chapter thirteen (*edited 2021)

Matthew didn’t want Somin to be alarmed, so he tried to call her before he headed back. She didn’t answer her cell phone even after he tried twice, but before he tried again he realized that she was probably sleeping. She was tired most of the time after all, and he didn’t want to wake her up by calling when he was going to do that by going home anyway.

Since it was in the evening, the traffic was higher, as people with typical full-time jobs returned home. To avoid the intersection that, despite being on the shortest route home, was the busiest at that hour, Matthew took the roundabout way, which was longer but had less traffic. Unfortunately, he forgot that there was construction happening on that route, and most of the lanes were closed off; by the time he remembered this, it was too late to change plans, and he was stuck on that road.

He tried calling the home phone, just for good measure, but no one answered. She must have been really tired.

Matthew slowly opened the apartment door, careful to make as little noise as possible as he closed the door behind him and took off his shoes. He caught a glimpse of the blankets on the sofa, and a small, familiar figure huddled into the corner, her brown hair sticking out of the blanket. He smiled, glad he didn’t wake her up with his calls.

He packed his laptop and the case files into his bag, and then remembered the coffee he had brought with him. He quietly walked to the living room and set it down on the coffee table in front of the sofa. Though he thought of waking Somin up, he finally decided against it; she looked peaceful as she slept. Making sure that he didn’t forget anything this time, he left to go back to work.

“So Ahn was a drug lord. That connects him to Sangchul Medical, then,” Matthew said, drawing arrows as a visual on the board, “and serves as a way to connect him to J.Seph.”

Jae twirled a pen between his fingers. “You’re really pushing for this connection, aren’t you?”

“You don’t agree?”

“I do, man, it’s just . . .” he sighed, dropping the pen onto his desk. “That’s a whole new can of worms, isn’t it? When was the last time we’ve been able to take a case against J.Seph to court?” The silence corroborated his point. “Yeah, it’s probably true, this is probably him. But how would we go about trying to get him when it took this much time just to find something on Ahn?”

Kevin spoke up, “But we did get info on Ahn, so—”

“Don’t tell me you think we got that by actually looking for it,” Jae cut him off. “If we didn’t get that handed to us, we’d still be stuck on trying to connect everything to J.Seph.”

It was at times like this that Matthew appreciated Jae’s presence on their team, not only for friendly support, but for anchoring them to reality. He didn’t hold back from boldly pointing out uncomfortable facts, as reluctant as the rest of them may be to acknowledge them.

“But that would mean that whoever leaked the info wants us to connect it to him. Why?” Matthew said, running a hand through his hair as he looked back to the board.

Jiwoo cleared . “We have the connection between J.Seph and Sangchul Medical, right?”

“Yeah, Park Seungjin,” Kevin said.

Jiwoo nodded. “We can work with that, then. Connect the victims first to Seungjin Park, then from him we’ll have a somewhat more manageable connection to J.Seph.”

She had a point, so they let that case rest. After all, it would be a waste to dedicate so much manpower to a case that couldn’t be solved until it wanted to be.

Kevin wanted to continue researching the victims; research was his specialty, and he felt disturbed by the truth that Jae pointed out—that the evidence was being handed to them. That left Matthew, Jae, and Jiwoo to attend to other business.

Matthew explained to them his suspicions about Hongbin, and while Jae could recall some information about the case—possibly from when Matthew was venting to him in the aftermath—Jiwoo had to be caught up to date. Along with forwarding the copy of the evidence that he had emailed to himself to the team, he gave both of them a brief summary of the key points.

Four years ago, shortly before the new year, four college students had gotten into an accident. Their blood alcohol levels showed that all of them were intoxicated at the time of hospitalization, meaning they had been driving under the influence. They were all students at the same university, and two of the four succumbed to their injuries shortly afterward.

“So the only survivors . . .” Jiwoo started.

Matthew nodded grimly. “Somin and Hongbin.”

“When did this happen? How old were you guys?”

“Back in 2013 . . . she would have been a junior. It was the winter break of her junior year. And I was two years older, so I had graduated the year before, in 2012. Hongbin was a senior.”

Jiwoo seemed oddly disturbed. “So you think this might be related or something?”

“Not exactly. But Hongbin . . .” Matthew sighed. “See, he was the driver, at the time of the accident. But for the first time, right after Youngji’s death, he said that he had ‘saved’ her.” Matthew tried to recall Hongbin’s exact words, repeating them for Jiwoo and Jae.

Both of them looked perplexed.

“That doesn’t add up.”

Mathew raised an eyebrow. “Yes, Jae, that observation was spot on. Thank you for your contribution.”

Jae rolled his eyes. “Anytime, fam. But either he was lying, or the report was wrong.”

“And this happened right after we found Youngji?” Jiwoo asked. Matthew nodded. “Then . . . well, in that case, I’m leaning toward the report being wrong.”

Both of them turned to her, and she blinked slowly, not understanding how they couldn’t see it. “It was right after his wife died. The emotional toll would have been overwhelming, and we saw that for ourselves. It doesn’t make sense for him to lie after an event like that.”

Matthew frowned. “But if the report has been a lie this whole time . . . then what actually happened that night during the accident?”

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.

.

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Somin felt her blood run cold as she stared at the notifications on her phone. No, no, no, no, she could not break his trust, not like this, not so soon.

Her ankle was supposed to be sprained, she wasn’t supposed to walk too much even in the apartment, and here she was, outside, in an unfamiliar coffee shop uncharacteristically far from their apartment, and she had basically told him that she would stay in the apartment for ’s sake—

Actually, you only told him that you would know how to manage for a few hours by yourself.

Somin resisted the urge to pull at her hair in frustration.

No explanation would make him understand—she needed more time, she—she couldn’t lose him like this.

She hailed the next cab that came by, ignoring the person behind her who, from the disgruntled look on his face, must have been waiting longer.

Though she kept a close watch on her phone during the whole trip back home, she received no more calls from Matthew, and that eased some of her anxiety. If he had found her missing, he would have called again, right?

And once she got home, after a quick inspection of the apartment, she realized that it was empty.

She had made it.

The air whooshed out of her lungs as she sighed in relief. She grasped at the dining table for support, slowly sinking into one of the chairs. For now, she was safe. Matthew was safe. She had done her job to protect him. And then a flicker of light in front of her made her look up.

It was Matthew’s laptop, left open on the dining table.

She must have brushed against it as she sat down, because the screen was lit up, the laptop disturbed from sleep mode. She stared at it, and after a while the screen dimmed back to black.

Get the name.

Somin shut her eyes tightly and stood up, the chair grating against the floor. “No,” she said out loud to no one in particular. “No.”

Then what you avoided this time could become a reality next time.

Somin clenched her hands into fists, digging her nails into her palm. After a few seconds, she reluctantly forced her hands to relax. Small, crescent-shaped indentations had formed on her palm, but she could barely feel the sting. She sat back down and pulled the laptop closer to her, adjusting the screen angle to see more clearly, and was surprised to see that it had opened to the desktop.

Of course, she thought with the sickening feeling of realization. When his laptop was connected to their home Wi-Fi, it didn’t require a password. She suddenly felt much worse than she did a few seconds ago.

He trusted her enough to not require a password while at home.

His trust was a mistake.

Somin took a deep breath. She would have to deal with the consequences eventually, there was no way around it. But she would postpone them for as long as she could.

And with that thought, she clicked around the open programs to find his email, and noticed that he had a new email . . . from himself. Her gut told her this would be significant, so she opened the email and clicked on one of the attachments, which opened a PDF preview in the email. Her eyes widened after just reading the first few lines, a flash of recognition running through her.

Why . . . why would Matthew need to pull up the files from her accident so many years ago?

As she continued reading, a strange feeling niggled at the back of her mind. She couldn’t quite place it, but something about the document seemed to be slightly . . . off. She needed more time, and she jolted up in the realization that Matthew would still be on the way home.

Moving fast, she ran to the office room, rummaging through a drawer to find a USB drive. Returning to the dining room, she download the files to the USB, and then deleted them from his laptop. Another thought ran through her, and she marked the email as unread before putting the laptop into sleep mode and pushing it back to its original spot on the table.

Then she caught sight of the files next to the laptop.

No, she couldn’t . . .

She had to.

With a heavy sigh, she took out her phone, opening the camera application. She flipped open the first file and began to take pictures. Her heart sunk lower and lower with every click of the shutter, and after a certain point the motions became robotic.

Somin barely finished in time, moving the files back to their place as the lock on the front door clicked. Sparing the table a last glance, Somin speed walked to the sofa and curled up in a corner—

She was wearing different clothes. Looking around, she yanked the blanket that was on the other side of the sofa toward her, covering herself from head to toe, and then rested her head on the armrest. Her heart was beating too fast, too loud, the sound echoing in her head—her head was pounding, on the verge of developing a migraine.

Breathe in, breathe out. Breathe in, breathe out. Breathe in . . . breathe out.

She had to relax her breathing; she had to look like she was asleep. She could think of more excuses that way, since she wouldn’t be disturbed.

But she didn’t have to worry that much.

She heard the zipper of a bag, the clunking of a laptop, the rustling of papers. Then footsteps, approaching her, and she all but stopped breathing in her effort to appear naturally asleep. A few seconds later—though it felt like an hour at the least—the footsteps receded. The lock clicked into place, and only then did Somin dare to breath.

Opening her eyes, she sat up slowly, her vision slightly disoriented by the migraine she definitely had by now. She’d have to make a cup of coffee, to help with her migraine—wait.

Somin blinked once, twice, three times to make sure she wasn’t hallucinating. Disentangling herself from her blanket, she shoved it to the side without a second thought, ignoring it as it fell to the floor; she leaned forward and shakily outstretched her arm, her fingers wrapping around the cup hesitantly.

It was still hot, but not scalding. She brought it to her nose and sniffed slightly—then swallowed a gasp. She blinked rapidly, but her eyes were stinging.

What did she do to deserve him?

You don’t deserve him.

and the plot thickens :) thank you for all the support so far!!