Chapter 89: The Twentieth Display Case

“Hm.”

Having left the restaurant first, Chae Woo-seok sat in the driver’s seat, tapping the steering wheel in a steady rhythm as he thought. Something had definitely gone wrong. He couldn’t shake that feeling.

Go Ha-jin had said he was only going to the restroom for a moment, but he still hadn’t come out.

Woo-seok hadn’t checked the time precisely, but it had easily been more than ten minutes.

The longer he waited, the more unpleasant possibilities began to creep into his mind.

The first thought was: ‘Did he run away because he didn’t want to go home?’

The second was a more reasonable one: ‘He ate that much food, so maybe he just needs time.’

The first thought didn’t quite convince him because it lacked a motive.

Go Ha-jin was someone who, objectively speaking, gave no one reason to trust him. And yet, for some inexplicable reason, Woo-seok trusted him anyway.

So he decided to believe that Ha-jin was simply taking a long time in the restroom.

Even so, it was taking too long.

“What’s taking him so long?”

Going into the restroom while someone was using it would be ridiculous. It wasn’t as if he could help with anything.

But what if Ha-jin had collapsed after eating too quickly?

‘What if the exhaustion from the previous night had only now caught up with him?’

Once those thoughts started, they refused to stop.

Woo-seok turned on the car’s hazard lights and got out.

He walked back toward the restaurant and stepped into the elevator just as the doors opened.

Then he paused.

The elevator was going down, not up.

Inside was a large utility cart and a man standing beside it.

“Oh.”

“…Sorry.”

The man pulling the cart brushed past Woo-seok as he got off on the basement level.

The cart was covered with a cloth bearing the logo of the restaurant they had just eaten at, so he appeared to be transporting supplies.

His apology was so quiet it was barely audible.

Woo-seok watched him leave the elevator.

Something about him bothered him.

His eyes kept following the man.

There was nothing particularly unusual about him.

He looked completely ordinary.

So why…

No.

That wasn’t important right now.

There was someone else who mattered far more.

Woo-seok rode the elevator back up to the restaurant.

Even after crossing the dining area and heading toward the restroom, there was still no sign of Ha-jin.

“Go Ha-jin.”

He deliberately called out loudly as he entered the restroom.

Silence.

Only the soft instrumental music playing overhead could be heard.

The restroom wasn’t particularly large, so checking it didn’t take long.

He opened each stall one by one.

Ha-jin wasn’t there.

His footsteps quickened on their own.

Woo-seok returned to the dining area and grabbed a passing employee by the arm.

“Did you happen to see the person who came with me? He went to the restroom earlier.”

“I’m not sure…”

Even the staff had no idea where Ha-jin had gone.

Only then did Woo-seok’s heart begin to pound.

Because Go Ha-jin was missing.

If someone like Go Ha-jin disappeared, what was the most reasonable explanation?

Should he assume he had run away?

That, as Woo-seok had briefly suspected earlier, Ha-jin had decided to escape this marriage?

After all, he had done it before.

The moment Woo-seok had discovered his true identity, Ha-jin had chosen to flee.

So wasn’t it entirely possible that he had done the same thing again?

Objectively speaking, that was the most logical conclusion.

But Woo-seok’s heart rejected it.

Despite the countless reasons Ha-jin had to run away, Woo-seok instinctively reached a different conclusion.

Something had happened.

Something that had forced Ha-jin to disappear against his will.

“Stop the footage there.”

That was why he had come straight to the security office.

There was one detail that kept bothering him.

He fast-forwarded through the CCTV footage until he found the man who had been in the elevator earlier.

The man had been pushing the large cart from the moment he left the restaurant.

A black cap pulled low.

A mask hiding his face completely.

Then he entered the elevator.

And shortly afterward, Woo-seok entered as well.

After getting off, the man pushed the cart toward the trunk of a black SUV.

The moment he pulled back the black cloth and lifted something out—

Woo-seok clenched his jaw so hard it felt as though his teeth might shatter.

“The angle isn’t very clear…”

“It’s clear enough. Just preserve the footage. I’ll handle the rest.”

The camera angle was poor.

It was impossible to tell whether the man was carrying a person or an object.

All they could see was that whatever he lifted wasn’t ordinary cargo.

But in the brief instant before the trunk closed, Woo-seok saw enough.

“Chief Kim. I’m sending you a license plate number. Track the vehicle’s route. And gather as many men as you can. As many as possible.”

He knew what he had seen.

He couldn’t be mistaken.

There had been a day when Go Ha-jin had dressed up carefully and waited outside their house for Woo-seok to come home.

Ha-jin had claimed he was just taking a walk.

But he had been painfully obvious about expecting something from their first night together.

He had been wearing that same shirt.

The shirt he was wearing today.

There was no certainty.

It could have been a similar shirt.

A similar piece of fabric.

But Woo-seok was certain.

The man dressed in black had kidnapped Go Ha-jin.

Because Go Ha-jin would never simply vanish on his own.

And then the self-reproach came.

He had been in the same elevator.

He had noticed something strange.

He should have looked more closely.

More carefully.

No…

He should have gone to find Ha-jin sooner.

Five minutes earlier.

One minute earlier.

His carelessness filled him with overwhelming anger and disgust.

As he strode quickly down the hallway, he called someone other than Chief Kim.

“Yes. Chief, this is Chae Woo-seok.”

He was certain of one more thing.

That kidnapper was the omega serial killer.

He had no concrete proof.

Only instinct.

But his instincts had never screamed this loudly before.

Ha-jin’s voice echoed in his mind.

“Don’t you think it’s strange? Those two omegas who were murdered were both connected to you.”

Woo-seok’s emotions surged violently.

‘Please let me be wrong.’

Click.

Click.

In the darkness of the room, a monitor glowed with blinding brightness.

A man sat with his back turned toward him.

The only sound was the irregular clicking of a mouse.

That was the first thing Go Ha-jin saw when he opened his eyes.

“…Ha.”

The man let out a heavy sigh, as if something wasn’t going the way he wanted.

Even in his dazed state, Ha-jin thought the sound was somehow unnatural.

He regained consciousness silently.

Instinctively, he didn’t even breathe loudly.

He had no idea where he was or what had happened, but one thought came to him immediately.

‘Don’t let him know I’m awake.’

The situation was bad.

He was sitting in a chair, completely restrained.

His legs were fixed to the floor.

His arms had been pulled behind him and bound tightly.

Only his mouth was free.

That alone told him one thing.

No matter how loudly he screamed, no one was coming to help.

The man hadn’t even bothered gagging him.

That meant he was confident.

“Awake?”

The man spoke without turning around.

He continued clicking the mouse and staring at the monitor.

That calmness itself was terrifying.

As if he were saying, No matter what you do, I already know.

“There’s a camera up there. I’m watching everything.”

Ha-jin looked around the room.

Only then did he notice the small red lights blinking from cameras mounted in each corner of the ceiling.

“Who… are you?”

He tried to sound calm.

But the voice that came out was pitifully weak.

Hoarse.

Shaking.

Anyone could hear how frightened he was.

Silence filled the room for a moment.

Then the man laughed.

The sound made Ha-jin’s skin crawl.

His voice was heavily distorted by some kind of electronic device.

It was impossible to guess his age.

Barely possible to tell he was male.

The mechanical laughter was deeply unsettling.

“If you kidnapped someone, would you tell them who you are? You’re more naive than you look.”

The man laughed for a while before standing up.

He was the same man from the restroom.

Still dressed entirely in black.

He was much larger than Ha-jin had realized.

“D-Don’t come any closer…”

“Why are you so afraid? You asked, so I thought I’d give you a little hint.”

Ha-jin struggled desperately to move away.

He knew it was useless.

The man walked behind him and grabbed his chin with a gloved hand.

“See that?”

He forced Ha-jin’s head to turn.

In front of them stood a large transparent shelving unit.

The room was dim, but Ha-jin could make out rows of glass display cases.

“Bags. Shoes. Fingers. Ah, I had to cut that finger because the ring wouldn’t come off. It wasn’t intentional, I promise.”

Ha-jin didn’t want to understand what he was saying.

But he did.

The items inside those glass cases, they all belonged to the people this man had killed.

And this man…

“I wonder how many there are now. Including the ones the police still haven’t found… nineteen.”

Ha-jin’s blood ran cold.

“Oh, and you’re number twenty.”

The man smiled.

“How symbolic.”

Go Ha-jin had been abducted by the omega serial killer.

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