CHAPTER XI

Two full days had passed since Shin Hye attempted and then utterly failed to encounter the dead. She’d spent the night alone in her room, with the door locked, ignoring the tap, tap, tap of her friends who kept stopping by and knocking. They weren’t rude enough to pound, but the taps might as well have been screams of mockery.

But Shin Hye wasn’t insane. Nor was she mentally ill. She had some issues with phobias relating to her past, and she was bipolar, yes, there was that. But she wasn’t psychotic and she wasn’t crazy. Slowly, she managed to pull herself out of the deep hole into which she’d thrown herself after escaping the mortifying ordeal in the kitchen.

As the night quieted she grew annoyed with her pouting and forced herself out of bed. She took up her yellow notebook and pencil and continued her work on the novel she’d begun to write two weeks earlier. It was mostly scratching at this stage, just ideas and sentences written on the page, a guide for when she was ready to begin the actual story on the computer.

There was a significant difference between thinking and writing. Writing wasn’t just the translation of interesting ideas to paper. It was its own kind of thinking, which seemed to kick in only when the pen made contact with the page, or her fingers touched the keyboard.

But tonight, not even that faithful connection seemed to yield any useful thoughts or emotions. She gave up after an hour.

Hungry, she warmed a bowl of noodles in the microwave. She lived alone in a one-bedroom unit. She spent half an hour on the Internet using the small gray Compaq computer the center provided all residents who could conduct themselves appropriately in the virtual world. The computer was her gateway to the world, but she found little in the world that really interested her, so she used it primarily to research topics of interest, like mental illness and religion and nature.

Cats and dogs cheered her up. If there was one thing she longed for, it was a dog. But pets were forbidden, so she had to settle for pictures or videos that never failed to bring a smile to her face.

Warmed by Ramen and cheered by a Web video of a cat trying to catch a butterfly on the other side of a window, she slipped under her covers at one in the morning and fell asleep. A black day was behind her, but she’d survived many black days.

She woke in a gray mood, haunted once again by her failure. But she was determined not to let it keep her down, so she ventured out. Her friends gave her about an hour of space during which they subjected her to glances, but the looks lengthened into unbroken stares of accusation until Jae Suk finally decided they’d waited long enough and approached.

 “Did he try any funny business?” Yoo Bi immediately wanted to know.

“I don’t want to talk about him.”

 “So he did?”

“Aniyo, he didn’t but can we not talk about my nonexistent love life. No more questions, period.”

“Wae?” Jae Suk oppa cried. “I haven’t even asked a single question. I demand an opportunity to cross-examine the witness!”

“Ani. We can’t.”

Shin Hye stuck to her decision the rest of the day. When Jae Suk oppa tap, tap, tapped on her door at ten that night, she buried her head under her pillow until he left. But today was a new day, and she was finally feeling distant enough from her failure to open up. There was, after all, some benefit to being at the center of attention, and her refusal to give them even a snippet of information the prior day had worked all three into quite a tizzy. She was practically a celebrity. They acted as if they’d won the lottery when she announced that she would meet them in Jae Suk Oppa’s office at nine to break her silence.

Now here they sat: Hyung Sik, who was having a bad morning and hardly able to concentrate on their discussion; Yoo Bi, who was sinking fast into a full-blown depressive cycle; Jae Suk, who sat against the desk like the lion king who had finally found his place, leading the hunt; and Shin Hye, who had just told them what she could remember and was suddenly wishing she’d kept shut about her suspicion, however remote, that Lee Min Ho found her interesting.

“What did I tell you?” Yoo Bi said.

“How many times are you going to remind us what you told her?” Jae Suk demanded, glaring at Yoo Bi. “We’re faced with the crime of the century here, and all you can think about is whether some high-and-mighty Special Agent likes Shin Hye more than he likes you.”

Yoo Bi poked her head out of her depression and glared back at him. “YAH! That’s not true. I’m just more interested in her than I am in some dead girl that none of us knows. Not that I don’t care about the dead girl, but I care more about Shin Hye. Right, Shin Hye-ah? That makes sense, right?”

Shin Hye merely sighed. “See, this is why I didn’t want to tell you anything. The truth is , this isn’t the crime of the century, at least not as far as we are concerned. The Special Agents came, they got what they could, which was nothing, and they left. We’re still here. Our lives still go on, here behind these walls. There is no special agent , not anymore. It’s all past. Gone. Finished.”

In his delusion as a world-renowned investigator, this was impossible for Jae Suk to comprehend. In his mind, he was all that stood between the killer and the next poor victim.

His face turned red as he spoke. “How dare you give up on innocent victims who’ve been thrown to the wolves?”

Shin Hye put her hand on his shoulder. “Listen to me oppa, you’ve been reassigned to a new case. A more important case that involves dozens of victims.”

“Don’t try to tempt me.”

“I am temptation,” Hyung Sik mumbled, eyes tilted down, far off.

“I’m not. The choice is yours, but you’re needed elsewhere. If the Special Agents decides you’re not qualified to lead this other more important investigation, they will let you know. But I think you’re up to it.”

He blinked. “Not qualified? This is a blatant attempt at misdirection.”

“Is it? If they wants you back on the Bride Killer case, they’ll come begging, I can promise you that. But they won’t, because he’s gone. You’re too important.” Then she added, as much for herself, “We all are.” She believed that as much as she believed she really was a monkey.

Jae Suk looked stunned. He settled back, forced to at least consider the possibility.

“Then at least answer my question,” Yoo Bi insisted.

“I will. If we can all promise to move on.”

No one objected, which was a kind of confirmation in itself.

“What question?” Shin Hye asked.

 “I just want to know, would you have gone with him?”

Gone with him?

“I mean, you know, not like I was saying. But if he…” A tear spilled down her left cheek; she was fighting the downturn. “If he really showed interest in you, I mean real affection, that might be nice, right?.”

Shin Hye blinked. “Yoo Bi-ah, it’s stupid to even think along those lines. That’s their world and this is ours.”

“But I know what it’s like. When I was on the outside, before I came here a year ago, I was, you know, quite popular with guys. It’s not just my brains.” Her eyes darted to the wall. “And no, it’s not just my body, either. “

Shin Hye felt perturbed by this new direction in their conversation. She picked up a dictionary from the desk, snapped it open, and showed the spread to Yoo Bi. “How many words are on these two pages?”

A glance told the girl. “Three hundred ninety-seven.”

Shin Hye closed the book. “You see, normally the kind of people that can tell you that are savants, maybe autistic. They don’t often look like beauty queens who can flirt like cheerleaders. So the boys see you, and they trip.”

“What are you saying? That I’m just a monkey? You always say that they think we’re all monkeys, monkeys, monkeys!” Yoo Bi paced, agitated. “Well maybe we are , but I was trying to be nice. Maybe I was wrong, you know? Maybe the Special Agent is really a nice guy and he really does like you. Maybe you deserve that. But now you’ve ruined it!”

Shin Hye was about to snap at the girl, tell her that it was all a horrible fantasy. Her emotions boiled and she was reminded just why she hated men so much. In the end, they dashed hope. They were a curse.

“He likes you,” Hyung Sik said, staring up at her from the couch. “All men want you.” They’d clearly given him more medication than usual, and his eyes looked only half lit.

“Maybe Min Ho-ssi likes you,” Yoo Bi said.

“You can have him. I can’t afford this. My mind can’t take it. Neither can my heart.” Shin Hye replied back.

“So you like him, too,” Hyung Sik said. “I know what that’s like. Having my heart broken. It happens quite a lot.” He stared at them for a moment, then went back to watching the floor.

“Nonsense. He’s all yours, Yoo Bi. But it won’t matter, they’re gone.”

That seemed to settle the issue, at least for the moment. Jae Suk was still trying to comprehend the nature of her suggestion that he was needed for a much more important case.