Chapter 150
Chapter 150
"In front of the school" was a phrase students tossed off without a second thought. When everyone went to the same school, it practically worked like a landmark.
Seoul was as sprawling as its long history. It wasn't just big—the sheer number of people packed into it was staggering.
And with that many people came countless buildings thrown up and just as many torn down.
Demolishing and rebuilding was, objectively, a good thing. Buildings that got too old posed safety risks, and they inevitably dragged down the cityscape with them.
The problem was that the cycle of destruction and construction, especially in the older districts, almost never followed anything resembling a systematic plan.
Amid buildings sprouting and crumbling like weeds, narrow, crooked alleys fanned out in every direction like spiderwebs. No matter how much redevelopment pushed through or how many roads were reorganized, the original footprints of the old structures had already warped the underlying land from the start. The city's interior was doomed to grow only more convoluted.
In a place like Seoul, you could get lost just going one neighborhood over. Without smartphone navigation to guide you, you could walk straight through a forest of high-rises only to circle back to where you started, or make what felt like the right turn and never see your destination appear.
Which was why the best way to visit the homes of friends you'd made for the first time this year, especially friends in a different neighborhood, was to meet up beforehand and go together.
And friends knew where the school was.
So meeting in front of the school solved everything neatly.
The catch was anyone who wasn't a student.
A school could serve as a fairly well-known neighborhood landmark, and the sheer volume of student foot traffic often made it prominent enough to name a bus stop after. But to anyone unaffiliated with the school, it was deeply exclusionary.
That was unavoidable.
It was a place perpetually full of children who hadn't yet become adults. If an adult lingered nearby, it was only natural to read their presence as suspicious.
And when the task you'd been handed was to surveil that very school front—
[You're keeping a close watch, right?]
"......Ugh."
A small sigh escaped her as she read the message.
—This was So-ri, holding a camera with a massive telephoto lens, with no good option but to keep her distance.
Even this was risky, if she stopped to think about it. Taking photos of the school was one thing, but secretly filming students from this far away? She could practically hear the police cheering over how easy the arrest would be. That was exactly why she'd picked a spot this remote.
At this range, she could make out the students' silhouettes, but the footage and photos wouldn't have the resolution to do anything with. And since that part wasn't even centered in the frame, it was caught on the periphery, requiring deliberate enlargement to see, if she ever got caught, she could at least wave it off with the excuse that they'd happened to wander into the background of her landscape shots.
......That blond girl with the twin-tails was far sharper than she'd expected.
Not that she meant it as a compliment. The direction the girl's mind worked wasn't what you'd expect from a teenager her age.
Using the photos to strong-arm her into dangerous tasks.
The payoff, of course, was undeniable. Looking into it later, the girl, nowhere near Ye Sa-ra's level, but still, was the daughter of one of the country's top conglomerates.
No, honestly, she hadn't even needed to look into it. Very few domestic business figures had married a blonde beauty, and having already spent her own time photographing Ye Sa-ra, she'd long since completed a rough background check on the people around her.
If anything, the ones who still remained a mystery were the girl with the bleached-yellow hair who clearly loved having fun, and the slightly intense-looking girl who always wore her hair neatly tied back.
There was genuinely no way to dig up anything on those two unless she made the first approach or resorted to illegal methods. Their faces had already shown up in newspaper articles, but surprisingly, it had never turned into much of an issue.
"Just my luck......"
Frankly, she figured she'd picked the wrong target.
She'd assumed the heir to the world's wealthiest company, with a face like that, would absolutely attract fans. But there'd been a small stir at the start and then nothing. People had less interest in the business world than she'd thought.
Yet the reason she kept following her—
What should she call it? A kind of hunch.
The feeling that if she stayed on this kid's trail, she'd eventually capture something worthy of an exclusive.
......Though here she was now, just surveilling a school for money.
She looked back down at the camera. The LCD screen, tilted upward horizontally, showed the feed coming through the telephoto lens, which was thicker than a person's forearm.
"Still, thank god it's a model with no recording limits."
Letting out one heavy sigh after another, she pulled out her smartphone and snapped a picture.
Her current location was the rooftop of a nearby building.
She'd been lucky to have a connection with the building owner, though that connection, like most things, had been built with money.
"Honestly, not having money ought to be a crime."
She sent the photo to her employer, then settled into her unfolded fishing chair, rummaged through the bag beside her, fished out some bread, tore open the wrapper, and took a large bite.
"......Or wait. Is having too much money the bigger crime?"
Watching the girl she'd been tailing for the past few months appear on the camera's display, she muttered to herself.
*
Checking the message that had just come in, Su-a flinched.
The photographer from the amusement park, the one she'd bought off with money, the one she could no longer so easily call a paraz, had sent her a photo of her equipment as-is.
And on the camera's LCD screen in that photo, she could see the school building.
Lee Su-a hurriedly closed the messaging app.
"Huh? Did you see something?"
Ha-neul, beside her and also keeping an eye on the school front, asked. She'd been busily taking photos for a while now. Some passing kids gave them suspicious looks, and a few students who'd gotten to know them a little after Sara had changed things asked what they were doing, but Ha-neul just fumbled through with a vague excuse about taking pictures because she was pretty.
"Oh, no. I think I was mistaken."
Just then, a woman stepped out of a car. She honestly looked around Choi Na-kyung's age, though she did seem a bit older than Choi Na-kyung, who looked far younger than her years. Right after, a student who appeared to be her son got out of the car as well.
"Could be a false alarm."
Ha-neul looked at the car Su-a had pointed out and nodded.
They honestly didn't even need to be out here keeping watch. Because although she couldn't say exactly from where, the reporter she'd called in advance was definitely recording this area.
......She just didn't have the nerve to admit that yet.
Surveillance aside, Lee Su-a had already started acting on her own—operating anonymously through that reporter, not under Lee Su-a's name, of course.
Beyond the photos of Sara the woman had taken before, she'd gotten time-stamped photos of Sara and organized them systematically. When possible, she'd also recorded video, and she'd backed up all the original footage onto multiple hard drives stored in different locations.
Then she'd anonymously sent an accessible, organized compilation of those photos and videos to the board of directors of Yujin Group.
She hadn't sent them to just anyone. Within the limits of what Lee Su-a could ascertain, she'd only sent them to people related to Sara by blood, those known to oppose Choi Na-kyung, or those known as close associates of the former chairman.
She'd sent nothing but the photos, with no accompanying message, but she was certain those people would understand what it meant.
......Right, this was undeniably dangerous. If even a single person existed who wanted to exploit Sara, they would absolutely try to push Choi Na-kyung aside and claim her.
But she also knew that would never be easy.
Combining the shares Sara held with those of a displaced Choi Na-kyung would already make Sara's stake too significant to ignore.
On top of that, both Sara and 'Sara' were no longer pushovers.
And Lee Su-a could work hard to help from the shadows.
If marriage became necessary, she could even go that far.
No, if she were being honest, it was something she wanted.
Even if Sara or 'Sara' ended up just using Lee Su-a and throwing her away—
Even so, it would serve as atonement for the sins she had committed.
"......Su-a."
"H-huh?"
Caught up in those thoughts, she must have spaced out without realizing it.
Ha-neul had somehow moved beside her and was looking at Lee Su-a.
"Ah, I'm okay—"
Before she could even finish,
"Are you hiding something?"
Ha-neul, staring straight at Lee Su-a, asked.
"......."
She lost her words for a moment. The question had landed far too precisely.
"......I see."
But Ha-neul just shrugged, as if she understood without needing an answer.
"You've sure got a lot on your mind."
Ha-neul let out a small sigh and let her shoulders slump.
"And all I can manage is stuff like this......"
She looked incredibly pitiful in that moment.
"......No."
"Huh?"
When Lee Su-a shook her head, Ha-neul looked up. Her eyes were slightly widened, such a stark contrast to her usual confident self, and Su-a felt she had to say something.
"The reason the current Sara, and 'Sara', can exist at all is thanks to you."
So she said it.
She'd done many things she might come to regret, but she was confident she wouldn't regret these words.
"Because you're the one who started it. That's why we can all go on like this."
All Lee Su-a had been able to do was speak to Sara.
Ha-neul had run alongside Sara.
A line like "I liked her first..." didn't hold anymore, not when she weighed the magnitude of the sins she'd committed before that, or what she'd managed to accomplish.
Ha-neul was overwhelmingly ahead of Lee Su-a.
"R-really......?"
At Lee Su-a's words, Ha-neul's face flushed, as if she were embarrassed.
"Yeah. So you can hold your head high."
Lee Su-a smiled as she said it.
"I-I see......"
A brief, awkward silence drifted between them.
It was awkward, Lee Su-a thought, but not unpleasant.
"You guys!"
From far off, someone's voice called out to the two of them.
Looking up, they saw So-hee waving her hand in the distance.
Behind her, 'Sara' and Yang Hye-in were walking over together.
"Hi!"
As if eager to shake off even a little of the awkward feeling, Ha-neul waved back with exaggerated energy and called out a loud greeting.
Watching her, Lee Su-a burst out laughing.