Be Careful with Deals 2
In the midst of that endless war between reason and instinct, a text arrived from his mother.
The message from his mother carried an unexpected proposal.
In short, she was suggesting he meet an academy teacher who had graduated from the very department of the university he was aiming for—someone who could assess his current academic level, run him through mock interviews, and more. Judging by the fact that a date and time were already written out, it seemed the conversation between his mother and the teacher had already been settled. It was less a suggestion than a notice.
I can't believe Mom even had a connection like that…
His mother was so desperate to get him into his target university department that if she had known someone like this, she would have moved heaven and earth to arrange a meeting. With her fierce educational drive, she would have pushed for private tutoring even if it meant stretching their finances thin. And yet, right at the moment when she would have clutched at any straw, someone conveniently appeared with the perfect offer…
Something's off.
Kim Seojin felt a deep, crawling unease.
His mother had been fretting and worrying over the fact that he had to retake the exams alone. If she had truly intended to hire a tutor, she would have already done so the moment his retake year was decided—through someone else, if not this academy teacher. The fact that she was only now trying to arrange tutoring was strange enough on its own.
If he had been studying alone and his grades had been slipping, her personality would have already shoved him into an academy or lined up a private tutor. It was precisely because things had been going relatively smoothly that the whole situation felt even more suspicious.
Sensing that something was going badly wrong, Seojin slowly reread the message.
A meeting with a graduate of the department he was applying to—someone who could check his academic level and give him insider information through mock interviews and the like. On the surface, it was a golden opportunity. There was no denying that.
But it fits too perfectly.
Stripping away every uncertain piece of information, one thing was clear: this so-called academy-teacher acquaintance was someone his mother had only recently met. Whether some unidentified contact had noticed her hunger for educational advantage and proposed the meeting first, or whether his mother had asked the favor herself, didn't matter.
What mattered was the timing. Information about his mother was slowly leaking onto the internet, and predators were already salivating over the chance to devour her—and this was the exact moment when contact with Jung Taeyoung, the one who had been involved the longest, had gone quiet.
No way…
Seojin logged into Heartfans and checked the channel Jung Taeyoung ran, as well as his own, hunting for anything he might have missed.
His own channel was fine. He had reviewed every piece of material multiple times before uploading, terrified of exposing his mother's personal information. But one thing snagged at him: the Mummy Hunter channel that Taeyoung operated had stopped uploading content entirely as of late.
Seojin let out a long breath.
But no amount of fretting would change what he could do. He heaved a sigh of pure frustration, yet the knot in his chest refused to loosen. A small snowball had rolled down the hillside, gathering mass until it had grown beyond his control. Now, trapped in the anxiety and restlessness of not knowing where that swollen mass would bounce or how far it would roll, the day of the meeting with the unknown academy teacher arrived.
"Mom's heading to work. When the teacher comes this afternoon, have a good talk with him."
"Okay."
After seeing his mother off to work, Seojin collapsed into a chair with the face of a man who had already given up on everything.
He still had time before the meeting, so he had used his mother to gather what information he could about the man. Just as he had expected, she claimed she had run into the academy teacher by pure chance on the street.
Ha. By chance, huh.
Apparently the man had bumped into her while walking, spilled coffee on her, and handed over a business card to cover the dry-cleaning bill—and what do you know? Not only was he an academy instructor, he was an alumnus of the very university her son was aiming for.
As the saying went, the thirsty dig the well. His mother had been the one to arrange a meeting, eager to extract every scrap of exam-related information she could. And as they talked, it turned out he had even graduated from the exact department her son was applying to. In place of the dry-cleaning money, the man had offered the perfectly tailored proposal of assessing the academic level of a potential future junior and running him through a mock interview.
I'm so speechless I don't even know what to say.
The more Seojin talked with his mother, the sharper the sense of crisis grew in his mind. And it wasn't hard to deduce the true identity of the "academy teacher" who would soon be walking through their front door.
It's Jung Taeyoung—Mummy Hunter. Has to be.
That man. No doubt about it.
Even after hearing the whole story, by the time Seojin tried to stop his mother from letting Taeyoung visit, it was already far too late. Naturally, evaluating academic level and running mock interview practice wasn't something that wrapped up quickly, and doing it out in public was impractical. Since it was a private meeting, they had agreed to hold everything at their house—and his mother had already given the man their home address.
Seojin exhaled a long, defeated breath.
So this was what people meant by being completely helpless. Unable to find any clear solution, he simply waited until the day of the confrontation arrived. And as if the man had been waiting for his mother to leave for work, the doorbell rang not long after she was gone.
Seojin's dead eyes rolled toward the clock. As expected, there was still a long time left until the appointed hour. He stayed perfectly still, hoping to pretend no one was home—but the doorbell rang again, as if the visitor already knew someone was inside.
Seojin drew a deep breath, like a man accepting an unavoidable fate, and opened the door.
"Hey."
A peaceful greeting, delivered as if the man had been waiting for the door to open. And standing there, just as expected, was Jung Taeyoung—a man whose plain, unremarkable face matched that bland greeting perfectly.
"Please come in."
The only words he could offer an unwanted visitor were cold ones. But Taeyoung seemed almost refreshed by the frosty reception.
"I figured you'd put up more of a fight. You're surprisingly calm."
Once inside, Taeyoung looked around the place the way a tourist might survey a destination he'd only ever seen in photographs, tossing out empty remarks that meant nothing. Seojin nearly clicked his tongue at the thinly veiled mockery. A storm of self-reproach and bewildered questions—how had things even gotten this far?—churned through him.
Following Seojin into the room, Taeyoung maintained an easy, unhurried air, as if inviting him to ask whatever he wanted.
"So?"
That single first word carried irritation, questions, and the weight of everything still to come. Taeyoung answered as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
"I told you already. Don't hog the good stuff—let's share."
The sheer shamelessness of it nearly made Seojin clutch his head.
This psycho.
Behind that ordinary, even likable exterior lived a monster of absurd proportions. Standing face-to-face with the true nature of the unease he had felt from their very first meeting, Seojin couldn't even begin to figure out how to react.
Taeyoung glanced around the room, then, apparently unable to find what he wanted, tossed out a question.
"Where's the thing I gave you?"
"You talk like you left something in my care, but I have no idea what you mean, so stop talking in circles and just say it straight—!"
"Ah, my bad—I wasn't clear enough. Where's the hidden camera I gave you?"
"The hidden camera?"
Seojin pulled out the tiny camera he had carefully stashed away so his mother would never find it. Taeyoung took the device he himself had provided, a smile that bordered on mockery curling at the corner of his mouth.
"You know what? There's no such thing as a free favor."
"Isn't that obvious?"
That was exactly why Seojin had trusted Taeyoung's desire—because unlike the other men, he had stated what he wanted so clearly. Underestimating his opponent had been the fatal mistake. As Seojin sat there cursing his own stupidity, Taeyoung pressed the hidden camera back into his hand and spoke.
"And deals need to be handled even more carefully."
Taeyoung tapped the camera in Seojin's palm with a fingertip.
A deal? What does he mean? W-wait…
Seojin grasped the hidden meaning in those cryptic words without much difficulty.
"You don't mean…"
"You're not completely stupid for your age."
Seojin stared down at the tiny mechanical device resting in his palm with a look of pure horror. Taeyoung continued, delivering mockery dressed up as an explanation, as if walking him through the answer key to a problem.
"That little gadget can check approximate location data—not perfectly precise, but close enough."
The moment the word location left Taeyoung's mouth, Seojin felt a chill race down his spine.
"Lucky for me you accepted such a one-sided deal. Thanks to that, I found out where that delicious prey of yours—your mother—was."
Seojin began to understand, dimly, how Taeyoung had managed to track his mother down. The hidden camera would have given him a rough idea of where Seojin lived. The sleeping pills had been the bait that let him see her face. And then there was her name—the one Seojin had carelessly let slip…
With everything already in place, all Taeyoung had needed was time to find her. While Seojin had been losing his mind day after day to lust for his own mother, this man had been hunting her with single-minded obsession—and he had finally arrived.
Be careful with deals.
His words, Seojin had to admit, had been exactly right.