GBH 48

It was the first time the lights were on so late in the evening since Song Yi-heon had started living in this house. Song Min-seo, who usually occupied the living room drinking alcohol and sleeping like the dead, was now asleep in the bedroom after receiving an IV drip. The woman from Seosan, despite being told to rest, brought a broom and swept up the scattered glass shards, cleaning the ransacked living room. She clutched her chest, seemingly distressed at how quickly the once-intact decorations had been destroyed.

“Oh my, what a waste…”

Kim Deuk-pal, with his left hand sprained and now under the care of the doctor summoned by Choi Se-kyung’s call, used his right hand to type on his phone. Though he wanted to irritate Lee Mi-kyung by speaking informally out of spite, it would be disadvantageous for Song Yi-heon if he was caught using informal language in a message. Kim Deuk-pal typed out the message, infusing each character with his anger.

[Please answer the phone. I know this was your doing. If you want to end this quietly before I contact the chairman, it’d be best for you to pick up.]

If he followed his temperament, he would have gone to Lee Mi-kyung’s house and dragged her out by the collar, but he didn’t know where she lived. Since seeing each other’s faces would only irritate them both, Kim Deuk-pal hadn’t tried to learn more about Lee Mi-kyung.

“Do you know where Lee Mi-kyung lives?”

“I don’t know. I came here through someone’s introduction, and I only receive money through bank transfers, so I don’t have any separate contact…”

The woman from Seosan shook her head and trailed off. Lee Mi-kyung’s attitude of treating Song Yi-heon and his mother as complete subordinates was evident throughout their living environment. While she could come to this house and cause trouble, Song Yi-heon didn’t even know where she lived.

Feeling frustrated, Kim Deuk-pal was tempted to contact the service agencies he had employed during his gangster days to find out where Lee Mi-kyung lived and pay her back in kind, but he refrained, not wanting Song Yi-heon to have any connection with gangsters.

It was frustrating, but there was nothing he could do immediately. For now, the best course of action was to retreat for the day and contact a private security company early tomorrow morning to install new security devices. And he would need to stay at the house for a while. Realizing this, Kim Deuk-pal called out to Se-kyung.

“Hey, I’m sorry. Looks like I won’t be able to go to the study room for a while.”

Missing their study sessions together wasn’t the worst of it. What really hurt was the sense of helplessness. Trying to study alone without Choi Se-kyung’s help felt like being a duckweed drifting in a vast ocean. In the past, Kim Deuk-pal would have challenged himself with a man’s spirit, thinking he could crack even a rock with an egg if he hit it thousands of times. But after learning Se-kyung’s study methods, he realized how reckless he had been.

Seeing Kim Deuk-pal’s furrowed brow betraying his inner turmoil, Se-kyung shrugged his shoulders.

“You’re worried those men might come back, right? Then I’ll just study here.”

“Here?”

In this house? In this ransacked living room? You, who are sensitive to even the slightest sound? As Kim Deuk-pal pointed at the living room floor for confirmation, Se-kyung pointed at the same spot. For a moment, Kim Deuk-pal had to clench his lips to avoid grinning too much.

* * *

Choi Se-kyung entered the passcode for the house’s front gate. Until then, his phone had remained silent. It wasn’t that there was no surveillance; they must have contacted the doctor. There was no way Choi Myung-hyun wouldn’t have noticed that he’d called the house doctor late at night on a weekend.

Since he had been caught anyway, there was no point in sneaking in through the garage, so Se-kyung entered the passcode and went in through the front door. In the living room, Choi Myung-hyun, wearing a sleeping gown, was flipping through documents on the sofa. Having brought his work to the living room while waiting for his son’s return, the living room table was cluttered with papers. His impassive gaze was mildly obscured by thin-rimmed glasses.

Since the funeral of Se-kyung’s grandfather, they had been tacitly ignoring what had happened in Choi Myung-hyun’s study and the trip to Gangneung. Neither of them mentioned those incidents, nor did they assign blame or responsibility. Nothing had changed, but distrust and suspicion had grown like a spark catching oil.

Se-kyung entered, greeting casually as if nothing had happened.

“I’m home.”

“Ah, you’re back.”

Choi Myung-hyun had intended to just confirm his son’s return and then go to the bedroom. So he was late in raising his head, having just finished organizing the documents he had been reading. He had also let his guard down because at a glance, Se-kyung’s attire looked the same as when he had left in the morning to play soccer with his schoolmates. However, when he saw that Se-kyung’s lip was split and his cheek was swollen, he threw down the documents in anger, making the glass table tremble.

“Choi Se-kyung, why is your face like that again…!”

Se-kyung touched the medicine applied to his wound. When he had looked in the mirror at Song Yi-heon’s house, it hadn’t seemed so bad, and he thought he had done well, but apparently not in Choi Myung-hyun’s eyes.

When he had spotted the ambulance in front of Song Yi-heon’s house and saw Song Yi-heon throw down his shopping bag and rush out, Choi Se-kyung had immediately followed. He had tried to pull out the driver from the ambulance, but the man in the driver’s seat had pulled out a jackknife.

The standoff with the jackknife, its blade sharp enough to be discerned in the darkness, was a nerve-wracking time that left Se-kyung sweating.

As the man seemed to only be keeping Se-kyung at bay, implying he wouldn’t attack unless provoked, Se-kyung also refrained from recklessly charging in. Wary that the man with the jackknife might change his mind and attack, Se-kyung maintained his guard as he backed away, only rushing into the garden when he had put some distance between them.

A man carrying Song Min-seo over one shoulder was coming down the marble steps of the garden. Choi Se-kyung tried to tackle the man, aiming to grab his waist and throw him backward. However, despite carrying Song Min-seo, the large man didn’t budge easily and instead tried to shake Se-kyung off by grabbing his waist.

If Se-kyung hadn’t seen Song Yi-heon being hit, he might have been overpowered. He still didn’t know where he had found such strength. When Song Yi-heon shouted in the dark garden, even the man carrying Song Min-seo looked in that direction.

‘Song Min-seo-! Wake up! Run away! Song Min-seo!’

Seeing the man straddling Song Yi-heon and slapping his face, Se-kyung saw red. He tripped the man, barely managed to snatch Song Min-seo away, and kicked him. After kicking him in the stomach and then the groin, the bear-like large man convulsed, foaming at the mouth.

Se-kyung rushed in, pulled the man off Song Yi-heon, and threw punches. His memories of that moment, swinging his fists with expanded pupils, as if consuming the man alive in the dark, were hazy. He had lost his reason, overtaken by a boiling rage that was hard to describe.

Se-kyung didn’t bother explaining this process and these emotions. Choi Myung-hyun would find out everything by hiring people anyway, so explaining would only be a waste of time and energy. As Se-kyung just smiled silently, it was Choi Myung-hyun who grew impatient. He ordered in a stern tone.

“Stop associating with Song Yi-heon.”

In Choi Myung-hyun’s view, his son, who had obediently followed his wishes, had started to go astray and get into fights since becoming friends with Song Yi-heon. Since being in the same class as Song Yi-heon, he had started doing night studies which he never did before, forgot about curfew, and came home with a bruised cheek after sneaking out at night. Remembering Song Yi-heon trying to confirm a gangster’s death by viewing the body in the morgue, it was hard to connect the boy’s behavior to anything positive.

His son already had violent tendencies. If he got involved with Song Yi-heon, who had connections to gangsters, it might not end at just fighting but could lead to serious crimes.

“Father.”

However, Se-kyung laughed lightly, as if mocking his father’s concerns. His father was seriously mistaken. Se-kyung had endured the oppression and surveillance, not that he had been completely immobilized by it. Choi Myung-hyun had mistaken Se-kyung’s silence, born from not wanting to disappoint his father, for his own victory.

Given the right opportunity, Se-kyung could easily break through the surveillance network.

“I told you before. Don’t interfere with him. If you keep that promise, I’ll live as you wish.”

His once-obedient son’s defiance caused a vein to bulge on Choi Myung-hyun’s forehead.

“Where did you learn such insolence…!”

But this time, Se-kyung stared back at the shouting Choi Myung-hyun impassively. When it came to Song Yi-heon, Se-kyung was not the same as before. Moreover, Choi Se-kyung was no longer at an age where he needed his parents’ permission to choose his friends.

“I’m going up.”

Although Choi Myung-hyun hadn’t given permission, Se-kyung climbed the stairs.

“Ah-“

Halfway up the stairs, Se-kyung let out a short exclamation and looked down at Choi Myung-hyun.

“Could you call the school and tell them not to make a fuss about the injury on my face?”

There was a teacher who would seize any opportunity to criticize Choi Se-kyung, who was otherwise faultless, whenever he showed any sign of misbehavior. In the past, he would have endured it, but since this injury was related to Song Yi-heon, there was nothing to gain from having it pried into.

Suppressing his anger, Choi Myung-hyun called out to his son.

“Choi Se-kyung, come down. Let’s talk.”

“As long as it doesn’t involve Song Yi-heon, I’ll follow your wishes, Father. Please.”

Yet, Se-kyung was doubtful. What was the point of talking in a relationship built on surveillance and being surveilled? He didn’t want to waste time pretending to be the obedient son when he could just keep playing the part without the unnecessary hassle.

“Then, good night.”

Despite the polite farewell directed at Choi Myung-hyun, Se-kyung showed no emotion.

Once inside his room, Se-kyung locked the door and opened his desk drawer. Beneath the neatly organized contents, he pulled out a stack of notebooks, revealing a photograph of Song Yiheon taken from Myung-hyun’s study and a thin, transparent plastic bag. Inside the bag were strands of hair, separated into distinct groups.

The short brown hair belonged to the fake Song Yiheon, whom Se-kyung had confronted before, and the longer white hair was from Song Yiheon’s biological father, whom he had met at the funeral.

When he first obtained the hair by confronting the fake Song Yi-heon about the whereabouts of the original Song Yi-heon, Se-kyung hadn’t expected things to turn out like this. There was nothing to compare it to without the genetic information of the original Song Yi-heon. He had even checked the coat he had lent to Song Yi-heon on a rainy day, but the washed coat only smelled of dry fibers and didn’t yield a single strand of hair.

Yet he couldn’t throw away these seemingly useless hairs, hoping they might provide some clue. At the time, Choi Se-kyung had been feverishly searching for Song Yi-heon, trying to find out anything related to him. Even if it wasn’t the real Song Yi-heon, having the hair of someone pretending to be Song Yi-heon helped fill the void.

Staring at the short brown hair, Se-kyung took out a carefully folded tissue from his pocket. Inside were Song Min-seo’s long, curly brown hair. He picked up the long hairs and placed them together in the transparent bag.

The hair of the person pretending to be Song Yi-heon and Song Yi-heon’s biological parents were gathered together. Se-kyung’s eyes darkened as he looked at the hair strands, each with different characteristics.

Choi Se-kyung listed reasons why he should conduct a DNA test.

…There were none. It was just an impulse. He simply wanted to test the DNA of these three closely related people now that their genetic material was gathered. The intense desire he had felt at the beginning of the semester to conduct a DNA test when he suspected the fake Song Yi-heon still lingered.

On the other hand, he tried to list reasons not to get a DNA test.

First, Choi Se-kyung doesn’t know how to perform a DNA test. However, this issue could be easily resolved with enough money and time.

Second, there was the issue of Choi Myung-hyun’s surveillance. But he was no longer afraid of that. Even if Myung-hyun saw him as a strange person, Se-kyung didn’t care anymore.

Third, the fake Song Yi-heon would dislike it. Gathering hair without permission and digging into his past—he was bound to be resented. Remembering the moment when those scornful eyes were directed at him, Se-kyung’s fingers turned cold, and all his enthusiasm and curiosity vanished.

He rubbed his dry face, his expression worn and brittle.

Anyway, the original Song Yi-heon and the fake Song Yi-heon are different people. Conducting a DNA test to stir up past events would be futile and only earn the fake Song Yi-heon’s hatred. He didn’t want to be hated by the fake Song Yi-heon for doing something unnecessary.

After a long silence, Se-kyung eventually put the bag containing the hair strands back and closed the drawer.