Chapter 134
The moment I reached my conclusion, Yugyeom’s eyes, which had cracked open, remained frozen. I continued in a flat voice.
“You figured it out, didn’t you?”
The scattered pieces of the puzzle clicked into place.
“The person who shot at me in the forest back then.”
“…”
“The person who might still be hiding and trying to kill me.”
The reason Baek Hawon suddenly said such things, and the reason I had to leave this place.
“Who is it?”
But I couldn’t understand why he was keeping so quiet about it.
If he had just told me from the beginning that he knew who the person was that had tried to kill me, and that I had to avoid them, I wouldn’t have been foolishly rebelling.
The most important thing was being hidden, and my resolve to not leave here without knowing everything grew stronger.
“Who is it, that I have to leave like this?”
I let out a frustrated breath and asked.
Yugyeom’s face, now distant again, showed no sign of revealing what he was hiding.
Without saying a word, he looked down at me.
“Why won’t you speak? If you knew, you would’ve told me to be careful.”
I felt like something was chasing me. I became anxious and restless. Yugyeom’s silence weighed on me more than anything else.
“…Maybe it’s better if I don’t know.”
I muttered under my breath, and at that moment, my handbag vibrated.
I took my phone out of my bag and checked the caller ID. The name displayed made my breath catch.
– …Miss.
When I answered the phone, a brief silence followed, then a voice broke through.
The voice, dry and cracked, made my heart sink with just the sound of it.
– I know I shouldn’t contact you, Miss, but I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to…
I gripped the phone with trembling hands. Though my vision was blurry, I fought to speak calmly.
“Angel. What’s going on? Calm down and tell me, I’m fine.”
– Ivy is gone.
But the moment I heard those words, I could no longer pretend to be fine.
– She’s not the kind of child who would run off on her own, but suddenly…
Angel’s voice was panicked and incoherent, and I squeezed my eyes shut before opening them again.
Get a grip.
“Where are you right now?”
I looked up and found the sign showing the location Angel had mentioned.
“I’ll be there soon, so wait. It’s dangerous for you to be alone in that state. I can find Ivy, so calm down.”
I hung up the phone and immediately began walking, but my hand was grabbed. It was the same hand that had given me the plane ticket.
“Let go.”
I twisted my wrist to pull my hand away. But the grip on me didn’t loosen; instead, it tightened.
“What are you going to do?”
Yugyeom, with a dark look in his eyes, asked.
When I twisted my wrist again, this time, he let go willingly.
“We should go together. I have things to say to Angel urgently.”
I wrapped my other hand around the wrist that had been held. Though I knew he controlled his strength so it wouldn’t hurt, my chest ached instead.
“You…”
I wasn’t sure whether this sharp pain was because I was angry at Yugyeom for blocking me, or because of disappointment or betrayal.
“Miss, you don’t need to go yourself.”
Yugyeom still stood in my way, not budging an inch.
I could feel his determination not to move from his position as he blocked my view.
Yugyeom took a breath and opened and closed his fist before speaking.
“Actually, everyone here is either a member of Baekcheon’s organization or connected to it. We’ve verified their identities one by one, so nothing will happen.”
The plane ticket, already crumpled in my hand, was crumpled even further. I clenched my fist tightly and scoffed.
“Then that’s even better. It won’t be dangerous if I go find Ivy on my own, right?”
Though I felt a sense of unease, I couldn’t help but marvel at the scale of things. Should I be impressed?
I wasn’t angry that everything here was just a staged play.
It was just a sense of emptiness and growing anxiety.
Yugyeom’s words didn’t give me any relief. If everyone here was connected to Baekcheon… among them, there could be…
“Why are you saying that?”
Yugyeom spoke with a groan, his voice filled with anxiety.
“You… why are you doing this to me?”
I swallowed the rising emotions and spoke.
“Why won’t you say anything?”
Instead of holding it in, a twisted, sharp laugh escaped.
“Do you happen to know where Ivy is?”
Yugyeom’s face showed no change. As I looked at his reaction, my patience gradually wore thin.
“See, if you don’t say anything, how am I supposed to stay with you? You just want me to leave without asking anything, don’t you?”
I feared this wall of silence.
Even if I punched, kicked, or aimed a gun at it, I felt like I could never break it down.
I was afraid that when this wall disappeared, there would be nothing left beyond it.
In the end, I exploded and let out everything I had been holding in.
“You want me to know nothing, so I can’t do anything?”
As I relaxed my grip on the fist I had been clenching, two plane tickets fell to the floor.
Yugyeom’s gaze on me deepened, growing darker.
I glanced at the tickets that had fallen to the floor and then lifted my head again.
“If that’s the kind of foolish woman you wanted, then go find someone else now.”
I bit my lips and turned away. My breathing was irregular, and everything in front of me seemed to blur.
“…Don’t go. Don’t go.”
Because of my blurred vision and the confusion in my mind, I wasn’t sure if the voice behind me was an illusion or reality.
I didn’t stop walking. I no longer wanted to talk to Yugyeom.
*‘Let it be that where I stand, that’s your world.’*
Even though I faced those words and eyes once again, I didn’t feel confident I could hold my ground.
“Don’t go!”
Then, a voice shouted, almost like a scream.
Before I could even process that unreal sentence into reality, my arm was firmly grabbed, spun around, and I was forced to face him.
The smile was gone from his face, and my heart dropped.
“Don’t pull your hand away from mine.”
Yugyeom seized my hand with a force so strong it felt like he was tearing into it.
“Don’t get away from me.”
His voice, harsh and biting, came through clenched teeth.
“Even if you hate me terribly, you can’t leave me.”
His gaze was suffocating, and my entire body felt as though it were bound by chains—heavy and painful.
But I didn’t want to run away. He wasn’t threatening or restraining me; he was clinging to me with all his strength.
“You promised.”
Yugyeom’s lips trembled slightly.
“You said you loved me.”
His voice, desperate and sharp, pierced my eardrums. The air around him grew colder.
That chill sank deep into my chest, and my heart couldn’t find its rhythm.
The shadow in his eyes deepened.
“Do you think I’ll let you go again?”
Yugyeom laughed with a half-broken voice. His smile, growing stronger by the second, seemed as if it were on the verge of turning into tears.
“…You should know by now.”
I smiled bitterly and met his gaze. In his eyes, a small vortex swirled.
“You can’t keep me like this.”
The twisted smile on Yugyeom’s lips slowly faded.
“I love you, and you are already my world, but…”
I met his unshaken eyes and spoke with a firm voice.
“That doesn’t mean I’m going to stand by your side like a doll.”
I could feel Yugyeom’s breath stop. His grip on my hand tightened. Our gazes intertwined, searching each other deeply.
“Choose.”
Yugyeom looked like he was about to be blown away by a strong wind, frail and ready to disappear.
But I didn’t waver.
“Explain the situation to me and come with me.”
I wrapped my other hand around his that held mine and coldly spat out the words.
“Or you can let me go again.”
***
The amusement park, after the fireworks display, was in disarray.
The rides were still off, and people moved quickly without stopping.
I ran through the crowd, breath coming in ragged gasps. My heart was pounding as if it might stop any second.
I checked Ivy’s location on my phone again.
It had been a thought sparked when I saw the hairpin that Doshiyu had given me earlier this morning.
On the way here, I’d installed a location tracking app on Ivy’s phone and linked it to mine, hoping I’d never have to use it.
The location was marked in the deepest part of the amusement park, near an unused ride.
There were no people in sight.
Then, beside the dark ride with no lights, I saw a large warehouse. I turned off my phone and grabbed my gun.
As I approached the warehouse, I saw a shadow in front of the door. I loaded my gun and moved closer.
When I saw the face of the person standing guard by the door, all the strength left my body.
“They’re waiting for you.”
The tall woman in a black suit had her blonde hair tied up high.
Her features, a mix of Eastern and Western traits, gave her an eerie presence that was only more pronounced in the darkness.
She was the woman I had met at the orphanage.
Even though she saw the gun in my hand, she opened the door without hesitation.
“You found it.”
As soon as the door opened, a familiar voice greeted me. I froze, unable to step inside.
“Did you enjoy the fireworks from the Ferris wheel?”
‘Zzzip-’, ‘thud’.
The sound of something being dragged on the floor and footsteps grew closer to me.
“I wonder what you and Yugyeom were talking about for so long.”
The closer the footsteps came, the clearer the outline of a dark figure inside the unlit warehouse became.
“You should have just waited, and I would have killed you.”
And just as the nightmare-like words stopped, the dark shadow disappeared, revealing a pale face.
I first noticed the sound of something being dragged across the floor before I saw the face.
In the bloodstained hands was a sack.
The difference between what I had suspected and the horrifying truth was staggering.
I couldn’t hold back my breath and coughed it up like blood. A sharp pain struck my heart.
‘Who was the person who shot at me?’
Yugyeom’s answer to my question echoed in my mind like a haunting refrain.
I raised my head and looked at the face in front of me. With a voice choked by anger, I called his name.
“Doshiyu.”
