Chapter 21.2

Chapter 21.2

Chulhyun, who was wearing a hooded t-shirt and a leather jacket, handed the bottled water he was holding to Sungang, who was forced to take it. Then, Chulhyun ruffled Sungang’s hair, treating him like a child.

“Stop talking nonsense, and just take care of your own clothes, Gang-ah. Your chest and arms are getting choked, so wear a size bigger, Gang-ah.”

“Ah, fck, stop touching my hair… I told you not to touch my hair, moth3rfck#r.”

Sungang scowled and roughly brushed back his disheveled hair. His suit was stretched taut, accentuating his bulging arms, and it looked like it was about to tear apart at any moment.

“Anyway, see you later? Take care.”

Chulhyun nodded at Heeju in greeting and then walked out of the entrance.

“Does that look like the back of someone going out to have fun, or the back of someone going to work? What do you think, kid?”

“Ah… yes, well.”

“Anyway, that guy doesn’t understand the concept of TPO. A man needs to have some dignity.”

Sungang continued to touch up his hair, making sure it was perfectly in place. It seemed that he always made a point to wear a full suit and have his hair slicked back, no matter the time or place.

Unlike Yunam, who always moved around with Gukhyun, Sungang didn’t seem like he was going to work at a company. The same could be said for Chulhyun, who Heeju had seen at the headquarters. She could only assume that they were probably Gukhyun’s personal guards or something similar.

“I’ll be at the gym, so come find me there after you’re done.”

Sungang said this as he opened the door to the physical therapy room.

“Don’t insist on going back alone, and don’t do anything unnecessary. If you can’t find me there, just give me a call. He told me not to let you wander off on your own.”

“Who said that?”

“Gukhyun hyungnim.”

“Ah…”

Heeju nodded as she thought that she was asking something obvious. Who else would say such things besides Gukhyun?

“Then, have fun reminiscing with your sister and come out later.”

Sungang locked the door from the inside and then closed it from the outside. Heeju stared at the closed door for a moment, and only when she heard the sound of his footsteps fading away did she begin to look around the quiet physical therapy room.

Nothing had changed much since her last visit. She walked past the massage bed with its white sheet and headed straight to the small break room that was attached to the inner area.

The break room still had remnants of her sister’s presence. Heeju took off her outerwear and draped it on a chair, then turned on the computer. She also pulled out a notebook from the bookshelf. It seemed that the physical therapists who came and went from this place wrote their reports on the computer and received payment for each treatment.

Heeju filtered the records by her sister’s name, starting from the beginning of last year when she had started coming to this place. Her sister, Heejin, had usually gone on business trips about three times a month, and at most, five times. The most frequent client her sister had treated was Lee Chulhyun, and the second most frequent was Kang Sungang.

Heeju was lost in her thoughts as she stared at the names on the computer screen for a long time

“There should be a logbook, so  you should be able to tell who the regular clients were. Honestly, I don’t understand why you want to know when she’s already dead.”

“I don‘t know, I‘ve gotten treatments sometiems, but there are a lot of kids who come in regularly, so maybe she just happened to mention that she needed money or something like that.”

Heeju thought back to Sungang, who had spoken as if he didn’t know much about her sister. Even when she had checked the records and asked him directly about what had happened, he had remained tight-lipped.

“I’m the biggest regular? Aah, was it around that time? I hurt my shoulder a bit last year and got treated frequently. And Lee Chulhyun, well, he’s just a massage addict..”

Heeju wondered why Sungang had told such an obvious lie, especially when he was someone who came and went from this place fairly freely. And why did he even mention the logbook in the first place?

Heeju stared at the records with Kang Sungang and Lee Chulhyun’s names on them, lost in her thoughts. It was like she was facing an ambiguous problem. There was little evidence to connect the number of physical therapy sessions they have to their current mysterious behavior.

Was it really so irrelevant that they left it behind, or is there a cover up?

Heeju had the impression that the people here were hiding something about her sister. Of course, it was possible that she was just being overly sensitive. But for Heeju, who couldn’t accept her sister’s death, the whole situation was suspicious.