Not a mistake. A talent.
I couldn't erase Dad's words from my mind.
I stood in front of Uncle Taeseok's desk, unable to move for a long time. I could still feel the case file's paper against my fingertips. Thin, cold paper. One name written inside it was tightening around my throat.
Han Jiuk.
The three syllables sent by an unknown number.
And the name I had just confirmed in the case file on Uncle Taeseok's desk.
It was real.
That man was connected to the missing girl's case. He wasn't just some passerby. My feeling at the scene, based only on his eyes, hadn't been a mere illusion. The pink hairpin in his pocket was the same kind the missing girl had been wearing when she disappeared.
Then what had I done?
Had I killed another serial killer?
Or had someone put a person who needed to die in front of me?
Whether it had been a mistake or intentional, this made four.
The first was Dad.
The second was the school bully.
The third was Oh Sejun.
The fourth was Han Jiuk.
Counting them made it hard to breathe.
The fact that I was counting people's deaths as numbers made me feel even more horrible. One, two, three, four. As if marking answers in a workbook, as if numbering case files, I was counting the deaths my hands had touched.
If, as Dad said, this really was a talent.
A talent for recognizing evil people.
Where would that talent lead me?
To becoming a police officer?
Or to becoming like Dad?
"At this point, it's not a mistake. It's a talent."
Dad's voice came back to me.
I clenched my teeth.
Dad was sitting in Uncle Taeseok's chair across the desk. The sight of a dead man sitting in a living person's place looked strangely natural. He had his legs crossed and was gazing at the case file I had looked through with interest.
"Look. The people you killed always had a reason, didn't they?"
Dad smiled.
"So what does that make you?"
I didn't answer.
"A murderer?"
He tilted his head.
"Or a righteous person?"
That was when it happened.
"Kang Minjun."
A low voice came from behind me.
My heart nearly stopped.
When I slowly turned my head, Uncle Taeseok was standing there.
In front of other people, he called me Kang Minjun.
Kang Minjun.
My name outside the world I knew.
The name written on the police academy documents and engraved on my intern's name tag. The name my professors called, my classmates called, and the people at the station called without the slightest suspicion.
A name that wasn't Kim Doyoon.
The name I had put on to survive.
Uncle Taeseok had said it from the beginning.
"Outside, you're Minjun."
It sounded like an order, but it was actually protection.
The name Kim Doyoon was too dangerous. If someone searched it, old articles would come up. A child whose face had been pixelated, the son of a serial killer, the boy who lost his mother and killed his father. People could remember me as a case from nothing more than a name.
So outside, I became Kang Minjun.
A name similar to Kang Minjae, Uncle Taeseok's son.
If anyone asked, it was a name that let me blend in naturally, like a child from a distant relative's family or someone Uncle Taeseok had been taking care of for a long time. That was why I had been given the surname Kang. So I wouldn't look like a complete stranger, but would still be ambiguous enough that no one could confidently call me real family.
That ambiguity hid me.
But things were different inside Uncle Taeseok's house.
When the door closed, food was placed on the table, and Aunt Eunju pushed a bowl of soup toward me, they called me Doyoon.
Kim Doyoon.
The name I thought I had given up.
At first, I hated that name. It held blood, my dead mother, and the final smile on Dad's face. But one day, Aunt Eunju quietly said,
"They can call you Minjun outside, but at home, I'll call you Doyoon. Your name isn't a crime too, you know."
I couldn't say anything in response.
Uncle Taeseok had said that day,
"I'm not telling you to forget what you did. But if you bury your name completely, you'll be buried with it."
So only inside that house, only when we were together as a family, I was Doyoon.
When the world called me a child who had to be hidden, the people in that house called me a child who was still alive.
But this wasn't home.
It was the police station.
There were people around, case files, and things I could never let anyone discover.
So Uncle Taeseok called me precisely what he was supposed to.
Kang Minjun.
The name that hid me.
"I told you to sit quietly."
His voice wasn't loud.
Even so, my body went rigid like a child being scolded.
"I didn't tell you to look through case files."
I tried to put down the file in my hands, but Uncle Taeseok snatched it away first.
"I'm sorry."
The answer came immediately.
It came so quickly that it sounded awkward.
"I just… I wanted to use it as a reference for my intern report…"
"A reference?"
His eyes turned cold.
"Does this look like something you can use as a reference?"
I shut my mouth.
I had no excuse.
This had clearly crossed a line. Case files an intern wasn't allowed to look at without permission. And not just any files—they contained the connection between the newly discovered body and the missing girl's case. No matter how much protection I received from Uncle Taeseok, no matter that I was a police academy student, I had no right to look through them.
And I hadn't only looked through the files.
I had been trying to find out how much of my crime had been exposed.
That was the biggest problem.
"Oh, Captain."
A fellow detective at the next desk cut in with a laugh.
"What's the harm? He's a police academy student, and he might be a future member of the team."
He was holding a cup of coffee and shrugged as if it were no big deal.
"Besides, kids like that might notice something. Something we missed. You get your best instincts when you don't know much, right?"
I suddenly found it hard to breathe.
Instinct.
That word overlapped with what Dad had said moments ago.
Talent.
Instinct.
The eyes that recognized serial killers.
Uncle Taeseok shot his colleague a sharp look.
"Is an investigation a game to you?"
His colleague gave an awkward smile.
"No, that's not what I meant."
"He's still a college student and an intern. He's not here to sightsee at a crime scene, and he's not here to play detective."
Uncle Taeseok's voice grew lower.
The lower it became, the more frightening it was.
"If you're going to keep saying useless things, why don't you check whether the scene report and autopsy report have arrived?"
His colleague stopped smiling.
"Yes. I'll check."
When he moved away, Uncle Taeseok's gaze returned to me.
I lowered my head.
His gaze felt heavy.
"I know you're curious, and I know you want to study."
He spoke quietly.
"But you can't cross the line."
I couldn't answer.
The line.
That word struck me painfully.
I had already crossed the line.
Looking at the case files wasn't the problem.
I had crossed the line of death. Not once, but four times. And I was still standing in front of a detective's desk as if nothing had happened.
"I'm sorry."
I bowed my head.
"I'm really sorry."
I lowered my voice as much as possible. Like someone who truly regretted what he'd done, like someone who had looked at the files by accident. Not too flustered, but not too shameless either. I knew what expression I was supposed to wear.
That fact frightened me all over again.
I gave an awkward smile.
"There were a lot of things I was seeing for the first time at the scene today. I didn't know how to organize them when I wrote my report… I just saw the file sitting there and looked."
Lies had to be mixed in carefully.
If everything was a lie, people would notice.
So I added a little truth.
There had been a lot of things I'd seen for the first time at the scene today.
It wasn't entirely a lie that I was having trouble writing the report, either.
What I had really been curious about wasn't the report. It was whether Han Jiuk was truly the killer, what kind of person the man I'd killed had been, and how much Uncle Taeseok knew.
"Then ask me."
Uncle Taeseok spoke.
"Don't look in secret."
"Yes."
I nodded.
"Then… in a case like this, would the unidentified-body case and the missing-person case be merged right away?"
Uncle Taeseok stared at my face for a long time.
The suspicion hadn't completely left his expression.
But he began answering my question.
"We don't declare them connected from the start. We just consider the possibility. Even if an item belonging to the missing person is found on the body, we have to determine how it got there."
"Whether the killer had it himself, or someone put it there?"
"Exactly."
His answer was short.
My fingertips grew cold.
The possibility that someone had put it there.
That was possible too.
What if Han Jiuk really wasn't the killer?
What if someone had planted the girl's hairpin on him and lured me there?
I had killed him.
But what if he hadn't been the killer?
No.
I had seen it in the file. He had been an unofficial person of interest. He also had a history of past reports. But even that wasn't conclusive. Suspicion and evidence were different, weren't they? Uncle Taeseok had said that himself.
"Then the autopsy results will be important."
I spoke as calmly as I could.
"Once they determine the time and cause of death…"
"Right."
Uncle Taeseok closed the file.
"We can't make a determination based only on what we see at the scene. The scene's in bad shape too, because of all the rain."
Rain.
Rain again.
Every time I heard that word, my stomach twisted.
Rain always seemed to help me.
No. It seemed to test me.
Whenever I did something, it rained. Then the evidence disappeared. Footprints blurred, bloodstains washed away, and the world grew wet again as if nothing had happened.
"Why?"
Uncle Taeseok asked.
I looked up in surprise.
"What?"
"What are you thinking about?"
"Nothing. I just… I was thinking that it must be hard to examine a scene when it rains."
Uncle Taeseok looked at me for a moment before speaking in a low voice.
"A scene never stays the way people want it to."
The words sounded strange.
A scene never stays the way people want it to.
Scenes disappear, blur, and are erased. But some scenes remain strangely inside a person. Like the living-room floor where I killed Dad. Like the student collapsed beneath the stairs. Like Oh Sejun behind the abandoned building in the rain. Like Han Jiuk at the warehouse complex on the outskirts.
Even when the scenes disappeared, they weren't erased inside me.
"Anything else you're curious about?"
Uncle Taeseok asked.
I shook my head.
"No. That's enough."
"Then let's go."
He picked up his coat.
Then he gathered the case files from the desk, as if to keep me from touching them again. He picked up his car keys and tucked the file under his arm.
"Let's go home together."
I hesitated for a moment.
"I can go by myself."
"We're headed in roughly the same direction."
It was a lie.
Uncle Taeseok's house and my place weren't exactly in the same direction. But he said it that way, and I couldn't argue.
No, arguing would have made it stranger.
"Okay."
I quietly followed him out.
Uncle Taeseok didn't say much as we passed through the station's hallway toward the parking lot. His steps were steady as usual. I walked one step behind him. My gaze kept drifting toward the file he was carrying.
Han Jiuk.
Yoon Seoa.
The pink hairpin.
The autopsy report.
There was a truth inside that I still didn't know.
I didn't know whether that truth would save me or destroy me.
Before we reached the parking lot, Uncle Taeseok suddenly spoke.
"Take some side dishes home."
For a moment, I didn't understand him.
"What?"
"Eunju made some because she said you'd gotten thin the last time you came over. She made the things you like."
My throat closed.
He had scolded me moments ago. He had told me not to cross the line and not to look at case files. But the next moment, he was worrying about whether I had food to eat.
That was Uncle Taeseok.
And that was why it hurt more.
"It'd be even better if you came in and ate with us."
I couldn't answer right away.
If I went to eat, Aunt Eunju would greet me with a smile. The moment I stepped inside, she would call me Doyoon instead of Minjun.
I knew how dangerous that house was from that one name alone.
That house was where I was hidden, but it was also where I was most likely to be exposed. Outside, I only had to hide behind the name Kang Minjun. But inside that house, everyone knew I had once been Kim Doyoon. They knew what nights I had lived through, what name I had given up, and what name I had ultimately been unable to give up.
That was why it was warm.
That was why it was frightening.
Harin might play around, and if Minjae was there, he might tease me again about looking thin. There would be warm side dishes on the table, and everyone would treat me like family, unaware of everything.
I wasn't sure I could endure that warmth.
If I stayed too long, I felt like they'd realize.
That I wasn't human.
That I wasn't someone who deserved to sit at their table.
"I'll just take the side dishes."
I said it.
"I'm a little tired today."
Uncle Taeseok looked at me.
"All right."
He didn't press me further.
Before getting into the car, he spoke again.
"Your internship ends soon, doesn't it?"
"Yes."
"I heard you'll graduate at the top of your class if you finish this evaluation well."
I looked at him in surprise.
"How did you…"
"I asked your professor."
He said it casually.
"They said graduating at the top of your class means you can apply to the department you want."
I looked out the window.
The department I wanted.
The detectives' division, the place I'd dreamed of joining because I wanted to become someone who arrived eventually, even if he was late, like Uncle Taeseok.
But now the thought felt heavy.
Did I really want to become a detective?
Or did I want to become one so I could stand as close as possible to criminals?
Or.
So I could hide what I'd done better?
A chill ran through me at the thought.
"Don't rush into a department that's too hard. Think it over carefully."
Uncle Taeseok said it.
"Don't make a decision in a hurry."
"Yes."
"I'm sure you'll do fine on your own, but…"
He always said that.
I'm sure you'll do fine on your own, but…
Those words had been an expression of trust.
And now that trust felt like a knife stabbing me.
I wanted to ask him about the question he'd thrown at me at the scene.
You're sure this is the first time you've seen this scene, right?
I wanted to ask why he'd said that.
Whether he really knew something.
What I had done to give myself away.
But I couldn't ask. The moment I did, he'd realize I had been trapped by that question all this time. He'd realize that I'd been shaken, that I was connected to the scene.
So I only answered,
"Yes. I'll think about it."
The car headed toward Uncle Taeseok's house.
Before we even arrived, Aunt Eunju had come out to the parking lot. She wore nothing but a cardigan against the cold night air, a bag of side dishes in her hands.
The moment she saw me, she raised a hand in greeting.
Then, for just a moment, her lips stopped moving.
I noticed that brief pause.
Inside the house, Aunt Eunju called me Doyoon. But the parking lot wasn't inside the house. It was a place where we didn't know who might hear. The apartment security guard might pass by. A neighbor might open a window. Someone might remember my name.
So she always corrected herself in that instant.
She would start to say, Doyoon—
"Oh, Minjun!"
She said it brightly.
I hurried out of the car.
"Auntie, it's cold out here."
"Cold? Seeing your face was more important."
The moment she looked at me, her eyebrows drew together.
"You've gotten thin again. You're not eating properly, are you?"
"I eat."
"Liar."
I didn't know whether to laugh, so I only lifted the corners of my mouth awkwardly.
Aunt Eunju put the bag of side dishes in my hands.
"Eat the rolled omelet right away, put the braised beef in the refrigerator, and I didn't make the kimchi too spicy. You can't handle spicy food, remember?"
I looked down at the bag.
It was so warm.
There was still heat inside, through the plastic.
Those small, ordinary signs of warmth brought me down.
"Thank you."
"Eat at home before you go. I made soup too."
"I'm sorry. I just…"
I searched for an excuse.
Should I say I had somewhere to be? That I had to study? That I was tired?
Uncle Taeseok cut me off for me.
"The scene today was a rough one. He needs to go home and rest."
Aunt Eunju's face filled with concern.
"Was it that bad?"
I shook my head.
"No, I'm fine."
"Stop saying you're fine. You don't look fine at all."
I couldn't answer.
Uncle Taeseok said,
"You should go inside and rest too. You have work tomorrow. I'll drop Minjun off and come in."
Minjun.
He called me that in the parking lot too.
The name that protected me outside.
That name was safe.
But strangely, the safer the name was, the less it felt like mine.
Aunt Eunju looked at me regretfully.
"Next time, you have to stay and eat."
"Okay."
After glancing around, she added in a very low voice,
"Doyoon."
The name fell softly.
It was too quiet for anyone else to hear, but I heard it.
"Make sure you eat."
My throat closed.
I lowered my head.
"Okay."
That one word was warmer than the side dishes.
And it hurt more.
"And take your medicine."
I froze.
Uncle Taeseok glanced at me.
Aunt Eunju continued speaking as if she knew nothing.
"Uncle told me to make sure you were taking your medicine, but I held back because I thought you might complain that I was nagging a grown-up."
I managed a smile.
"I've been taking it."
A lie.
There had been many days when I hadn't taken my medicine.
Sometimes the medicine made Dad's voice quieter. But lately, that small silence was more frightening. When Dad grew quiet, my own thoughts became clearer. The things I had done came into sharper focus.
Sometimes it was better when Dad kept talking.
Even that thought was horrible.
After Aunt Eunju went inside, I got back into the car.
Uncle Taeseok started the engine.
"Let's go home."
I nodded.
"Okay."
The moment the car left the parking lot, my phone vibrated briefly.
I froze.
Uncle Taeseok must have heard it too, because he looked toward me.
"Aren't you going to check it?"
I pushed the phone deeper into my pocket.
"Later."
"Who is it?"
"A friend."
Another lie came naturally.
It came so naturally that for a moment, I nearly forgot I was lying at all.
Uncle Taeseok didn't ask anything else.
But his gaze lingered on my pocket for a moment.
That look frightened me.
I couldn't take out my phone.
I was almost certain who the message was from.
The unknown number.
The person who had sent me the name Han Jiuk.
Now that I'd gone to the station and looked through the case files, he must have sent something. Did he know I'd looked at the files on Uncle Taeseok's desk? Did he know I'd confirmed Han Jiuk's name?
If so, how close was he?
A familiar silence flowed through the car.
Uncle Taeseok kept his eyes on the road. I watched the streetlights pass outside the window. Their light stretched across the wet road. The rain had stopped, but the city was still soaked.
The city after the rain always seemed strange.
It looked clean, as if something had been washed away, but in truth, the filth had only sunk beneath the surface.
The car stopped at a light.
That was when Uncle Taeseok spoke.
"Doyoon."
There were only the two of us in the car.
No one outside could hear.
So he called me Doyoon again.
Every time I heard that name, I felt as if I were splitting in two.
Kang Minjun was a police academy student. He was the child under Kang Taeseok's protection, an intern about to graduate at the top of his class, someone who might apply to the detectives' division in the future.
Kim Doyoon was different.
Kim Doyoon was the child who killed his father.
The child who saw his mother's blood.
The child who heard his dead father's voice.
And now, the person standing before a fourth death.
I didn't know which one was the real me.
No. Maybe they were both me.
"Yes."
I answered.
"You can tell me if things get hard."
I couldn't turn my head.
His voice was low.
It wasn't a scolding voice or an interrogating voice.
It was a worried voice.
"You've been seeing a lot of scenes lately. It might bring back old memories."
He paused before continuing.
"I know that even if you say you're fine, you might not be."
My throat tightened.
Old memories.
Dad.
Mom.
The living-room floor.
The space between the wardrobe and the wall.
And every death I'd created after that.
Could I tell him?
Tell Uncle Taeseok that I had received a message.
That someone knew my old name.
That someone had sent me a picture of Oh Sejun's knife.
That he had called it a necessary evil.
That he had sent me the name Han Jiuk, and I had gone to that address.
And that Han Jiuk had died there.
That I had killed him.
Could I tell him?
The moment I spoke, everything would end.
Uncle Taeseok, Aunt Eunju, Harin, Minjae. The table in that house, the warmth of the side dishes, the illusion that someone was waiting for me. The police academy, the detectives' division, the younger me who wanted to become a good person.
Everything would end.
I opened my lips.
"I'm fine."
In the end, that was all I said again.
"I'm really fine."
Uncle Taeseok let out a small sigh.
"People who say that all the time usually aren't fine."
I shut my mouth.
The car began moving again.
Uncle Taeseok didn't say anything else.
But this silence was different from the one before. He was waiting. Waiting for me to tell him someday. But I was betraying that patience.
When we reached the area near my place, the car stopped.
"Go straight inside and get some rest."
"Okay."
"Take your medicine."
"Okay."
I got out of the car with the bag of side dishes.
Before I closed the door, Uncle Taeseok called me.
"Minjun."
This time, we were outside.
The car door was open, and someone might have been passing through the alley.
So he called me Minjun again.
That one name changed the situation.
Doyoon was the name I left inside the house.
Minjun was the name I sent out into the world.
By now, I knew that boundary too well.
"Yes."
He seemed to hesitate for a moment.
Then he said,
"Don't make decisions on your own."
I stiffened.
"What…"
"Just don't."
He looked ahead.
"Whether it's at a scene or in life. Making decisions alone is dangerous."
I couldn't say anything.
His words struck the exact right place.
Don't make decisions on your own.
But I had already made those decisions alone.
Oh Sejun. Han Jiuk.
Before confirming whether they were truly killers, before the procedures were complete, before anyone could tell me to stop. I had made the decisions alone, and someone had died at the end of each one.
Uncle Taeseok drove away without saying anything more.
I watched the car recede.
I couldn't move until its rear disappeared at the end of the alley.
Then I slowly took out my phone.
The message from earlier.
It was the unknown number again.
I held my breath and opened the screen.
[Don't worry.]
Three short words.
Don't worry.
That frightened me even more.
What was I not supposed to worry about?
That I had looked through the files?
That no trace of me would be found on Han Jiuk's body?
That Uncle Taeseok wouldn't suspect me?
Or.
That I was already inside their plan, so I didn't need to worry about anything?
At that moment, my phone rang again.
Another message.
[You checked.]
I swallowed hard.
You checked.
He knew.
He knew I'd confirmed Han Jiuk's name.
He knew I'd looked through the files.
Then had he really been nearby? Inside the station? At the scene? Around Uncle Taeseok? Or had he been watching every path I took from the beginning?
With my fingertips trembling, I typed a reply.
[How did you know who the killer was?]
Send.
I immediately typed again.
[Why did you send me there?]
Send.
The screen stayed silent.
No answer came.
Silence.
I stood there for a long time, staring down at my phone.
I should have grown used to the unknown number's silences by now, but every time, they shook me more deeply. He threw out only the words he needed and disappeared. A name, a picture, a place, a time. A few words, enough to make me collapse on my own.
Then Dad's voice came from behind me.
"Why do you think he isn't answering?"
I didn't turn around.
Beneath the alley's streetlight, my shadow stretched long. It seemed as though there was another shadow beside it. Dad's shadow. A dead person's shadow shouldn't exist, but I always felt as if he were stuck beside me.
"He's pretending he doesn't know."
Dad laughed.
"Just like you."
I put my phone in my pocket.
Dad walked up beside me.
"Still, you did learn something."
I started walking.
"That you weren't wrong."
I didn't answer.
"That man was the killer, and you killed another serial killer."
Dad's voice settled low over the night air.
"What will people call you when they find out about you?"
I closed my eyes, then opened them.
"A monster?"
He laughed.
"Or a hero?"
I didn't answer.
I went inside and closed the door.
But Dad's final words didn't stay outside.
They followed me in.
You killed another serial killer.
I stood in the entryway, unable to move.
The bag of side dishes nearly slipped from my hand. I caught it. A warm bag. Food Aunt Eunju had made. Food she remembered I liked.
How could people be so different?
On one side was the name of a dead man.
On the other was warm food.
I had come home after hiding a murder, carrying food someone had prepared for me.
The contradiction tore me apart.
I went to the kitchen and put the side dishes in the refrigerator. When I opened the container of rolled omelet, a little steam was still rising from it. Aunt Eunju had surely thought I would eat it right away. She must have worried that I wasn't eating enough.
I picked up my chopsticks, then set them down.
I couldn't eat.
My stomach churned.
I went into the bathroom and washed my face. Cold water touched my skin. The person in the mirror looked unfamiliar. My eyes were sunken, and my lips were pale and dry. But the strangest thing was my eyes.
Those eyes.
The eyes Oh Sejun had recognized.
The eyes that had recognized Han Jiuk.
The eyes Dad loved most.
I braced one hand against the mirror.
"I'm not you."
I said it so quietly that the words were almost lost beneath the sound of water.
Even so, Dad heard me.
He was standing behind me in the mirror.
"You still say that?"
I closed my eyes.
"How many more people will you kill before you stop?"
"Shut up."
"No. You have to answer now."
Dad smiled in the mirror.
"When you found out that everyone you'd killed was a serial killer, you felt relieved, didn't you?"
I held my breath.
"No."
"Really?"
"No."
"Then why did you go to check?"
I couldn't answer.
"You wanted to know whether Han Jiuk was really the killer. That way, you'd suffer a little less."
Dad whispered close to my ear.
"But how did you feel after you found out?"
I clenched my teeth.
"Did it feel better?"
"No."
"Not even a little?"
I lowered my head.
A little.
For just a moment.
When I confirmed that Han Jiuk really was the killer, some part of me felt relieved.
The fact that I hadn't killed an innocent person.
The fact that my instincts hadn't been wrong.
The fact that he could no longer create another victim.
That relief frightened me more than anything.
I wasn't afraid of being punished.
I was afraid that I might come to believe what I'd done was justified.
That it was okay because I had killed a serial killer.
That it was okay because he had killed people first.
That it was okay because I had stopped someone the law had failed to catch.
If I kept telling myself those things one by one, someday it might really become okay.
That was what frightened me.
I was afraid I might truly be okay.
That night, I couldn't fall asleep even after lying in bed.
My phone lay beside my head. The unknown number never replied again. But I kept checking the screen. What if another message came? What if this time he sent the next name? The next address, the next time, the next necessary evil?
I was waiting.
The moment I realized that, my body turned to ice.
I was afraid of that message.
At the same time, I was waiting for it.
Why?
To learn the truth?
To escape the threats?
Or.
To recognize another serial killer?
I pulled the blanket up.
The room was dark.
But even in the darkness, I could see Dad. He was sitting in the desk chair, watching me. As always, he looked like someone waiting.
"You're curious, aren't you?"
He said it.
I didn't answer.
"Who will come next."
I closed my eyes.
Dad laughed.
"You're not running away anymore, Doyoon."
His voice slowly settled deep inside me.
In front of other people, no one called me Doyoon.
I was Kang Minjun.
The child Kang Taeseok protected.
Another sonlike presence, with a name similar to Kang Minjae's, who had blended naturally into that household.
That name had been created to keep me alive.
But when we were together as a family, they called me Doyoon.
Not to dredge up my past.
They called me that so I wouldn't remember the name only as a crime.
They wanted to carefully teach me that the name Kim Doyoon didn't mean only the son of a serial killer. It was also the name of the child his mother had tried to protect until the very end.
So I was Doyoon only in that house.
Minjun outside.
Doyoon inside.
And Dad always called me by my real name, as if mocking that boundary.
"You're waiting."
I covered my ears.
But the voice didn't disappear.
My ears weren't what I needed to block.
It was the inside of me.
That night, for the first time, I almost admitted it.
That what I feared wasn't being punished.
Maybe what I feared was that I might come to believe what I'd done was justified.
And along with Dad's laughter, that fear remained in my room for a very long time.