<18>
"Try one."
Kang Il-hyun offered the cigarette he was smoking to Ja-kyeong. Ja-kyeong kept his mouth firmly shut. Had he noticed? If so, how much? And when did he see the tattoo? His eyes were fixed on the cigarette he was holding, but his mind raced with all kinds of thoughts. He couldn't conclude anything for certain. For now, he smiled and refused his offer.
"My lungs aren't good...."
"Lie."
As Il-hyun waved away the drifting smoke with his hand and Ja-kyeong coughed repeatedly, Il-hyun laughed and put away the cigarette, crushing it in the ashtray. He leaned back on the sofa, crossed his arms, and gazed steadily at Ja-kyeong. Ja-kyeong covered his mouth with the back of his hand, coughed a few more times, and watched Il-hyun's reaction.
"Are you going to tell grandfather?"
Il-hyun didn't answer. Ja-kyeong looked troubled.
"Please don't say anything. If he finds out about the tattoo, he'll scold me...."
His voice shrank like a child being scolded by his parents for doing something wrong. He filled a nearby glass with ice and poured alcohol. The brown liquid filled half of the transparent glass. Ja-kyeong watched tensely, wondering what words would come from his mouth. He swallowed a sip of alcohol without speaking.
"What's so significant about that?"
"You know... what kind of person he is."
"True. The old man is old-fashioned and stuffy."
The sound of ice moving inside the glass clattered, sounding unusually loud. Ja-kyeong nodded with a gloomy expression.
"That's right... he's overly protective to an excessive degree... so sometimes... it feels suffocating...."
Kang Il-hyun silently swirled the glass in his hand.
"It was fun coming here and hanging out with friends my age... like a rebellion. Actually, in Hong Kong, I couldn't even dream of such things...."
Ja-kyeong lowered the ends of his eyebrows and made a sad face. He moved his lips a few times, sighed softly, and acted as Zhang Yi-an. When people face a crisis, acting that couldn't be done before happens naturally. This is why survival instinct is scary. Wang Han had taught him so much, sitting him down and instructing him, yet it was difficult.
"Because my father passed away that way... I know grandfather is even more concerned. But I'm an adult now. When Executive Director said earlier that he assigned someone to follow me without my knowledge... that's why I got so upset... thinking there wasn't much difference from how I lived in Hong Kong... I felt suffocated...."
His eyes reddened and he couldn't continue speaking. Il-hyun finished all the remaining alcohol, and after waiting a moment, Ja-kyeong continued.
"Executive Director must have done so with the same heart as my grandfather... I was reckless to get angry... I'm sorry."
He bit his lower lip hard and looked down with an apologetic expression. Quiet as a dead mouse. When he looked up, Il-hyun was looking at his phone, checking something. Making someone tense and then what is he doing? Il-hyun looked at Ja-kyeong once while touching his phone.
"Sorry. It's an important contact."
"Yes..."
"Go up and rest. Sleep well."
As he stood up, he made a call somewhere. Talking about deals and such, he entered the bedroom and completely disappeared. Left alone, Ja-kyeong looked at the closed bedroom with a bewildered face. What is this? After making the atmosphere strange just moments ago. Even squeezing out non-existent tears while acting.
He glared at where he had disappeared, then stood up from his seat. Perhaps from unconscious tension, his legs felt slightly weak. When he came outside, the housekeeper approached and asked if she should prepare a snack.
"No, I'm fine."
"Why not? You're still at an age where you should eat plenty."
That age had long passed. He wasn't deliberately deceiving her, but feeling apologetic, he awkwardly smiled and declined her kindness. Seeing her reminded him of Wang Han's grandmother. Ja-kyeong had gone to China and lived with Wang Han's family, and that's when he first met Wang Han's grandmother.
The sight of her sitting in a small courtyard knitting remains vivid even though a long time has passed since she died. She cherished Ja-kyeong and gave him much good advice. She even taught him to do good deeds and live well. She probably didn't know that those good deeds would turn out to be killing people.
Going up to the second floor, Ja-kyeong entered the bathroom and finally let out a sigh of relief. It was the only space in this house where he could be comfortable. There, he replayed the situation from moments ago. The words Kang Il-hyun had said, his actions, his expressions.
When did he see the tattoo? The shirt he was wearing in the basement was terribly disheveled—was it then? Or did he notice something else? One day he looks with suspicious eyes, another day he looks like he's seeing a close younger sibling, making it impossible to figure him out.
He took off his glasses and turned on the faucet, washing his face repeatedly. He braced both hands on the sink and lifted his head to look at his reflection in the mirror. On his face, with water dripping down, traces of tension remained. He put his hand in his pants pocket, took out his phone, and sat on the edge of the bathtub.
After the signal went through, Wang Han's voice came after a while.
[What's the matter at this hour?]
"I contacted you because I have something to ask."
[Why is your voice like that? Did something happen?]
"Please find out who commissioned this job."
Wang Han seemed flustered and said nothing. In cases where a request comes through an intermediary like Dmitry rather than a direct commission, one must never ask about or be curious about the employer. Even if not specified in a separate contract, this was an unwritten rule in this industry. And Ja-kyeong had never broken that rule once while working all this time.
Perhaps thinking something had gone wrong, Wang Han's voice became extremely tense.
[Something happened, didn't it?]
"No, not yet."
["Not yet"? And Dmitry won't tell you that.]
"If he won't tell, say I'll return the advance payment and withdraw from the job."
[Ja-kyeong.]
"I'm serious."
Wang Han didn't ask further. He too had felt uneasy from the beginning, so he figured Ja-kyeong must have a reason for acting this way. But quitting in the middle of a job carried that much risk. If word spread, one would have to pay a price regarding client confidentiality. Whether with money or with one's body.
[Alright. Just need to find that out, right?]
"Please do. I'm hanging up."
Ja-kyeong put the disconnected phone in his pocket and glared at his face reflected in the mirror.
[The tone is polite, but why are the eyes behind those glasses so thug-like?]
Strength entered his tightly closed lips. It was nonsense, but at that moment, the suspicion crossed his mind that Kang Il-hyun might be the client. Would people find it absurd if they heard? How many people would commission a contract killing to kill themselves?
However, it wasn't entirely nonexistent. Shortly after starting this work, he received a commission from a famous Russian ballet dancer who had been having an affair with a politician's wife. The man, thinking he could never fully possess the woman, suffered from depression and eventually asked Ja-kyeong to kill him.
On the day the woman came with her husband to see a performance, he asked to be killed miserably in front of everyone. So the woman would live with guilt forever. No, even if not guilt, so she could never forget him in her memory. Eventually, the ballet dancer died, and the media made a fuss about it for a while.
After that, the woman also appeared on broadcast media occasionally. Unlike the man's wish, she was smiling and looked happy. She once said that this was the most blessed time of her life and hoped everyone would be the same.
But Kang Il-hyun was definitely not someone who would give up his life to remain in someone's memory or for revenge. Unless his purpose was to threaten or take something with his life as collateral. He roughly rubbed his wet face with his hand. If only he could, he wanted to slit open Kang Il-hyun's stomach and look inside his thoughts.
***
After washing up in the bathroom, Il-hyun shook his wet hair to dry it, then put on only a comfortable pair of pants. He went to the living room, fed the pet sharks in the aquarium, and observed them. The sight of them tearing apart the food with their sharp teeth was adorable, making him smile with satisfaction for a moment before going to the refrigerator, taking out two cans of beer, and returning to the bedroom.
He sat on the sofa, opened a beer, quenched his thirst, and turned on the TV with the remote. When he pressed the button, the screen switched from advertisements to CCTV footage. The footage showed dozens of screens divided to show various places inside and outside the house. When he pressed the button again, footage of Zhang Yi-an's bedroom appeared.
Zhang Yi-an was lying on the bed, and whether he couldn't sleep, he kept moving and changing positions. Il-hyun drank his beer without taking his eyes off that screen. He even chuckled from time to time as if watching an entertainment program.
Yi-an, who had been tossing and turning, rose from his seat. He seemed to be going to the bathroom, but suddenly pulled his shirt up and took it off. He had already touched and knew, but his body was surprisingly firm with not an ounce of excess flesh. Discovering the tattoo on his right shoulder, Il-hyun licked his lower lip with his tongue.
"So it was a snake."
He had glimpsed it in the basement, but only now confirmed the exact shape. After taking off his shirt, he even pulled off his pants completely and lay down wearing only underwear. It was a shame that the night vision function didn't reveal his skin color explicitly.
Even after taking off all his clothes, Yi-an couldn't sleep and kept tossing and turning. He covered himself with the blanket then kicked it off; until yesterday he was careful, conscious of the CCTV, but now, perhaps thinking he'd been caught, he was uninhibited.
Then at some point, his movements decreased, and he curled up like a fetus, balling up and fell asleep. Il-hyun crushed the empty beer can with force, picked up the remote, and turned off the screen. The light all disappeared, leaving only one lamp in the room.