56 – Haerin Kang (56)
Haerin Kang (56)
The winter rain was very long.
I liked to be sentimental while watching the rain fall, but it was terribly, terribly long.
And even when the rain stopped.
Nothing got better.
Rather, it was for the worse.
Clear drops of water falling through the branches.
It is peaceful to see the sun peeking out through the clouds, and the patient, his family, and acquaintances sitting on a bench or chatting while taking a walk, just like before it rained.
Daily life is recovering daily life.
However, the older sister was still missing.
When an outsourcing order came in that could be handled simply with a laptop, my older sister deliberately immersed herself next to me.
she wasn’t with me
“……..”
I stared nervously at my phone.
There was no contact from the categorical detective.
Detective Park Seong-gang, who decided to help, saying it was ‘personal interest’, also had no news.
As close as my older sister is, the categorical detective is as anxious as I am and is doing her best.
I know better than anyone else that Detective Park Seong-gang has intuition as good as any other great detective.
Still, I was angry with them.
They didn’t do anything wrong.
It must have been more my fault that I told Kang Hae-rin that I would convey my intentions and that my sister disappeared.
If I don’t blame them, it’ll be my fault.
that was hard to bear
I gave strength to my right hand.
“…….”
It didn’t work out.
Rather, I only heard a tingling pain.
Nothing happens.
It was a shame that I was lying in bed like this when my sister was missing.
After handing over Ban Yi-jae to the detectives, I thought I could live a quiet, peaceful life with Kang Hae-rin.
Heaven fell to hell in a matter of days.
Without Ban Yi-jae, detective Seong-gang Park would not suspect Kang Hae-rin, and as far as I know, other characters, such as Park Sang-woo, Jung Beom-sik, and Jang Hye-ok, do not show any signs of appearing.
I also wrote a novel to prevent materialization, and I defeated all the people who were needlessly curious about Kang Hae-rin.
I did the best I could
Still, things went awry.
‘What’s the matter?’
I clenched my left hand, which was still intact.
When he collided with Banyijae, he misplaced his hand and sprained his bones, but if he didn’t do that, he couldn’t hold back his anger.
‘Why is that? Kang Haerin, why the hell?’
I didn’t tell the detectives, but there must be Kang Hae-rin in the background of my sister’s mysterious disappearance.
I was almost certain
This is because there is no way to disappear without a trace unless it is abducted by aliens.
As far as I know, my older sister had never done anything worth wanting to anyone, and there was no way that a kidnapping would happen so suddenly and so unexpectedly.
If you want to extort money from your sister, you have to contact me, but I’m a less-than-average college student.
What can you rip out of me like this?
I wouldn’t care about my father or my sister’s biological mother.
‘… It’s highly likely that Haerin did that.’
I was conflict after conflict.
Before she went missing, my older sister also told me to separate Kang Hae-rin from the characters in the novel, and I also regretted treating her as a murderer.
But how can I not doubt it?
It happened like this.
The direction where the sister disappeared was Kang Hae-rin’s house.
Even if he conceded 100 times, he really shouldn’t have ignored the possibility that Kang Hae-rin might have harmed his sister.
Above all, Kang Hae-rin’s contact itself was cut off.
Three days have passed since my sister disappeared, and I sent dozens of phone calls and text messages to Kang Hae-rin that evening, but it has been three days since I have not received an answer.
In other words, this was not an unconditional suspicion or prejudice from before, but a reasonable and grounded guess.
“…love without hate is not love. Hate is another word for love, and another word for love is hate.”
I turned my head in the direction the voice came from.
“How are you, old man? It’s the best sentence I’ve ever decided on.”
Hyejeong Kim.
Ban Lee-jae’s ex-girlfriend and a victim of dating violence.
He was the one who provided Kang Hae-rin and me with the audio recording of the call so that he could be arrested.
Park Se-young, who visited with Baek Yu-ram the day before yesterday, said that he wanted to visit Kim Hye-jeong in the hospital.
It came as part of those words.
Unlike when I saw her before the incident, she had light brown, curly bobbed hair. She was looking at her phone, and when she smiled, her teeth were slightly exposed.
It’s not obvious, but you can see it if you look closely.
Also, when I smile, I show a little bit of my gums.
The face is cute and has a slightly chubby body shape.
Even though it was cold, she had come wearing a thigh-baring skirt and was clinging right next to her.
News articles related to her ex-boyfriend continue to be reported every day, but she seems to be unconcerned.
Well, from the time she provided the audio file, she criticized Ban Yi-jae as ‘garbage’, but she didn’t show any signs of distress.
I wonder if I’ve already seen everything I’ve seen and don’t dwell on it.
so much that I don’t even want to think about it.
I thought it was better to be angry than to blame myself, so I didn’t think too complicatedly.
“… Love is desire, and desire is desire for destruction. To want to make the other person’s everything mine is to degrade the other person to be mine.”
Hyejeong Kim was reading something.
“… excuse me.”
Seeing Kim Hye-jung reciting in a clear voice, I couldn’t stand it and hung up.
“What are you reading now? 『Meditation』? Or is it a self-development book that summarizes the quotes of Schopenhauer or Nietzsche?”
“Puhahahahaha.”
To be honest, it was hard to listen, so I said it in a roundabout way, but Kim Hye-jung burst into laughter.
Like I told a funny joke.
“Senpai, you are a surprisingly humorous man.”
“… I didn’t do anything. And I’m not funny.”
“No, senpai is fun even if he stays still.”
“……”
“Because you have a funny face.”
Kim Hye-jeong bursts into laughter.
“ha…”
I rolled over on the bed and wiped my face.
‘f*ck.’
The curse was about to come out.
It’s fun even when I’m still.
You mean it looks funny?
I heard a lot of things like that when I was in high school.
In middle school, to be precise, in the first year of high school, until I got help from my older sister and a categorical detective.
Mainly if you did a lot of physical beatings or errands.
After that, I suffered a lot of verbal abuse.
‘Hey, Lee Dong-min, look at your forehead.’
Representatively, Kim Hye-eun.
In the past, people like Seo In-woo and Nam Jae-chan used me as a punching bag or harassed me by stabbing me with a sharpie, but after that, I was beaten by female Iljins like Kim Hye-eun.
‘Puha, you bastard, look at your frightened expression.’
‘Hey, do you want to touch my sister’s breasts?’
‘Touch. don’t you touch Do you want to search? Touch it, quickly.’
‘Kyaaah, you bastard, I really touched you, crazy bastard. You touched my heart, so give me 1,000 won, okay?’
‘Hey, would you like to touch my butt too?’
‘Crazy b*tch, stop it, kid, it’s my toy-‘
‘Open your legs. i want to sit here.’
It was a tactic of making unwanted skinship and then using that as an excuse to extort money.
Most of those scenes were filmed.
Whenever I made an excuse that I had no money or refused an order, he threatened me again with the video or photo.
‘Hey, if you don’t do what you’re told, I’ll sue you?’
Later, when I saw my video going around to the school staff around me, I even felt the urge to commit suicide.
He slapped his face until he blushed, and then mocked him for being petty when he cried.
‘Me, kid, why is crying so… ugly?’
‘Puhahahaha, crazy b*tch, are you a pervert?’
Because of that, I was very sensitive to such words.
I thought I was saying that because I was ugly, because I looked ugly, because I looked funny.
“senior?”
Kim Hye-jeong pushed her face closer to me.
Dropping my gaze toward my knees, I was downcast, but I flinched back in surprise at Hye-jung Kim’s white, cheeky face, who came too close.
“Are you offended by my words, by any chance?”
“Hyejeong.”
At that time, Park Se-young grabbed Kim Hye-jung’s shoulder.
“Stop it now. Senior, you are tired.”
“Chi, Seyoung, can you be the manager? Exclusive desire comes, you too. hahahaha, sorry, senior?”
“……..”
Hyejeong Kim said while packing her bag.
“It’s getting late, so I’ll just go. Is this Hyejeong a woman who knows how to step back when she steps down?”
Hyejeong Kim winking.
However, unlike Park Se-young’s oddly shy wink, it’s a confident wink.
Even though it’s the same action, the feeling is completely different.
“… What I read earlier was a phrase from 『Kang Hae-rin’s Murder Diary』, don’t you remember that far?”
Turning around, she said.
I paused.
Why does Kim Hye-jeong know 『Journal』?
“uh? Senior, did you react now? right? You stayed blank the whole time I was there.”
“… How do you know, do you read web novels?”
“Oh, yes, yes. Jiyoung and Yoona are right. You said you like web novels. And you heard that you are a huge fan of 『Kang Hae-rin’s Murder Diary』? I did some research.”
“No, how do you know?”
I grabbed the arm of Kim Hye-jeong, who was still twitching and couldn’t grasp the atmosphere, and I pressed on.
“… yes?”
“This is a novel that has gone down. How do you know?”
I shouted.
I didn’t want to hear anything about the 『Journal』.
Because that was the starting point of all of this.
“… ah…”
Kim Hye-jung was embarrassed and looked at Park Se-young.
As I told her, I, the writer of 『Journal』, stopped signing the contract and took down all articles on the platform.
There’s no way it’s being distributed anywhere.
The novels I read ever since Kim Hye-jung came to the hospital were none other than sentences from my novels.
I felt a sense of déjà vu at some parts, but I didn’t remember all the sentences, and I couldn’t afford to be immersed in memories when my sister disappeared.
so i didn’t understand
If I, as a writer, were like this, there was no way that Kim Hye-jung, who was not a fan of web novels, could remember the contents sentence by sentence.
It was too late to find out.
Kim Hye-jeong glanced at the arm I was holding on to, then continued to stutter with a slightly reddened face.
“Seo, senior said he likes that novel, so I thought it would be nice to get to know him a bit… yo. Among the lines monologued by the character Kang Hae-rin…”
“You didn’t ask for that. How did you know?”
I asked fiercely again.
“…Yoona and Jiyoung showed it to me, so I typed it myself. I had it as a print…”
“……”
I looked at Park Se-young.
As if being asked for an answer, she said.
“… Ah, while the possessors were active, they typed out some of the beginning for research purposes. It couldn’t have been for any other reason. The quantity is all there is to it. About 15 episodes in the beginning… I guess?”
The first 15 screens are free, so there is no loss in sales, but it was not such a problem.
The fact that I typed it out one by one was surprising, but it also felt terrifying to me.
If so, it means that the amount of Lee Jae is also included in the prints of Hwang Ji-young and Kim Yun-ah.
Even if memory distortion occurs, if there is evidence, which side will you believe?
Is it his head that remembers Ban Lee Jae as ‘Ban Lee Hyun’, or is it the contents of a print he recorded a long time ago?
Could the two of them figure something out?
Seeing that he hasn’t said much so far, he doesn’t seem to be able to relate to what’s happening in real life.
“… Seo, senpai, that arm hurts… You can hold it if you want, but if you relax a little…”
Hyejeong Kim said with an awkward smile.
I let go of my hand holding her arm.
“… sorry.”
“yes? Oh, no, just a little more… you can hold on…”
I was thinking about what to do next, covering my face, when the phone on my thigh vibrated.
It was a categorical detective.
“Yes, detective.”
I got a quick call.
“What about your sister? did you find it?”
[Ah, that’s… Haa… I haven’t found it yet.]
“yes…”
[I am so sorry. Dongminah. I’m doing my best, but where the hell did this guy go… don’t worry. Nothing will happen.]
The categorical detective also sighed deeply as if frustrated.
He was a person who cared for his sister as much as I did, so I couldn’t whine as I felt.
Besides, he suffered a serious thigh injury when he bumped into Ban Yi-jae.
Detective Park Seong-gang seems to be helping, but it will be difficult to actively move.
Thank you for even doing this.
He must have said that he thought of his sister that much.
“no.”
I said.
“are you okay. do your best. I don’t think anything… will happen to my sister…”
[By the way. Dongminah, I kept thinking about whether I should tell you this…]
His voice faded.
[Have you ever said that your sister is going on a trip?]
“… yes?”
I asked an unexpected question.
“Is it a trip?”
[… I didn’t say it because I was worried, but I just heard from Detective Park. I wonder if I went on a trip… There is no record of my departure, but I could go somewhere…]
I couldn’t hear the categorical detective’s words well.
Of course, there was no way my sister had gone on a trip.
Most of all, since she was my older sister who said that I was important in her life, there is no possibility of her leaving the country without even a hint of leaving me here.
However, the stuff that was there was a problem.
Unless it’s your sister-
My thought stream changed quickly.
‘…if Kang Hae-rin stopped by there…’
I decided to live with Kang Hae-rin and remembered the conversation we had on moving day while packing my sister and I.
‘Is this it? That troublesome laptop?’
My sister asked me while she was tidying up the boxes.
Wine red laptop.
With the thing that summoned Kang Hae-rin in her arms.
Although it didn’t work anymore, I was reluctant to take it to Kang Hae-rin’s house, so I decided to leave it with my sister.
A terrifying thought came to my mind for a moment.
‘What if Haerin Kang got it?’
I felt urgent.
‘… but Haerin Kang doesn’t know what that is?’
Recalling the past, she saw the laptop turned on and said ‘it’s broken’.
So he gave me a laptop as a gift.
Once secured, it must be secured.
But detectives are in trouble.
The possibility of it falling into the hands of people who shouldn’t know about Hae-Rin Kang, Detective Seong-Kang Park, who is full of the possibility of getting entangled with Hae-Rin Kang in the original work, had to be avoided.
I looked at Kim Hye-jeong.
With a slightly flushed expression, she seemed like she would listen to anything I said, but I chose Park Se-young.
“…Seyoung, can I ask you a favor?”
#
The hospital room was quiet.
Since she was an older sister who often went to bed, her loneliness became darker at night.
“… sister.”
I tried to fall asleep while looking out the window, which was getting darker than the inside of the hospital room.
Then, the phone vibrated.
“… hello?”
[self.]
It was strong.
It was a bright voice that made the wait colorless.
“Haerin, where are you?”
I jumped up and asked.
“Where are you!”
There was no answer on the phone for a while.
Instead, it’s a nonsense word.
[… Rather, honey, isn’t it okay?]
“… what?”
[We must keep our promise.]
“What promise.”
[You promised. Ban Lee-jae, if you get rid of it, marry me and live happily for the rest of your life. We will have as many children as we want, and we will be together forever…]
A nervous laugh escaped her.
[Didn’t you forget?]