Chapter 8
“Yeah, sis.”
“……”
If you have money, anyone can be your older brother or older sister, right?
Unless the owner of this club had completely lost his mind, that was probably the context.
“I asked if you talked to him.”
As she sipped the drink poured by the young-looking man, Arang looked at Ji-i over the rocks glass. Meanwhile, the man sitting to Arang’s right busily brought her snacks, repeatedly glancing between Ji-i and Arang.
Arang merely tilted her head slightly, as though deliberately showing off to Ji-i, then opened her mouth. She proceeded to pop the snacks the man brought into her mouth one after another, all while staring fixedly at Ji-i.
Ji-i had no idea whether Arang was trying to make her jealous or simply show off, but whatever the purpose, Ji-i’s consistent reaction was disgust.
Ugh!
“……”
In response to Arang’s question, Ji-i merely nodded. It wasn’t only because she wanted to avoid speaking with Arang as much as possible. Her voice was also more than 98 percent identical to Arang’s, and for some reason, she didn’t want to attract any more attention from the people around them.
Incidentally, aside from the birthmark behind the left ear, the two looked practically identical, on the level of Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V. More precisely, their voices were also different by just a tiny amount—less than two percent—if one listened closely enough with their ears perked up.
Both women had fairly pleasant voices. However, if one listened carefully, Ji-i’s voice was slightly lower, while Arang’s was half a tone higher.
Since the difference was only half a tone, an ordinary person without an exceptional sense of pitch would have had a hard time distinguishing them, especially amid the noise of their current surroundings.
So Arang’s fiancé probably hadn’t noticed any difference either.
Even a single person’s speaking voice could have subtle differences between ordinary conversation and a telephone call, after all.
“So what did he say?”
While Ji-i was lost in thought, Arang gestured toward the phone with her chin, and Ji-i’s gaze shifted to it. Only then did she remember that a message had just arrived.
[Tomorrow at 7:00 a.m., the coffee shop at Noble Hotel.]
Seven in the morning?
“……”
“Reply.”
Did hotel coffee shops normally operate around the clock?
“……”
“What are you doing? Hurry up and reply.”
When Ji-i tilted her head and looked at her, Arang spoke in a commanding tone.
[Yes, the exact time and exact location…]
Ji-i began composing a reply, but deleted most of it. She had intended to ask whether 7:00 a.m. was really correct, or whether he had meant 7:00 p.m. and simply sent the message incorrectly.
However, her instinctive intuition stopped her.
Somehow, even through the phone, the other person’s aura felt like that of someone who would never make such a mistake.
Indeed, this was the first time she had ever felt intimidated by someone whose face she had never even seen.
[Yes.]
It really wasn’t a mistake, was it?
Even as she tilted her head in puzzlement, Ji-i sent the brief reply.
“……”
Then she handed the phone back to its owner, who had been sitting beside her.
“That phone is yours now.”
“……”
Well, fair enough.
After briefly studying Arang’s expression, Ji-i shrugged and slipped the phone into the pocket of her flight jacket.
“You know what you have to do from now on, right?”
“Where is he?”
Arang asked, and instead of answering, Ji-i asked another question.
“You said you’d tell me after the contract was completed, didn’t you?”
“Are you sure you’re protecting him?”
“You don’t believe me?”
“I don’t.”
I’d sooner trust the most shameless scoundrel in the world than trust you.
“……”
For a while, the two women glared at each other.
Eight years ago, Ji-i would have been intimidated by the malice seething in Arang’s eyes and would have backed down immediately.
“……”
But I’m not the Song Ji-i of eight years ago anymore!
The foolish girl who had considered Arang her only family and believed that it was only natural for her to give in to Arang had died eight years ago.
You killed her. With your own hands!
Objectively speaking, Ji-i herself didn’t know exactly how much she had changed. But at least on the outside, she surely didn’t look nearly as soft and yielding as she had eight years ago.
The silence, made even more suffocating by the noise coming from beyond the door, seemed as though it would never end.
Then, after an indeterminate amount of time—
“Haa… Here. Check for yourself.”
Arang’s eyes had gradually taken on a strange mixture of puzzlement and suspicion. Eventually, she was the first to back down.
She tapped her phone several times before holding it up.
“……”
A message notification sounded from the phone inside Ji-i’s flight jacket. She pulled it out and discovered that an image file had been sent to her.
Judging from the automatically assigned filename, the image had been created five days ago.
What is this? Grandpa?
Ji-i hurriedly checked the message.
Ah… Grandpa.
The moment she saw the photograph of her adoptive grandfather wrapped in life-support equipment, she immediately felt her throat grow hot.
The sensation became so intense that she felt as though the heat might spill out of her throat at any moment.
I have to keep Grandpa alive somehow.
She barely swallowed back the emotion and was just about to rise from her seat when—
“Take this.”
Arang casually tossed a document file toward her.
“……”
Ji-i instinctively clenched her fist and looked at Arang.
“We weren’t particularly close, but our families did know each other, after all. You need to know at least the basics about Heo Dong-in, or people will get suspicious.”
If nothing else, Arang was remarkably good at using her quick wits. If she had put that brainpower into studying, wouldn’t she have become a judge, prosecutor, or doctor by now?
“……”
Sneering inwardly, Ji-i finally opened the file.
It contained Heo Dong-in’s personal history.
But this time, Arang didn’t seem to have done such a good job.
The report contained far too much detail—details that someone who wasn’t close to him could never possibly know. Overall, it was an excessively padded report.
Ji-i figured Arang had probably hired someone to compile his résumé and glanced at her.
Yet the one report that should have contained the most detailed information was nowhere to be found.
“What about the report on your family?”
Wondering if she had somehow missed the prepared report, Ji-i quickly flipped through Heo Dong-in’s file once more as she asked.
“My family?”
I let myself get fooled by someone this careless. Just how brainless am I?
Even if she had no reason to meet Arang’s family immediately, Ji-i would inevitably have to come into contact with them.
But Arang had overlooked that.
There was exactly one thing Ji-i knew about Arang’s family.
More than a decade ago, Ji-i had saved Im Sang-ah, and as a result, she had been supposed to become Sang-ah’s parents’ adopted daughter.
But Arang had stolen her identity and become their adopted daughter in Ji-i’s place.
After having her identity stolen more than a decade ago, Ji-i had never properly heard anything about Arang’s family.
Several years later, she did spend her second and third years of high school living under Arang’s identity. However, after school, they each returned to their respective homes, switching identities only while at school.
