Chapter 146.1

Chapter 146.1

People passing through the airport lounge glanced at the man in the black priest’s robe.

He knelt, placing a hard, long case bag at his feet, and began to pray, drawing everyone’s attention.

Unintelligible rapid foreign words were murmured, and a red tongue flicked against the gaps. Kia frowned and began to whisper even lower and more fervently.

“….”

The boy sitting in front of him seemed fascinated by Kia and kept turning around to look. It was then that their eyes met over the cross he was clutching tightly like a breast.

Kia quickly changed his expression and opened his palm. He rolled it into a ball, pressed it to his nose, and then suddenly revealed a red Rudolph nose as if it had flown away like a bird.

“Wow―!”

The child clapped and exclaimed in admiration.

After that, Kia played with the child, showing and hiding the red nose. Then he placed the case that had been at his feet onto his lap and began to assemble a gun.

“Mister, is that a real gun?”

The child’s eyes widened at Kia’s dazzling hand movements. In the blink of an eye, Kia finished assembling it and grinned as he pointed the gun’s muzzle at the child’s forehead.

At that moment, the adults who appeared to be the child’s parents stiffened and pulled him away.

Bang!

As Kia pulled the trigger, making the sound himself, colorful paper burst out like fireworks. The child burst into laughter again, grabbed his bag, and jumped down from the chair.

Kia’s gaze was fixed on a dangling owl plush toy.

“Mister, can you give me that gun?”

“Do you like the owl?”

“Yes?”

“I like that plush toy. Want to trade it for my gun?”

At those words, the child clutched the plush toy attached to his bag and pouted.

“Hmm… but this is a gift from my grandmother…”

“Do you know what an owl means?”

“An owl is a bird!”

“Right, it’s a bird. A bird that looks like a cat. But in the old days, they called it a disobedient bird that eats its mother. They said that if an owl hooted at midnight, someone in the neighborhood would suffer a loss.”

“What does ‘suffering a loss’ mean?”

“Don’t you know? It means someone is going to die.”

“….”

“But I keep dreaming about an owl that keeps crying.”

Kia pressed a red ball against the child’s nose and asked.

“Then who do you think will die today? Your grandmother?”

“Ugh, aah―!”

The child’s face turned red, and he made a pout with his chin, while Kia stretched his lips into a wide grin.

***

Seoryeong, wearing the shiny shoes that Wooshin had polished for her, entered the Orthodox Archdiocese building.

With its round dome and white exterior walls, the large arched doors made it a Byzantine-style church that was hard to find in the country.

This unofficial security operation, which Kang Taegon was keenly overseeing, was a suspicious event where prominent figures from Korea who had received money from Russia were invited to showcase a new leader.

As Seoryeong passed through the worship hall with a red carpet and crossed the corridor adorned with abstract paintings of saints, she adjusted her outfit once more. Each time she exchanged glances with the tightly arranged security personnel, a strange tension enveloped her.

— Seoryeong, do you hear me well?

Her steps, which had been moving forward with a steady pace, momentarily halted, and Seoryeong sighed as she pressed one ear.

Thinking of the man who might be watching her from somewhere made her stomach churn. No matter how she thought about it, the breakfast she had shared with him was the problem.

Wooshin seemed to have tossed and turned all night while holding her. Each time, Seoryeong woke up once and inevitably heard his sighs.

The man either wandered aimlessly around the unlit living room or shut himself in the study, or he burrowed into her pits, gnawing at her flesh throughout the night.

She even heard the sound of the door in the early morning, but she pretended not to notice.

— I packed Seoryeong’s things roughly and put them in the trunk. You can buy anything urgent locally.

“Isn’t that a bit too fast?”

— What’s fast about it? It’s not like I’m rushing.

“Are you really going to leave right after the job is done?”

— What’s wrong with that?

They were talking through earpiece.

The man brought up the topic of marriage from the morning. While eating the tasteless breakfast he made for her, they vaguely decided on a honeymoon destination, agreed to keep it simple with just the two of them, and he said he had already ordered the bouquet of peonies, which would just need to be picked up at the airport.

Still half-asleep, Seoryeong kept answering “yes, yes,” and before she knew it, Wooshin had packed everything.

The faster the schedule, the better it was for Seoryeong, but it also made her feel like an irreversible end was approaching.

She chewed on the rice he put in her mouth, then swallowed only water repeatedly.

Thus, the two decided to finish this security detail and then move on to Azerbaijan, which borders Ukraine.

Wooshin was displeased with the fact that it was a country with poor security and close ties to Russia, but Seoryeong insisted that she wanted to see the landscape of the red rocky terrain stretching out.