Seeing Through
In the detective agency's office, a woman handed over a USB drive.
"That's everything we have on Choi Min-ji."
"This is my first time using a service like this, and you work faster than I expected. Thank you. I'll transfer the remaining balance to your account right away, minus the deposit."
The one receiving the USB was Yurin.
"Much appreciated. Come by anytime you need us."
Stepping out of the building, Yurin found herself impressed by how efficiently the agency had handled her request. In just three days, they had dug up nearly everything — from Min-ji's high school friends all the way to her family. Given how often the Hwaryong Guild used them, it made sense that the place was reliable. She found herself thinking that if something like this came up again, she might as well use them once more.
Carrying that thought — and a quiet sense of anticipation — she headed home.
Once she went through everything on the USB, she found quite a few pieces of useful material. Beyond Min-ji, it seemed perfectly fine to put in a few more requests on anyone who might get close to Seon-a.
Ever since becoming an adult, situations that couldn't be resolved with violence had started to pile up, and whenever she thought about how to handle them, she remembered those occasional news stories about "disappearances." The media would sometimes cover missing-person cases involving people who had given unfavorable testimony against the major guilds or acted against them — enough that conspiracy theories thrived. There was even evidence that looked nearly conclusive, but the government usually buried most of it.
With the entire world under a wartime footing because of the Gates, the government turned a blind eye to a certain amount of major-guild excess. Better that than risk high-rank Hunters and other critical talent emigrating or ending up in prison over something that wasn't, in their view, a serious problem.
Of course, Yurin had no intention of doing anything directly to Min-ji — they were friends, after all. But if Min-ji ever confessed to Seon-a, or took any action that stood between the two of them, it would be wise to have one or two methods ready to stop her.
Choi Min-ji had made a great many new friends since starting university. She showed up to almost every gathering, treated her seniors with careful respect, and looked after struggling classmates. She was the social butterfly among social butterflies on campus.
Even so, she had something on her mind.
She found herself thinking about Seon-a more and more often — a classmate from the same department.
On orientation day, Seon-a had entered as the top student, and his looks alone had drawn every eye in the room. Min-ji herself had briefly considered asking whether he had a girlfriend — but before long, his girlfriend Yurin had slipped an arm around his waist and shot pointed looks at every woman staring at him. It was impossible not to notice he was already taken.
At first, watching Yurin stick to Seon-a's side no matter what gathering they attended, Min-ji had simply thought, She really dotes on her boyfriend.
But as it kept happening — and after one particular incident — most of their classmates came to understand that Yurin was a woman with severe morbid jealousy.
At one gathering, Seon-a had begun to show small signs of discomfort around her. Yurin, far from backing off, behaved as if he were her personal property, and the looks on everyone's faces said they were thoroughly sick of it.
When a girl from their department offered Seon-a her number, no one could have predicted what came next: Yurin snatched his phone right there, held it up in front of both of them, and deleted the contact on the spot.
"Don't take other girls' numbers. And if something like this happens again, delete it yourself."
The words had been ice-cold — nothing like the easygoing Yurin they usually saw.
With everyone else, she was skilled at reading the room, respectful to her seniors, and ready to help anyone who asked — the picture of a kind underclassman. Even when she only showed up because of Seon-a, she would call multiple taxis at the end of a drinking night and pay out of her own pocket to send her wasted classmates home.
A soft touch bordering on a pushover — who transformed into someone else entirely the moment anything involved her boyfriend.
If that wasn't morbid jealousy, Min-ji would have bet her entire fortune on it.
Did Yurin, who cherished her boyfriend that intensely, simply not see how uncomfortable Seon-a looked? From Min-ji's perspective, it was nothing but frustrating.
Why is he even dating someone like that?
A senior who had finished his military service and successfully returned to school offered to buy drinks, inviting everyone in the group chat to a gathering. Yurin, who had only recently been added to the chat, showed up as well.
Most people were probably seeing Yurin at a drinking party without Seon-a for the first time. Min-ji, who attended nearly every gathering herself, was seeing it for the first time too — so the guess felt safe.
Conversation wandered for a while, but once the returning senior started talking about the military, it turned into a back-and-forth between those who had served and those who hadn't. Min-ji didn't know much about any of it, but she nodded along well enough, and the atmosphere warmed into something pleasant.
A drinking party without cigarettes was a rare thing. Since Min-ji didn't smoke, she stayed put when the seniors and classmates who did stepped out for a break.
"You're Choi Min-ji, right? I'm Park Yurin. Fellow classmates, and we still haven't properly introduced ourselves."
While the others were gone, the two of them fell into conversation. It was the same kind of talk they'd already had in the group chat, but Min-ji preferred meeting people face-to-face. Text was something you only saw with your eyes — emotion rarely came through. Talking in person meant reading expressions and hearing a voice. Sight and sound together made for better communication, she thought. It was a big part of why she went to almost every gathering in the first place.
Yurin seemed to feel the same way, laughing as she said that talking to people was best done in person. As one similarity after another surfaced, they kept digging for more common ground, the conversation rolling easily from one topic to the next.
Even after the smokers came back and sat down, the talk between Min-ji and Yurin never broke off. Friends who clicked this well were rare — Min-ji could count maybe one or two from high school — and she found herself thinking she might grow quite close to Yurin.
When the gathering ended and most people headed home, Min-ji walked with her. She was a local, so she didn't use the dorms; she commuted from home. Pleasantly buzzed, walking alongside a new friend, she felt light and happy. Yurin's place was in the same direction, so they talked as they went, the easy warmth of people who had just become close.
Along the way, something about Seon-a had been nagging at her, so she asked.
"Yurin. You're dating Seon-a because you like him, right? But sometimes you do things he clearly hates, and you treat him completely differently from how you usually are. Is something going on?"
Yurin's eyes went cold — as if the person who had been chatting so pleasantly a moment ago had been replaced by someone else entirely.
"That's between me and Seon-a. What happens between a man and a woman is for the two of them to handle. Watching from the sidelines doesn't mean you understand it."
The chill in her tone was sharp, but she wasn't wrong. Most people who knew Seon-a were aware the two of them had been together for fifteen years. There were bound to be secrets between them — and the fact that they were still dating suggested Seon-a might simply be tolerating her behavior.
Something about it still sat wrong, but Min-ji realized she'd been probing their relationship too freely under the influence of alcohol, and she apologized quickly.
"Sorry. I think I said too much because of the drinks. You've been together that long — there must be things you've already worked out between you. I made it sound simpler than it is."
Yurin wiped the earlier expression clean and gave a small, dismissive snort of a laugh, as if it were nothing.
"As long as you get it."
They shifted the conversation to other topics and kept talking until they parted ways for home.
After they split up, the two of them stayed in occasional contact through the group chat, and when another drinking night came together they arranged to meet again.
The atmosphere had grown thick and warm; most people were already drunk. True to the saying that alcohol brings out the truth, confessions were spilling out in every direction. Min-ji was talking with Yurin again, just like last time, when Yurin suddenly threw out a question from nowhere.
"So, what about you? Not dating anyone?"
"I've got high standards. Makes it pretty hard to find someone."
She said it as if she had no interest in being set up, and Yurin pressed on.
"Oh? How high are we talking? What's your type?"
"How do I put this… I'm not great with words, so I'll just show you. I've got a few pictures."
Min-ji pulled out her phone and began swiping through screenshots she'd saved in a gallery album — images that matched her taste, one after another.
Then a photo she absolutely could not show Yurin appeared.
They were pictures she had downloaded on orientation day. She had gone through various sites looking for material for a little self-comfort, and most of what she'd saved weren't outright explicit shots but borderline gravure-model photos. A beauty mark just below and to the right of the right eye. Refined features. Sharp, catlike eyes.
In other words — men who looked a great deal like Seon-a, captured in teasingly undressed, half-lewd shots. Several of them.
She swiped past them in a frantic rush, switched to something else, and continued showing the rest as if nothing had happened.
Yurin's expression didn't look angry. Maybe she hadn't caught it properly.
Thank god.
"Ooh, solid taste."
"Want me to send you a few?"
"Nah. Seon-a's the one I like best."
Then what was the point of asking me to show you all this?
"Anyway, good look."
Min-ji walked away from the exchange feeling like she'd come out behind. Even between women, revealing tastes that private wasn't easy — she had only done it because she thought they had grown close enough. And then Yurin had given her that faintly unsatisfying response. Of course it left a bad taste.