chapter twenty one

“You know, it’s kind of weird.”

Matthew looked up as Jay entered the room with two seemingly new files in hand. “What is?”

“Doesn’t this whole thing seem a bit . . . overkill?” Jae stopped next to his desk, leaning back on it while turned to Matthew. He held up one of the files in his hand. “This was your statement after her second abduction. I was looking through it again. You said it was J.Seph on the other end, right?”

“. . . As far as I could tell. Yeah.”

“So J.Seph talked about the game becoming a little too close for comfort. What could he possibly have meant by that?”

Matthew raised an eyebrow, clearly not following. It probably had to do with whatever Somin was going to tell them, right? Whether it was about Hongbin, Kim Taehyung, or J.Seph himself, it had to have been something she had learned or remembered. How J.Seph had come to find out, especially considering that their phone lines had apparently not been tapped, was something they were still looking into.

“Well, it couldn’t have been about bringing him, or even just Sangchul Medical, down—we have minimal evidence there. Sure, we’d be able to do something if we could properly connect Park Seungjin to him, but how well are we doing there?”

“Not too bad I’d say . . . considering we’re hiding what evidence we have left,” Matthew said, chuckling at the irony. He still remembered the way the team nearly broke apart after the initial evidence connecting Park Seungjin, and therefore Sangchul Medical, to J.Seph had disappeared. While the team was in a better position now, it was still highly optimistic—if not downright unrealistic—to think they close to bringing that case to court.

Jae didn’t laugh, but even he couldn’t stop the corners of his mouth from lifting. “Funny. You’re real funny, man.” He shook his head. “But see, that’s exactly why I said this feels like overkill—J.Seph tends to stay off the radar. But everything about this case is now screaming for attention. Why kidnap someone—especially the girlfriend of a police officer—and then do it twice?”

Jiwoo, having been awake and listening from her desk for a while, cut in before Matthew could respond. “More like the police officer assigned to his case—is that cause for retaliation?”

“Fair point. But at that point, wouldn’t it be easier to simply kill—” Jae cut himself off, eyes darting to Matthew.

Matthew chose not to address that line of thought—fully, at least. But Jae wouldn’t have brought this up for no reason. “What are you thinking?”

Slightly relieved, Jae continued. “Well . . . honestly, it might just be the sleep deprivation blurring the dots together when they’re not even connected. But . . . well, have you done anything to J.Seph directly?”

“What do you mean?” Matthew asked.

Jiwoo tilted her head. “Other than just pursuing him as an officer?”

Jae shrugged. “Yeah, kind of—like, before the rest of us joined the team, had you gotten him on anything yet?”

Matthew slowly shook his head. “Well . . . no, not really. It was only those confessions after you and Kevin joined, but most of those have disappeared anyways. Nothing else directly.” He saw Jae’s expression shift, but he quickly continued, “I get what you mean—that this seems a bit too much just for an officer on his case. But at the same time, I haven’t really done anything else to him directly, so I’m not sure why he would be putting so much effort into this either.”

Jae made a sound of assent, and then sighed. “It still feels a bit weird, but nothing we can really do about it, I guess. In the meantime” —he tossed Matthew’s statement onto his desk and then held up the other file— “here’s the stuff on the accident. Kevin had gone through the physical newspaper archive earlier today, so we have that to reference as well.”

“Earlier today?” Matthew glanced at the clock, which read nearly eight o’clock in the morning. “How early was he there?”

“Early enough to need to use police privileges to access the archive building,” Jiwoo muttered. “He woke me up for help with that, but at least he didn’t make me come with him. Unlike someone here.”

“Hey, when did I ever do that?” Jae asked indignantly.

“Are you telling me you wouldn’t?”

“Well if you’re already awake to help me with accessing the building, might as well access it with me, right?”

Jiwoo rolled her eyes, not deigning that with a response. “But Kevin has either headed home for a proper meal and some sleep, or he’s going to be coming back here in a half hour from the café down the street. He should be texting us—otherwise we’re on our own for coffee.”

An hour later, Kevin had neither texted nor returned, so it was assumed that he was going to come back around lunch. Jae went ahead to get coffee, saying he didn’t want to give Jiwoo more of a reason to ‘harass’ him (Jiwoo and Matthew only laughed once he left, giving each other a high-five).

That left re-assessing the accident to Jiwoo and Matthew. Since they had already done the research earlier that week, their goal was mainly to establish what they were going to bring up when they called in Hongbin again.

Or at least, if they called in Hongbin again.

“It’s mainly about being the initial witness versus in the accident, right?” Matthew asked rhetorically. “But how can we prove that there’s a distinction? Sure, there’s what he said to me that night, but honestly he could probably get away with saying he was there and called for help first, before Kim Taehyung popped in.”

Jiwoo made a disgruntled sound, not responding. Clearly, they were both stuck at this same point.

Matthew scooted back from his computer, rubbing his eyes. After a moment of consideration, he stood up and headed to Jae’s desk to pick up the new file with the physical newspapers. As much as he wanted to continue working, he knew he’d only be setting himself up for a massive headache later that day if he kept staring at his computer. If he was going to go through the newspaper articles, he might as well use the physical copies.

He quickly realized, though, that going through the physical copies was a good choice for another reason as well.

“Hey, Jiwoo?”

“Hmm?”

“Did the digital media about this case include anything about the state of the car?”

A pause. “What do you mean?”

Matthew looked up to meet Jiwoo’s eyes, holding up the paper he was looking at while being careful to avoid damaging it. “This paper includes a supposed photo of the car in the junkyard right after the accident.”

Jiwoo got up from her chair so fast that it teetered backwards, just barely settling back into place. She quickly came over to Matthew’s desk, looking over his shoulder at the newspaper. “No, there wasn’t anything like that in the digital copies—when was this even printed? I don’t remember seeing this back then.”

Matthew flipped a few pages backwards to check the date on the front. “December . . . 29th. A Sunday. So this was the literal morning of the accident . . .” He checked the newspaper again. “This is a local newspaper. I guess they had a journalist follow the tow truck straight to the junkyard for this . . . wow. I don’t remember seeing this either.”

And then what Jiwoo said fully processed in his head. “Seeing this back when?” he asked, glancing back up at Jiwoo.

Jiwoo remained still, almost eerily so. It was only for a second, but it was enough to make Matthew uncomfortable. But then she responded, “Back when we were first going through this case as a team, earlier this week.” And it was such a smooth and natural response that Matthew was set at ease—almost.

He was not as familiar with Jiwoo—he certainly did not know her as well as Somin, of course—but Jiwoo’s response still gave him the same unsettled feeling as when Somin told him about the ring. Whether it was because he actually had gotten to know her usual behavior over the past few weeks or because of his experience as a police investigator, he had a suspicion that something was off about Jiwoo’s response.

But he didn’t voice any of that, opting only to say, “Right,” with a noise of assent—there was no point in following up when there was a thin line between his current suspicion and simple paranoia. Besides, something else was calling for his immediate attention.

Honestly, he hadn’t seen the car after the accident. He hadn’t wanted to see it—the report of the event was good enough for him, and he didn’t want to envision Somin in a wreck like that, or see the way two of the four passengers had passed away. But now, he wished he had, if only to have been able to confirm the appearance for himself, because the photograph printed in this newspaper was not what he would have expected with the knowledge that the car had been driven into a tree.

He passed the newspaper over so Jiwoo could better look at it while he rummaged through the file for the accident report, which he had read earlier that week as well as immediately after the accident. Finding the part describing the damage to the vehicle, Matthew placed the page next to the newspaper article. He looked up at Jiwoo.

“Does this seem mismatched to you too?”

Jiwoo pursed her lips, skimming through the accident report again before going back to the photograph. Her eyes narrowed. “The visible damage doesn’t match the written report.”

The written report said the car had hit a tree—which made sense with the evident side impact damage. The photographed car was dented in the middle of the passenger side, as if it had nearly wrapped around the tree. Furthermore, the two deceased victims—Lee Jaehwan and Lee Hyeri—had been seated in the passenger side of the vehicle, likely contributing to their fatal injuries. The discrepancy arose with that being the extent of the damage described in the report. The photograph, by contrast, showcased the extensive damage to the front of the car as well, with the brunt of the impact appearing to be from the side opposite to the side impact. This was not damage that could be explained by hitting a tree with the side of the car; rather, it looked like a separate head-on collision. While Matthew was by no means an expert in collisions and the resulting damage on cars, he had seen his fair share of car accidents, both accidental and deliberate; and something felt off about the accident report.

Then there was Jiwoo, confirming his gut feeling before he explained his idea. Despite his reservations about her lack of skepticism, he felt slightly relieved by her support.

“I’m back—apologies for those of you that missed me, but I come with drugs! More specifically, caffeine. And they had a double points deal going on today since it’s Wednesday,” Jae rambled as he waltzed in, unaware of the tension in the room he was walking into. He was quickly ambushed by both Jiwoo and Matthew, who shoved the newspaper and accident report into his face and waited for him to give his comments.

“Um. Well. I guess . . .” Jae squinted, looking back and forth between the two papers. “Hmm. Is this the full report? Because the damage to the front of the car isn’t explained in this.”

The relief Matthew felt was almost palpable. “No, this is the full one,” Matthew began to explain. “But we found some physical copies that weren’t digitized, including this local newspaper with a photograph of the car post-accident.”

Jae took a sip of his coffee. “Huh . . . did the witness say anything about it in that article of peer interviews?”

“I don’t believe so, but let me check,” Matthew said, hunting through the stack of newspapers. “Here it is . . .” Matthew frowned as his eyes scanned the page again. The other interviews still sounded familiar, but for some reason, he couldn’t find the one mentioning Kim Taehyung. He had a weird nagging feeling in his gut.

“Jiwoo, can you pull up the digital peer interviews? It should be in the files I emailed everyone about this case,” Matthew said, and he had barely finished speaking before Jiwoo had the email pulled up on her work phone and handed it to him. Both Jae and Jiwoo were looking over his shoulder as he compared the digital and physical copies, meaning all of them realized the glaring difference at the same time.

Audible variations of ‘what the hell’ coming from all three of them aside, Matthew had to let out a laugh in disbelief. The specific interview with the initial witness, albeit too pixelated to discern much more than the name in the photocopy, was entirely missing in the physical copy, the entirety of the corner spot being taken up by a logo of the newspaper company instead.

Matthew and Jae moved at the same time to check the dates, with Matthew scrolling to the top of the digital file and Jae flipping to the front page of the physical copy.

Matthew said, “December 29th,” and at the same time—

—“December 30th,” said Jae.

There was a long pause as they considered the implications.

“So it was edited in the span of a day,” said Jiwoo, a touch of awe in her voice. “How much power do you need to make evidence like that disappear?”

“So now we have three things that are missing,” Jae added. “The accident in Hongbin’s medical records, the head-on collision in the accident report, and the initial witness statement in the newspaper.”

Matthew froze. “That’s it.”

Jiwoo and Jae glanced over at him, Jae voicing the question, “What?”

“The accident. I brought it up because of Hongbin’s weird comments—I thought, maybe it would reveal something about Hongbin, or Somin, I honestly don’t know. But this accident is looking strangely like cover-ups we’ve seen in the past,” he said, spinning in his chair to look directly at the other two. “Manufactured medical files, omissions from the written report, a disappearing witness . . . those are some risky moves. Someone organizing that would need the right resources and power.”

They understood what Matthew was implying—it went without saying. Jiwoo was remaining oddly quiet, but Jae was still skeptical. “But this is just a few college kids driving drunk. None of them were related to politicians, celebrities . . . or anyone even remotely important, if we’re being honest. What need is there for a cover-up, especially by J.Seph?”

“Exactly.” Matthew reached back with his good arm to grab the accident report again. The case report number and date stared back at him, suddenly much more ominous than they had previously seemed. “What was so important about these students or this particular accident that necessitated a cover-up by J.Seph?”

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Somin awoke to the incessant but rhythmic beeping in the corner of her mind. Once fully conscious, she realized it was a heart monitor. As had become nearly routine to her by now, she went through a mental checklist to ensure she was still physically functioning—fingers and toes were moving on command, though her left upper arm was unbelievably sore. Her head was still hurting.

She noticed, as she haphazardly sat up in the bed, that she was in a new room. Still a bedroom, but completely different from where she’d been held hostage for weeks at a time. Not in the penthouse? she thought, a moment of worry passing through her, and then the door to the room opened. Even as Somin instinctively stiffened, the previous events came back to her in flashes.

Hongbin waited at the door for a moment, taking in that Somin was properly awake. “How are you doing?” he asked, eventually moving toward the side of the bed where the monitors were set up.

Somin followed his movements with her eyes, feeling more relief than she was used to over the past few days. How long had it been since she . . . well, tried to escape?

As if knowing what she was asking through her eyes, Hongbin answered, “It’s been two days. Or a day and a half, more like. You were out all of yesterday, and now it’s Thursday.”

Somin realized just how dry was when she opened to talk. As she tried to clear , Hongbin reached to the ground next to the bed and brought up a water bottle. He uncapped it and held it out in front of her, and Somin mustered the strength to reach up to grab it. Her grip was weak, though, so she was thankful that he didn’t let go of the bottle even as she took a sip. He took it back once she was done.

“Thanks,” she got out, after properly clearing .

“Of course, do you need anything else?”

Somin glanced at him for a second before looking back at her hands in her lap. “I meant . . . for everything yesterday—or the day before. Thank you.”

Hongbin stayed quiet for a moment. “Of course,” he said softly.

But then Somin furrowed her brow. “Why were you there anyways?” she asked, looking up at him again.

He only grimaced, not responding any further. In fact, he went back to checking the monitors. But Somin’s mind was racing—or at least, driving forward, slowed down considerably with the way her head was throbbing in time with her heartbeat.

She doubted that he would have been there for her; after all it was, as J.Seph had called it, a safe house. Anyone there would likely have been there in relation to J.Seph. So why would Hongbin have been in that building if not because he was somehow connected to J.Seph? And if he was connected to J.Seph . . . the accident from college came to mind again. And then the incident with Youngji flashed through her mind, making her shudder.

Hongbin responded to that, at least. “Are you cold? I can turn up the heat, or get you another blanket. Whichever you prefer.”

“I’m fine,” Somin said quickly. “Do you know J.Seph?”

“I’ll bring another blanket, just in case,” he said, avoiding eye contact with her as he made his way out of the room. Somin stared after him, equal parts confused and annoyed. But then her attention was drawn by movement on the wall next to her . . . with which her annoyance disappeared. Of course.

Up high on the wall right beside her, with a perfect view of the entire room and the doorway on the opposite wall, was a CCTV.

She vaguely remembered J.Seph saying something about video cameras being set up—did the surveillance also include audio? If that was the case, she suddenly understood why Hongbin was choosing to ignore any questions that had to do with J.Seph. If anything, the annoyance was replaced by a hint of despair, of suffocation; even outside of the penthouse, even in the home of a close friend, she was still under J.Seph’s control. But when she felt a familiar pressure building up behind her eyes, she took some rapid breaths to calm herself. She was fine with crying, but not now—not when she had successfully gotten away from J.Seph, if only physically. She was proud of herself . . . or she wanted to be. Would Matthew be proud of her?

And then she saw the guard lying on the landing of the stairs, eyes cold and dead, and Somin had to push down the wave of nausea. No, there was nothing to be proud of when she had directly killed someone. While she could rationalize the previous deaths around her as technically being due to J.Seph, she had no excuses this time.

Before she could get too carried away in that line of thought, Hongbin walked back in, holding a blanket as promised. He set it down on the foot of the bed. “I’ll have some sort of porridge ready for you in a bit if you’re feeling up to eat. Do you have any preference?”

Do you have any preference?

Jaehwan already called shotgun, so I’ll just sit in the back with Hyeri! Besides, isn’t it better to avoid having them in the back together?

Somin barely managed to bring her head into the present, just shaking her head enough to be considered a response. Hongbin nodded, saying a quiet all right. He seemed to recognize that Somin had assumed his connection to J.Seph, assumed that audio was also under surveillance, or both. And with that, he left her alone to her thoughts, but this time they were more focused.

Who had said that to her? She could hear her own response about sitting in the back ringing through her head as clear as day, but she couldn’t quite place the voice of the person asking her about her preference. Somin closed her eyes, trying to focus. If anything, she could believe it was Hongbin—but that could also be her imagination, because his name wouldn’t have been the first to come to mind. The voice wasn’t the exact same. Besides, how was that possible, if Hongbin was never in the car?

Right?

But Somin’s headache was only worsening—what qualifies it as a migraine? Maybe she could ask Hongbin. For now, she decided she would try sleeping it off.

She was roused by the aroma of food. Hongbin had entered the room with a food cart, careful to avoid making noise, but glanced up when he felt Somin’s gaze. “Hey, I hope you’re okay with soup?” he asked, but he really didn’t need to, with the way Somin’s eyes were following the food cart as she sat up. She hadn’t realized till she smelled food, but she was starving.

With a click, the top of the food cart extended into an over-the-bed table, making it so that Somin could eat without needing to move any further. She gave Hongbin a questioning glance. “It looks like you set up a hospital in here,” she said. Though it came out raspier than intended, the joking tone was there, and Hongbin chuckled.

“Had no other choice, really.” And then his smile disappeared. Somin didn’t try to push any further, and after a beat of silence, he changed the topic. “I made dakjuk . . . I wasn’t sure what you’d be able to eat right away, so I figured porridge was a safe bet. Let me know if it’s okay—”

Honestly, Somin was barely listening; her focus was entirely on the porridge. Despite her shaky arm, she managed to bring a spoonful up to , and then another—and then she was all but inhaling the dish. She heard Hongbin laughing in the background. She took a break midway, more for her arm than her stomach, and joined him, her heart feeling oddly light after the past few weeks. Something about the dish was invoking a particular memory . . . was it from college? When it clicked, Somin looked at Hongbin incredulously. They may have met during college, but something about college made the friends last longer—both of them knew they were thinking about the same thing.

Somin spoke first. “So you really did make the porridge back then.”

Hongbin rolled his eyes. “Why does it sound like you still don’t believe it? Yes, and I’ve been telling you that for years.”

“Do you blame me though? When the samgyetang we saw you make during that summer break was  . . . well, not samgyetang.”

“The key difference being stress, Somin,” Hongbin said, bring up the water bottle to place it on the table. “Remember that horrendous internship? Yeah, it was during that same year.”

Somin waved him off and, rested enough to pick up her spoon again, resumed eating. She was forming the sarcastic response he deserved when the phone rang from outside the room. Somin saw the way Hongbin flinched before quickly composing himself and turning to her as if asking permission to leave. Again, she only waved him off, showing a quick thumbs up sign as she continued to eat. Once he exited the room, Somin was left with her thoughts again—and that lighthearted feeling disappeared.

It was off-putting, how easily she was able to revert to good-natured banter with Hongbin—like during college—even though he was helping her captor. Helping J.Seph, a criminal. Honestly, she was just as put off by her own behavior, and the flashing memories made her set down the spoon. She started to feel hints of nausea again, but tried to force it down—honestly, the porridge was good, and she couldn’t remember the last time she’d properly eaten.

J.Seph holding her, bringing warmth.

No, he was the one that had lowered the temperature so drastically.

J.Seph coming back into the room right on time, waving his hand, having the drunk men escorted out forcefully.

No, he was the one that had left her alone with them.

J.Seph proud of her for sharing information—

—that would be detrimental to the efforts of Matthew and his team. Why had she been happy about that. Why had she—why.

Somin was going to throw up, but that would be a waste of food and bedding. She would not throw up. Not right now. Not when she still had to figure out what would convince Hongbin to get a message to Matthew about J.Seph’s real name and maybe her returning memories. And about Jiwoo, she realized, recalling Jiwoo’s comments about her brother. Had there been two cars in that accident? And how was J.Seph involved with this?

But if J.Seph had managed to get Jiwoo, a police officer, to help him . . . and if he had managed to keep Hongbin on his side despite murdering his wife . . . then what chance does she have with winning over Hongbin, right? Unless this was his breaking point, Somin realized to herself, her eyes widening fractionally. Why else did he offer his home up, at first in defiance of J.Seph’s decision, only to plead with him until his request was accepted? Why bother taking Somin unless he was, well, worried about her if she were to remain under J.Seph’s control? As she glanced up, not looking at the video camera directly but locating it in her peripheral vision, an idea was forming in Somin’s mind, and even though it seemed to be taking advantage of Hongbin . . . well, maybe it was a little deserved, and maybe it could help them both.

look at me, sticking to promises

dakjuk = chicken porridge

samgyetang = ginseng chicken soup

ngl, i’m not really sure how daily newspapers work in south korea, and i’m not sure what exactly i had in mind when i drafted this plot point four years ago, but for simplicity and logic we’re gonna go with this