TCDBL 09

Chapter : 09

Yoonseol’s jaw dropped slightly as she merely blinked at him.

What on earth is he up to, going so far as to buy a building just for this…?

It was a scale that an ordinary person couldn’t even imitate.

“I’ll make sure I get my money’s worth. You just pretend you don’t know anything and come along.”

With a cheerful smile, he turned around again and got into the driver’s seat.

Even though he could be so obsessively persistent, when it was time to turn away, he was utterly ruthless.

“……What?”

Even after his car drove away, Yoonseol remained dazed for quite some time.

Then she noticed the coat still wrapped warmly around her body.

“Oh. I forgot about this. I’ll have to give it back next time.”

Next time? When?

Are we going to see each other again tomorrow? Or next weekend, when he comes asking for rent?

Without realizing it, she was already thinking about the next time she would see him.

Sigh.

Yoonseol’s bewildered, hollow breath rose white into the air.

“I should go inside.”

Fatigue suddenly washed over her. So much had happened today.

Gently pressing down on her restless heart, Yoonseol turned and walked toward her home.

The large coat made a soft, pleasant rustling sound with every step she took.

“……”

After getting into the driver’s seat, Dogeon watched Yoonseol disappear beneath the oversized coat and picked up his phone.

“Send me all the CCTV footage from in front of the main entrance from today.”

It had been bothering him that the small, delicate woman had been drooping like a soaked stuffed toy.

If she wasn’t going to tell him the reason herself, he could simply find out on his own.

After giving the instruction to his secretary, he was about to end the call when he added another order.

“And investigate Attorney Seo Yoonseol. Everything from her past to the present. Don’t leave anything out.”

Until now, there had been no reason for him to go out of his way to find out what kind of person Seo Yoonseol was.

But now he needed to know.

Who you are.

What he had said to Yoonseol a little while ago had been sincere.

Now that he had decided to have this woman, nothing about her background—or anything else—mattered.

If there was something Yoonseol lacked or needed, he could take care of it for her.

If it could be solved with money, that would be the easiest option. Even if she had committed a crime, he could stay by her side and roll around with her at rock bottom until she had paid the full price for her crime.

But…

“I…… came here to run away. ……From reality.”

Even when she confessed her pain beside the crystal-blue lake in Italy, she had smiled brightly.

He needed to know why that woman was gradually losing her vitality after only three months.

Come on, Seol.

If you were going to kick me away and run off, you should have been living happily with a smile.

Why are you so down? Why are you depressed and lonely? You’re getting on this crazy man’s nerves.

After ending the call, Dogeon roughly turned the steering wheel and drove out of the alley.

For the first time in a while, he was filled with a searing rush of excitement and dopamine.

He didn’t mind it one bit.

After that, Yoonseol’s daily life continued quite normally.

Assistant Manager Kwak still hadn’t shown even the tip of his hair.

The client wanted to complete the full designated period of the protest. However, they decided not to hold picket signs.

So Yoonseol spent most of each day sitting quietly in front of Hyunsin Construction with her client.

She had even become somewhat friendly with Hyunsin Construction’s security team.

They were men of few words. Usually, they would quietly approach her, offer her a hand warmer or some snacks, and then disappear again.

Once the protest ended for the day, she ran into Dogeon every day.

The strange routine of him seemingly walking her home—yet somehow not quite doing so—continued as well.

Thanks to him, her commute home was never boring.

She no longer had to worry about the dark residential alleyways on her way home, either.

As that routine continued day after day, she sometimes even found herself wondering if this had always been her normal daily life.

And before she knew it, another weekend had arrived.

Tomorrow was the day Dogeon had asked to see her under the excuse of collecting rent.

<Saturday, 11:00 a.m. In front of the convenience store>

They had agreed to meet at the convenience store near her home.

“He already knows where I live anyway.”

Judging by the level of his obsession, he had probably already secretly watched which house she went into. Yet he had specifically asked to meet in front of the convenience store.

She felt as though she had gotten a glimpse of his little scheme.

“Tch.”

After going to bed, Yoonseol stared blankly at the dark ceiling for a long time.

She couldn’t fall asleep.

Was it because of his coat?

“Should I put it inside?”

Yoonseol abruptly got up and put his coat, which was sitting right in front of her, inside the closet.

She had originally hung it somewhere visible so she could return it to him when they met tomorrow, but his scent kept tickling the tip of her nose.

Absurdly enough, she even felt as if he were watching her.

She kept glancing suspiciously at the coat as though it were a person.

For various reasons, it was getting on her mind.

Click.

Yoonseol closed the closet door and returned to bed, continuing to toss and turn.

“……”

Is it really okay for me to live this peacefully?

Whenever she had trouble sleeping, the thoughts that had been lurking in her mind inevitably began branching out.

It had been a habit she developed after her father suddenly passed away.

“No. Not today. I don’t want to.”

Normally, Yoonseol would let her sadness surface, allow herself to become completely drenched in it, and then let it pass.

But tonight, she didn’t want to sink into depression.

Tomorrow was an important appointment.

“I’ll just take one.”

Yoonseol got out of bed again, rummaged through the kitchen drawer, and took out her medicine container.

They were prescription pills she had once swallowed while crying because she desperately wanted to sleep but simply couldn’t.

She swallowed a pill and lay back down on the bed.

This time, however, her phone rang.

“Who’s calling at this hour—”

Without giving it much thought, Yoonseol checked the screen.

Then she sprang upright like a released spring.

After fumbling several times with her trembling hands, she finally managed to press the call button.

“H-Hello? What happened? Did you find it?”

It was a call from the private investigation agency she had hired to trace the message claiming that her father had been murdered.

The phone that had sent the text was a burner phone whose registered owner could not be traced.

Yoonseol had already guessed as much.

However, the documents attached to the message were so suspicious that she had separately hired the agency to investigate them.

Whenever she had asked about their progress in the meantime, they had always said they hadn’t found anything.

They had never contacted her first like this before.

—“Ma’am! I really put my heart and soul into this. I managed to trace the address of the building where that document was printed.”

The document attached to the suspicious message was filled with numbers and Hangul mixed together like a code, making its contents impossible to understand.

But Yoonseol had noticed the lower-right corner of the document.

When multiple people use the same printer, the IP address, date, and time are sometimes printed in tiny characters.

It was a trace left behind so that one could determine which computer had printed a document and when.

Yoonseol had used up nearly all the money she had left to hire the agency to find where the IP address was being used.

—“But it’s such a huge building that…… we can’t determine which floor it was on or whose computer it was.”

“Yes, that’s fine. It’s okay. Where is it?”

As Yoonseol listened to the man give her the address, a shiver ran through her entire body.

—“It’s the holding company of the Hyunsin Group.”

“……”

—“Hello? Ma’am? Are you still there?”

Beeep—

A faint ringing filled Yoonseol’s ears.

She could barely hear what the man was saying.

The clue was somewhere close to me.

The Hyunsin Group’s holding company? Could it be someone from the legal department?

—“Anyway, we managed to trace it that far. We only found it because it was us. Other agencies wouldn’t have been able to do it.”

“Yes. Thank you.”

Extreme excitement brought about extreme calm.

The man seemed flustered by how suddenly cold and composed Yoonseol had become.

—“Ahem. I’ll contact you if we find anything else.”

The moment the call ended, Yoonseol took out the box she had kept deep inside a drawer.

It was the box where she had collected her father’s belongings.

“Why didn’t I think of looking through this?”

She moved aside miscellaneous items such as his notebook, fountain pen, and cellphone, then pulled out the file folder buried at the very bottom.

“These are the only documents I brought home from his company.”

Yoonseol hurriedly flipped through the ordinary reports.

The contents weren’t important.

The numbers printed at the top were.

“Please be there. Please.”

She went through dozens of clean sheets of paper without an IP address printed on them, and her anxiety grew.

“There!”

There was exactly one sheet of paper with her father’s computer IP address printed on it.

With trembling fingers, she traced each digit one by one.

Of the sixteen-digit IP address, only the final digit was different from the address on the document she had received in the message.

A place where two or more computers with similar IP addresses existed.

“The document was printed from inside the legal department.”

It was the first meaningful clue she had found in three months.

All the strength drained from Yoonseol’s body, and she slowly slid down the wall until she was sitting on the floor.

Yet her mind was unnaturally clear.

“Could the person who sent that message have been someone from the legal department?”

No.

She shouldn’t jump to conclusions.

It was possible that only the document itself had been printed from the legal department.

“It would be good if I could find out which computer actually printed it.”

But how?

How could she confirm that?

Was there no way?

If only she knew someone who could help her, perhaps she could somehow ask them—

“……Lee Jungwoo.”

The only person she knew in the legal department came to mind.

A sigh escaped her naturally.

Do I really have to ask that bastard for a favor?

And if she did, what excuse could she possibly use?

“I’m going crazy.”

Of all people, why him……!

“Don’t even show your face in front of me. Before I contact the woman you’re supposedly going to marry and tell her to keep a closer eye on her boyfriend.”

The image of herself threatening Lee Jungwoo so fiercely just a few days ago flashed through her mind.

Still hugging her knees, Yoonseol’s head dropped with a small thud.