OL Ch 41

It might have been his imagination, but the salty smell of the sea hit him as soon as he got off at the bus terminal. Hayun avoided the touts and started his journey by bus, just as he had researched beforehand. He was incredibly anxious about whether he could get to his intended location properly.

The need to be wary of anyone watching him also added to his anxiety.

After traveling by bus for about another hour, Hayun looked around with a dazed face.

There were pensions and farmland scattered about, but somehow, not a person was in sight. He looked around anxiously and found a farmer. It seemed he had been bent over, working in the field the whole time.

Hayun quickened his stopped pace.

The place he had in mind was not frequented by people, so he had to walk quite a bit. By the time he arrived nearby, the sun was turning yellow.

His heart was anxious, but things weren’t going as planned. Considering the time it took to come up, he should be heading down soon. It was a perfect situation to get stranded, especially on an unfamiliar path as the sun was setting.

‘How come everything looks the same?’

All the paths looked the same. There were no particularly different plants growing anywhere.

“…?”

Hayun stopped walking. He looked up at the sky once, then to his left and right.

‘My senses have really dulled.’

Hayun let out a slow breath and began to dig at the ground with a branch he was using as a walking stick. After scattering the leaves and dirt, he saw a square, flat stone that didn’t look like it belonged on a mountain.

Hayun had seen Seo Iju have it installed at her house by an acquaintance.

The square stones had to be placed at the four corners around what was to be protected. Hayun thought about where the square, flat stone he had found would be centered.

Then, his head naturally turned towards a not-so-high cliff nearby. Hayun fumbled along the cliff wall with his hands. When he pushed his hand deep inside, he felt a different texture than soil.

‘A straw mat.’

It seemed there was more space inside than he thought. Hayun, unlike the first time he pushed his hand in, began to carefully dig at the wall. He had to be cautious as he didn’t know the exact structure.

Finally, he dug an entrance big enough for himself to crawl into. When he lit it up with his phone, a rather modern space was revealed.

There was a heater that could warm the body like in a mountain cabin, sleeping bags, blankets, emergency food, and also items that shamans would use, like cinnabar, colored paper, brushes, and unidentified wooden beads.

The air and humidity weren’t too bad, perhaps because there was a ventilation system.

However, what he was looking for was still not in sight. Hayun let out a pained breath and continued to look around. Then, he suddenly noticed that the floor he was standing on made a slightly different sound.

Hayun scratched the floor and checked the gaps. And finally, he lifted a part of the floor.

‘No, you call this hidden?’

A sensitive person would have noticed it as soon as they entered. Hayun tut-tutted at the ambiguous camouflage that could hardly be called hiding.

Under the floor was a wooden box with a familiar pattern carved on it, and it was in good condition despite being buried haphazardly. The box was sealed with a talisman, but nothing happened when he swiped it with a utility knife. And when he finally opened the box, a white time capsule that looked like an ostrich egg came out.

Despite its rough appearance, the time capsule required a fingerprint and a password to open.

‘Won’t my fingerprint work?’

Hayun scanned his fingerprint and then entered a password combined from Seo Iju and her husband’s wedding anniversary.

“…”

Contrary to his expectation of failing a few times, the lock opened at once. Hayun opened the capsule with a dumbfounded look.

Inside were four envelopes. Judging from the names written on the outside, it seemed Baek Jinha had organized and packaged the items after receiving them.

‘Teacher can’t pack like this.’

Hayun took out the four bundles and stared at them for a long time. His heart pounded for the first time in a while. Then he realized he had been relying too much on his phone’s light. Hayun took out a lamp from nearby and lit it up.

Hayun picked up Seo Iju’s envelope from the ones he had laid out. He tore the seal on the envelope and unfolded the folded part, revealing her cursive handwriting.

[Couldn’t wait 10 years, could you?]

“…”

Then he opened the envelope, and there were other words written inside.

[Oh, you. Couldn’t you have been a bit more patient?]

Hayun burst out laughing. It was funny, but his nose stung and his eyes smarted. He clamped his mouth shut and forcibly swallowed the sob that was trying to escape.

Inside Seo Iju’s envelope were a wooden box the size of a glasses case and a key. Hayun picked up the key first. Two identical keys were on one ring. A label with a familiar sequence of numbers was attached to the head of the key.

It was covered with transparent tape to prevent the label from tearing off, and judging from the wrinkled tape, it was clearly Seo Iju’s handiwork.

‘It’s the number from inside the shoe cabinet.’

Given the key, it seemed something was hidden inside the [door]. Hayun clenched his fist holding the key. If the phenomenon from today wasn’t temporary, he would now be able to tell which door a marking connected to just by looking at it.

‘Then I can find this too.’

Of course, it would take some time, but that didn’t matter.

Hayun then picked up the wooden box. It had the same pattern as the box that held the time capsule.

‘I’ve seen this pattern somewhere before.’

He couldn’t remember exactly whether he had seen it at his old house or at another store on the street. But one thing was certain: it was familiar. To be precise, the wooden box the size of a glasses case was.

‘In a way, it looks like an incense box.’

Click.

When he opened the wooden box, a familiar pair of glasses and a small note came out.

‘I thought it looked like a glasses case, and it really has glasses in it.’

[The rest is inside. And I’m leaving a spare pair of glasses just in case. Use them carefully.]

“…Inside?”

He couldn’t understand what it meant. Hayun flipped the note over and held it up to the lamp light. He even sniffed it, wondering if she had written something with a special reagent. But he couldn’t smell anything different.

‘Is it related to the key? Or is it separate?’

Hayun checked the envelope again. But there was nothing else left.

‘Strange.’

The incomprehensible words were strange, and the message that seemed to be left for him and Baek Mookyeong, not for Seo Iju herself or her husband Baek Jinha, was also strange.

‘As if only the two of us would be left to open it. And as if we’d open it before the ten years were up.’

Considering Seo Iju’s mischievous personality, it seemed plausible. Or, it could have been a precaution prepared considering their profession, unrelated to Kim Deukcheol. But it was hard to simply overlook it, given what had already happened.

Hayun then opened Baek Jinha’s envelope. Baek Jinha’s envelope was thinner than Seo Iju’s or Baek Mookyeong’s, but it was much heavier.

‘It looks like a photo.’

Baek Jinha’s envelope contained a thick envelope that seemed to be a bundle of photos and three letters. The recipients were Seo Iju, Hayun, and Mookyeong. Hayun set the letters aside and picked up the bundle of photos. The photos were neatly wrapped in hanji, just like Baek Jinha would do.

On the seal that held the hanji, there was a short memo left by Baek Jinha.

[Look at the photos without Seo Iju seeing.]

What on earth could it be that he had to look at it without Seo Iju seeing? As soon as he carefully tore the seal and removed the wrapping, a photo of Seo Iju sleeping with her eyes half-open appeared. It was a photo he had never seen before.

‘To think a photo like this exists in the world.’

Hayun’s mouth fell open in surprise. Although he couldn’t search like Mookyeong, Seo Iju’s senses were also sharp. How did Baek Jinha take this photo?

‘He would have been caught right away.’

Seo Iju immediately deleted any photo of herself that she didn’t like. When she used a film camera, she would even go to the photo studio herself and get rid of the photos she didn’t like.

‘There are tons of weird pictures of me and Mookyeong, though.’

But it seemed that Baek Jinha liked even the photos that Seo Iju disliked. On the back of the photo, he had written the reason why he had this photo, the date and place it was taken, and a simple explanation of the situation.

Some of the photos had yellowed backs, as if they had been kept for a long time. After one landscape photo that served as an introduction and a few solo photos of Seo Iju, photos of Mookyeong and Hayun began to appear. The bad photos in the album were nothing compared to these.

Was he about two years old? Baby Mookyeong was wailing with a flushed face. A few rice-grain-like teeth could be seen in his wide-open mouth. His nose was wet, his eyes were wet, and below, he was making Baek Jinha wet.

And behind him, Hayun, sitting in a walker, was smiling brightly, and Seo Iju, reflected in the mirror, was also smiling brightly while holding a camera.

There was also a photo of Hayun sucking on Mookyeong’s head, and a photo of Mookyeong in a blue summer dress, dangling from Seo Iju’s hand, forced to stand.

[Sorry to our prince who only wanted to look cool.]

Hayun chuckled at the short note written on the back of the photo.

There was also a photo of Hayun and Mookyeong jumping on a pile of blankets under Seo Iju’s dressing table, and a photo of Seo Iju running towards them, leaving a blur, and a photo of Seo Iju with red eyes from the camera flash, looking like she was shooting lasers from her eyes.

“Haha.”

As he kept flipping through the photos, Hayun burst out laughing at one photo. He had been smiling all along, but he laughed so hard that it made a ringing sound.

It was a photo of Baek Jinha getting a sand bath at the beach. Two roughly made sand mounds were on his sculpted chest muscles, and they were connected by seaweed. Hayun and Mookyeong were making his lower body with serious expressions, and judging from the general appearance, it seemed they wanted to make a mermaid.

Unaware of this, Baek Jinha was sleeping peacefully with his face in the shade of a parasol.

[My heart ached when they said they would give me a massage with their tiny hands…]

Looking at the photo, he vaguely remembered Seo Iju laughing her head off.

‘I don’t remember playing, but I remember crying because I wanted to drink canned soda and cup noodles.’

How funny it must have been to see them crying for ramen when she had taken the time to brew healthy tea and pack a healthy lunch box. Hayun scrunched his nose, thinking of Seo Iju and her husband, who loved mixed grains and protein.

Moreover, it must have been even harder because of Mookyeong’s attacks, who always wanted to do whatever he was doing.

With each photo he flipped through, forgotten memories came back one by one. Hayun wished this moment would never end. But the thick bundle of photos was also coming to an end. After flipping past a photo of Seo Iju wiping her tears with a ridiculous expression at Hayun and Mookyeong’s elementary school graduation, afraid that her makeup would smudge, the photo he had first seen reappeared.

“…When things were good, when it was peaceful.”

Even if he was crying with a scrunched-up and red face, those times were good, and peaceful.

‘Ah, I was happy then.’

Hayun didn’t want to cry, so he forced his tears down. His throat ached from how fiercely the sobs scratched him. Hayun forced a smile and looked at the remaining letters. He couldn’t bring himself to open the letters written to Seo Iju or Mookyeong.

This wasn’t his to open. Hayun put the letters in his bag, worried that he might forget them. Only after checking several times that they were properly packed and wouldn’t get wrinkled did he open his own letter.

As if mocking his efforts to hold back, the tears burst out as soon as he saw the words “To Hayun”.

“Mister, mister, I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.”

He remembered Baek Jinha’s last moments. Kim Deukcheol had used the dead Baek Jinha’s body to attack Mookyeong and Hayun. Hayun vividly remembered the moment Kim Deukcheol twisted Baek Jinha’s neck, the moment the dead Baek Jinha grabbed his arm, and the moment he cut him in two.

“I’m really sorry. I was wrong.”

He hadn’t forgotten a single thing about that day.

Since that day, from the moment he regained consciousness, Hayun had replayed the events of ‘that day’ hundreds, thousands of times. With each replay, the regrets he had piled up rushed in all at once. I shouldn’t have gone out then. No, I should have run away with both Seo Iju and Baek Jinha, regardless of what happened to the others.

I should have moved Baek Jinha and Seo Iju through the door I opened, and moved Baek Mookyeong through the door Seo Iju opened. When we got out of the basement, I should have let Mookyeong escape through the passage where the door had disappeared due to the Labyrinth and followed him.

No, at least I shouldn’t have left Mookyeong alone.

‘I should have done well. I could have done it.’

Not the me now, but the me then could have done it.

Hayun tilted his head back, looking at the tear-stained letter. He couldn’t even ask for forgiveness now. In the end, Hayun couldn’t read the letter. He didn’t think he was ready to see it yet. He put his own letter in the bag as well, and then finally picked up Mookyeong’s envelope.

He already knew what he had put in, so he didn’t particularly want to see it again.

But he didn’t have the courage to look at Mookyeong’s envelope either. Hayun hesitated for a long time before finally opening the envelope. Contrary to his expectation that he would have packed a lot, Mookyeong’s envelope contained one ring box and one gray letter envelope.

‘…Just one page?’

Shouldn’t there be three?

Hayun turned the letter envelope over and over. There was no name written on it.

“What is this?”

When he opened the envelope, he saw a card made of special paper. When he pulled it out a little further, he saw a simple flower pattern and two names written side by side below it.

[Baek Mookyeong · Kim Hayun]

[Are getting married.]

“What is this kid?”

Even the sadness that had been binding his whole body disappeared in the face of the absurdity. Hayun sniffled and opened the wedding invitation.

At first glance, it looked like any other wedding invitation, but when he read it, it was hard to tell if it was a wedding invitation or a letter of blackmail. It basically said that he was going to publicly announce and notarize his relationship with Hayun, so please attend and prevent Hayun from backing out.

And on the side, instead of the wedding venue, the address of their new home was written.

“Why, if you’re going to do it, why not set the wedding venue and date too?”

Hayun snorted at the words “(to be gifted)” under the address. If Seo Iju were alive, she would have said he was counting his chickens before they hatched.

And it was the same for Hayun.

‘Who said I’d marry him?’

Hayun then checked the back of the wedding invitation. He didn’t think there would be anything. It was just a habit he had learned before. But as if expecting it, there was a message written there.

[Hayun-ah, when we’re around twenty-seven, don’t you think it would be okay for you to marry me?]

“This kid, so brazen for a seventeen-year-old.”

Hayun roughly wiped his face. After wiping away all the remaining tears on his face, he opened the ring box. Inside the box were two plain rings, with Mookyeong’s and Hayun’s initials engraved on the inside.

“…”

But there was a problem. The ring with the K engraved was visibly small. It looked like it would only fit on his little finger.

‘My hand isn’t that small.’

Baek Mookyeong, without considering his own large build, thought Hayun was small and delicate. And the result of that was the ring in front of him now.

“…Baek Mookyeong, what do you really know? You don’t even know the ring size.”

Hayun cursed Mookyeong and put the ring engraved with a B on his left ring finger. This ring was a little big. Instead, he put it on his middle finger, and it got stuck on the knuckle.

“You really don’t know anything.”

Hayun looked at the ring on his hand and swayed his curled-up body back and forth.

‘Yeah, I can do this with this. I can endure.’

It was a ring with no style and no certificate of authenticity, but he felt like it would give him the strength to endure until he turned twenty-seven. Hayun decided to believe so. And he decided not to think about anything else. They wouldn’t be of much help in enduring.