Chapter 28
Chapter 28
It was my first weekend since starting school.
Truthfully, there wasn't anything I particularly needed to do. Just like January and February, when I hadn't been attending classes, there wasn't much I was capable of doing anyway.
No, that wasn't entirely accurate. One possible course of action did cross my mind.
Ye Sa-ra had mentioned obtaining a dangerous sleeping pill, one no longer prescribed, through illegal channels. That meant she must have had an outside collaborator, or at the very least a pipeline to the outside world.
How?
Inside the mansion, it was impossible. Even when Ye Sa-ra used a smartphone, or on rare occasions a computer out of necessity, a servant was always watching. Yang Hye-in apparently came to this mansion around the time Ye Sa-ra entered middle school, but other servants would have been monitoring her long before that.
Ye Sa-ra died before graduating middle school. By age, she was still extremely young. How had a child, one who relieved stress by scribbling grandiose delusions in a notebook, managed to establish an outside line and maintain it?
......Clearly, someone must have approached her first.
I couldn't be certain. I hadn't witnessed that era of Ye Sa-ra from right beside her. But based on the clues I currently had, it was the only conclusion I could draw.
If so, where?
For merely exchanging information, perhaps you could hide away and use some small terminal. But trading actual drugs was a different matter. She'd have needed another person who could explicitly take a request from Ye Sa-ra and procure the item immediately.
The easiest place for that was, of course, school.
After her father's death, Ye Sa-ra had lived solely within the mansion. The only time she could go outside was when she went to school.
And inside the school, no one cared where Ye Sa-ra was or what she was doing.
Yes. Even when Ye Sa-ra screamed, threw things, or hit someone.
......Even when she stormed out of class during a lesson.
It meant no one paid any attention whatsoever.
The problem was, I had no idea where, with whom, or how she had communicated.
Besides, I was in high school now. Even if Ye Sa-ra had a contact point in the middle school, I couldn't use it anymore. However adjacent the buildings, the campuses were separated by walls. Sneaking onto the middle-school grounds in a high-school uniform would draw immediate suspicion.
Should I wait for the other party to approach me first?
Yes, let's wait for now and think it through gradually. If Ye Sa-ra had someone she'd been in steady contact with right up until her death, that person would find the long silence strange.
And if I could find any hints inside the school, I'd search for them.
Hm.
Even though I'd sorted out my thoughts to some degree, it wasn't even Saturday breakfast time yet.
......I'm bored.
Just a little while ago, I'd been savoring this state of doing absolutely nothing in my own way. No company to report to, no exams or studying required. Just sprawled out, loafing around, randomly pulling a book from the shelf and flipping through it...... and when I passed the time like that, Yang Hye-in would come up to announce it was mealtime.
Yet after only a few days of school, I was already bored.
Of course, the lessons themselves were dull, but at least during the breaks between them, there was Yu Ha-neul busily poking at me. There was Lee Su-a to eat lunch with. And there was Shin So-hee, who somehow ended up tangled with us after school every time.
I couldn't claim I had many friends, but I could say I had just enough to not be bored.
Having surrendered my body to the weight of boredom, I was sprawled on the bed for a while staring at the ceiling when the door slid open with a rattle.
"Breakfast is ready, young lady."
Yang Hye-in spoke, bowing politely.
I pulled myself up at the words.
*
This mansion was tranquil, with no real distinction between weekdays and weekends. I had no idea if it was quiet when I was away, or in places where only servants were present. But at least when I was here, the servants were deathly silent.
So, to put it bluntly, it was no different from having no one around at all.
Toast and fried eggs. Plus mashed potatoes and bacon. Breakfast was always simple. Not that the cooking was done carelessly. The toast was properly crisp, and the fried eggs were soft-boiled, the yolk gently swathed in white. The yolk held its plump shape perfectly until I burst it with a fork.
The mashed potatoes were smooth. So smooth you couldn't feel a single lump. I could tell how meticulously the cook had mashed and blended the ingredients.
The bacon was fried perfectly crisp. I'd eaten this sort of crispy bacon for the first time only after arriving here. It tasted excellent. Honestly, I was starting to think I might never be able to eat thin, floppy bacon again.
The people who prepared and served the meals didn't sit well with me. Maybe because I'd read the will Ye Sa-ra had left behind.
In truth, everyone who worked here was indirectly connected to Ye Sa-ra's death. No, depending on the perspective, some might even call them direct perpetrators. Because if even a single person here had offered Ye Sa-ra genuine affection, perhaps she would have made a different choice.
If Ye Sa-ra had taken her life, what would have happened to all of them? Would their fate have been to be exposed directly to the Chairwoman's fury and burn to ashes?
As I was slowly finishing my meal with such thoughts, the dining-room door opened.
......?
And the situation itself caught my attention.
Because it was something I'd never seen before.
Beside the open dining-room door stood a security guard with a somewhat flustered expression.
Something must have happened outside the mansion. Something troublesome enough that he apparently needed to report directly to me.
But the guard couldn't quite bring himself to speak to me directly. When I stared at him fixedly, he hurriedly averted his eyes.
"May I have a moment?"
Yang Hye-in, seemingly unable to watch his state any longer, asked me in a collected voice.
When I nodded, Yang Hye-in walked toward him without a sound.
"Report."
"Ah, well......."
The guard started to speak, glanced at me once more, then finally sighed and reported to Yang Hye-in.
"Outside......"
The rest was spoken so quietly I couldn't hear it from where I was.
I sliced the bacon into small pieces, placed a piece in my mouth, and crunched on it. The distinct aroma of smoked pork filled my mouth. The properly cooked fat layer was crisp and satisfying to chew. As I was slowly eating like that and watching the two of them, the conversation seemed to end, and Yang Hye-in quietly walked back toward me.
When I looked up at her steadily, Yang Hye-in immediately reported.
"It seems a friend of yours is waiting outside, young lady."
"......Excuse me?"
*
"Hey!"
The person greeting me with overwhelming energy was none other than Yu Ha-neul.
Naturally, she wasn't in her school uniform.
She wore black leggings that clung to her legs and a gray hoodie. Her sneakers looked comfortable.
At a glance, she looked exactly like she'd come out for a morning jog. Even while greeting me cheerfully, she was running in place, as if unable to contain her overflowing energy. The ponytail gathered at the back of her head swayed in a very healthy-looking way.
"What's going on?"
Standing with the open gate between us, I asked, genuinely surprised. I mean, on a weekend, at this hour, to think she'd actually come here in person.
On top of that, Yu Ha-neul had already seen twice what kind of position I held here. The fact that she still came by suggested she had more nerve than most.
"Oh, I just woke up in the morning, went for a jog, and thought of you."
Jogging on a weekend morning; I couldn't even imagine it. No, actually, not just on weekend mornings, I was the type who genuinely couldn't understand people who came outside in the morning to do exercise like jogging. Why deliberately set aside time to torture your own body?
"And if you stay home all weekend, you won't exercise at all, right?"
So she seemed to be saying she'd come to make me exercise.
"I apologize. Even though I told her you had a schedule today......."
The guard spoke, sounding deeply sorry. Naturally, his gaze was directed not at me, but at Yang Hye-in, who held de facto command of this mansion.
"Right, so what exactly is this schedule? Do tell."
Yu Ha-neul asked, quite boldly.
"Yes, do tell. What schedule did I have today?"
At least I hadn't heard a thing. In the first place, I'd never done anything significant on a weekend. What urgent business could a young lady left abandoned in a mansion without friends or even acquaintances possibly have on a weekend?
.......
After hearing my words, the guard shut his mouth.
Truthfully, if he had his way, he would want to use force and drive Yu Ha-neul out right then. Unfortunately for him, this mansion stood in the very heart of the city, practically announcing to everyone that it had originally been intended as a department store. This was despite quite tall buildings jutting up sharply on both sides. If anything, this one lower section made the building stand out more.
Naturally, the road stretched right in front of it, with people coming and going constantly. Since most of the surrounding buildings were offices, there were a bit fewer people on the weekend. Still, it was impossible to create a situation with zero witnesses if anything violent occurred.
Well, on another private property, maybe they could ignore that and simply expel someone. After all, this was now a residential mansion, not a department store, and they could just say they were driving out a stalker loitering in front of such a place.
But my situation here was too unique to consider such things.
The Chairwoman was someone who took great pains to prevent any further photos from leaking, aside from a few childhood pictures. If word of "who lives here" spread outside, curiosity would pour in about who the heiress was who had inherited a full 5.7 percent of a 3,600-trillion-won market cap, and what kind of person she was.
They could probably feed money to the media to shut them up, but if it shifted into public opinion, the narrative would change.
So, they couldn't recklessly use force to throw out a minor teenage girl. It would draw attention.
Actually, wasn't this current situation dangerous enough in itself?
"So what I'm saying is, want to go for a refreshing run?"
She probably wasn't aware of that, but at the very least, Yu Ha-neul seemed pleased about flustering the security guard. Well, I hadn't exactly expected a friend to show up in person either.
.......
I lowered my gaze.
Along the direction the gate opened, a metal track was drawn. It was the path for the wheels attached to the gate. That track was also the line that divided inside this mansion from outside.
Ye Sa-ra had never crossed beyond that line by her own will.
For a moment, I almost looked up at Yang Hye-in, but stopped myself.
Did I really need another person's permission?
Yang Hye-in had said the Chairwoman would notice right away if I acted like this—
Ah, whatever.
If she's going to notice, let her notice.
I had no intention of just taking it forever either.
I lifted my head and looked toward the guard.
And then I gave a sharp grin.
A bead of sweat formed on the guard's temple as he saw my expression.
Alright, let's try borrowing a page from Ye Sa-ra's behavior.
Though in a completely opposite direction, of course.