TE 1

Chapter 1: Janus

The king has brought me into his chambers.

Draw me in and we will run after thee;

Let us be glad and rejoice in thee;

Let us remember thy love more than wine.

It is fitting that the maidens should love thee.

— Song of Solomon 1:4

Seo-ha had once heard the moans of a woman barely five years older than herself.

The woman who played the role of mistress of the house—though legally unrelated to Seo-ha—was someone she awkwardly called “Auntie” for lack of a better term. Her theatrical moans seemed deliberately performative, as if designed to boost the masculine pride of Seo-ha’s aging father.

Though Seo-ha had lived a life deliberately distant from men, never experiencing normal romance, she was adult enough to understand what those sounds meant.

At the time, listening to those exaggerated, nasal cries, she had only one thought:

Could sex really be that good?

The sight of Park Hee-jung writhing atop the old man’s body made Seo-ha’s stomach turn, as if watching someone consume spoiled food.

Her father wasn’t any more pleasing to look at either. The sight of a sixty-year-old man lusting after a woman young enough to be his daughter’s sister triggered an involuntary gag reflex.

After accidentally witnessing that scene through the partially open door, Seo-ha never ventured downstairs during the late hours. She had no desire to inadvertently spy on her father’s intimacies with that woman again, nor hear those sounds.

What Seo-ha never anticipated was that she would hear Park Hee-jung’s passionate cries again—not at night, but in broad daylight, and not at home but elsewhere.

She should have ignored it and walked away, pretending she hadn’t heard.

But she couldn’t—because these sounds were different from those, she’d heard years ago.

This wasn’t the dead of night, and the source wasn’t their home.

The cries, almost like screams, emanated shamelessly from the nursery of the newly renovated church.

( Note: 자모실 = nursery or space where parents and infants worship together inside the church. It is a space use for worship if the parents are having a hard time attending worship)

She should walk away.

Seeing the two sweaty bodies entwined through the door crack, Seo-ha knew she should leave immediately. That would be the proper thing to do.

Especially upon seeing the smooth, firm back of the muscular young man lifting Park Hee-jung’s body—her father’s live-in girlfriend in the arms of another man.

In simple terms, she had inadvertently stumbled upon her father’s lover’s infidelity.

“Ah! Oh! Mmm—!”

But Park Hee-jung’s moans, so different from before, rooted Seo-ha’s feet to the ground.

Though Seo-ha had never experienced sexual pleasure herself, she instinctively recognized the difference. These weren’t the forced sounds Park Hee-jung made with her father.

These were genuine responses to stimulation that couldn’t be contained, making her whole-body shudder.

The visually provocative movement of the two bodies made Seo-ha forget she should leave. Park Hee-jung’s body, lifted in the man’s embrace, rocked up and down, his waist arching deeply with each motion. His smooth buttocks flexed with every thrust. Seo-ha caught herself unconsciously tracing the young stranger’s naked form with her eyes and bit her lower lip hard.

“T-Tae-beom!”

Park Hee-jung raked the man’s back with her bright red, pointed fingernails. The man let out an animalistic grunt—whether from pain or pleasure was unclear—and changed positions, laying her on the bare floor.

Tae-beom, Tae-beom, Tae-beom…

As Seo-ha mindlessly repeated the name that seemed both familiar and strange, she suddenly felt a chill at her temples.

Looking up from the entwined naked bodies, she understood why.

A cold gaze had fixed not on the woman pressed against him, but on the spectator.

It was a trap.

Those eyes, like a snare that froze its prey in place the moment they met, bound Seo-ha with their intense gaze as he thrust deeply.

‘I’ve been caught.’

Her feet, frozen more from fear than embarrassment, stumbled backward.

Her heel caught on a tool the workers must have forgotten during cleanup. Though she quickly covered her mouth, she couldn’t muffle the sound of her foot hitting the object.

“Th-there’s a sound! I heard something…!”

Just as Park Hee-jung tried to turn her head to look—

“It’s nothing.”

For the first time, the man spoke actual words instead of deep groans, covering her eyes.

His gaze remained fixed on Seo-ha as he increased his pace to prevent the woman from speaking further. Following the sweat droplets hanging from his chin led to the gentle curve of his lips, which particularly caught her attention.

“Ahh! Wh-what… mm! We should check…”

Park Hee-jung, not completely lost to carnal pleasure, kept insisting they investigate.

In this embarrassing, frightening, and uncertain situation, one thing was clear: the man had no intention of revealing to Park Hee-jung that Seo-ha had witnessed their dirty deed.

That was enough.

As long as that woman, whom she had to face daily at home, hadn’t caught her, it was fine.

Seo-ha turned to flee, trying to muffle her footsteps.

“A cat.”

The man’s crimson lie followed her retreating back.

“Just a cat that wandered in.”

Like his touch that had caressed Park Hee-jung, his voice that had protected Seo-ha seemed to stroke her ears.

That sensation haunted her for quite some time.

Even after she fled the church and reached home.

For a very long time indeed.

***

“Incompetent bastards!”

The rectangular table shook, making the glass plates rattle. The force behind the fist of Seo-ha’s father, Moon Seok-ho, must have been considerable.

Like the table in Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Last Supper,” this one served multiple purposes. It was used for delivering special prayers to female devotees chosen by Moon Seok-ho, and when Seo-ha was very young, she had used it for chemistry experiments at home.

And of course, it served as a punching surface for when Moon Seok-ho lost his temper, as he had just now.

While Seo-ha was accustomed to her father’s outbursts, Park Hee-jung and her ten-year-old half-brother were not.

Moon Seo-chan fidgeted with his fork, ignoring his favorite side dishes. Though he was Seo-ha’s half-brother, he wasn’t Park Hee-jung’s biological son either—like Seo-ha, he had been born to one of the church’s female devotees.

Although their father doted on Seo-chan as his successor, Seo-ha knew well that when business troubles arose, he would lash out at anyone who irritated him, regardless of who they were.

He might cherish a wife young enough to be his daughter and play the role of a doting father to his late-born son when the mood struck him, but he was a man who considered himself above all else.

“When I stuffed money up the asses of those pig cops—their commissioner, their chief—they were happy to take it! But now they can’t even handle one measly rookie and create this mess?”

Even Park Hee-jung, who usually knew how to soothe his temper, could do nothing when their father was this angry.

Seo-ha glanced at Park Hee-jung, who was awkwardly smiling and trying to read the situation to improve her husband’s mood.

“D-darling… what could that rookie possibly do…”

Those fingernails, now painted black with cubic zirconia instead of bright red…

“So, maybe you could calm down now…”

Those red lips, tightly closed in fear…

Everything about Park Hee-jung reminded Seo-ha of the scene at the church. Or more precisely, not of Park Hee-jung herself, but of the man who had embraced her.

Or perhaps of the act of adultery itself.

Was it because the scene had been so shocking to Seo-ha, who had only known such things in theory? She simply couldn’t forget it.

“You should just enjoy spending the money I give you and look pretty. You don’t know when to step in and when to stay out. This is why young women are so—tsk…”

Even Park Hee-jung, whom he usually protected as if she might blow away in the wind, wasn’t spared his fury now that he was in such a state.

It was understandable.

How much money had he poured into the police force, now more commonly known as “pigs”? Of course, even in such a corrupt organization, there were bound to be some uncorrupted, righteous individuals.

After dealing with a particularly troublesome team leader, as her father put it, a young detective under him refused to let go and kept digging.

Seo-ha knew what would happen to this young detective whose face she’d never seen.

“Kill him.”

He would meet his end.

Just like all those who had maintained their integrity and fulfilled their duty in these murky waters before him.