Projection Novel (Completed) - Chapter 51

They left the crematorium not for a columbarium or memorial park, but for home. It was because Sejin wouldn’t let go of the urn. Cheon Sejoo realized that Sejin needed a little more time to say goodbye and headed home, abandoning the idea of stopping at the columbarium.

Upon arriving at the parking lot, Sejin got out, clutching the urn. Cheon Sejoo had him wait while he retrieved a box from the trunk. It contained items Kim Hyunkyung  had used in the hospital, a guestbook compiled by Seo Jinyoung, and the condolence money.

After carrying their respective belongings upstairs, Cheon Sejoo first pushed Sejin into his own room. Sejin’s room was too far away. Since it was a place where he wouldn’t be able to hear his cries, he took him to his own room instead.

“It would be a big problem if it fell. Put it here.”

“……”

At Cheon Sejoo’s words, Sejin quietly nodded. He handed over Kim Hyunkyung ‘s urn. Cheon Sejoo placed it by the sunlit window and then headed to the dressing room. From there, he took out some of his own clothes and handed them to Sejin.

“Go wash up, eat, and then get some sleep.”

“Okay… What about you?”

“I’ll wash in the living room bathroom. You use this one.”

Cheon Sejoo pushed Sejin into his room’s bathroom and left the room. Before heading to the bathroom outside, he glanced at the box he had left in the living room. Inside the box with Kim Hyunkyung ‘s belongings was a letter that the caregiver, Kim Seonhee, had privately handed to Cheon Sejoo. It was something Kim Hyunkyung  had asked her to deliver to Cheon Sejoo during her lifetime.

He hesitated, then took the letter and went into the bathroom. After locking the door, he stared at it for a moment, then laboriously broke the seal and took out the letter.

Hello, Director. If you’re reading this letter, I must have passed away.

The letter, beginning with that sentence, was written in a shaky hand. It seemed Kim Hyunkyung  had written it herself with a hand that barely moved. Cheon Sejoo swallowed a sigh and read on.

Was the funeral held well? Did Sejin cry a lot?

I hope he becomes a stronger and more steadfast adult than me, but deep down, I know Sejin’s natural disposition is too tender for that. He probably cried until his tears ran dry. He must have been very sad. But I’m not too worried. I believe the Director would have stayed by Sejin’s side. I know you’re that kind of person.

Last year, when I first met you at Hwahak and entrusted Sejin to you… Do you remember? That day, you looked at me with a troubled expression and then quietly left. Sejin was angry at seeing you like that, but I kept thinking that you would eventually accept Sejin.

It’s not easy to help someone who brings no benefit to you. Yet, you were responsible and kind enough to take Sejin and care for him. I knew it at first sight.

Of course, if I say this, you’ll think I don’t know you well, but I’ve met many people in my life. I don’t doubt my judgment. You know, Sejin’s stubbornness comes from me 🙂

My hands are shaking, making it hard to write. I’ll wrap up the introduction here and get to the point. Director, you brought up your younger sibling’s story then, giving it as a reason for helping us. But regardless of that, I know you cherish Sejin very much. So, relying on that affection, I dare to make another shameless request.

Please, even after I pass away, continue to look after Sejin. He’s a naive child with little experience, but he has a lot of affection and cherishes what he likes terribly.

Sejin likes you very much.

Please. Don’t let him be alone. Please become Sejin’s family.

The letter was a bit rambling, but its meaning was clear. Cheon Sejoo’s brows furrowed. He read the letter she left several more times, then closed his eyes tightly and sighed. He recalled the day he first met Kim Hyunkyung . Memories of her bowing her head to him, much younger than her, and entrusting Sejin to him, resurfaced.

From that day until now, Kim Hyunkyung  had always made requests he couldn’t refuse. His chest felt heavy. I’m not someone who can be responsible for anyone. He had thought that Sejin would leave his side once he became an adult, which was why he could pour so much affection into him. How could I…? But that thought quickly changed. The moment Sejin’s pleading face, his soft cheeks, and wet eyes came to mind, he absolutely couldn’t bring himself to send him away. Perhaps it had been decided the moment he foresaw Kim Hyunkyung ‘s death.

How could I leave you alone…?

There were inevitably problems that would follow if he decided to keep Sejin by his side, but Cheon Sejoo habitually only saw what was important. In his eyes, only Kwon Sejin was visible. There was no need to hesitate further.

Cheon Sejoo turned on the shower to wash away the complex thoughts. Icy cold water began to pour down. He stood beneath it for a long, long time.

Then, with a chilled body, Cheon Sejoo entered the bedroom. He looked at Sejin, who was lying in bed, shaking his head as if he had no intention of eating, and eventually gave up, lying down next to Sejin.

Only then, embracing his warm body, did he feel alive. Sejin’s warmth gave Cheon Sejoo a clear answer. It was Cheon Sejoo, not Sejin, who couldn’t do without the other. He buried that fact deep in his heart and fell asleep.

The next day, January 1st, there was no excitement of a birthday or New Year’s Day for them. Cheon Sejoo spent time with Sejin in the silent house. He made sure Sejin ate, and tried to return him to normalcy by watching people laughing loudly on TV.

However, Sejin merely stared at Cheon Sejoo with an expressionless face. As if he had no interest in anything else, he sent endless gazes only towards him. Unable to ignore Sejin, Cheon Sejoo exchanged glances with him several times.

That look was a little different from what Sejin usually sent. In Sejin’s affectionate gaze that met his, in his obsessive clinging, holding his hand and not letting go, in Sejin’s embrace that burrowed into his arms during the night, bringing his ear close to his heart, Cheon Sejoo felt Sejin craving his affection.

But that couldn’t be. Given what happened at the funeral, Cheon Sejoo thought it impossible for Sejin to like him, so he tried to convince himself that his assumption was wrong, that this was just a child’s struggle to fill the void of loss.

After an early dinner, he lay in bed with Sejin. He embraced him, who was quietly shedding tears, and patted his back. It took a long time for Sejin to fall asleep. Cheon Sejoo didn’t find that time tedious. He knew he might have to leave the house and stay up for several nights on the 4th, so he wanted to alleviate Sejin’s sorrow as much as possible before then.

However, the moment he had to leave the house came much earlier than he expected. On the night of January 1st, Cheon Sejoo received a sudden call from Chae Beomjun. He was told to come up to the 43rd floor immediately, as something had happened.

Cheon Sejoo quietly changed his clothes so as not to wake Sejin and left the house. But the elevator wasn’t moving, seemingly under inspection. Eventually, Cheon Sejoo went up to the upper floor through the unlocked stairs and soon found a bleeding person sprawled in the 43rd-floor lobby. The metallic smell of blood made his sluggish body keenly awaken, and all his nerves stood on edge. Cheon Sejoo looked around with a chilling expression.

“What is this?”

His sharp gaze quickly scanned the half-dead person.

A man lying on the floor, his head twisted at an odd angle. Given the shallow rise and fall of his chest, he wasn’t dead yet, but death seemed imminent, as if he would soon breathe his last. The man’s hands were horribly crushed, and half of his face suffered severe facial fractures. His eyes, looking as if they would pop out, dripped blood.

At Cheon Sejoo’s rigid question, Shin Gyoyeon, who was smoking in front of him, smiled broadly.

“There’s a rude bastard living in our apartment. I gave him a little education.”

The man with a cigarette in his hand pointed at the half-corpse with a mask-like smile. In front of Shin Gyoyeon lay a fire extinguisher stained with blood and flesh, and his fingertips were also splattered with blood. It meant Shin Gyoyeon had done this. Soon, Cheon Sejoo noticed a helmet rolling next to where he stood and shifted his gaze.

However, the fallen man was dressed in indoor clothes. Short sleeves, shorts, and sneakers worn without socks. The clothes were too thin for riding a motorcycle on January 1st in the middle of winter. There was another person here.

“What about the witness?”

“Ah, there was a child…”

At Cheon Sejoo’s question, Shin Gyoyeon tilted his head obliquely and chuckled to himself. The eyes of a psychopath, devoid of guilt, indifferently scanned the man’s body as he turned into a corpse. Cheon Sejoo, reading an unspeakable madness in that gaze, motioned to Chae Beomjun standing beside him.

Chae Beomjun, understanding Cheon Sejoo’s silent question, calmly gestured towards the inside of the front door. It meant the witness was inside the house. This was unlike Shin Gyoyeon, who usually left no loose ends. What in the world was going on? Cheon Sejoo swallowed his doubts and asked.

“Then what should we do?”

“For now… just this. Sell it off.”

Shin Gyoyeon flicked his cigarette butt into the dark pool of blood and instructed, then walked away leisurely. He casually wiped the blood-splattered shoes on the man’s trouser leg, then tapped Cheon Sejoo’s shoulder, saying, “Good work,” and disappeared inside the front door. Click, the sound of the lock engaging was heard, and Chae Beomjun quietly sighed.

“He wasn’t in a good mood today, and of all people…”

“What is this? Out of nowhere.”

At Cheon Sejoo’s question, Chae Beomjun shrugged as if he didn’t know either.

“I don’t know either. The elevator was being inspected, so I had a delivery service deliver something, and this guy followed the deliveryman up and caused a scene. So when the boss told him to stop, that guy, not knowing his place, picked a fight. So, with no one watching, the boss couldn’t hold back and hit him once, and he just collapsed and happened to hit his head on a corner… No, but Director Cheon. That delivery kid’s face…”

Chae Beomjun, who had been speaking, widened his eyes and ostentatiously ran his hand over his face. Cheon Sejoo looked displeased at him, who was talking about the deliveryman’s face while a person was dying right in front of them. It was utterly pathetic.

Cheon Sejoo ignored Chae Beomjun muttering beside him and raised the phone he had brought out. He called Moon Seonhyuk, who answered immediately.

• Yes, Director.

“Where are you?”

• I’m at the office now. Do you have anything for me to do?

“Bring some stuff to dispose of a body. Come with Cheoljoo, too, because we need to erase the CCTV.”

• Where should we go?

“Our apartment.”

-…Yes, I’ll be right there.

Moon Seonhyuk seemed to question it for a moment, but accepted his instructions without further comment and hung up. Cheon Sejoo stood there and calmly looked down at the dying man. The man, who occasionally trembled, sometimes made choking sounds like someone about to breathe their last, but he held on until Moon Seonhyuk and Yoon Cheoljoo arrived. Amusingly, unlike Kim Hyunkyung , he felt nothing while watching the man die. Cheon Sejoo couldn’t hide his bitterness at his own detachment.

About 40 minutes later, Moon Seonhyuk and Yoon Cheoljoo arrived. Cheon Sejoo put the man into the bag Seonhyuk was carrying. Then, with him, he moved the bag to the work vehicle. Meanwhile, Yoon Cheoljoo connected to the apartment’s security server and erased the CCTV footage and elevator operation records in real-time, and hacked the man’s phone in his pocket to extract his information.

Cheon Sejoo left the cleanup of the 43rd floor to Seonhyuk and took the man to the workshop. There, with an expressionless face, he injected the man with an anesthetic and cut open his abdomen with a scalpel. This was to carry out Shin Gyoyeon’s instructions. The smell of blood, covering his entire body, made him dizzy, but he performed all the tasks with practiced ease. He couldn’t count how many times he had done it. There was no time for guilt now.

In the chilling, airless workshop, Cheon Sejoo transferred the man’s organs into an icebox. Most of the money earned this way went to Cheon Sejoo. It was a kind of hazard pay, disbursed with Shin Gyoyeon’s permission. Cheon Sejoo spent this gruesome money without any meaning. It was also this money that repaid Kim Hyunkyung ‘s debt. Because it was worthless money, Cheon Sejoo unhesitatingly handed over money earned from selling someone else’s organs to Kim Dong-gil.

His own food and expenses were also covered by this money. He bought meat for Sejin with this money too. What would Sejin’s reaction be if he knew this fact? Cheon Sejoo swallowed, recalling Sejin looking at Kim Dong-gil with disgust. This, he could never tell him.

However, what he could honestly tell Sejin was that Kim Hyunkyung ‘s medical and funeral expenses were all paid from money Cheon Sejoo had saved long ago. The money he earned from tutoring during school, and the money he saved without spending during his internship and residency, was mostly used up for this matter. He had saved it for Hyein’s university tuition and hadn’t dared touch it after she died, but he didn’t regret using it for Sejin. In fact, he felt relieved by the empty balance, even thinking, “So this is why I hadn’t touched it all this time, to use it like this.”

It was around the time he was finishing up his work in the blood-scented workshop, thinking such thoughts, that he received another call from Shin Gyoyeon. Cheon Sejoo ultimately couldn’t return home that night.

It wasn’t to dispose of the witness’s body. Shin Gyoyeon seemed to like the deliveryman. Through Chae Beomjun, he handed Cheon Sejoo the deliveryman’s wallet and ID and told him to “clean up” his residence.

“Clean up.” This was the first time for a civilian. When he asked what it meant, Chae Beomjun explained. Shin Gyoyeon had decided to keep the boy for a while and wanted Cheon Sejoo to arrange the deliveryman’s affairs to prevent any trouble during that time. So, Cheon Sejoo left with a worn-out wallet and a cram school dorm card key, almost illegible with a faded address.

The deliveryman’s dwelling was not far from Shin Gyoyeon’s house. Before getting out of the black sedan he used for work, he opened the wallet he had been given. Inside were a few thousand-won bills, a resident registration card, and the cram school dorm card key. There seemed to be a folded photo inside, but he deliberately didn’t take it out. Cheon Sejoo quietly looked down at the ID card, which had a picture of a very beautiful boy, and then got out of the car, holding the wallet.

It was already dawn, so there was no one around. Nevertheless, he pulled his hat low and first checked the surrounding CCTVs. There was a security CCTV about 30 meters away, but it wasn’t a high-quality camera. Cheon Sejoo confirmed that and then walked into the building.

The cram school dorm was on the 3rd floor, and there was no elevator. There was no management office, and no common security CCTVs in the building; the only security was the card key panel at the entrance of each floor. He scanned the card from the deliveryman’s wallet and opened the cram school dorm door.

The interior was dark. To the left of the entrance was a small room labeled “Management Office,” but it was empty, and a quiet bustle permeated the hallway, where half the lights were off. There was a musty smell characteristic of old buildings. Cheon Sejoo took off his shoes and carried them in his hand as he searched for the room number written on the deliveryman’s card key.

Room 102. However, perhaps the numbers were assigned from the inside, as Room 102 was at the very end, not near the cram school dorm entrance. As he moved silently down the hallway, he heard noises from inside closed doors—the sounds of keyboards clicking, mice clacking, dry coughs. Many people here couldn’t sleep, even at dawn. What was keeping them awake? Cheon Sejoo walked with a somewhat subdued feeling, as he could easily guess.

Finally, he arrived at Room 102, placed the card key, and the panel glowed green, unlocking the door. The door creaked on its hinges as it opened. Cheon Sejoo checked again that no one was in the hallway, then quietly went inside and closed the door.

The room was very narrow. On one side, a mattress half the size of a single bed was placed, and in the space that was exactly that width, another half-sized desk was against the wall. Where a window should have been, a built-in wardrobe reached the ceiling, and beneath the old, peeling sheet of the wardrobe was a small window barely the height of Cheon Sejoo’s palm.

As if to prove the cram school dorm’s age, black, dusty tissue paper was wedged into the gaps of the rusted aluminum sash. One could see the occupant’s effort to block even a little of the cold wind leaking in, but despite that, the room was as cold as if the heating hadn’t been turned on at all.

He searched the room with an expressionless face. Most of the belongings were inside the built-in wardrobe: a pair of old pants, two short-sleeved shirts, three socks, one underwear, instant rice, and cup noodles. And just in case, he lifted the electric blanket under the thin comforter, and as he scanned beneath the mattress, he found two crumpled ten-thousand won bills…

Cheon Sejoo felt as if he was falling to the ground and sat on the deliveryman’s bed. A hollow laugh escaped him. Along with it, a white mist of breath appeared in the room. It felt as if that shapeless smoke was crumbling the wall he had painstakingly built.

He painstakingly composed himself and took out the deliveryman’s ID again from the wallet he had brought.

Yoon Heesoo, twenty years old.

He was the same age as Sejin, and January 2nd. It was his birthday today, as midnight had passed. On a day when he should have been happy, he was confined on the 43rd floor, facing an uncertain death. Cheon Sejoo smiled weakly, finding the situation absurd. Then, suddenly remembering, he took out the folded photo from inside the wallet.