[Kim Doyoon, long time no see.]
The moment I saw that sentence, I couldn't breathe for a while.
Kim Doyoon.
That name had died a long time ago.
I believed it had been erased from official records, vanished from school, and buried in people's memories. On the day I first entered Uncle Taeseok's house, I thought I had to give up that name to survive. The name Kim Doyoon carried the smell of blood, the last look on Mom's face that I'd seen through the crack in the closet, and Dad's smile as he died.
And now, someone knew that name.
They knew things I didn't.
They had the knife that had disappeared that night.
With trembling hands, I typed a reply.
[Who are you?]
Even after pressing Send, I couldn't take my eyes off the screen for a long time.
I thought an answer would come soon. No, it had to come. Who they were, why they had the knife, how they knew my old name, and where exactly they had been that night.
But no reply came.
I couldn't even tell whether the message had been read. An unknown number. One photograph. And a short sentence calling me by my old name.
That was all.
I didn't sleep a wink that night.
Even lying in bed, I couldn't close my eyes. Whenever I did, I saw the blade. The knife that had gleamed wetly in the darkness. The sensation of it tearing through my abdomen. And someone's hand holding it.
Had that person helped me?
They had removed the knife from the scene.
Or had they taken the evidence so they could use it to control me?
That person knew me. They knew my old name, and they knew I'd been there that night. They even knew I was the last person to face Oh Sejun.
That fact alone made it hard to breathe.
I held my phone and watched dawn arrive. Even after the sky outside had begun to turn faintly blue, no reply came.
The next day, I went to work as usual.
Even I could see how awful I looked in the mirror. Dark circles sagged beneath my eyes, and my lips were dry. But I couldn't skip work. If I suddenly disappeared, someone would ask why. If they asked, I'd have to answer, and once I started answering, it would lead to where I'd been the night before, why I was hurt, and why I hadn't slept.
I had to put on an ordinary face.
As if nothing had happened.
Not long after I arrived at the police station, my phone vibrated.
One short buzz.
My heart reacted first.
I secretly checked my phone beneath the desk. My fingertips turned cold, afraid it might be the unknown number. Had that person contacted me again? Had they sent another picture of the knife? Or would they send even bigger evidence this time?
But the name on the screen was Kang Taeseok.
[Come over for dinner tonight. Mom says it's been too long since she's seen you, so I have to bring you home.]
I stared at the message for a long time.
Mom.
In my heart, I couldn't call Uncle Taeseok's wife, Aunt Eunju, that. I'd never once said it out loud. But Uncle Taeseok sometimes said it that way.
Mom's waiting. Mom made some side dishes. Mom told me to pick up your favorite food.
Those words always made me feel strange.
They were warm enough to hurt, and frightening because they were unfamiliar.
Another message came a moment later.
[I’ll pick you up when you get off work.]
I couldn't write back.
Uncle Taeseok was coming to pick me up.
If I got in that car, I'd go back to that house. The house where Aunt Eunju set the table, Harin complained as she talked to me, and Minjae casually played around on the weekends. The house that made me want to believe I wasn't a monster.
But what if they found out?
That I'd been standing before another person's death.
That even if the man had been a serial killer, I'd fought him, he'd died, and my memory had cut out.
That someone who knew my old name had the knife.
Could they still look at me the way they used to?
Would they look at me as I really was?
Or would they finally realize it then?
Oh. The child we brought home had been dangerous from the very beginning.
I turned my phone facedown on the desk.
That was when I heard the senior detective's voice.
“Hey, trainee.”
I looked up in surprise.
“Yes?”
“Where's your head at? Finish the field report for Oh Sejun's unexplained death case. Organize the basic details, turn it in, and then go home.”
“Me?”
“What, can't you do it?”
“No, sir. I'll do it.”
The senior detective dropped the case file onto my desk.
“You only need to put together a draft. Organize the photo numbers and the scene details, and check whether anything's missing from the forensic team's report. It's not difficult.”
I looked down at the file.
Trainees were normally restricted from viewing case materials. Besides, having one write a report directly was absurd. But things like this happened from time to time inside a police station. A busy senior passing off his work. Dumping an annoying task on someone else under the name of simple organization.
Normally, it would have bothered me.
But this time was different.
I had been given access to the materials.
Officially.
I could check whether there was anything I'd missed.
I slowly opened the file.
The scene photographs came first.
The rear of an abandoned building. Wet concrete pavement. The spot where Oh Sejun had collapsed. A drain nearby. A weathered wall. Muddy ground blurred by the rain that had fallen all night. Number markers placed by the forensic team.
I flipped through the photographs one by one.
They were unnaturally clean.
Too clean.
For a place where someone had died, there was almost nothing that could prove I'd been there. Most of the blood had been washed away by rainwater, and footprints had been crushed by mud and water until they lost their shape. Fingerprints were unlikely. The CCTV camera had been blocked by a blind spot. No witnesses. No weapon.
There was truly nothing.
It was as if someone had erased the scene for me.
No.
As if God had helped me.
The moment the thought occurred to me, I shuddered.
Had God helped me?
Or was He testing me?
When I killed Dad, the world had protected me. Even before a second death, I had escaped. This time, too, it had rained, the evidence had vanished, and the dead man had been revealed to be a serial killer.
I had survived again.
Was that a coincidence?
Or was I gradually becoming someone who never got punished?
“Must be nice.”
A voice settled over my ear.
I knew without looking up.
It was Dad.
He was sitting across from my desk. With a calm face that was far too composed for a dead man, he looked down at the scene photographs with interest. People were coming and going inside the police station, but no one could see him.
Dad pretended to point at one of the photographs with his fingertip.
“Clean, isn't it?”
I bit my lip.
“It's all gone. Your footprints, your blood, your traces.”
“Shut up.”
My voice was barely audible.
Dad smiled.
“This time, you don't even remember what you did, and the world is already on your side.”
I clenched the papers.
“It's not on my side.”
“Then whose side is it on?”
He tilted his head.
“The dead college student? Her family? The police? Or the person who took the knife?”
My heart sank.
Dad knew.
No, he was only saying aloud what I knew. Even so, his words always felt more real than reality itself.
“Aren't you curious?”
He whispered.
“Who knows your name.”
I closed my eyes.
“Who is holding the knife.”
My breathing quickened.
“And Doyoon.”
Dad's voice dropped lower.
“Can you really be sure you didn't take that knife?”
I shot to my feet.
The chair scraped backward with a loud noise. The people around me looked over.
The senior detective frowned.
“What is it? What's wrong?”
I swallowed a breath.
Dad was still sitting in front of me, smiling.
I barely managed to answer.
“Nothing. I just felt dizzy for a moment.”
The senior detective clicked his tongue.
“Were you up all night? Just finish the report and go home.”
“Yes.”
I sat back down.
My hands were shaking.
There was nothing left in the scene photographs of Oh Sejun. That was what made it more frightening.
The absence of evidence didn't mean I was safe.
If anything, it meant the opposite.
Now, the only ones who knew the truth were me, the dead Oh Sejun, Mingyu, and whoever was behind the unknown number.
I looked down at my phone.
There was still no reply.
But I knew.
That person would contact me again.
At the moment I most wanted to hide. At the moment I most wanted to pretend I was fine. At the moment I tried to lift a spoon at Uncle Taeseok's dinner table as if nothing had happened.
That person would call my name again.
Kim Doyoon.
I flipped through the scene photographs again.
The rainwater in the pictures seemed to have washed everything away.
But no matter how hard it rained, some things couldn't be erased.
The dead man's final gaze.
The missing knife.
And the fact that someone knew my old name.
Then Dad spoke slowly.
“Now it's finally getting interesting.”
I closed my eyes.
The sound of Dad's laughter lingered beneath the police station's fluorescent lights for a long time.