Kill Your X Chapter 76

Si Yeonho was right. Late at night, the mountain was bitingly cold.

When I fell into the dirt pit, I wasn’t quite dead yet. My father didn’t care and shoveled cold dirt on top of my body. My body was piled on top of Detective Choi’s already buried corpse. The smell of blood, whose I couldn’t tell, was strong before gradually fading. One by one, my senses began to close their eyes.

Death was rapidly approaching, cutting across life. I would die before the pit was filled with dirt. It was a fate I could never change, no matter how hard I tried alone. It was futile, and then some.

Just as I had given up on everything, strangely, the dirt stopped falling from above at some point. Was I dead? Confused, I gathered my remaining strength and forced my eyelids open.

It was absurd, but the moment I saw him, it felt as if time had stopped.

Si Yeonho was standing next to my father, who was frozen in an awkward posture holding a shovel. He looked down at me indifferently with his arms crossed, his thoughts unreadable. The moment I saw him, the embers of hope I thought had been extinguished quickly flared back to life. Fighting against the pain spreading throughout my body, I opened my mouth. I didn’t want to die like this. I wanted to live. I wanted to live so damn badly.

“Plea…se…. Save me….”

Dirt entered my mouth every time I opened it, and my pronunciation grew more and more slurred. My voice was also so quiet that it obviously wouldn’t carry outside the pit. And yet, Si Yeonho tilted his head to the side as if he could hear everything.

“I want to live. I don’t want to die like this. Save me, please…. Please….”

Si Yeonho watched me beg for a long time. So long that I resented him more than my father who was killing me.

“Si… Yeon… ho….”

Right before death, I called his name one last time.

“Seo Seunghan.”

As if the name I barely heard was a death sentence, my slowly beating heart finally stopped.

“That’s my real name.”

Why, don’t they say that the brain can perceive its surroundings for a short while even after breathing stops? Having experienced it myself, I could say that was true.

“Sunbae won’t remember any of this after today.”

That night, Seo Seunghan pulled me out of the pit and then revived me. He found my cell phone, which my father had taken, erased the recent call and message history between us, came down from the mountain, and had me change into his school uniform that was in the car.

Worried about something, he made me roll around in a nearby dirt field after putting me in clean clothes. Lastly, he made me look straight into his eyes and muttered some unknown words. As if he were hypnotizing me.

When I came to my senses, it was dawn, and I was in front of my house. Somehow, my father had already gotten home. My parents scolded me for coming home so late, and I collapsed right onto my bed in my room. My body felt as heavy as water-logged cotton.

The next morning, still half-asleep, I searched for the text message history I had shared with Si Yeonho. I stayed like that for a while, just staring blankly. My mind was foggy, as if filled with mist.

‘Did I have something to say to this kid?’

“Is Gyujin awake?”

Just then, my mother came into the room. As I got off the bed and put on my slippers, my mother hugged me tightly.

“Oh, my. They say kids who don’t cause trouble when they’re young are more dangerous later on. Is this how you’re going to worry your mom, son?”

“Huh?”

“Let’s go down and eat. I asked the housekeeper to make some samgyetang for you.”

I remained in a daze even while eating. My mother looked at me with concern.

“Gyujin. Grades are important, but you don’t need to push yourself that hard. Your father talks as if B University is the only path, but I think a slightly lower-ranked university would be fine too.”

“B University….”

“Of course, I would be overjoyed if my son got into B University. What could make a parent prouder than sending both their children to prestigious universities? Still, if the stress is so severe that you’re doing things you normally wouldn’t, it’s better to control it. Your health is the most important thing to me, Gyujin.”

At a glance, it sounded like she was concerned for me, but her underlying meaning was that I absolutely had to get grades good enough for B University.

It seemed like she was letting me rest for a few days, but then my mother hired two more tutors for me under the pretext of preparing for the college entrance exam in advance.

“Hmm? When did my uniform change?”

The following week, while getting ready for school, I noticed something strange. I had no memory of borrowing a uniform from another kid, let alone one from a grade below me. I was puzzled as to how this happened. Had my brain really gone haywire from studying so much? Stress-induced amnesia, or something like that?

Maybe that’s why I had looked for Si Yeonho’s contact information as soon as I woke up that one time. Because I had to return the uniform.

I sent him a text message, but even after four days, there was no reply. I tried calling him, but this time it said the number did not exist.

To make matters worse, Si Yeonho was a kid who often skipped school, so returning the uniform seemed like a distant prospect. Well, if it was really urgent, he would contact me first. I dismissed it as such and erased the matter from my mind. It was more urgent for me to get good grades on the upcoming school exams.

I hadn’t seen his face or contacted him since becoming a third-year in high school, so the name Si Yeonho naturally faded from my memory. Then, I ran into him on graduation day. It was accompanied by a confession that felt quite out of context.

I was flustered by a kid I wasn’t even close to acting like that, so I just mumbled some vague words. I thought that was the end of our connection.

Now, ten years later, I finally understood the meaning behind his persistent gaze towards me. It was the last piece of my puzzle, lost and finally found.

✽✽✽

I was being investigated by the police for the second time. I told a part of the truth, excluding the supernatural existence of Seo Seunghan. The investigator didn’t believe me.

“So, you’re saying that the police commissioner tried to bury his own son in the ground that day?”

“Yes. Before, I didn’t mention that out of consideration for my father’s reputation. I thought finding the missing people was more important than my own situation.”

“Look here, Mr. Song Gyujin. What you’re saying doesn’t make any sense. Not only did your father try to kill you, but he actually buried you in the ground, and you kept your mouth shut for over ten years? Let’s say that’s the case for you, but why would the commissioner have stayed silent all this time? His son could report him at any moment.”

“It may be hard to believe, but it’s the truth. The incident was so traumatic that I couldn’t remember it until recently. My father… probably knew about my condition and chose to remain silent.”

“As if he’d know when his son would remember.”

The investigator openly scoffed at me. It was so frustrating I could go crazy. My voice grew louder with indignation.

“Motive. I crucially lack a motive. Isn’t motive the very first thing the police try to establish when investigating a suspect? Please investigate the victims found on the mountain. See if I even knew any of them.”

“That’s why this is an unprecedented violent crime. Mr. Song Gyujin, you don’t seem to grasp the situation, but this is a huge case. It’s getting attention not just in our country, but overseas as well.”

There was nothing I could do when he wouldn’t listen. The police had already singled me out as the culprit and were continuing their investigation based on that assumption.

“Investigator. How does my blood being found there mean I’m the murderer? I’m obviously the victim. Are you suggesting I dug a pit, got in, killed someone, and then got out?”

“Police Commissioner Song Jeonggun has provided additional testimony regarding that.”

A wave of anxiety washed over me in that moment.

“What did my father say?”

“Mr. Song Gyujin, you’ve been mentally unwell for a while, haven’t you? Your condition worsened recently, so you took a sick leave from work.”

“What?”

I couldn’t readily understand what he was talking about. When I pressed him, the investigator said with a sullen expression.

“The police commissioner will make a formal announcement about the details soon. The commissioner must be having a hard time. I thought he was a perfect man without a single flaw, but to think his only son has a problem like this.”

“Just tell me. My father said that I’m sick?”

“Well, this is a formality, but. Mr. Song Gyujin, you will be undergoing a psychiatric evaluation soon. For now, just be aware of that.”

Only then did I fully realize. Shifting his own crime onto me, my father was trying to paint me as mentally insane.

After the unpleasant interrogation, I was detained in a holding cell. Fortunately or unfortunately, it was a different one from Seo Seunghan’s.

For my father to resort to such an absurd tactic. My head was spinning from a possibility I had never once considered. I was so wronged that my breathing kept becoming unstable. Far from saving Seo Seunghan, at this rate, the two of us were about to rot in prison together for the rest of our lives. And that was only possible on the premise that we avoided the death penalty.

As I was gripped by despair, a man came to see me. I was dumbfounded by the unexpected visit request.

“Lawyer!”

“Hah…. Mr. Gyujin, are you alright? You look so worn out in the short time I haven’t seen you.”

It was the lawyer in charge of Seo Seunghan’s case, introduced to me by Detective Nam.

“What brings you here? Don’t tell me you’re taking on my defense as well?”

“Actually, Mr. Seo Seunghan has changed his mind about retaining me as his lawyer. He asked me to help Mr. Song Gyujin instead.”

“What? Then what about him?”