Why (3)
Kim Do-hoon wanted to scream it in his heart.
That he could not go on. That this was already more than enough…
Looking down upon those desperate feelings of Kim Do-hoon’s, Oh Hae-in regarded him with nothing but an emotionless gaze. There would be no compromise.
Without a word, he took up the notebook and pen and spoke to Kim Do-hoon.
“I’ve changed my mind. How you learned that Eun Na-rin and I were together… answer every single question I ask, without leaving anything out.”
That was all he said, and Kim Do-hoon, restrained, had no choice but to comply with the interrogation.
Beyond the questions themselves, Oh Hae-in simply filled out the suspect interrogation record in the notebook.
“So that’s how it was.”
I kept staring at the notebook filled with the facts Kim Do-hoon had squeezed out—at nothing but my own scrawled handwriting.
The information that Eun Na-rin and I had been together had come from hiring a private detective agency to spy on us in secret…
What an idiot.
I ought to have reported him, but with the White Flame Cult matter already overwhelming me…
I would just put a leash on him for now.
I had already taken steps to ensure Kim Do-hoon could never hang around Eun Na-rin again, making him vanish completely from her vicinity…
Unfortunately, the group chat named White Flower could not be definitively linked to the White Flame Cult affair.
I had checked Kim Do-hoon’s phone, but it was nothing more than a casual social circle, and the chat’s name had not even originally been White Flower.
From the nuances, Kim Do-hoon seemed unconnected to the pseudo-religion business. The friend with the Yang surname might possibly be blood-related to the Shepherd Teacher, but beyond being a rich kid there was nothing special…
Fortunately, there was one truth I could pin down.
Only a single person in the group chat had been writing posts related to the White Flame Cult.
Choi Byung-su.
Only that bastard, uniquely easy to identify.
I had also learned that Kim Do-hoon and the rest of the group had just mindlessly copied the phrases Choi Byung-su posted without thinking, so Choi Byung-su’s claim of having nothing to do with the fabricated cyber school bullying case that framed me as the perpetrator was no longer perfect innocence.
I wanted to go after him right away, but not yet.
I had to find a way to make the bastard show up at Min-soo’s funeral somehow.
Unfortunately, I had no card to force him to come. He would not even share a table with me anymore, and if I called he would just block me immediately…
If I went to him in person and suggested we meet face to face, Choi Byung-su would only answer, “Why?”
I needed a card.
But first…
I folded the notebook and opened the door to the classroom where Park Jun-woo would be.
The first-years inside recognized me at once and their expressions stiffened. I greeted them with a smile and spoke to Jeong Min-jae, who was snickering as he looked at me.
“I’ve got something I need to do, and I need Jun-woo’s help. Go fetch him for me.”
“Yes, Hae-in hyung-nim!”
Receiving my request, Jeong Min-jae groaned as he approached Park Jun-woo, who still had no idea I had come. He told him I was here, and the moment Jun-woo saw me… he shot Jeong Min-jae, who stood right in front of him, a look that seemed to beg for help… but Min-jae just decided it looked fun and dragged Jun-woo over to present him to me.
“Thanks, Min-jae. You turned out to be surprisingly useful.”
“Senior Do-hoon told me to help hyung-nim out~ Something like this is a piece of cake.”
After responding good-naturedly, I took Jun-woo and stood with him in the utterly ordinary empty hallway.
“You don’t know why Kim Do-hoon left early yesterday, do you?”
“Ah, he left early? W-well, that could happen…”
“Kim Do-hoon’s father found out late that Do-hoon had hired people from a private detective agency, and that’s what happened.”
“A pr… private detective agency?! That’s…”
“He was spying on Eun Na-rin’s surroundings… When Kim Do-hoon’s father found out, he blew up… and apparently beat Kim Do-hoon up.”
The reason for Kim Do-hoon’s early departure was the behind-the-scenes story of his father, upon belatedly learning of the detective agency hire, summoning the boy home at once and giving him a thorough thrashing.
“But you know what? While Do-hoon was leaving early on his way home, he said he happened to see you from a luxury foreign car.”
“…I was busy too, Hae-in hyung…. Senior Do-hoon could have just happened to see me while passing by… Why do you keep interrogating me…”
“You hurt Yoo Min-soo, didn’t you?”
In that instant, Park Jun-woo could not form any expression at all and simply stared blankly… at me, but his gaze could not stay fixed on me. Barely managing a sigh, he lowered his head… and with a naked face of exhaustion, he shot back at me.
“I don’t even know who this Yoo Min-soo person is… I’ve heard people say I look cocky because of my face, but this is the first time I’ve been accused of hurting anyone, Oh Hae-in hyung-nim!”
“When I called Yoo Min-soo… the bastard hung up the second he answered, you know?”
“…So what?”
“Do-hoon remembered the time he spotted you, surprisingly enough.”
“What does that have to do with anything…?”
“If you hurt Yoo Min-soo… cleaned up the evidence and left, there would have been enough time. The first time slot when I called Min-soo and the time you were captured on Kim Do-hoon’s car black box match up.”
“What… what kind of nonsense is that…?”
I cut him off, pulled out my phone, and showed him the black box footage from the luxury car Kim Do-hoon rode around in.
“Because of the detective agency hire, Kim Do-hoon’s father went ballistic and said he’d check every last bit of the black box on the foreign car Do-hoon rides. Kim Do-hoon, worried something problematic might turn up, reviewed the black box first, and unfortunately for you… yesterday, in the redevelopment zone where Yoo Min-soo was, he discovered a junior he knew fleeing in bloodstained clothes and took a capture of it.”
Park Jun-woo lost the ability to speak.
There it was—himself in a hurry to flee, his clothes faintly painted a bright red…
“Kim Do-hoon was on his way after receiving his father’s furious order to come at once… but it happened to overlap with rush hour. Saying he’d be in big trouble if he was late… he urged the driver and changed the route toward a secluded area, which turned out to be a rundown hillside village. The CCTVs there only pretend to work on the outside; they’re already broken and don’t function properly in that rough neighborhood, and it’s not even where you live, he said.”
Park Jun-woo looked at me, but… those were not eyes that were seeing me. Like a fish that could not swim away to escape… about to be eaten.
“You’re a believer of the White Flame Cult, aren’t you?”
“I… I don’t know anything about that kind of cult!”
“Is that so? If not, then not. Kim Do-hoon just thought you’d committed an assault and only wanted to use it as leverage against you… but as your senior, wishing for the best for my junior… I suppose I should inform the adults of this fact.”
Sending him a look that said not to worry, I turned and started walking, and Park Jun-woo, terrified, began trailing after me step by step.
“No! Hae-in hyung-nim… let’s settle this with words!”
“You and I aren’t fighting. I just asked because I was worried about you. So timid.”
“Please….”
At those words I turned back to look at Park Jun-woo again, showing only distrust in place of concern.
“Whether you killed him or were just an accomplice… if you answer properly, I’ll bury this fact.”
“That’s… for now… later again…”
“There’s no later. How am I supposed to trust someone as suspicious as you? If I go along with ‘later’… you’ll just go spill everything to the White Flame Cult right away, won’t you?”
Park Jun-woo hid his face with both hands and was busy trying to run, but… he had to choose. Either way… Park Jun-woo’s future held only a crossroads of choosing one of two destructions.
In the end, Park Jun-woo… forced out a difficult answer.
“I’ll tell you everything I know… so please… bury that matter.”
“Good thinking.”
Yeah, I’ll bury it.
In your grave.
I realized that the presence of the White Flame Cult had been faintly around me all along.
My childhood friend’s parents, the politician’s son who was my first bad connection and his family, the underclassman I met at the high school I was forcibly transferred to…
Park Jun-woo was a believer brainwashed by his parents from childhood, and unfortunately it was not a condition that could be cured. The boy’s heart already… held only devotion to serving the white flames.
The circumstances of how he came to harm Yoo Min-soo… Lee Hyuk, the father of my childhood friend Lee Ga-rang, was… a core executive of the White Flame Cult… holding a position of educating young believers like Park Jun-woo who were still green, and at the same time… their lives as well.
Though my grandfather had wiped out the White Flame Cult, the remaining embers that still faintly survived… had spread their flames silently and continued to burn even now…
When the White Flame Cult was annihilated by my grandfather, the cult leader’s grandson had gotten caught up in it and died at a young age, they said. It was not certain, but right before the cult leader was arrested… he left this will to the little lambs who served only him.
“Inflict upon the grandson of Prosecutor Oh Hae-rang… the same severance of loss that I suffered. Only upon Oh Hae-rang’s grandson. Do not touch his other relatives. Bestow upon Oh Hae-rang’s kin… the pain that blooms in the chest.”
Revenge.
The ravings of a madman who had ranted that turning the whole nation into a sea of fire and reducing it to ash was the true purifying flame of salvation… were now being put into practice.
However, since it had not been properly consolidated and carried on… they were in the middle of factional strife dealing with sects that had misinterpreted the cult leader’s words and acted independently.
“Haa… this is driving me crazy.”
Because of that, regarding the matter of dealing with me… unlike the provocation Lee Hyuk had foreshadowed… Park Jun-woo confessed that it was still far off, but… it was only “still.” It was as good as already begun.
First of all… Choi Byung-su.
Through Park Jun-woo I was able to definitively conclude that the bastard was a White Flame Cult believer. Moreover, that his family had a route connected to the guy called the Shepherd Teacher… As for the person with the Yang surname in the group chat, Park Jun-woo’s sincere eyes said he did not know either, so I estimated he was just someone with the same surname, not blood, but… it still was not certain.
Before I knew it, it was the time when the students were all leaving school. Much earlier, Eun Na-rin had been extremely cheerful that I had resolved the Kim Do-hoon matter for her, expressing her thanks while acting cute, and Eun Na-rin’s friends had also… toward me… unfortunately my head was full of thoughts of the White Flame Cult, so… I could not stay with them longer and had to leave school.
Soon after, the academy district of Daechi-dong. An expensive academy building that only families of means could enter by paying high fees stood before my eyes. Before long, students began coming down, and around them parents waited in their cars, while I simply stood there quietly waiting for someone.
There he was. The White Flame Cult believer I had been so eagerly waiting for appeared swaggering, and I stepped forward from where I had planted my feet on the roadside, tapped the bastard on the shoulder, and said,
“Long time no see. A new underclassman of mine told me… that you’re the real perpetrator of the cyber school bullying.”
It was late at night, and there were many students, but… Choi Byung-su and I, both of us still said nothing.