, going cold all at once.
My rant about his poor communication and constant need to shut me out fades away as I realize it’s useless. It won’t change anything to tell him for the thousandth time that I just want… I just wished he’d open up.
…that he would talk to me. Really talk to me.
“You know what?” I mutter. “It doesn’t even matter anymore. This doesn’t change anything. You know that, right? We’re still… we’re not together. Which means you have no right trying to interfere in my life.”
As I push the passenger door open and get out, it’s immediately apparent he’s still following. He gets out on his side too, making quick work of the distance between us as he comes around the car and joins me on the pathway leading to my apartment building.
“I’m walking you up,” he says resolutely, leaving no room for dissent. “I’m escorting you to your apartment. Then I will go.”
I sigh but let him, figuring it’s useless to waste the breath arguing otherwise.
We ride the elevator up to the ninth floor, and he walks me to the door. I turn to face him, my gaze flicking up to meet his.
“Thanks,” I say. “You didn’t have to… but thanks.”
His throat tightens with the swallow he takes despite his stoic and unemotive expression. “Tokki-ya—”
“Jin,” I interrupt, shaking my head. “Please don’t call me that anymore. It… it makes it really confusing for me when you do. It… it hurts now.”
His stoic face shutters as he gives another tight swallow, and the wall he hides behind so well slides back into place.
“Alright,” he says simply. “Goodnight, Monroe.”
Then he turns and disappears down the hall. I pause long enough to watch him go, my body still thrumming with the aftershocks of what we did. But my heart still aches from the painful realization that we’ll never be what we once were.
This is the way things must be.
Since my miscarriage and breakup with Jin, I’ve struggled to find a purpose, or some sense of meaning. I’ve felt adrift and aimless, with no desire to fill up my time with anything but grieving and going through the motions.
But over the next few days, I finally find a distraction that works. That has me up early in the morning and awake late at night.
I throw myself into the investigation involving Jin’s family and the mysterious Black Shell with a fervor that borders on obsession.
It’s easier than thinking about Jin and our relationship. Certainly easier than replaying what happened between us on that rooftop in my head, analyzing every touch and tremor of pleasure he gave me.
And the tense and awkward uncertainty that followed.
If I keep my mind occupied with research and leads and unanswered questions, I don’t have time to dwell on the mess that’s become my personal life.
I spend hours hunched over my laptop, digging through online archives of old Korean newspapers, searching for anything related to the Seo family massacre.
The articles I find are sparse and faded, digitized copies of print editions from over thirty years ago, but they paint a grisly picture that makes my blood run cold.
A family slaughtered in their home. No one was spared except for the small, mute boy discovered hiding in the wardrobe days later.
A four-year-old traumatized Jin.
He’d witnessed his parents and grandmother, among others, slaughtered and left to soak in their own blood.
Jin’s told me about what happened. But it’s different reading the facts of the case; reading about how he was found forty-eight hours later in his own waste, so terrified he hadn’t moved from his hiding spot.
It makes me ache for him and the boy he once was to see the mentions of how he had no family left to claim him and was instead placed in an orphanage.
The articles speculate about gang involvement. A few even outright mention that the long-fabled Hyeonmudan were possibly involved, but there has never been any credible evidence that the gang was real and not some tall tale from the local underworld.
Eventually, the case went cold. No arrests were ever made. The detective in charge—a man named Im Tae-sung—is quoted saying they had “exhausted all leads” and were “unable to identify the perpetrators.”
Except now I know that’s not true.
Dok-su told me Black Shell was involved. The same Black Shell he says has ties to the Hyeonmudan and who left Jin and I flowers on our doorstep.
Jin himself has admitted Black Shell is an unknown threat from his past.
It seems to all come back to what happened thirty years ago with his family, and Detective Im Tae-sung could be the missing link needed to uncover the truth.
I track him down through a combination of public records and sheer stubbornness.
He’s retired now, living quietly in a modest neighborhood on the outskirts of Busan, far from the precinct where he spent decades solving crimes—or in this case, burying them.
When I call him, posing as a journalist working on a cold case story for an American publication, he’s reluctant to meet.
He hangs up the first time, promptly telling me he’s not interested.
It takes a second phone call where I’m able to plead with him a little more and appeal to his sense of justice for him to agree to a meet up.
He insists on his neighborhood, making me travel to him, and we settle on a local coffeeshop. He’s exactly as expected when I turn up, a man in his seventies who once must’ve been strong and stocky but has softened into a frailer, rounder, older version of himself.
His eyes seem permanently tired, crinkled at the corners with deep bags under them, and he quickly establishes himself as a man of few words as I take my seat.
He’s already sipping from a cup of black coffee, his fingers drumming restlessly on the table.
“Thank you for meeting me,” I say as I slide into the chair across from him. “I know this isn’t easy.”
He grunts noncommittally and studies me with a sharpness that speaks to his police training. “You said you’re writing about cold cases. Why this one? It’s ancient history.”