Chapter 63

Chapter 63

Growing anxious, the child stepped outside. She climbed the cement steps and crouched by the rusty metal gate, waiting for her father.

Snow began to fall from the sky.

One flake, then another.

She brushed them off her face with the back of her hand as they landed. Her hands were freezing. She rubbed her palms together and blew warm breath on them. White clouds of breath dampened her skin.

When would Dad be back?

She stared at the worn tips of her shoes, then glanced toward the corner of the alley.

Through the swirling snow, someone was walking toward her.

She tried to stand up, hoping it was her father, but her legs had gone numb and gave out beneath her.

“Hey! You… who are you?!”

A boy’s blunt voice rang out. Goyo slowly lifted her head.

“You… mm, d-daugh…”

His irritated voice kept coming, but the static made it impossible to understand.

Goyo squinted, trying to get a better look at the boy standing in the snow. But his form was blurry, doubled, and tripled in her vision.

Then suddenly, the world started to spin.

The boy glaring at her, the snowy sky—it all swirled together into a vortex and vanished.

Darkness fell.

***

“The room. When will it be ready?”

A familiar voice rang out.

A sigh of relief escaped Goyo’s lips.

She tried to open her eyes, but her lids felt too heavy. She wanted to hear more, but the voice faded away, footsteps trailing with it.

She tried to reach for Jae-heon, but her body wouldn’t move. She forced her fingers to twitch, but all she felt was a stinging jolt, like they were being shocked by electricity.

“Haa… haa, haa…”

Only after several labored breaths did her hazy mind begin to clear.

Goyo finally managed to open her eyes and slowly rolled them around the space. She was lying on a hospital bed, alone in a narrow area sectioned off by curtains.

Machines were connected to different parts of her body through thin lines, beeping in steady rhythms above her head. The sharp smell of disinfectant filled her nose, and only then did the reality of where she was begin to settle in.

Did I collapse?

Her last memory was of watching a movie with Kwon Jae-heon.

The murder scene in the film had been horrific. It had triggered old memories—things she thought she’d forgotten—and even stirred up unsettling dreams.

She couldn’t tell anymore what was real and what was delusion.

It was the first time she’d remembered scenes from before her father was accused of the kidnapping, and there were far too many things that didn’t make sense.

How had Lee Yi-taek found their home?

How had he come to know her father—a man who lived day to day, scraping by?

But more than anything else—

The day of the kidnapping, her father had left home saying he was going to meet Lee Yi-taek.

She had waited for him outside all day.

But instead of her father, the person who showed up was Lee Yoon-geon.

And Lee Yoon-geon… he hadn’t been kidnapped. He had come on his own.

What on earth was going on?

“Haa… haa… haa…”

Goyo clutched her chest, struggling to breathe. Her airway felt blocked, and her chest ached—throbbing, as if someone were squeezing her heart.

“P-please…”

She wished something—anything—would come back to her. But her thoughts were jumbled, scrambled beyond recognition.

She couldn’t even be sure if what she’d remembered had truly happened. The helplessness was unbearable. Just lying there, hooked up to IVs in the ER, she felt like nothing would ever get better.

Gripping the bed rail, she pushed herself up.

The movement made her head pound like it would split open, but she couldn’t stay lying down anymore—she felt like she was suffocating.

She began to detach the lines hooked to her body, one by one.

Her hands fumbled, but eventually she yanked out the IV needle lodged in the back of her hand.

Blood trickled down her wrist, but she barely wrapped it before stumbling her way out of the emergency room.

She didn’t even know how she’d managed to leave the hospital and hail a taxi.

In a half-dazed state, she directed the driver to her old house—Lee Yi-taek’s home.

She had to see him.

She had to ask. She had to know.

If she didn’t, she was sure she would go mad.