Chapter 20

With those words, no one opened their mouth.

There was no need to ask why Somi had been unable to escape Shin Gyeongho.

The thirty million won was merely the name of the shackle fastened to her ankle. What Shin Gyeongho had truly gripped was not a debt that could be repaid with money.

Jei did not probe further. Knowing that no words would comfort her, she simply kept silent.

After a moment, Iheon spoke.

“Has anyone else come looking besides us?”

Surprise rose in the woman’s eyes, which had been sunk in regret until moments ago.

“Can a profiler guess something like that just by looking at someone’s face?”

“A profiler isn’t a fortune teller. What would I use to do that? I just asked.”

Iheon continued in a dry voice.

“No matter how much of a bastard deserving to die Shin Gyeongho was, I wondered if there really wasn’t a single person looking for him.”

When a crime occurs, the first thing to examine after the victim is what went to the culprit.

In other words, who benefited most when Shin Gyeongho disappeared.

It could be money, freedom, or safety. Sometimes the very act of resolving a long-held grudge was the price.

Many people had been harmed by Shin Gyeongho. Among them, there would surely have been those who had been waiting only for him to vanish.

People with motives strong enough to commit the crime.

Muerte, whom Iheon and Jei were chasing, was highly likely to be among them.

But it was not enough to look only at those who had gained.

Those who had lost because Shin Gyeongho disappeared.

Especially if they were someone who shared secrets with him, they would have moved the moment they noticed his disappearance.

To check not where he was, but what he had left behind.

Or perhaps, after eliminating him first to silence him, they might be searching for the evidence that remained.

“Did those who came looking ask about Shin Gyeongho’s whereabouts, or about what he left behind?”

At the unexpected question, Somi raised an eyebrow.

“Does that make a difference?”

Iheon leaned loosely against the back of the sofa. The tip of his index finger tapped lightly on the table.

Tap.

“If they were worried about a missing person, they would have asked where he was first.”

Again. Tap.

“If they were worried that the man might talk too much, they would have asked who he met and what he said.”

“…….”

“If they feared what he had left behind, they would have looked for a phone, a ledger, a storage device, something like that.”

The smile vanished from her red lips, which had been tracing an arc out of habit. Iheon watched the change, then stopped his finger.

“The answer is simple.”

His tone was that of someone who already knew the correct answer.

“What did that person ask about first?”

Jei immediately took out her notebook and opened it. On the phone laid face down at one side of the table, the recording time was silently increasing. It was an app she had turned on from the moment they entered Stella.

“It was about three days after Shin Gyeongho went into hiding, I think. A man came all the way to the officetel and asked whether I had received anything from that bastard.”

“You’re sure it was three days after the shop closed?”

“I’m not sure it was exactly three days. Three or four days, maybe.”

Jei checked the dates in her notebook and wrote two possibilities side by side.

“What was the thing they were looking for?”

“A USB.”

The pen tip stopped on the paper.

An unusual gleam also passed through Iheon’s eyes.

There was a high probability they had asked because they knew what Shin Gyeongho had been collecting.

“And then? Did Shin Gyeongho entrust it to you, Somi?”

“Why would he entrust something like that to me? I’m the woman praying every day for that bastard to die even a day sooner.”

Now that she mentioned it.

“That man said something strange too.”

“What?”

“When I told him to ask Shin Gyeongho directly if he came back……”

Somi narrowed her brows. Only now did the meaning seem to catch her.

“He said there was no chance he’d come back, so I should just answer what I was asked.”

“Who was it? The person who came.”

“He said he was sent by an old acquaintance of Shin Gyeongho.”

“He didn’t give his own name?”

“No. But I know who sent him.”

“Who?”

“Choi Mingyu.”

“Choi Mingyu?”

“A partner attorney at the law firm Segyero.”

Choi Mingyu. Law firm Segyero. Partner attorney.

Jei wrote down the name and affiliation precisely, then asked.

“Did the man show you anything that could verify he was Attorney Choi Mingyu, like a business card or identification?”

“No. He only gave the name. But I know who he is. Though that side probably wouldn’t even remember me.”

Choi Mingyu. It was the appearance of a new figure.

“How do you know him, Somi?”

“I saw him once, not long after I started this work.”

“Not long after you started would be five years ago. Is there a reason you remember someone you met five years ago?”

Struck at the mark, Somi’s lips pressed into a straight line. As his black eyes grew sharp, Somi lowered her gaze to avoid his.

“I guess I saw him more than once.”

Wetting her dry lips with the tip of her tongue, she sighed and spoke.

“I slept with him. That man.”

“When was that?”

“Do I have to say even that?”

Somi’s voice sharpened. On her face, which had been hesitant until moments ago, a defensive look spread quickly.

“If you don’t want to say, you don’t have to.”

Jei cut in quickly.

“I’m not trying to pry into your private life, Somi. I have no intention of criticizing it, whatever the reason. I’m only trying to confirm what kind of relationship Shin Gyeongho and Choi Mingyu had.”

Somi looked at Jei for a moment. At last, letting out a long breath, she opened her mouth.

“Shin Gyeongho sent me. Told me to go meet a customer. He even sent me the room number and said it was an important person who had to be treated well.”

“Was that Choi Mingyu?”

“Yes.”

“Did Choi Mingyu specifically request you?”

“Who knows. Whether he chose me, or Shin Gyeongho sent me on his own.”

Perhaps the liquor had lost its taste, because Somi pushed her empty glass with her fingertips. The smooth glass base slid briefly across the table.

“But I found out later. That I wasn’t the first.”

“How did you find out?”

“I learned while talking with the girls at the shop. There were more girls who’d gotten a call from Shin Gyeongho and gone to Choi Mingyu, just like me.”

Jei’s pen moved again.

“Shin Gyeongho had been supplying women to Choi Mingyu for a long time. He’d pick girls from the shop who seemed tight-lipped and unlikely to cause trouble, send them to hotels, or call them out to wherever Choi Mingyu wanted.”

“Shin Gyeongho was supplying women to Choi Mingyu?”

“In their words, I suppose so.”

Somi tilted her head and wore an expression that asked whether he was satisfied now. Afraid the mood would turn awkward again, Jei moved to the next question.

“How did the two of them seem to you, Somi? Friends? Or business partners?”

“He said they were friends. More precisely, Shin Gyeongho was the only one going around saying that. That if anything happened to him, Choi Mingyu would take care of it all.”

“Take care of what?”

“The police, lawsuits, people’s mouths, anything.”

As if he were serving an omnipotent god, Shin Gyeongho revered Choi Mingyu. It was excessive for friendship.

“But Shin Gyeongho may have believed in Choi Mingyu, yet Choi Mingyu didn’t believe that bastard.”

Yet in the eyes of Somi, who had observed the two from the side a few times, it had looked different.

“Why do you think so?”

At the same time he asked, Iheon watched how the expression of the woman being questioned changed.

Sure enough. Somi crossed her arms beneath her chest and pulled back the upper body she had kept close to the table.

It was an unconscious gesture to protect herself from the other person.

“Because the way he looked at people was always the eye of someone surveilling.”

Somi, who had silently endured his gaze, spoke as if to provoke him.

“Just like the way you’re looking at me right now.”

Across the table, a gaze full of complaint and a cold gaze collided.

Caught in between and at a loss, Jei signaled to Iheon with her eyes. Apologize first, quickly. At that, Iheon reluctantly opened his mouth.

“If it looked that way, I apologize. It’s because of my profession.”

Unlike his words, there was not the slightest trace of apology on his face. Somi scoffed as if dumbfounded and spoke to Jei.

“You must have a hard fate, unnie, living with a man like that.”

“He looks like that, but he’s quite tender.”

“I’m sure he is. Anyway, that’s all I know. If there’s nothing more to ask, can I bring the check?”