MHF 5

Chapter 5

Could I possibly be dreaming?

But if this were a dream, the sensation of the doorknob beneath her hand was far too real.

“H-How are you here…?”

“Why? Is there somewhere I’m not allowed to go?”

The man asked back playfully, but there was nothing funny about it from Sua’s perspective.

She was frightened by the person standing before her.

At the same time, however, a vague hope began to bloom inside her.

Could Hajin really have come back alive?

“It started raining again.”

Unlike Sua, the man before her spoke with complete composure.

His calm tone and the subtle atmosphere he gave off were exactly like the Hajin she knew.

She was certain of it.

There was only one thing that bothered her.

His loosely undone tie.

The Hajin she knew had always been obsessive about keeping his tie perfectly straight.

“If you’re not going to throw me out, may I come inside?”

His dark eyes slowly swept over Sua from head to toe.

From her swollen eyes to her tightly pressed red lips.

Even after finishing his lingering inspection, Sua gave him no answer.

“Hmm.”

He clicked his tongue.

“If you’re not in the mood to deal with me, I’ll come back another time.”

Apparently, if she had no intention of letting him in, he was prepared to leave without hesitation.

He took a step back.

“W-Wait!”

Unexpectedly, it was Sua who became desperate.

She reached out and caught his fingertips.

In that brief instant, she checked his fingers.

There was no wedding ring on his fourth finger—the ring he had always worn.

“……Come in.”

Whatever the case might be, she first needed to figure out who he was.

Seeing Sua muster up her courage, the man gave her a crooked grin.

Sua looked away first and stepped inside.

A moment later, he followed her in.

Sua still couldn’t tell whether this was a dream or reality, and all she could do was stand there in a daze.

“This is my first time coming to this house.”

At the quiet voice that followed, Sua unconsciously furrowed her brow.

What he had just said was every bit as absurd as his appearance.

“Your first time?”

This was Hajin’s house.

He had bought it himself and had lived here continuously ever since before they got married.

“Then why have you been looking at me like I’m a ghost?”

He asked as though he genuinely had no idea.

“If you’re not a ghost, then that means I’ve gone crazy.”

Sua answered in a trembling voice.

A short laugh escaped the man.

Already on edge, Sua found his reaction unsettling.

“You haven’t forgotten me, have you?”

At that moment, another member of her family whom she had momentarily forgotten suddenly came to mind.

Her brother-in-law, who looked remarkably like her husband.

Woojin, Hajin’s identical twin brother.

Sua was rendered speechless.

“Or did you mistake me for your dead husband come back to life?”

“Ah……”

If the visitor wasn’t Hajin but Woojin, then all of her questions were answered.

The person standing before her wasn’t a ghost.

And even if she wasn’t dreaming, this situation suddenly made perfect sense.

“I’m Do Woojin, sister-in-law.”

It was such an obvious and simple answer.

Why hadn’t she thought of it herself?

Sua tilted her head and stared intently at the man before her, just as she had stared at Hajin’s photograph at the funeral.

“That’s a little hurtful.”

The reason was simple.

No matter how much she looked at him, he appeared to be Hajin.

Even though identical twins looked exactly alike, Hajin and Woojin were still two completely different people.

Even though she and Hajin had been a loveless married couple, Sua could at least tell them apart.

More precisely, her body only reacted to Hajin.

Yet the man standing before her carried an atmosphere much closer to Hajin when he was alive than to Woojin.

Unlike Hajin’s eyes, which resembled dark storm clouds, his younger brother Woojin had eyes that reminded her of brilliant sunlight.

And yet, the man before her was uncannily similar to the cold, indifferent Hajin who had lived in this house with her for an entire year and spoken with her every day.

It was difficult to dismiss it as nothing more than Woojin’s demeanor changing because of his brother’s death.

If Hajin had really meant that much to him, shouldn’t he have shown up at the funeral?

Shouldn’t he have shed at least one genuine tear?

“What is this? Do you really wish your dead brother would come back to life?”

The man before her let out a small laugh, apparently realizing that Sua was suspicious of him.

“Were you in love with my brother?”

“……”

Eventually, his laughter faded.

Then, without warning, he grabbed Sua by the arm and pulled her toward him.

Sua had been standing there weakly, and in an instant, she found herself directly in front of him.

When she felt his breath against her, she was startled and tried to pull her arm free.

“What are you doing—”

“Feel it for yourself. Whether I’m a ghost or a living person.”

But he didn’t loosen his grip.

The warmth radiating from his body was unmistakably human—far too warm to belong to the dead.

Naturally, her hand didn’t pass through his body, either.

He was unquestionably alive.

Just like her.

“Do I still look like Do Hajin to you?”

Instead of an answer, the only sound that filled the room was the rustling of Sua’s mourning clothes.

Then a strange citrus scent reached her nose, lending weight to his claim.

Unlike him, Hajin had always worn a heavy, subdued woody fragrance.

It had suited his confident attitude and charisma perfectly, and its sophisticated atmosphere had left a particularly strong impression on her.

Sua looked up at him with trembling eyes.

He was closer than she had realized.

The moment her eyes met his dark gaze, a strange ringing suddenly filled her ears.

Yes.

If he really is alive, then he must be Do Woojin.

“Then why didn’t you come to the funeral?”

Sua asked Woojin without letting down her guard completely.

There were still things she needed to confirm.

“I had my reasons.”

“Were they more important than your brother’s death?”

She hadn’t intended to sound harsh, but the words came out sharper than she expected.

Perhaps Woojin hadn’t expected Sua, who had always been so passive that she seemed to be there and not there at the same time, to answer him that way.

His eyebrow twitched.

“Yes. Unfortunately, they were.”

“Even so, you should have at least come on the day of the funeral procession……”

“From now on, I’m going to find out whether my brother’s death really was an accident or whether someone deliberately caused it.”

The moment he said those words, the entire room seemed to freeze.

Goosebumps rose across Sua’s body.

Even the rustling of her mourning clothes suddenly sounded eerie.

“W-What do you mean by that…? It was just an accident.”

The statement was nearly as shocking as the news of Hajin’s death itself, and Sua even stumbled over her words.

Woojin rubbed his prominent brow bone before abruptly stepping closer to her.

His face came so close that it seemed as though they might touch.

Sua drew in a sharp breath.

“Sister-in-law, do you really think it was just an accident?”

Woojin whispered as though he were revealing an enormous secret.

At the same time, his sharp gaze carefully observed Sua’s expression.

As though he were trying to discover something.

“An accident without even the slightest hint of intent. I don’t think that’s what happened.”

Does he suspect that I had something to do with my husband’s death?

Even if that were the case, it wouldn’t have been particularly shocking.

Everyone in the family knew that Sua had decided to marry because she had been forced into it by her family’s debts.

They also knew that she and Hajin had never been particularly close.

She could easily have been identified as a prime suspect.

“What evidence do you have?”

Sua swallowed down her trembling and calmly asked in return.

Woojin stepped away from her as though nothing had happened.

“Evidence……”

Sua had to tense every muscle in her body, to the point of pain, just to keep herself from collapsing helplessly onto the floor.

“First, my brother’s helicopter underwent a condition check the day before takeoff. The engine was perfectly fine then. It’s not exactly normal for an engine that was functioning properly to suddenly fail overnight.”

Woojin toyed with the small decorations displayed on a shelf.

They were souvenirs Hajin had bought whenever he traveled abroad.

Perhaps it was merely her imagination, but the way Woojin’s fingers moved over them seemed strangely natural.

“Second, the pilot had already escaped from the helicopter long before the crash. As though he knew what was going to happen to it. But my brother didn’t realize what was happening until he was already facing death. And there wasn’t a single safety device inside the helicopter specifically intended for him.”

Sua’s previously listless heart began pounding.

“If all of that is coincidence, then this world is insane.”

Sua couldn’t disagree with that.

The coincidences that had happened to Hajin had piled up one after another, all leading toward his death.

As if he had been placed on a factory conveyor belt designed for one purpose alone.

“So, for now, I need your help, sister-in-law. You’re free to refuse, of course……”

“How am I supposed to believe what you’re saying?”

Sua interrupted him before he could finish.

The truth was, just as Woojin seemed to suspect her, Sua was suspicious of his intentions as well.

But if there really were suspicious circumstances surrounding Hajin’s death, she had no choice but to help him.

Some instinct told her that this was a fate she had to accept.

Her sharpened instincts, honed through years of rigorous training, had never betrayed her before.

That was why Sua desperately tried to shake off the image of Hajin that kept overlapping with Woojin.

“If he died unjustly, then I want to know the truth. Even if this marriage started as a political arrangement, I was still Hajin’s wife. But I don’t think I can simply take your word for it without evidence.”

“Trust.”

Woojin slowly repeated her word.

“Before I show you that evidence, there’s something I need you to do for me right now.”

“What is it?”

Sua asked resolutely, unaware of what she was about to hear.

Her posture resembled that of a small herbivore puffing out its fur in a desperate attempt to protect itself from a vicious predator.

A faint glimmer of interest appeared in Woojin’s eyes.

“For the time being, I’ll have to stay here with you, sister-in-law.”

“……What?”

As expected, the color drained from Sua’s face.

She looked as though she desperately wished there had been something wrong with her hearing and that she had simply misheard him.

“I said I want to stay here.”