Chapter 43: The Uninvited Guest

I frantically searched for a place to hide. The room right next to the entrance felt precarious, as did the space behind the sliding door leading to the kitchen.

Then, my eyes landed on the bathroom. It seemed to be the safest option. I scrambled inside and locked the door, my hands trembling as I clutched my phone. Without a second thought, I dialed the most familiar number.

“Why, why isn’t she answering…!”

But my mother didn’t pick up. This was the same person who had just called me, the one who had monitored whether I went to the villa.

I had no idea what they might do outside, or if they would burst in at any moment!

Why did my mother only call when she needed me, but never answer when I called her? And whose fault was all of this? I gritted my teeth and dialed again.

‘Please answer, Mom. Please….’

My desperate plea was met only by the cold, mechanical voice of the answering machine.

—The person you are trying to reach is currently unavailable. Please try again later….

I suppressed the urge to scream. My face flushed, as if I were on the verge of tears. I was utterly sick of it. I truly, deeply hated it.

What should I do now? What was I supposed to do? It was then that an extreme thought crossed my mind, wishing I could just die.

‘If anything happens, tell me first. Come to me.’

Those words, that voice, that expression—they all came rushing back.

With trembling hands, I called him. The phone rang once, then twice….

Before it could ring a third time, he answered.

“What’s up? You’re actually calling me first.”

He answered. It was Yoon Heesung.

Tears welled up.

“Yunwoo? Is something wrong?”

I sniffled. His gentle voice, asking if something was wrong, seemed to melt away all the accumulated bitterness. I knew exactly what to call this feeling. It was relief.

I stammered out the words.

“Hee, Heesung… what do I do….”

“Where are you right now? At home?”

“Uh-huh, yeah. I’m home, but people came outside….”

My head spun. I had never been taught how to act in a situation like this. Even just answering Yoon Heesung’s questions felt overwhelming. I poured out my grievances to him, as if tattling.

‘It’s the same people who came before, they said my brother borrowed money, they even wrote a new promissory note, but I don’t know why they came again, they keep kicking the door….’

Before my last word could even finish, a jarring *bang!* echoed right next to my ear. I whipped my head around. The bathroom door was wide open. More accurately, it had been half-torn off and forced open.

“Hiding in a place like this, huh?”

The man clicked his tongue, a soft *tsk-tsk*. He spoke as if genuinely pitying me.

“I can tell what kind of life you lead.”

“……”

The raised scar above his lip twitched repulsively with every word he spoke.

I was easily dragged outside. As I was pulled away, my phone clattered to the floor. Kneeling like a criminal, I looked up at the two men staring down at me. The bald one was a stranger, but the other was indeed the same man from before.

“But we, we even wrote a new promissory note last time. Why, why are you doing this…?”

I protested in a shaky voice, but the man completely ignored me. As if my words weren’t even worth responding to, they left me kneeling and began to search the house.

The bald man grumbled.

“There’s nothing to steal in this damn house. If he was going to run away, he should’ve at least lived well. He’s a pain in the ass.”

It seemed they weren’t truly looking for things to steal, but rather something else.

Perhaps another person hiding, for example….

“Should we just finish up and go fishing, Boss?”

“What would we catch in a place like this? And you, I told you not to do a half-assed job. Isn’t that why I came along today, in case you messed up again?”

“Oh, our boss worries too much.”

They bantered as if I wasn’t even there.

Once they confirmed that no one else was in the house besides me, they came back towards me. The bald man nudged my thigh with his shoe and asked,

“Boss, should I handle this one?”

“No.”

The man waved his hand, dismissing the question, then squatted down in front of me, meeting my gaze.

“You, go outside.”

“Huh?”

He was looking at me, but his words weren’t directed at me.

“I said, go outside. The kid’s too scared to talk.”

“Yes… yes, sir.”

The bald man, who had been standing nearby, went outside. I didn’t know why he was being sent away, but I suspected it wouldn’t be good for me.

“This kind of thing has to be done gently. Gen-tly.”

The man drew out the middle of the word, seeming to enjoy himself. He stared intently at me, as if dissecting me, until the sound of his shoes clicking faded into the distance.

“That guy is a bit careless. I was going to see what he’d do, but I sent him out because it seemed he’d just blow things up again today. It’s a waste of our effort to get worked up over nothing, isn’t it?”

Then he grinned at me.

“The mother ran off, and only the son is left.”

“……”

“Quite heartless, wouldn’t you say?”

The man pulled out a cigarette from his pocket and lit it. Wisps of hazy smoke curled between us.

“Your mother isn’t answering, and she’s ignoring her own son, too. We came all this way, only to be turned away at the door. Wouldn’t *I* be angry?”

“……”

His words momentarily stunned me. My mother wasn’t answering? But I had talked to her just this afternoon. Yet, for this man to come all the way here, it meant my mother hadn’t answered for more than a day or two.

A connection formed naturally in my mind.

‘…He doesn’t know Mom’s phone number changed.’

Was it instinct, or intuition? I wasn’t sure what word to use, but it felt primal.

My mother had given me her new number just before she left this place.

But if what he said was true… it meant my mother had been avoiding calls for a long time.

“……?”

But why would she?

There was no need to humor him, but also no need to stir up trouble. After all, they had threatened Lee Sunwoo, so my mother would be the most desperate of all. Wasn’t that why she moved to this remote village, and left me to go elsewhere for a slightly higher salary?

‘I don’t… have to believe everything. There’s no way Mom would go that far….’

Even in my confusion, that thought lingered. There was no need to take the man’s words at face value. More importantly, I needed to figure out how to escape this situation.

My hands grew colder and stiffer. Despite the summer heat, the room was stifling, sweat trickled down my back, yet my hands and feet felt strangely cold, as if no blood flowed through them. Suddenly, I wondered why this was happening to me. It wasn’t my fault at all. I just wanted to live a peaceful life. I studied hard. I didn’t do anything wrong, but because of Lee Sunwoo and Mom….

Then the man tossed my phone onto my thigh.

“Make the call.”

The man stared intently, as if he could read every flicker of emotion on my face.

“Call her while I’m being nice.”

My pale hands reached for the phone. It took a long time just to grip it, as I had no strength in my hands. The man watched my helpless struggle but didn’t rush me. Perhaps less time had actually passed than I perceived.

With trembling fingertips, I tapped the screen. I was in the middle of entering ‘010’….

“That’s not it.”

The man seized my wrist.

“She doesn’t use that number anymore. Who are you trying to fool?”

The man was not easily deceived. As he grinned, the scar above his lip stretched even wider.

“Do you think I’m a pushover?”

“No, n-no. No, I don’t….”

Goosebumps erupted on my skin, and sweat trickled down my spine. It was the moment I realized that what I had felt as fear until now was not true terror. My mind went blank, and the man’s image seemed to draw near and pull away, as if my head was swaying back and forth. I knew this was no time to ask for explanations. The man would not leave until he got what he wanted.

Then it happened.

“Yunwoo, I’m here.”

A nonchalant voice, completely out of place, sounded.

With tears dried on my cheeks, I lifted my head. The man squatting in front of me did the same. However, the man’s expression wasn’t one of anticipation, but rather utter disbelief. His face clearly showed his perplexity, wondering who this guy even was.

And my savior appeared, acting as if he’d just dropped by a friend’s house and encountered someone he didn’t recognize.

“Is this the person you were talking about?”

Yoon Heesung politely removed his shoes, neatly placed them, and stepped inside.

His voice was as incongruous as a laptop placed in a medieval painting. It wasn’t that I hadn’t expected him to come. Rather…

…Yoon Heesung simply didn’t fit into this scene. He felt out of place here.

‘Did I… call him for nothing?’

The small house, covered in mold. The bathroom, with more than half its tiles broken, still reeked of fish even with the door open. In front of it, I sat kneeling. My pathetic state, tearfully helpless against the debt collectors who had chased me all the way to this countryside demanding money, felt ridiculous. For Yoon Heesung, who had surely only ever seen and heard good things, this must have been utterly foreign.

Despite the urgency of the situation, I felt a strange sense of shame at that moment. I hadn’t wanted him to see me like this. But with my mother not answering, Yoon Heesung was the only one who came to mind.

Yet, there was an even bigger problem. Yoon Heesung was severely lacking in tact.

“Why are you like this?”

“Huh?”

Ignoring the suffocating standoff, he slipped his hands under my armpits, helped me up, and asked,

“Don’t your knees hurt?”

“……”

He couldn’t possibly be asking that out of genuine curiosity….

I wasn’t the only one dumbfounded; the man beside me was equally stunned. However, his surprise now seemed to have given way to greater annoyance.