Episode 24: A Rough Start (5)

Unfortunately for Sodam, Juyul had heard every word she’d muttered.

“Too bad, I can’t do anything about my face. That’s out of my control, so I’ll let you enjoy it. I was starting to feel a little guilty about calling you out every dawn, but if my face is enough to satisfy you, I suppose it’s fine.”

“What the…!”

They continued talking, but with their lips still brushing together, Guiding happened naturally, flowing between them without effort.

While being drained of the life force that was practically her lifeline, Sodam found herself reeling from Juyul’s nonsensical comments. Her head spun, and her thoughts jumbled. She couldn’t process what she’d just heard or think of an appropriate response. Juyul seemed to take her gaping silence as agreement, pressing her chin to part her lips wider and tangling his tongue with hers.

As he mirrored the moves she’d made earlier, Sodam’s fragile resistance melted away, and she found herself unable to maintain any sense of control.

Her vision blurred, and the sight of Juyul filled her gaze until everything began to darken.

The moment she felt all strength leave her tongue, Juyul broke the kiss, letting her limp hands fall. As Sodam slumped backward, he held her firmly, whispering words she couldn’t hear.

“…Hmm. I wonder if she’ll demand new clothes, too. It’s not like she’s staging a protest by wearing my things everywhere, but she definitely seems like the type who’d ask for it.”

He glanced at the luxurious leather gloves atop the old leather jacket he’d thrown her yesterday. Strangely, he liked the contrast. If she asked, he wouldn’t mind buying her a few outfits to go with it, just for the sake of harmony. But that thought faded as quickly as it had come, his lips curling in a dismissive sneer.

“Ridiculous. It’s nothing more than paying her back for the Guiding. Nothing more, nothing less.”

Juyul felt the need to voice it out loud, as if saying it would cement it in his mind.

“There’s no way an F-class Guide could… shake me.”

He told himself that to make it feel true.

* * *

When Sodam finally opened her eyes, it was late afternoon, and the sun had long set. Realizing she’d woken in a cozy bed, she quickly became aware of both relief and misfortune.

The relief was that Juyul hadn’t just left her lying on the beach; he’d actually brought her back. The misfortune was that she’d spent a good fourteen hours of the day sleeping, her body utterly spent.

‘So the one barely hanging on to their limits wasn’t Baek Juyul but me. Damn it…’

If he’d needed more Guiding, he could have left her anywhere, but the fact that he’d chosen to lay her down in his private Guiding room suggested he was in far better shape than she’d expected.

Yet, it was precisely because this space felt prepared for a fresh Guiding session that she quickly rose from the bed and slipped out, thinking it was best not to overstay her welcome.

Before she’d fainted, her clothes had been thoroughly soaked by seawater, but now she found herself dressed in fresh, dry attire. Both her top and bottom had been changed, and it made Sodam mentally lower Juyul’s rank on her internal list of tolerable people. Though the clothes felt luxurious against her skin and clearly looked expensive, she couldn’t shake the thought that she would’ve preferred cash instead.

‘Honestly, it’s annoying enough that he changed my clothes without permission.’

Logically, she knew it was better than leaving her in her salt-encrusted clothes, but that didn’t mean she had to like it. And then to have dressed her in a high-collared shirt that reached her neck? She sighed in disbelief.

As she tugged on the sleeves and straightened the hem, grumbling under her breath, a hand suddenly gripped her shoulder.

“Hey, Maeng Sodam!”

The voice sounded so strangely familiar that she turned around reflexively, even though she didn’t recognize it at all. And for the first time since her reincarnation, she uttered a sentence she’d been waiting to say.

“…Who are you?”

“Hahaha! Pretending you don’t know me now? That’s hilarious—you’re just as cheeky as always.”

Though she’d been completely serious, the man brushed her off, treating her as though this were just more of her usual antics. Given what she knew of her body’s original owner, this reaction didn’t surprise her too much. The problem was that she had no idea how to interact with someone who seemed this familiar with her.

She forced a smile, following the old saying about not spitting at a smiling face.

“Wasn’t trying to be funny, but I guess it turned out that way.”

“What’s with the formal speech? Are you trying to make me laugh myself to death?”

“Not particularly…”

The man kept up a casual tone, showing no sign of paying attention to her words or noticing her pale expression. She figured they couldn’t have been very close.

She subtly shrugged his hand off her shoulder, giving a strained smile as he started talking again.

“Living the dream these days, huh? First, Samuyeon shows up at your place, and then you’re cozying up to Baek Juyul for days. Must be nice getting what you wanted.”

“Oh, yeah… Wait, what did you say?”

“And still stuck in that rank you hate so much. Imagine if you’d started at C-class like me—must be tragic, right? I could cry from how pitiful it is! Hahaha!”

The man, who’d been rambling non-stop since he’d touched her shoulder, doubled over laughing before finally walking away, leaving her behind.

Listening to his laughter fade, Sodam didn’t grit her teeth or stomp her feet in anger, but instead sank into serious contemplation.

‘Did Samuyeon come to her house?’

It was possible her body’s former owner had spread such rumors to make herself seem tough. But after reading her predecessor’s will and diary, Sodam couldn’t shake the feeling that this wasn’t a lie. There had been a passage that seemed vaguely similar to what he’d said.

Perhaps there was still a clue she hadn’t discovered in that diary or will. Meeting Samuyeon, her only lead, was now something she’d have to consider more seriously.

‘I guess I really do need to go to that meeting. What on earth was going on here?’

Needing a quiet space to process her thoughts, she wanted somewhere to be alone. At this point, she had no concern for the good citizens who might share public transport with her.

After some time, she found herself seated at her desk at home, as she had after her previous visit to Gunsan.

“If Samuyeon really did come to her house, then it’s likely he’s the one who killed her…”

Sodam scowled at the will and diary, thoroughly scrutinizing them on her reinforced desk. She tried everything she could think of, even reading only the first or last letters of each sentence, but nothing stood out. Then, her gaze fell on something she’d noticed earlier, something that had been bothering her.

“There are a few characters that look a bit smudged, like they’ve blurred, in a way that’s different from the rest of the diary…”

When she’d first noticed it, she’d assumed the killer had tried to erase evidence. But with the timeline she’d pieced together, the killer likely wouldn’t have had time for that. As her eyes drifted, she noticed the small phone lying between the diary and the will.

On that phone was the last message sent by her body’s original owner. It was a message she’d seen right after her reincarnation—a message sent to Hyunju.

[Unni, please save me. I think I’m going to di—02:48]

The message was sent, and Hyunju had arrived around 4:05 AM. Knowing the nature of the body’s original owner, she’d likely confronted the killer right after sending it, trying every tactic to intimidate them—saying things like how someone would quickly notice if she died or that a reporter was on the way. It made sense now why they’d staged her death as a suicide with a fabricated will.

“That way, even if someone found her, it would just look like a suicide. Clever.”

Their mistake was underestimating just how relentless Maeng Mo Guide could be. Their misfortune? That Sodam had possessed her body. Reexamining the will, she noticed that it wasn’t the words themselves that were smudged but certain consonants and vowels within them. Rearranging these faintly blurred characters yielded a chilling phrase:

[The cult is an organization created to kill Guides.]

The realization sent a shiver down her spine, and without thinking, she pushed away from the desk, collapsing onto the bed with trembling legs. A fragment of the original story came flooding back to her mind.

[…Lately, there have been rumors of low-ranking Guides disappearing without notice. The fallout from the death of Maeng Mo Guide.]

The cult had clearly used Maeng Mo’s death as an excuse to commit these disappearances. In the shadow of growing suspicion, the Association would view low-ranking Guides’ absences with disdain. And even if a body turned up one day, it would barely make a blip on the news—a convenience they’d capitalized on.

In other words, Sodam’s continued existence was an obstacle for them. They even knew her address.

A different kind of terror, far removed from what she felt while Guiding Juyul, washed over her. Her empty gaze fixed on the wall as she lay on her side, vigorously rubbing her arms in a vain attempt to chase away the cold. She couldn’t remember a time when she’d yearned for another person’s warmth as desperately as she did now.