Her Request
Seong-min stepped into the room first.
“It’s okay… just sit down for now.”
Following his words, she slowly took a seat.
She looks really anxious.
The expression on her face as she sat was dark, and beyond that she was trembling with anxiety, not even knowing where to rest her gaze.
“Um… your name was Arum, right?”
She looked at Seong-min.
“It’s okay… Min-hyeok will be fine for sure… Let’s figure out the situation first. By any chance… how old are you? I’m twenty-four.”
Arum fidgeted with her fingers, gauging Seong-min’s reaction.
“It’s okay… it’s really okay, all right? How old are you?”
Seong-min asked her age again, coaxing her gently.
Then she carefully wrote a number on the floor with her finger.
“Twenty… six…? You’re twenty-six?”
She slowly nodded.
“I see… so you’re older than me. Like an older sister.”
Min-hyeok had said he was twenty-two, which made them four years apart.
“Then from now on I’ll call you Arum-noona. Is that okay?”
Still reading the room, Arum slowly nodded again.
“Good. Then Noona, the reason you asked me for help… it’s about Min-hyeok, right?”
He already knew, but Seong-min asked once more just to confirm.
She nodded with an uneasy expression.
Mentioning Min-hyeok’s name seemed to make her anxious all over again.
“Did Min-hyeok leave this morning…?”
At Seong-min’s question she slowly shook her head.
“If not today… did he leave yesterday…?”
Arum shook her head again.
“Then… Wednesday…?”
Arum nodded.
“So he left on Wednesday and still hasn’t come back even today?”
She nodded again.
He left on Wednesday and hasn’t come back?
Min-hyeok wasn’t a little kid; he could be away for a few days if he had something to do. But suddenly disappearing without any contact was a problem.
Especially leaving a sister like this behind.
“Has Min-hyeok done this before…?”
Arum gave no answer, just fidgeting with her fingers and glancing at him.
“It’s okay… I came here to help you, Noona… so please answer me honestly. Has Min-hyeok ever disappeared without a word like this before…?”
Seong-min waited for her to react.
Arum didn’t move her head, but carefully wrote something on the floor with her finger. He watched closely what she was writing.
Ba…d… peo…ple…?
“Bad people…?”
She slowly nodded.
“Are you trying to say… that Min-hyeok hung out with bad people or something like that?”
She nodded as if that was exactly it.
Bad people, huh.
Seong-min ran through various possibilities.
Min-hyeok looked like the type who’d been a bit of a delinquent.
He might even have been a school bully back in his school days.
And when they’d talked while doing delivery work, Min-hyeok had mentioned he’d also worked as a waiter. That meant he’d worked in the nightlife district, and the nightlife district naturally had ties to that side of things.
Of course, it was hard to imagine Min-hyeok had actually mixed with gangsters.
Just because you work in the nightlife district doesn’t mean you get involved with that crowd.
But the words “bad people” stuck with him.
“From now on, I’d like you to tell me the truth about whatever I ask, Noona. Can you do that…?”
Still gauging him, Arum slowly nodded.
“Good.”
Seong-min went on to ask Arum, Min-hyeok’s older sister, all sorts of questions. About how Min-hyeok had lived before. Of course he figured she wouldn’t know the details. He just wanted to hear what she’d observed and felt from the sidelines.
She seemed unable to speak, so she answered with nods and head shakes or by writing characters on the floor with her finger.
Seong-min asked his questions calmly and carefully so as not to startle her.
Putting the answers together, it seemed Min-hyeok had hung out with worse kids than Seong-min had thought. And from what he heard, at age twenty he’d spent about seven months in what’s commonly called “school”—prison.
That was why he hadn’t gone to the military either.
As for why he’d gone to prison, even his sister didn’t seem to know.
Even after coming out of prison after those seven months, Min-hyeok had spent more time roaming outside than staying home.
Then recently, according to her, Min-hyeok had been getting along well at home.
This wasn’t something she’d said in detail.
It was Seong-min piecing it together and interpreting from her answers.
For instance, she had trouble answering in a coherent way.
When writing with her finger, she struggled with difficult words.
She’d simply put simple words together and write them on the floor with her finger.
“Did those bad people come looking for Min-hyeok again a few days ago…?”
Arum slowly nodded.
“Then just one more question. The people who came looking… were they the same ones Min-hyeok used to hang out with before?”
Arum nodded.
“I see…”
With that, Seong-min roughly grasped the situation.
He still didn’t know the true identity of those “bad people” for sure, but going by her answers, those so-called bad people were clearly the ones Min-hyeok had hung out with before.
He’d kept hanging out with them even after serving seven months in prison, but starting from last winter, Min-hyeok—borrowing the words she’d written with her finger—had been a “good older sister and younger brother.”
He’d written that Min-hyeok had come home and lived diligently as “good older sister and younger brother.”
Here Seong-min’s heart grew heavy.
In the end, whether Min-hyeok had been dragged off or gone of his own free will, he’d started hanging out with those “bad people” again. Of course he’d have to look into it, but either way the situation didn’t look good.
Suddenly Seong-min was flustered.
Because she had suddenly started shedding tears with an anxious face.
Seong-min looked around, spotted a roll of toilet paper, grabbed it, tore off a length, and held it out to her.
“Don’t cry, Arum-noona… Min-hyeok will be okay. We’ll definitely be able to find him…”
Without even taking the tissue he offered, she wrote something on the floor with her finger.
Seong-min looked at the characters she was writing on the floor.
I’m sorry… I’m so sorry… please help me…
Watching the words she wrote on the floor with trembling hands, Seong-min’s chest ached.
“Arum-noona…”
Without wiping her tears, she just kept writing over and over on the floor: I’m sorry… I’m so sorry… please help me…
“I’ll help you. I’ll help so that Min-hyeok can come home again. So stop writing on the floor and wipe your tears…”
Arum’s finger stopped writing on the floor, and she quietly looked at Seong-min’s face.
She looked at him with eyes still brimming with tears.
In the end, unable to just watch, Seong-min wiped the tears from the corners of Arum’s eyes with the tissue himself.
“Arum-noona, you contacted me because you thought I could find Min-hyeok for you, right?”
Arum slowly nodded.
“Then don’t cry like this… you have to stay strong too, Noona. That way Min-hyeok can come home again and you two can be a good older sister and younger brother. Right…?”
Watching her nod again this time, Seong-min gave her a kind smile.
“So don’t cry anymore… and I’d like a cup of the cocoa you make, Noona. Would that be okay…?”
At Seong-min’s words, Arum nodded, then got up from her seat and left the room.
This situation isn’t going to be easy.
While she stepped out briefly to make the cocoa, Seong-min sank into thought.
How was he supposed to know right away where Min-hyeok had gone?
He had to start by finding that out, and his chest felt tight.
While he was lost in thought, the door opened and Arum came in carrying a teacup.
“I’ll enjoy it.”
Seong-min took the cocoa she’d prepared, took a sip, and smiled at her again.
“It’s sweet and delicious.”
Then she smiled.
Seong-min thought that smile was truly pure.
After taking another sip, Seong-min set it down on the floor.
“By any chance, when Min-hyeok was writing a diary with those bad people, where did he write it?”
Then Seong-min saw her point to the small room.
“He wrote his diary in there?”
She nodded.
Maybe…
Seong-min stood up from his seat.
From what he could infer from her words, it seemed Min-hyeok had been doing some kind of work while hanging out with them. She didn’t seem to know the details, but she’d apparently thought of Min-hyeok writing something in a notebook as a diary.
I might be able to find something.
Standing up, Seong-min asked for permission.
“To find Min-hyeok, I’d like to look for that diary in that room—is that okay…?”
Seeing her nod, Seong-min opened the door to the small room and went inside.
There was a desk and chair, and a bedding set folded up.
He could tell Min-hyeok had lived in this room.
Seong-min rummaged through the desk. First he found all the notebooks and looked through their contents.
When am I going to get through all of this?
For a moment he wondered if this was even the right approach, but he kept examining the notebooks and searching through them.
Fortunately, most of them were textbooks and books from his school days.
Well… it’s not like Min-hyeok would have studied hard.
Unlike his initial worry, there weren’t that many actual notebooks.
Searching carefully, Seong-min soon found something in one of the note-taking notebooks.
There were names with tally marks. And phone numbers, ages written down.
What did this mean?
Anyway, there weren’t just one or two of those names, and some had X marks on them.
This might be a clue.
For now, Seong-min took out his phone and took photos of the names and phone numbers written in the notebook to save them.
Then he put it back in its original place.
When he opened the small room’s door and came out, he saw her standing there anxiously, fidgeting with her fingers.
“Sit here, Noona…”
Seong-min sat down, and she sat across from him.
Seong-min took another sip of the now-cold cocoa and set it down.
“I’ll make a promise to you, Noona. I’ll find Min-hyeok again… and make it so you two can go back to being a good older sister and younger brother. Can you believe what I’m saying…?”
Even with her anxious face, she nodded.
“Okay… I haven’t known Min-hyeok for long… but I know he’s a decent kid. So… I’ll definitely make it so Min-hyeok can get along well with you again, Noona.”
Arum quietly looked at the smiling Seong-min.
Without any action, just…
Simply gazing at Seong-min’s face.
Seong-min did his best to calm and reassure the anxious, frightened woman.
He soothed her so she could sleep soundly tonight without anxiety.
Even if it took time, he became a conversation partner so she could find her composure.
When it got late at night, he promised to come back tomorrow evening and left the house.
He soothed her heart once more when she tried to see him out, saying it was fine.
What the hell happened.
Outside, Seong-min let out a sigh.
I… I don’t think I’ll be able to do delivery work from now on.
Min-hyeok had clearly said that last Friday.
That he didn’t think he’d be able to go out for delivery work anymore.
He’d clearly said he’d finish the week well and that next week Min-hyeok would definitely come out for delivery work again.
He’d said this job was rewarding and good.
But Min-hyeok hadn’t come on Monday, and he hadn’t come after that either.
When he couldn’t get in touch, he’d gone looking, and that was what Min-hyeok had told him.
Something must have happened starting then.
He thought that Min-hyeok going with those “bad people” this time was related to those days he hadn’t been able to come to delivery work.
On the other hand, Seong-min felt sorry for Min-hyeok’s sister who had asked him for help.
Just looking at her, it seemed he was the only person she could think of to ask for help.
If he wondered why she hadn’t contacted the police, the answer was obvious.
She’d been scared that if she contacted the police, Min-hyeok would get hurt.
And Seong-min didn’t think Min-hyeok had gone back to hanging out with them of his own free will.
If it was the Min-hyeok he’d felt while doing delivery work, he wasn’t the type to just disappear as he pleased, leaving a sister like that behind.
Seong-min believed that.