“Hey, Hyung. Jung Gi Hyung. Seung Gi Hyung. How’s it going?”

It’s a Friday evening. Sung Jae and Chan Yeol decided to grab dinner at the Midnight Blue after work. It was no surprise for them to run into their boss and his best friends there chatting at the bar counter, considering one of them was the restaurant owner.

Seung Gi smiled at them while Dong Wook merely nodded. The atmosphere seemed a little sour. Boy, something’s up. Again.

“Hey. I don’t see you guys much lately. Been busy?” Jung Gi asked, trying to lighten up the atmosphere.

“A little. Henry brought flu into the office. And now a few of our guys are on sick leaves. The rest of us gotta take on their jobs for the time being.” Chan Yeol explained.

“Hey, Hyung, isn’t that Ha In-shi among that group of people at that long table?” Sung Jae exclaimed as he noticed Ha In with her friends.

“Oh boy.” Jung Gi could hear Seung Gi murmured to himself. He himself sighed because knowing Sung Jae, he wouldn’t stop there.

“And wait a minute, Hyung! What’re you doing here while some foreigner’s snuggling up to her over there?”

Dong Wook was seething at this point, turning away from the sight of Ha In being wrapped in that guy’s arms as he supposedly taught her how to use a professional camera.

“Uh…way to rub salt on a jealous man’s wound, Sung Jae.” Jung Gi said as Chan Yeol smacked his friend upside the head to tell him to shut up.

“Look! He doesn’t bother rejecting that he’s jealous anymore.” Seung Gi added lazily.

That was true. There was no point denying when Dong Wook knew he was covered in rage and jealousy. If only he could fly there and peel off those sticky arms from Ha In. What’s even more frustrating was the fact that the girl in question was being her friendly self, completely oblivious of her surroundings.

“Hi, Dong Wook-shi.” Yeong Ji, who was on her way back from the rest room stopped by to say hi. “I hope we haven’t been too noisy with our celebration. We just had our finals, you see. So we gathered up to celebrate the end of term.”

“Oh, no. Don’t worry about that.” It was a totally different thing that bothered him, after all.

“Umm, I’m asking out of curiosity, but are all foreigners touchy feely like that?” Sung Jae couldn’t help asking as he glanced at Ha In and her foreigner friend. That earned him an elbow to the stomach from Chan Yeol, but still, he expected an answer. His Hyung and Ha In were getting along so well. Everybody at work knew about her. Those two were practically dating whether or not they realized it.

“Oh, Jason? Nah, it’s just him. He’s always like that around Ha In.”

So he IS onto her, Dong Wook thought, now seeing red.

“Hey, guys! What ya talking about?”

But right before there could be any casualty from Dong Wook’s raging jealousy, here came the heavenly voice that calmed the storm and saved the universe.

Standing right there in front of them was Go Ha In, smiling and looking eager to join in their conversations.

Dong Wook took a deep breath. She was right here. Away from that guy. All was well.

“We were talking about you.” Seung Gi smiled as he steered her away from the current situation.

“Really? What, what?” Now she’s hooked. Dong Wook could only smile seeing how excited she was to be surrounded by friends.

They were chatting for a long while, and Dong Wook didn’t even bother reminding the girls that they came with a bunch of friends who were now sitting a few tables away. Well, he figured they could talk among themselves. It wasn’t as if it was Ha In’s party or anything.

RING!!!!

“Oh, hey! It’s Jin Hyuk.” Seeing the name on the screen, Ha In gave the biggest smile anyone’s seen all evening. She went outside to take the call, looking happier than ever.

Seeing as Ha In was busy with her phone call, Dong Wook took Yeong Ji aside from his friends, looking all serious.

“Umm, Yeong Ji-shi. There’s something bothering me for a while now, and I was hoping you could clear it up for me.”

“Ok. Shoot.”

“I’ve kinda noticed Ha In seems to be a little uncomfortable being alone for an extended period of time. I wonder why that is?”

He somehow quoted and unquoted the word uncomfortable and Yeong Ji nodded as she knew exactly what he was talking about.

“Oh. So you’ve noticed. Well, of course, you have.” Yeong Ji sighed. Her expression solemnly changed. “You see, something traumatizing happened to Ha In in the past. And even though she’s all good now on a regular day, she really can’t be alone for too long. That’s the reason why her family doesn’t want her to come to Seoul all by herself.”

“What exactly happened?”

“It was back in Junior High. I was still living in Busan then and going to the same school as Ha In. So I remembered it quite clearly.” Yeong Ji took a deep breath before she continued.

“It started with this girl who just started high school. She was smart and talented. But she never had a single friend as she was the subject of envy of all other students. Everyday she was the victim of bullies. The jokes, and the pranks got worse each day, but nobody seemed to take it seriously enough to stand up for her. And one day, the pranks got out of hand, an accident happened, and she was killed.

All that happened at the other side of the town, and we didn’t have any idea about it. After all, junior high schoolers like us had our own share of troubles to worry about. Especially Ha In who, being a very smart kid, had also been picked on by some students. Little did we expect, though, was that she was kidnapped a year after the high school girl incident. She was 13 then.”

“She was kidnapped?” Dong Wook asked as if to confirm what he’s been hearing. “Is it somehow related to the dead girl?”

“Very much. At first, we had no clue whatsoever. The kidnapper didn’t demand anything. They did a very clean job, there was no way to trace back to them. We didn’t even realize she was actually missing until she didn’t come home for a day. Even the police had no clue where to start looking, so we were just blindly searching. To us, she just disappeared. Just like that. For a month.”

“For a month??” Dong Wook fought to keep his voice down. For a month? What could the young Ha In possibly have been going through? He tried to calm down so he could ask the next question. “Then? How did you find her?”

Yeong Ji looked down. She was silent for a while. Whatever it was, Dong Wook wasn’t sure he could stomach it.

“That’s the thing. We didn’t find her.” Dong Wook felt liked he’d swallowed the biggest lump in his throat, it hurt. “She made it so that somebody found her. Dead or alive.”

“Wh-what?”

“There was a fire. From an abandoned house north east of the town. Nobody would have even bothered with it if it weren’t close to the forest. The locals put out the fire before it could burn half of the house. And that was where they found her. In the basement. Chained to a pillar.”

“She torched the house.” Dong Wook breathed out his conclusion, to which Yeong Ji nodded as a confirmation. He couldn’t imagine how desperate Ha In might have felt for her to set fire that would most likely burn herself in it.

“As it turned out, the kidnapper was a local hospital nurse. And she was the mother of the dead girl. She’d been resentful of everything and everyone since the death of her daughter. But she’d been really clever about it so that she could continue to work and nobody suspected anything about her. It was about half a year after the incident that she caught wind of a girl who was in the same situation as her daughter.”

“Ha In”

“Yes, and she claimed that she hid Ha In away to protect her from those evil people.” Yeong Ji sighed for the nth time that evening before she continued. “During that one month, I don’t know what that woman had told Ha In, but I could never forget that look in her eyes when we first got her back. Her eyes were dead and soulless. Her body covered in wounds and scars. And the first thing she said after seeing our faces was ‘you never found me’ with the coldest and most emotionless tone I’ve ever heard in my life, it gave us chills and guilt at the same time. That was all everyone heard her s