CH 121

When he returned to the house, he paused and frowned at the familiar scent surrounding him. As if out of habit, he felt immediately relaxed and he felt himself harden upon the realization that he was relieved just by the mere scent of her. Chase-woo cursed at this unwilling physical reaction. After losing his memory, he’d become such a moron.

His mouth and nose were instantly filled with the scent. It was this scent that always made the idiot Chae-woo, his past self, become sexually aroused, the scent of So Lee-yeon. He scoured the house, opened the window, and aired out the room.

“Damn, it smells like shit.”

It was the feeling of waking up one day with your head filled with another man’s memories. But it was nothing more than the feeling you got from rummaging through another person’s bookshelf or looking uninspired through black and white film. Chae-woo remained calm throughout it all.

Suddenly, he heard small footsteps and the front door opened wide.

“Scarabs feed on cow dung and horse dung. Adult scarabs roll the dung into round dumpling-like shapes and store them in a cave for later– Ah.” He stopped. Gyu-baek froze, his jaw dropping at the sight of the man standing tall in the middle of the living room. It was at that moment that Gyu-baek started running towards him cheerfully and with hands outstretched

However….

“Oh…?” The child hesitated and stopped in his tracks. His eyes grew big like the time his drunken grandfather squashed one of his most cherished insects. He suddenly stepped back, quickly turning to hide behind the sofa. He gasped and screamed at the top of his lungs.

“Fake! You are an impostor!”

Chase-woo’s head slowly turned toward the insignificant thing.

He watched the fumbling child. There was nothing so comical as the sight of him quickly covering his face whenever their eyes met.

Ah, him.

He recalled what he’d seen in this absurd little boy’s record. He treated me like a lazy, worthless man.

“You—”

“He’s gone. The man I knew has disappeared!” Gyu-baek kept covering and uncovering his eyes, his nostrils flaring. As Chae-woo strode toward him, he screamed and ran around the living room like a rabbit out of its cage.

A thick tendon pulsed wildly on Chae-woo’s chin. He glanced agitatedly out the window and up at the clock. If Lee-yeon came home to see this, the game would be up.

Chae-woo immediately snatched Gyu-baek with all his strength and sat him on the sofa. He squatted down and squeezed the child’s arms tightly, lowering down to match his eye level. He had never done anything this small. Chae-woo clicked his tongue.

“Hey kid.”

“The poor director. This is a huge problem. Male mantises fight with females to avoid being eaten. They are very cautious and strategic in their approach. You have an ulterior motive. The director is being fooled.”

“What?”

The child compulsively avoided eye contact and muttered words Chae-woo couldn’t understand.

“A-and the spider, bites the female, injects venom, or mates tightly with a web. This is the wild. But I can’t interfere with the glass box. That know-it-all doctor will have to. Peter Jonathan’s book. Preface. Third line.”

Gyu-baek looked at the square house, his face pale. Chae-woo looked at his small frame. His pupils were dilated, and his breath was shaking. Eventually, Chae-woo let go of the boy’s arms. He thought of something to say to calm Gyu-baek. “Insects that build cocoons don’t consider their cocoons fake, right?”

“It’s called metamorphosis.” The child was fast to correct him.

“….”

“There’s a difference between an incomplete metamorphosis and a complete metamorphosis.”

“….”

“The director must be told that you have undergone complete metamorphosis.”

Chae-woo’s expression slowly faded into a frown. There was no way to talk to this kid. In the end, Chae-woo opened his arms wide as if to take the boy in his embrace. In case he might scare Gyu-baek, Chae-woo loosened his control on the spirit inside him.

“Look carefully, am I really not the same man you knew?”

“The man I knew was old, lazy, and infirm. But your eyes are—”

“My eyes?”

“Wicked.”

“….”

“My gambling uncle always looks like that when he takes from my grandfather’s emergency bank account.”

Kwon Chae-woo remained speechless.

“When he goes behind his back.”

Chae-woo lowered his head and put a hand on the sofa, leaning his weight on that arm.

“Listen here, you little punk. I read about you. I know you’re smart, not great at reading the room, but you can get the gist.”

He pulled Gyu-baek’s head back by his hair and forced him to make eye contact.

“So tell me, what do you think you should do in this situation?”

Gyu-baek closed his eyes as hard as he could and tried to twist his head free.

“The director has to run away!”

“Wrong answer,” he said, veins bulging from his forehead, but he suppressed his rage. “You have to shut your mouth and adapt to the new environment.”

Chae-woo squeezed the child’s small lips like he was holding a pair of tongs.

“Wake up to reality. You can’t save your precious director.”

“….”

Suddenly, the child’s shoulders drooped as though all the energy had left his body. Seeing this, Chae-woo suddenly let go of Gyu-baek’s head and he bolted.

Gyu-baek’s sullen expression was oddly bothersome, but Chae-woo knew this feeling wasn’t really his. It was just a learned reflex his body had picked up and he knew better than to be fooled by the illusion.

It was enough to have experienced it once.

‘But the singing tree…’

Chae-woo smiled coldly, recalling the word he’d heard mentioned over and over again in the wiretapping recordings. Looking back, it had already been 15 years since then.

He lifted his rope, the first time in a long time, and it felt smooth in his hand. In that moment, the wait for the kill was better than ever. A dull humming sound escaped from between his lips.

I guess I wasn’t the only one thinking of you.