Episode 6
“Ah, I’ll just get out and go by myself.”
Goeun bowed her head deeply and hurriedly stepped out of the car. Startled after slamming the door shut out of habit, she looked toward the front seat.
“It’s fine. I’ll wait in the parking lot, so please send me a message when you’re done.”
The large car leisurely pulled out of the alley. Goeun blankly watched the receding vehicle before turning around. And at the daunting uphill slope before her, she let out a deep sigh heavy enough to make the ground cave in.
“Well, compared to when I used to climb Buramsan, this is nothing.”
It was much smaller than her pre-possession body, and it would be a lie to say she wasn’t worried about her lacking stamina, but she was still all right. Recently, she had even succeeded in climbing to the hospital rooftop by stairs, so she thought this level was manageable.
“Huff… Hah.”
But she realized after climbing.
It wasn’t manageable at all.
“Wow, I almost died climbing that hill again.”
No matter how much she built up this wretched body’s stamina day after day, it weakened after only a few days. Just what kind of structure was it built with that stamina could leak out like this?
Goeun roughly wiped the sweat gathered beneath her chin with the back of her hand and straightened her back.
“Mr. Seo Ijae.”
Knock, knock. She called his name several times while rapping the iron gate with her knuckles, but the door didn’t open.
“Mr. Seo Ijae, are you not inside?”
She had come all the way to his house on purpose because it was the weekend. It was the very moment she wondered if he had gone out somewhere.
“Who is it?”
The door that had stayed firmly shut while she knocked creaked open. Through the gap, a boy who seemed slightly smaller than Goeun and a girl even smaller than him peeked their faces out.
“Uh, then who are you… Ah, could you be Mr. Seo Ijae’s younger siblings?”
But to call them his biological siblings, the boy didn’t resemble the Seo Ijae from the photo attached to his resume, and the girl looked somewhat like him yet not quite.
“Seo Ijae is our older brother. Who are you, unnie?”
“Ah, I’m from Seongun…”
“Seongun? Little brother, that’s the Guide company, right?”
“Seongun? Why are you looking for our brother from Seongun?”
Did the family not know that Seo Ijae had applied for the special Guide recruitment?
Worried whether it was okay to speak of something he hadn’t told his family, Goeun hesitated for a moment at the child’s question. If she misspoke, Seo Ijae might refuse to take the matching test, so wouldn’t it be better to find another excuse?
“I’m Seo Ijae’s friend.”
Having come up with a fairly plausible answer after much thought, Goeun smirked with satisfaction at her own quick thinking. However, the children’s eyes looking at her were somewhat strange.
“…Our brother’s friend?”
For some reason, the reaction was even worse. It was a gaze filled with suspicion. Especially the boy, who seemed to think she was a suspicious person, was on high alert.
“Our brother doesn’t have friends, though?”
“…He doesn’t have friends?”
This was a completely unexpected development. The girl looked up at the flustered Goeun and smiled brightly.
“Yeah, big brother has a bad personality, so he has no friends! Unnie, you’re lying right now, aren’t you?”
“Ah… So Seo Ijae’s friends…”
He has none.
Too flustered to even think of another excuse, Goeun merely moved her lips soundlessly. She had thought it was the most ordinary and plausible lie, but who would have known he was such a loner that even his family acknowledged it.
“He shouldn’t… not have even a single friend, right?”
How could a man in his early twenties attending university not have a single friend? This was something Goeun found utterly unbelievable.
“Ian, go inside.”
“No. Why do you always tell me to go inside?”
“If you keep throwing a fit, I won’t take you to the director’s house tomorrow.”
‘Director?’
Forgetting that Goeun was standing right in front of them, the two children bickered. At the mention of the director she had overheard, Goeun tilted her head slightly.
“Shit… I hate you so much.”
“Kim Ian, are you cursing again? I’ll tell brother everything about this.”
‘…Their surname is different from Seo Ijae?’
They did seem to be Ijae’s younger siblings, but for some reason their surnames were different. Was the younger brother scolding the girl also of a different surname? Or was it the same as Ijae’s? He seemed to have quite complicated family circumstances.
“I just have to go in, okay?!”
In the end, the girl pouted her lips and went inside first with a heavily scrunched-up face. After confirming his sister had gone in, the boy quietly closed the door and looked up at Goeun.
“Excuse me, noona. You’re not our brother’s friend, are you?”
It already seemed she had been caught, so insisting she was his friend here would look strange. Goeun rolled her eyes slightly, worrying about how to answer.
“Did you by any chance lend our brother money, noona?”
“Th-that’s not it.”
“Then why did you come looking for our brother?”
Couldn’t she just tell the truth? It wasn’t illegal. Since Seo Ijae couldn’t be contacted at all, she had wondered if he had blocked numbers related to Seongun. Wouldn’t it be better to be honest rather than unnecessarily complicating things with lies? It would be very sorry toward Seo Ijae, who had kept his application a secret from his family, but…
“Actually, Mr. Seo Ijae applied for the Seongun Group special recruitment and didn’t attend the matching test.”
“Brother applied to Seongun Group? Don’t tell me… that Guide position this time?”
“Yes.”
As expected, the family hadn’t known. Seo Ijae’s younger brother, surprised by Goeun’s words, looked up at her blankly with wide eyes.
“But why didn’t our brother take the matching test?”
“I don’t know either, which is why I came looking like this. I don’t know why he skipped the test.”
“So hyung… was a Guide.”
The atmosphere suggested he hadn’t known his own brother was a Guide either. Feeling she shouldn’t mention Seo Ijae’s rank on top of this, Goeun firmly shut her mouth.
“You didn’t try calling him?”
“He seems to carry his phone around as a decoration.”
She had lost count of how many times she had tried contacting Seo Ijae. Other applicants could be reached immediately, but she had never once gotten through to him. That was why she had ended up coming all the way to his house.
“Ah, right. It’s about time our brother is at his part-time job, so he probably turned his phone off.”
“Part-time job?”
“Yes. He’s rarely home on weekends because of his part-time job. He’s probably… not even in Seoul?”
“Then when does he come back?”
“He comes back around dawn on Monday.”
“Today is…”
Saturday?
Goeun squeezed her eyes shut. Perhaps, as Naeun had said, finding a Guide from overseas might be faster. She had never expected meeting him would be this difficult. He couldn’t be contacted, and when she came to his house, he wasn’t home either. He wasn’t even in Seoul right now.
“Do you happen to know where he does that part-time job?”
“He says he goes to a different place every week, so I don’t really know either.”
“…Mr. Seo Ijae, he does go to school, right?”
Recalling the school name Seo Ijae had written on his resume, Goeun cautiously asked his younger brother. Phone calls: failed. House visit: failed too. Then the only remaining method was to find him at school. The child nodded at Goeun’s question.
‘So he does go to school. Then he’s not on a leave of absence.’
Goeun recalled Seo Ijae’s resume. Since his major was in science and engineering, should she look for him at the engineering building?
“Excuse me, but what about your parents…”
“Yes?”
“Ah, no, it’s nothing. Sorry to disturb you on the weekend. I’ll be going.”
Seo Ijae hadn’t gone out to have fun with friends; he had gone all the way to the province for a part-time job. Judging by his younger brother’s tone, he seemed to have been doing it quite consistently. Moreover, seeing only young siblings at home on a weekend afternoon, she had momentarily worried whether their parents were absent and nearly pried. With a life-or-death problem at hand, it was no time to worry about the family circumstances of an extra in a novel.
* * *
“Seo Ijae?”
“Yes, I heard he takes this class.”
“Ah, he did come out. I think he was there during roll call.”
“Then is he still in the lecture hall? I didn’t see him come out.”
In the end, after waiting straight through to Monday, she went to the university Seo Ijae attended. Over that weekend, Goeun had gobbled down a handful of sedatives and suppressants. Whenever she felt even the slightest pain, she would take medicine in fright, to the point where now she felt full just taking medicine. If only Naeun had been by her side, she might have taken less medicine. Because Naeun was away preparing for the Guide special recruitment in America she had mentioned before, Goeun was relying even more on medication. Given this situation, eager to find a Guide even a day sooner, she rushed to Seo Ijae’s school as soon as dawn broke.
“Huh? I don’t really know. Is he still inside?”
“He left as soon as class ended.”
“Oh, where did he go?”
But the news she heard was truly despair-inducing.
“We don’t know either. We’re not close with him. We’ve never even greeted him.”
“Then is there anyone even slightly close to Mr. Seo Ijae? Someone who might know his whereabouts?”
“Friend? Did he have friends?”
“Seo Ijae goes around alone. He probably has no friends? I’ve never seen him go anywhere with anyone.”
Just what kind of life was Seo Ijae living? Just as his younger brother had said, he really didn’t have a single friend. Moreover, among the students taking the same class, there wasn’t anyone who even knew him. How could this be? Recalling her life before possession, Goeun was inwardly astonished.
“Or try going to the department office. He did show up regularly for the national work-study program.”
“Ah. The department office.”
She should have gone to the department office from the start. In her haste, she had dropped in at the lecture hall right after entering through the main gate. Goeun thanked them and quickly moved toward the department office.
* * *
“Student Seo Ijae? Yes, I know him.”
Goeun finally shouted hallelujah and hurrah inwardly, sending thanks to a god she had never prayed to even once.
“I have something very important that requires me to meet Student Seo Ijae; where should I go to meet him?”
“Well… we can only meet him during vacation. He’s a student whose face is hard to see during the semester.”
She had thought that if she found the department office, she would meet him immediately. Goeun’s shoulders, filled with anticipation, slumped helplessly. Where on earth did she have to go to meet him? She was just thinking that at this point, he was practically a mythical creature, when—
“Seo Ijae? That Russian brown bear?”