Chapter 13

Chapter 13

Lee Seong-ha, who had a severe clean-freak streak that only he himself denied, rolled up his sleeves as if he simply could not endure the chaos before his eyes. Seeing him begin clearing the trash at once without waiting for anyone’s answer, Kwon Do-geun panicked and reached out to stop him.

“Um, excuse me!”

Before his cracked voice could even reach him, Go Gyeol quietly stepped in front of him.

“Please speak with me.”

Go Gyeol’s gaze, searching for somewhere to sit, lingered on the dust-covered floor. Instead of frowning, he offered a choice in a calm voice.

“Shall we go outside and talk? Or would you rather wait until this place is cleared a little?”

Their gazes collided in midair. Faced with Go Gyeol’s unwavering eyes, Kwon Do-geun, who had been huddled in on himself, hesitated and gave a small nod. Just as Go Gyeol was about to ask again because he could not tell whether Kwon Do-geun meant they should go out or wait, a voice as small as a mosquito reached him.

“…I’ll wait.”

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Go Gyeol let out a small sigh, crossed his arms, and watched Lee Seong-ha move around the room. Like a fish that had found water, Lee Seong-ha darted here and there as if possessed, clearing away old grime and trash. If his goal had not been to leave the secular world behind, Go Gyeol had the absurd thought that he would have succeeded spectacularly even if he had retired as a Hunter and opened a cleaning company with that passion.

That was when it happened.

“Aren’t you going to talk?”

Lee Seong-ha, absorbed in cleaning, asked as if he found it strange.

“There’s nowhere to sit and talk.”

“Ah. Got it.”

Lee Seong-ha nodded, and in an instant, he created a space large enough for the two of them to sit. Wiping away sweat, he said,

“Here. Talk here. I’ll clean the rest.”

“Yeah.”

Go Gyeol sat first in the clean space Lee Seong-ha had prepared, like a small island. Then Kwon Do-geun reluctantly sat in front of him, almost as if kneeling. His shoulders were drawn in tightly, and his head was lowered so far it seemed about to touch the floor. He looked like a sinner waiting for the blame and rebuke that would soon pour down on him.

“Mr. Kwon Do-geun.”

At the call, his shoulders flinched. Go Gyeol looked straight at him and cut away the preamble.

“I’ll tell you in advance. I know that you have dyslexia, Mr. Kwon Do-geun.”

In that instant, Kwon Do-geun’s head, which had been fixed toward the floor, shot up. His bloodless, pale face and eyes widened as though they might burst revealed his shock in full. Go Gyeol did not stop and drove the wedge in.

“So I also know just how unfairly you were framed for everything the world knows about.”

At those words, a transparent film began to rise in Kwon Do-geun’s wide eyes. Tears that he could not control gathered and fell, carving paths down his filthy cheeks. Despite his wretched appearance, his sorrowful, pitiful face, like that of a wounded beast, was like a scene from a film.

“H-how… do you know… that….”

His voice was almost a groan. But the spark of hope was far too faint. The weight of despair crushing him was far too massive. The light in his eyes, which had shone with surprise, sank back into deep darkness in an instant, and his head fell weakly toward the floor. As if every reaction from a moment ago had been an illusion, he became an empty shell once more.

Go Gyeol let out a dry sigh in frustration. He asked directly,

“Mr. Kwon Do-geun, are you planning to die?”

His shoulders twitched sensitively, but there was no answer. Silence was sometimes the clearest affirmation.

“Dying won’t solve everything.”

Go Gyeol tried to persuade him logically, but his words merely struck a firmly closed wall and shattered.

“…….”

Kwon Do-geun still did not move.

“Mr. Kwon Do-geun.”

Go Gyeol was frowning and about to urge him again, seeing him hang there lifelessly like a doll whose batteries had been removed. That was when Lee Seong-ha, who had been silently cleaning in the corner while keeping his ears focused on their conversation, quietly set down the broom. The small sound he made shook the heavy tension in the room.

“Hey. I’ll talk to him. You step outside for a bit.”

When Go Gyeol looked at him with puzzled eyes, Lee Seong-ha familiarly made the sign of the cross over his chest.

“You know I’m a former priest. From confession to suicide prevention counseling, this was my field.”

A strange certainty lay in his voice. Go Gyeol let out another long sigh and rose from his seat. With Kwon Do-geun having no will to talk at all right now, he had no choice but to admit that nothing he said would work.

More than anything, Go Gyeol himself was good at analysis and speaking based on it.

Persuasion was not something he was confident in.

“Fine. Finish cleaning first and….”

“No. Just go out.”

Lee Seong-ha cut him off firmly.

“Conversations like this have to happen one-on-one. Trust me a little.”

To Go Gyeol, who still looked doubtful, Lee Seong-ha threw him a playful wink. Only then did Go Gyeol move toward the door as if giving up.

When the door closed and only the two of them remained in the room, Lee Seong-ha quietly approached Kwon Do-geun and sat in front of him.

Then he took his hand. It was cold enough for the chill to dig into his skin. Lee Seong-ha could feel the tension gripping Kwon Do-geun’s entire body. He quietly closed his eyes and made the sign of the cross once more. Then, in the calmest and most peaceful voice in the world, he began to pray. His prayer was neither a question nor persuasion. Holding those cold hands, it was only warm comfort offered up for a broken soul.

Drop. Drop.

One drop, then another.

Hot liquid fell onto the back of Lee Seong-ha’s hand. They were Kwon Do-geun’s tears. From Lee Seong-ha’s hand holding his, the warmth he had forgotten spread through his veins, very slowly but unmistakably. A prayer someone offered solely for him. When the comfort he had longed for so desperately, yet had believed he could not dare possess, approached right before his eyes, paradoxically, the dam of tears he had locked away burst.

After finishing the prayer, Lee Seong-ha held Kwon Do-geun’s hand a little tighter as he silently shook his shoulders and shed tears. His voice was not the booming voice of a preacher, but closer to the quiet whisper of someone who had walked the same road.

“There is a saying that God gives only trials one can endure. But I do not believe that.”

Kwon Do-geun’s sobbing stopped for an instant.

“Just as the weight of pain differs from person to person, the strength to endure trials also differs for each person. But there is one important thing people do not know.”

At those words, Kwon Do-geun very slowly, with difficulty, lifted his head as though a heavy lump of iron had been attached to it. His empty eyes, from which hope had vanished, turned toward Lee Seong-ha.

“The trials given by God are never meant to be endured alone. This is also why human beings can share their hearts with other human beings. Endure together, and overcome together. That is the true will of God.”

“Together….”

The word echoed in Kwon Do-geun’s trembling eyes. Endure trials together, and overcome them together. Those words circled in his mind, then became sharp fragments and stabbed into his heart.

A faint laugh slipped out from between his dry lips. It was closer to the sound of cracked glass splitting than laughter.

Together? Who had ever been beside him?

He remembered the calls that had poured in like hellfire when the first report broke. Behind the honey-sweet concern, ugly curiosity gleamed as they enjoyed watching his fall. They had not been asking how he was. They only wanted to confirm in person just how miserably he had collapsed. They must have raised glasses with his misfortune as their side dish.

He had known long ago that the entertainment industry was a cruel stage where one had to step on someone else to rise. He had felt revulsion while watching other people’s tragedies. But watching from beyond a screen and becoming the protagonist of that tragedy himself were pains on entirely different levels. It felt like being hurled endlessly into an abyss, a bottomless pit with no end in sight.

No time was given to clean anything up. The lips that had whispered love to him spewed curses, the hands that had cheered for him turned into sharp pointing fingers, and the gazes of admiration all held contempt and mockery.

And in the very front row of all those betrayers stood the person who had been more precious to him than anyone.

His mother, Jeon Mi-gyeong.

The woman who had divorced when he was two years old and had not contacted him even once afterward. But when his older brother died in an unexpected accident, she appeared before him as if by fate. She wept, saying that she would cherish him now, in place of his dead brother. At first, he had not lowered his guard. But when the maternal affection he had yearned for throughout his empty childhood seeped into him like water into parched earth, doubt and wariness melted away like snow at some point.

He trusted her with everything, believing she filled the emptiness of his entire life. He showed her even the softest, most vulnerable parts of himself. And at that very moment, his mother pushed her son off a cliff in the cruelest way in the world.

“It’s all right.”

As if the memory of the past had gouged him with sharp claws, pain appeared on Kwon Do-geun’s face. Lee Seong-ha did not miss that moment and gently patted his hand. There was no coercive force. Only quietly, slowly. With a delicate touch, like applying ointment to a wound, the pain that had been torn open again slowly settled like waves calming down.

“It will be difficult to trust someone again. And it must be frightening too. But think about it one more time. Truly… was there not even one person who endured with you?”

Lee Seong-ha did not stop patting his hand. He did not rush him. So that Kwon Do-geun could draw the truth out from the chaotic fragments of memory, he simply waited in silence.

Who knew how much time passed? After a long while, Kwon Do-geun’s head turned very slowly toward one place.

The place his gaze reached was the only neatly arranged corner in this space of despair, which resembled a garbage dump.