Substitute-Chapter 127

Gwak Hoon was not a man with thin ears.

If anything, he had the stubborn philosophy of someone who had survived more than forty years in a vicious line of work.

A conviction bordering on obstinacy.

Going after a man like that was never easy.

But once that conviction began to crumble, it was as helpless as a sandcastle.

It started with Cha Jongsoo, Gwak Hoon’s lover—his partner in all but name.

No one, not even Gwak Hoon, thought Cha Jongsoo would die.

It was suicide. It was presumed to be suicide.

If only he’d at least left a hint of where he died—it would’ve been something; they couldn’t even find a body.

Old-fashioned as he was, Gwak Hoon was tormented by the fact he couldn’t recover Cha Jongsoo’s remains. The grief was so deep he even turned down sex, which he usually loved.

But he was a strong man, so he pretended to get over his lover’s death. Not as before, but he still hunted down men who resembled him to spy on and toy with. Whether he actually enjoyed it or not was unclear; outwardly, it looked like he’d gone back to normal.

Only, to those who served him up close, it was obvious he was withering by the day.

Gwak Yeol was among the witnesses who saw Gwak Hoon grow weaker, day after day.

Alone for the first time in twelve years, Gwak Hoon lay awake every night, asking questions with no answers.

The first question was whether Cha Jongsoo’s death was suicide or murder. If suicide, why—where, and how had he died? If murder, who, why, and for what had they killed him—and what did they gain from it?

He posed the same questions every night and tormented himself. He dug and dug, obsessively asking and investigating, but nothing moved.

The fact that, nearly two full years on, he still knew nothing about Cha Jongsoo’s death gnawed at him.

As time passed, questions rotted into suspicion, suspicion sparked all kinds of imaginings in the old man’s head, and in the end he came to distrust everyone.

Gwak Hoon could trust no one. Not even himself.

Flashback #6. Gwak Yeol, the day Cha Jongsoo died

At twenty-three, Gwak Yeol stood looking down at the man before him.

Under the smeared, heavy makeup streaked by tears and sweat, the man’s bare, uncanny face was drawing on a cigarette.

Once, he had owned all of Gwak Yeol’s heart.

He’d been an object of pure love and longing, far from anything sexual.

To Gwak Yeol, Cha Jongsoo had been father and mother, brother and friend.

If it had been a one-sided love, it wouldn’t have been this disappointing. Instead, Cha Jongsoo had returned several times more love than he’d received.

How did he end up this ruined.

There had been a time when the man before him seemed pitiable. A time when he’d tried, somehow, to set him back to how he was—but even that impulse was gone now. Not a hair’s worth of pity remained.

What he felt for him was empty.

Cha Jongsoo smoked until his cheeks hollowed, then let out a long, slow stream of smoke.

A flush rose on his face.

For a moment, the old him flickered through.

Not the gaudy version, but the understated, quietly magnetic figure who drew people in.

When the smoke thinned, that mirage of the old Cha Jongsoo vanished, too.

Regretting that, Gwak Yeol sighed.

“You said you were the pillar of this family, didn’t you? I’m counting on you, young sir.”

The man who had met his eyes and smiled brightly back then was nowhere to be found.

Forty-six, and yet his eyes were as dull and cloudy as a seventy-year-old’s, staring into empty air.

There was plenty of blame for Grandfather in how Cha Jongsoo got this ruined, but in the end it was his own fault.

He was past the age of blaming anyone else.

“Feels like just yesterday you barely came up to my waist.”

Cha Jongsoo spoke in a voice rasped and split with age.

“Now you’re all grown.”

“Thanks to you.”

Gwak Yeol answered in a tone drained of feeling.

“Yeol, want me to tell you a fun story?”

Their eyes locked.

“Before that, just one sip. Just one sip, please.”

This time he wasn’t asking for a cigarette.

“Hm? Young sir, you know I don’t make requests like this.”

He begged.

If people grant the wishes of the dead, how could they not grant the wish of the living.

And since it was a wish of someone about to die, Gwak Yeol nodded readily.

The man at Gwak Yeol’s side held out a bottle of whiskey.

Smiling wide, Cha Jongsoo took it.

“Thank you, young sir.”

The hand gripping the bottle shook.

It wasn’t fear.

It wasn’t because he was a drug addict.

Cha Jongsoo was an alcoholic, and even after losing half his liver he still couldn’t give up drinking.

Oddly enough, except when he had sex, he didn’t touch drugs.

Come to think of it, he was quietly a hard case.

Gwak Yeol snorted a small laugh.

The man who had been pleading desperately for a drink a moment ago lifted the whiskey with a blank face as if nothing had happened. After the first mouthful, a gleam returned to his cloudy eyes. After another, color crept back into his pallor and a satisfied smile hovered at his lips.

The one part of him he’d never altered, his mouth, was still handsome.

With a strange expression—maybe smiling, maybe crying, maybe both—Cha Jongsoo gazed at Gwak Yeol.

“Want me to tell you a fun story?”

“Go ahead. I’ll listen.”

Gwak Yeol was willing to listen to whatever excuses Cha Jongsoo wanted to make. Nothing he said would change his decision, but he wanted to hear something.

If he wanted, he’d even hand him a storybook.

For the first time in a long while, generosity rose in him.

“Once upon a time, before a young sir named Gwak Yeol was even born, the old man had a son by his lawful wife. Gwak Sang—he was the heir who would carry on the old man’s line.”

Out of Cha Jongsoo’s mouth came, unexpectedly, a story about Gwak Sang, the father.

A story about the father who had died ❖ Nоvеl𝚒ght ❖ (Exclusive on Nоvеl𝚒ght) the year Gwak Yeol turned ten, one year before Cha Jongsoo met the old man.

Of all people, he hadn’t expected Cha Jongsoo to bring up his father, and Gwak Yeol’s brow tightened. The generosity that said he’d even hand him a storybook vanished in an instant.

Now what trick was he playing, this late—he stared at the man’s lips.

“Can you imagine how much the old man loved it when an heir came out looking just like him. He felt like he had the whole world.”

Cha Jongsoo began.

“His hopes for his son were huge. He worried he might be disappointed, but no—he grew up even better than the hopes. He still couldn’t keep from chasing skirts and had a string of kids outside, but to his lawful wife he was better than anyone. And naturally, to his son, he played the greatest father in the world.”

With a gentle smile, as if he’d seen it all with his own eyes, Cha Jongsoo went on.

“‘Sang-ah, my boy Sang. My child I could put in my eye and it wouldn’t hurt.’ The old man was happiest when he said his son’s name.”

His gaze drifted into space. He took two more swallows, his body giving a small lurch as if dizzy, then he straightened up again.

“What bent that most tender of father-son bonds started in the year Gwak Sang turned twenty-three. Funny—your exact age. You’re twenty-three, too.”

His eyes came back to Gwak Yeol. A light rose in them.

“I thought maybe belated adolescence, but no. Something happened that rattled the old man’s convictions.”

Like that, Cha Jongsoo talked for nearly thirty minutes.

From the past of the father he’d never known to the secrets up to just before his death, he poured it all out.

Even on strong whiskey, he was reasonably coherent.

And far too vivid.

As if he were reporting what happened yesterday, he described and explained every detail without leaving anything out.

The shock to Gwak Yeol was tremendous.

Even at a young age he’d never lost his poker face, but not this time.

He was shaken so visibly that even Cha Jongsoo—and the man at Yeol’s side—noticed.

“Why are you telling me this?”

His voice trembled as he asked.

“A gift.”

Casually, Cha Jongsoo answered.

“A last gift. Because it’s the last, I wanted to give you the most precious thing.”

He added that and smiled brightly.

The face ruined by surgery twisted.

Even so, Gwak Yeol thought he was beautiful.

Why now, of all times?

He didn’t ask.

It would have been a useless question anyway.

Gwak Yeol didn’t feel sorry for Cha Jongsoo, and the same went the other way.

Neither owed the other a debt.

“Live well, young sir.”

It was Cha Jongsoo’s last will.

Gwak Yeol cried.

If someone asked why he was crying when he was the one who killed him, he had no answer—but he cried because once, he had loved him more than anyone. It was sadness and joy both. Because he was dead, because he had killed him—joy and sorrow at once.

For Gwak Yeol, death was almost ordinary life.

Since the age of ten, when his father and mother died, he had lived surrounded by death. It was brutally harsh for a child, but he endured, in his way. Largely because of the part Cha Jongsoo played. His maternal cousin, Kim Hansoo, helped a little, too.

As for Grandfather—no need to say.

He was Gwak Yeol’s solid pillar and spiritual mainstay. He did his best so the child wouldn’t feel the absence of his parents.

My Grandfather.

Cha Jongsoo’s lover, the old man.

And my father’s father.

I believed he was someone I owed endless gratitude to—fuck.

Gwak Yeol shuddered with betrayal.

Of course, he wasn’t foolish enough to swear revenge based solely on Cha Jongsoo’s word.

With a loud slap of water, the body sank.

With stones tied to both legs and his waist, Cha Jongsoo vanished into the reservoir in an instant.

“Sleep well, my love.”

Gwak Yeol said his farewell, too.

He stood a long time on the cliff, looking down.

By accident, he had buried Cha Jongsoo the same way as his father.

Which reservoir is Father lying in?

Thinking of his father sunk beneath some pitch-black water where no one would ever find him, he smiled bitterly.

“Mister, what if what Cha Jongsoo said is true?”

“Who knows. He lied like breathing.”

“Would he, right before death?”

“He was drunk.”

“Was he?”

Gwak Yeol cocked his head.

He made up some hopeless tale because he was drunk?

The man knew nothing about Cha Jongsoo.

Cha Jongsoo didn’t have that kind of imagination.

He was a man who could barely read a storybook aloud.

“Let’s verify it. Whether it’s true or not.”

He said it as he nudged a stone with his shoe.

“And if it is?”

“Mm... then we change the plan.”

After Cha Jongsoo, the old man had always been next.

Grateful to him or not, he’d planned to kill him.

He had intended to send him off as gently as possible, but if what Cha Jongsoo said was true, he wasn’t worth the trouble.

“The risk will be high.”

“Oh, don’t start. You dopamine addict.”

Smiling, Gwak Yeol glanced at the man.

The twenty-three-year-old who had been so rattled by what Cha Jongsoo said was gone without a trace.

“If it’s true, I’m going to send him off very slowly and with a lot of pain. I am.”

He vowed it, almost to himself.

Nearly two full years passed from the day Cha Jongsoo died.

A life that should’ve ended long ago was extended two years by Cha Jongsoo.

In the pounding rain, Gwak Yeol followed his Grandfather’s gaze.

His cousin, Kim Hansoo, was running.

To be precise, he was fleeing.

Foolishly.