Yeonrin could not open her mouth for a while.
The two hands she had placed on her knees slowly clasped together,
then slowly loosened again.
There was strength in her fingertips,
and her gaze had fallen somewhere on the floor.
“Hajin... was never a man of many words.”
The voice that finally emerged after a moment was low and calm.
It was less the voice of someone forcibly swallowing tears,
and closer to that of someone finally speaking words they had held onto for a long time.
“But he was always a diligent man.”
“There were days he came home late, but he always came back,”
“and he was the sort of person who said that as long as he earned what he had worked for, that was enough. He wasn’t very greedy either.”
Yeonrin seemed to smile for the briefest moment, but the expression quickly vanished.
“He wasn’t someone who stood out for being especially strong. At least, that’s how it looked to me.”
“But strangely, he endured longer than others.”
“Even when he came back from doing the same work, he seemed less exhausted,”
“and even when he carried heavy loads, he never let go until the end.”
“I just... thought he must have been born with good stamina.”
Bido blinked once.
Endured longer than others.
Put that way, it might not have sounded like much.
But what Yeonrin was saying now sounded a little more peculiar than that.
Yeonrin took a moment to steady her breath.
“But I don’t think the people he worked with let it pass so easily.”
“At first, they laughed and said it was impressive,”
“but at some point, people started looking at him strangely.”
“Hajin himself wasn’t the sort of person who wouldn’t notice that.”
“But he wasn’t the kind of man to bring talk like that home.”
Yeonrin’s gaze wavered ever so slightly.
“Still, a few times, I heard him say someone had asked him to work with them.”
“They said he could make much more money than he was making then. But he said it seemed dangerous.”
“So he said he wouldn’t do it. Back then, he really didn’t seem to have any intention of doing so.”
At those words, Miryeong asked,
“Hmm... from the sound of it, they don’t seem like ordinary laborers.”
Yeonrin hesitated briefly at her words before answering.
“In Seuchia... I think he said they were mercenaries.”
At that, Miryeong’s brow narrowed.
“Hmm...”
Soon, Yeonrin slowly rubbed the back of her hand with her fingertips.
It seemed to be a habit that surfaced whenever she recalled something.
Then she opened her mouth again.
“What changed Hajin... was after a certain accident.”
“An accident?”
Miryeong’s gaze sank ever so slightly.
Bido also looked at Yeonrin without a word.
After an accident.
Both of them already sensed that those words were not merely a turning point.
“He said the scaffolding collapsed at a worksite on the outskirts.”
“He said that if things had gone wrong, he could have been crushed to death right there.”
“But when he came back, he didn’t seem badly hurt on the outside.”
“His clothes were covered in dust, but he wasn’t bleeding or limping.”
“But after that day, he changed.”
“Changed how?”
Bido asked, sounding startled.
Yeonrin slowly raised her head.
In her eyes, the inside of that house on that day still seemed to linger.
“At first, I thought he was just shaken. He’d nearly died, so I thought it was only natural.”
“But that wasn’t it. He wasn’t silent because he was tired.”
“He kept... spending more and more time examining his own body by himself.”
She hesitated briefly, then continued.
“He would stare down at his hands, or touch around his chest,”
“or suddenly stand there in a daze for no reason at all.”
“When I asked if he was in pain, he always said it wasn’t that. He said he wasn’t hurt either.”
“But he did say his body felt strange. He said it wasn’t that any part of him hurt,”
“but that his body didn’t feel like his own... Just once, he said it like that.”
For an instant, Bido’s fingertips stiffened very briefly.
Those words lingered in her ears to a strange degree.
His body didn’t feel like his own.
Even though she could not explain why, somehow they felt like words that could not be dismissed lightly.
“After that, he spoke even less.”
“Before, he was the kind of person who would tell me everything—what happened that day, how someone had been,”
“how much he’d been paid...”
“But at some point, all he said was that things were fine. It wasn’t as if he was telling me not to ask.”
“If anything, he looked as though he felt sorry toward me. So I couldn’t press him any further.”
Yeonrin’s voice lowered a little.
“That wasn’t the only strange thing. Before, he never hid talk of money.”
“But around that time, our life started getting a little better.”
“And yet he never properly told me where he was going or what he was doing. It wasn’t a large sum of money.”
“But he was clearly bringing in more than before.”
“So I... thought someone must have offered him work again.”
She bit her lip, then quietly let it go.
“I asked him. Whether it was those people again.”
Miryeong immediately asked,
“Those people—did he say where he met them?”
“...Hajin at the time wouldn’t tell me.”
That single short answer settled even more heavily.
“Then, after quite some time, he said this time would be different.”
“He said it wouldn’t be dangerous.”
“He said he only had to help for a little while. That he only had to do it once.”
Yeonrin shook her head.
“He was never good at lying.”
“When he tried to hide something, it only made it more obvious.”
“That day was the same. He said it was all right, but his eyes weren’t.”
“He had the face of someone trying to reassure me, as always—not the face of someone who was truly at ease.”
Her throat caught for a moment.
But in the end, she did not shed tears.
Instead, she continued even more clearly.
“Even so, I couldn’t stop him.”
This time, a trace of regret clung to those words.
“Hajin was always a cautious man.”
“He wasn’t someone who acted recklessly either. So in the end, I trusted him.”
“I thought he really would just be gone for a little while. He said he would be back before sunset.”
Yeonrin’s fingertips trembled faintly.
“He said that as he left that day too. That he wasn’t going far.”
“That he only had to get through today. That he would tell me everything when he came back.”
She drew in a breath, then let it out very slowly.
“That was the last time.”
Even after she finished speaking, Yeonrin could not lift her head.
It might have been only a brief moment, if one could call it brief; it might have been only once, if one could call it once.
But that promise to return was never kept in the end.
“Then the meeting place.”
Miryeong’s question remained brief.
Yeonrin hesitated for a moment before speaking.
“He didn’t... tell me exactly.”
“Only,”
She lowered her gaze.
“he said he wasn’t going far.”
“I don’t think it was deeper inside Seuchia. It seemed like he was headed toward the worksite area.”
“If it’s toward the worksites, it’s easy to avoid people’s eyes.”
Miryeong muttered shortly.
“And for that very reason, it’s also a good place for people like that to move around.”
She nodded again and said,
“All right. I have a rough idea.”
That was all.
Bido did not bother thinking about what meaning was contained in those words.
If they knew the direction, there was only one thing left to do.
“Let’s go.”
Bido spoke first.
Miryeong looked at her for a moment, then turned toward the door without a word.
Yeonrin watched the two of them from behind, then carefully opened her mouth.
“...Please.”
Miryeong said as she opened the door,
“We’ll talk when we return.”
It was a sentence that did not sound like a promise.
Even so, Yeonrin nodded at those words.
The door closed.
What remained inside the house were only the stories left untold.
As they stepped out of the house,
the air of the outskirts touched them once more.
The air was rougher than it was within the city.
Dry dust mingled with the smell of damp wood,
and a thin layer of acridness, as though oil had been burned somewhere, hung over it.
Bido unconsciously rubbed her throat once.
It felt as though her breath was clinging to the back of her neck.
Places that people “avoided”
usually differed not from the road first, but from the air—that much Bido knew as well.
At the end of the alley, someone saw the two of them and averted their gaze.
It was not an obvious movement of someone hurriedly hiding,
but rather the movement of someone who did not want even the fact that they had “seen” to be discovered.
Miryeong’s ears moved ever so faintly.
Seeing that,
Bido realized that Miryeong was not finding the road,
but first listening to the “avoidance” people had left behind.
Miryeong examined their surroundings for a while.
It was less like she was checking the road,
and more like she was measuring human traces and sounds.
“If it’s toward the worksites,”
she said,
“there are a few places people deliberately avoid.”
“His body became strange after the accident, and someone who noticed that must have approached him again.”
Miryeong spoke in a low voice.
“I think it’s highly likely he wasn’t dragged in by chance, but targeted from the beginning.”
Bido nodded.
“Then,”
she said,
“he may not have gone to meet them simply because of work.”
Instead of answering, Miryeong started walking.
There was no hesitation in her direction.
Bido followed behind her, turning Yeonrin’s words over in her mind.
My body feels a little strange.
I only have to help for a little while.
Those did not sound like the words of someone who wanted to hide something, but rather the words of someone trying to set things in order before leaving.
So Bido thought Hajin had not simply fallen for a temptation,
but had gone out himself to see some kind of end.
How much of those words was truth,
and from where they became wishful thinking, she still did not know.
But one thing was certain.
Hajin had not been trying to run away,
but to settle something, to bring it to an end.
Bido did not bother saying that thought aloud.
Instead, she looked at Miryeong’s back as she walked ahead.
Miryeong looked less like she was searching for the path,
and more like she was erasing the directions that were not the path.
On the road leading toward the worksite area,
the footsteps of the two of them gradually moved farther away from the noise of the city.