Chapter 12.1

Instead of speaking, Woo-hyun bent her thumb backwards. Crack. Her finger flexed in a strange way, making a sound. Woo-hyun looked at that finger indifferently.

“If I go further, it will break the bone.”

“Aaaah!”

“I know it well because I’ve seen it a lot.”

“Agh!”

“So, shut your mouth. If you don’t want to live the rest of your life with one broken finger.”

Even after being on the verge of breaking a human finger, there was no significant change in Woo-hyun. The old lady’s expression changed in an instant as it looked like proof that he could do more than this at any time in that calmness.

She knew this because she met thugs due to using private loans. They did exactly this kind of thing. No, it was even more terrifying than that. Her lips trembled.

Recognizing danger, humans turn into beasts. It was an instinct sharper than reason, and the old lady also instinctively recognized the situation.

That he was not a person she could scream at.

He was a person who knew how to break people’s fingers without much effort. The indifferent eyes looking down at her were cold. Her body trembled in front of a face that proved that he doesn’t feel guilty for breaking a single human finger.

“P-please, spare me.”

“I know what you want from Kim Yoo-hwa.”

Despite the old lady begging, Woo-hyun only said what he had to say in a quiet voice.

“Since she’s the murderer’s daughter, perhaps you entrusted it to her just in case.”

“…”

“Would she be able to kill an elderly person? If not, maybe if you make a mistake and she dies, you can dump it all on her.”

Because Woo-hyun spoke in a quiet voice, as he pinpointed the words one by one, a gasp escaped from the woman’s lips. When all the secrets she had been firmly hiding were revealed, the woman’s face turned white.

She wondered if she should deny it, but the man had an expression as if he knew everything already. Like a person who had met the monster inside her.

“You must have wanted to get rid of the burden without feeling guilty through an accident. That’s why you entrusted it to her, but, contrary to what you thought, Kim Yoo-hwa is quite good with the elderly, isn’t she?”

“… Ugh.”

“The elderly would have gotten healthier rather than dying. It must have been getting farther away from what you wanted.”

On the way in, Woo-hyun heard what the old lady was saying.

She was asking why she didn’t do what she was entrusted with.

What Woo-hyun had observed so far was that Yoo-hwa took care of the elderly woman with utmost sincerity, for more than ten times the amount of money she received. There was no way the old lady didn’t know that. Still, seeing that she was making a fuss as if her anger could not be relieved, it meant that there was something else she wanted.

Woo-hyun quickly figured it out. He had seen hundreds of demons in a human disguise. It didn’t matter to him to tell them apart.

“P-please, spare me…”

The woman begged for her life. Still, he didn’t feel like her pride was hurt. It was instinct. A small instinct to live, without knowing the reason.

Looking down at the broken face of someone who was begging for their life despite wanting someone else to die without any sense of guilt, Woo-hyun spoke in a low voice.

“Then do as I tell you.”

He did not know that he would be saying such an old-fashioned line here.

***

She dreamed all night. She was in numerous places, regardless of the passage of time. She was standing in the middle of the people surrounding her, taking a step backwards; she was in front of her boss, asking her to leave without even making eye contact with her; and she had to be in a place where she listened to her middle school friend, who reluctantly answered the call she had given her dozens of times after mustering up the courage.

“I’m sorry… I am going to study abroad. So… I think it will be difficult to contact you now. You know. There is quite a time difference between the US and Korea. But I’ll call you from time to time. I’m sorry for saying this.”

Her friend’s acting was awkward. She met her friend who was going to study abroad again, one month later, at a convenience store. Yoo-hwa was working, and her friend belatedly found her and shrieked.

Although her friend, who was stuttering as if she really didn’t expect to run into her, said, ‘My study abroad has been postponed!’, she soon confessed that in reality, her parents didn’t want her to meet her.

It was understandable. She was a kind child who had a lot of friends and was loved and lived in an ordinary family. She would have a lot of friends even if it wasn’t her, and she wouldn’t have to deal with her bad luck.

Although she knew this, Yoo-hwa did not say anything. It was her feeble revenge for a friend that had hurt her twice by lying to her.

If she had been honest from the beginning, she would have been hurt once.

Yoo-hwa woke up with a headache and pushed the door, stepping out. On days like this, it was better to move around busily.

She stepped out to do the cleaning she didn’t need to do once again, and the laundry that she didn’t need right now. She hung underwear and small clothes in her room and had to hang the heavy and large clothes outside. If she hung the thick winter clothes inside the small room, they would smell bad.