BIA Ch. 72

“What, why are you throwing it away?”

“I don’t take pills.”

He spat out the words curtly and flopped onto the bed. Then, feeling uncomfortable in his clothes, he got up again. Taking off his coat and then the jacket he was wearing underneath, Isaiah asked Chester,

“You bought this outfit too, right?”

“You know it well.”

Chester puffed up his chest, acting smug.

“Who would wear clothes like this except for you.”

Isaiah tossed the discarded jacket into the wooden box.

“This crazy homo bastard? Hey, do you know this outfit cost twenty-eight thousand dollars?”

Chester went ballistic.

“Fuck off.”

Isaiah muttered lowly as he lay down on the bed.

“A Dior suit isn’t twenty-eight thousand dollars. It’s at most three or four thousand.”

“Hey, do you have any idea what a scene you caused when you went to buy clothes that day? Huh?”

Ignoring Chester’s tantrum, Isaiah turned his back. Then, he noticed the coat he had taken off and idly touched it. The glossy cashmere coat had fine, soft fibers, and it felt so good against the skin that anyone could tell it was quite expensive. However, despite being so well-maintained, it didn’t feel completely new.

“Did you buy this for me too?”

Isaiah asked Chester, pretending not to know.

“That’s…”

As expected, Chester hesitated, unable to answer right away.

“I guess not.”

“No, I didn’t buy it for you, it’s my coat, but it’s not new.”

Ignoring Chester’s words, Isaiah roughly spread out the coat, trying to gauge its size. He wasn’t sure about the length or the sleeves, but the width was definitely not Chester’s size. If Chester wore a coat this wide, he would look like a scarecrow. As far as Isaiah knew, there was only one person with the height and build to fit this coat.

“It’s Bran’s coat.”

Chester confessed.

“I figured.”

Isaiah put the coat back down and lay back down on the bed. Somehow, he ended up lying down in a position that looked like he was hugging the coat, and Chester, unable to stand it, grabbed Isaiah and started shaking him like a madman.

“Hey, you didn’t fall for him just because of a coat, did you? That bastard’s been tricking you all this time. He didn’t even buy you a new coat, he just threw you his old one to wear. It’s like putting a leather collar on someone else’s dog as an act of charity.”

“Chester.”

Isaiah called out to Chester quietly. Chester seemed to flinch and let go. Isaiah turned from his side to look at Chester.

“Tell me more about that.”

“What, what are you talking about?”

“About Bran tricking me.”

When Isaiah said he wanted to know what exactly happened during those five days, Chester hesitated, “That’s…” then suddenly walked out to the living room.

Seeing Chester return to the bedroom with Manny a moment later, Isaiah said, “Oh.” and smiled.

“You’ve gotten a bit smarter in five days, haven’t you, Chester? Yeah, from now on, if you’re not confident in saying things properly, you should just ask someone else. That’s better for you and for me.”

“That homo bastard, really.”

Manny stopped Chester, who was about to pounce on Isaiah after his sarcastic remark.

“Isaiah, do you remember meeting Bran the day before you lost your memory? I mean, on November 8th.”

“I met Bran?”

Isaiah asked, still lying on the bed.

“Yeah. At Mountain Dog.”

Hearing that, he remembered. Yes, he had met Bran. At Mountain Dog. But he couldn’t tell Chester and Manny about that. Because…

“He told you to betray Chester and side with him, right?”

Manny stated the reason first.

“You little shit, don’t even think about lying, we know everything.”

Chester chimed in.

“……”

It seemed that the situation had become unbelievably complicated in five days.

But the most complicated thing was inside Isaiah’s head. There was no way Bran would have told these two, so they must have found out through him. He had no idea what he had been doing while pretending to be Isaiah Diaz, so he couldn’t carelessly open his mouth.

As if sensing Isaiah’s dilemma, Manny spoke first.

“Look, Chester’s not going to blame you for this. You know why? Because you were also backstabbed by Bran.”

What the hell is he talking about now?

Just as Isaiah narrowed his brow, Manny said,

“Do you know he killed Robin?”

“What…?”

Isaiah involuntarily sat up straight.

“Robin is dead?”

“Yeah. Bran killed him.” Chester answered.

Isaiah habitually reached for his phone on the bed, then remembered that his old phone was gone and cursed.

“Why, are you going to call Robin? How can a dead guy answer the phone. Just ask Bran directly later. He’s the one who took care of the body.”

Chester sneered, sitting on the edge of the bed.

“Shut up, shut your mouth.”

Isaiah snapped.

“Yeah, he’s definitely back. He’s really back.”

This is the Isaiah Cole he knows. Chester smirked, his face showing a mix of liking and disliking.

“Look at you, messing up everything and getting angry. If you didn’t have that good shooting skill, you’d have been dead by my hands a long time ago.”

“Chester.”

Manny sighed, as if telling him to stop. Surprisingly, Chester shut his mouth at that. Usually, he would have slapped Manny’s cheek for sticking his nose in.

“Anyway, to continue,”

Taking advantage of Chester’s silence, Manny continued.

“We don’t know exactly what you two talked about. We just know that Bran came to this house, and it went pretty well.”

“Bran came to this house…”

Isaiah mumbled, putting his hand to his forehead again.

“He did. Don’t you remember?”

“No… I do remember.”

That’s right. Bran had come. With champagne. But was it a good atmosphere? He didn’t know. He couldn’t remember what they had talked about. He could vaguely recall Bran and himself sitting on the sofa and talking, but he couldn’t hear anything. It was like a scene from a silent movie. But he had accepted the glass of champagne that Bran had offered… so it couldn’t have been too bad, definitely. The fact that he drank alcohol, which he never did, meant there must have been a reason.

“And then he killed Robin, that bastard.”

Chester shouted angrily again. This time, Manny didn’t stop him. “And WD thinks you killed him. Of course, since they can’t get in touch with you.” He added calmly from the side.

“As if that wasn’t enough, he kept manipulating you while you had amnesia. He probably took that old phone of yours too. He must have thought it was great.”

Chester’s voice grew more and more agitated. Just as Manny was finally calming down the fuming Chester, a sharp screech of brakes was heard outside. It was a sound that could be heard several times a day in this residential alley. Yet, for some reason, Manny stopped calming Chester and ran out to the living room. And then he came back, pale as a ghost, and said,

“Bran is here.”

“What?”

Isaiah and Chester both got off the bed at the same time.

“I’ve been getting calls since earlier and I didn’t answer. Just in case, I looked outside now.”

“He’s here? That bastard?”

“He just got out of his car.”

Before Manny could finish speaking, Chester pushed Isaiah’s chest and shouted,

“You stay here.”

As Chester and Manny closed the bedroom door and left, Isaiah took a pistol out of the wooden box. He felt more at ease just holding an empty gun.

Holding the empty gun, which was more for self-comfort than for attack or defense, he pressed himself against the door, listening to the situation outside. Not long after he held his breath and waited, the front door opened outside and Bran’s voice was heard.

“Where is he?”

The unfamiliar yet familiar voice reached his ears, and for some reason, Isaiah felt a tingling sensation on the skin under his shirt. He couldn’t pinpoint exactly where. He just felt itchy somewhere.

“What are you talking about?”

Chester was furious. But there was no way such a shallow act would work on Bran.

As expected, Bran said without smiling,

“Chester. If you wanted to play dumb, you should have grabbed my collar and asked where Isaiah Cole is the moment you saw me.

Chester, you idiot. Isaiah bit his lip behind the door.

“And you shouldn’t have stopped calling every thirty minutes.”

Chester, you stupid, mentally ill bastard. Isaiah cursed repeatedly in his mind. If the gun he was holding had bullets, he would have shot that bastard first, not Bran.

As Isaiah took a deep breath to calm his anger, thwack, the sound of the front door closing came from outside.

Could it be that Bran already left?

Isaiah pressed his ear closer to the door.

Of course, that couldn’t be.

“You crazy bastard, where are you going!”

“Bran!”

Footsteps grew closer amidst the voices of the two people trying to stop him. Isaiah quickly took a step back from the door. At the same time as he took a sniper stance holding the empty gun, the bedroom door opened.