A Scorching Day Chapter 56

Before he could even take off his mourning clothes, Ki Joon came running down from the burial site in a frantic rush. It was right after the funeral procession had just ended. The taxi he had called moments ago was waiting at the foot of the mountain.

The adults, especially Ki Woohyun and Manager Hwang, urged him to at least have a meal before leaving, but he refused them all. He didn’t care what they whispered behind his back. He had no room for that.

It was because contact with Gawon had been cut off for three days.

―The subscriber you are calling is currently unable to take your call….

No matter how many dozens or hundreds of times he called, the result was the same. Naturally, his messages went unread as well. No matter how many times he tried to reach out, Ki Joon had not been able to hear Gawon’s voice throughout the entire funeral. In all this time, Gawon had never once gone out of contact like this.

Three days were more than enough for puzzlement to transform into anxiety, and anxiety into frenzy. It felt like being slowly suffocated, trapped inside a narrow coffin. Unable to move a muscle, dying without knowing why…. Panic choked his chest and throat.

By the last day of the funeral, he could bear it no longer. But Manager Hwang barely managed to hold back Ki Joon, who wanted to dash out immediately. Persuading him that, no matter what, the chief mourner had to stay until the funeral procession ended, and with mourners still constantly arriving to see the deceased’s only son, he couldn’t leave right away. It was only when the thread of his shallow patience finally snapped that the funeral procession ended.

“Driver, please hurry. …Please, I’m begging you, hurry.”

Ki Joon spoke as if squeezing out the words and closed his eyes. His pounding heart was now aching. The anxiety that had been sleeping in the deep abyss opened its jaws wide, trying to swallow him. Like the nightmare he had repeated his entire life, it dragged Ki Joon in with tenacious viscosity and immense force.

No, nothing will happen. As the car drove, Ki Joon repeated that to himself countless times. Come to think of it, Gawon’s phone had been quite old. It wouldn’t have been surprising if it had broken down.

“I should have… haa… replaced it sooner.”

Yeah, it must have broken down, that was surely it. Ki Joon trembled, his tightly clenched fist shaking. He had wanted to get him a new phone as a congratulatory gift for getting into university this time. But he had held back, knowing Gawon would definitely scold him for being too extravagant with rings and phones.

“Why did I hold back, fuck… stupid bastard…”

Ki Joon muttered like a madman. He raised his fist and struck his head repeatedly with a thudding sound. Fuck, fuck…. He should have replaced it no matter what Gawon said. If he had, he wouldn’t have had to go three whole days without hearing that kid’s voice. He wouldn’t have been this anxious….

His breathing grew ragged and his eyes burned. It felt like someone kept choking him. His throat was so tight. Ki Joon, with impatient gestures, yanked down his tightly buttoned collar. The obsessive motion tore off a button, which rolled across the floor.

“Student, are you alright?”

“Yes. I’m fine. Please, just hurry, hurry and get there.”

The taxi driver, unable to watch any longer, asked. Ki Joon replied mechanically and bowed his head deeply.

He believed nothing was wrong. He had to. But anxiety assailed Ki Joon like a black wave. Even when he tried to shake it off, the black darkness clung to his body like brine.

The various threats, big and small, that Ki Joon had experienced since childhood forced him to assume the worst-case scenario. He couldn’t dismiss that imagination as absurd, because Gawon had also grown up in a similar environment.

Because Ki Joon’s family and close associates had directly managed the red-light districts, he knew, whether he liked it or not. How gangsters treated the women there, what happened to them and their families if they tried to run away while burdened with debt.

He could only pray that Gawon’s mother hadn’t done such a thing. But the fact that she had been regularly leaving the house empty for months weighed on his mind.

No, it’s not that. Ki Joon shook his head violently. It’s just useless anxiety. If he knocked on Gawon’s door right now, that kid would welcome him with open arms as if nothing had happened.

With an embarrassed expression, he’d say his phone broke, or something else came up. He would reassure him like that. No other bad thing, not one single thing, would have happened.

So this time too, if he could just see with his own eyes that it was nothing, if he could just—

“Gawon-ah!”

Jumping out of the taxi into the familiar alley, Ki Joon immediately ran toward Gawon’s front door. In the blazing midday sunlight, Gawon’s door stood out conspicuously.

Before he even got close, Ki Joon’s footsteps came to an abrupt halt. Seeing the shattered front door hanging open, Ki Joon’s pupils shook helplessly.

“Yoon Gawon!”

He burst inside, shouting. A cold draft of air rushed out from the house. He could instinctively feel that no one was inside.

His heart dropped, endlessly downward.

“Yoon Gawon! Gawon-ah! Where are you!”

He searched the house frantically, calling his name like a madman. It took less than ten seconds to thoroughly search the tiny two rooms no bigger than a palm, the cramped kitchen, and the bathroom. Everywhere he entered was a cold, lifeless space, devoid of any human warmth.

His vision was stained with confusion. Huh, huh, huh… The sound of his ragged breathing filled his ears unpleasantly. Ki Joon staggered and struck his pounding chest with his fist. Gasping like a man about to have a seizure, he frantically scanned and re-scanned the house.

Only then did the shoe prints scattered messily across the floor catch his eye. Ki Joon glared with bloodshot eyes. Kneeling, he desperately felt across the floor.

A rough powder stuck to his palms. It wasn’t hard to realize it had come from the shattered phone screen.

“Yoon… Yoon Gawon. Where… where are you.”

A dazed voice crawled out. His chest, locked tight with a damp heat, felt like it would burst. He clenched his fist. Tiny shards of glass pricked his palm, but he ignored them. A snarling groan boiled up from his throat.

He sprang to his feet. There was no time to stay here. He had to find Yoon Gawon somehow. Ki Joon kicked the door open and ran. The scenery he had once walked through with Gawon vividly revived in his mind.

The place he entered, gasping for breath, was the nearby police station. Ki Joon, panting heavily, filed a missing person report. He told them everything he knew about the missing Yoon Gawon. After receiving his name, photo, and phone number, the police officer said they would contact him later and that he could go home now.

“…Is that all?”

Ki Joon questioned him with an expression of disbelief. This time, the officer asked back with a bewildered face.

“Is there something more you’d like us to do right now…?”

“Sir. Officer. Please… I’m begging you.”

Ki Joon grabbed his hand with a pale face. Seeing Ki Joon abruptly kneel on the spot, the flustered officer said, “Hey! What are you doing!” and tried to lift him up.

“Please… hurry, help me quickly. His mother… worked in the back alleys… so he might have been kidnapped or something.”

“Student, calm down. Once the report is processed, we’ll send a patrol near the missing student’s house and check the nearby CCTV, so don’t worry too much, just go home and wait, and we’ll contact you—”

“P-please look at this photo. There were footprints and broken phone fragments all over the house like this. It’s not just a missing person, it’s kidnapping… he was kidnapped. So please hurry, I’m begging you—”

“Oh dear… a young student like you, being so persistent and unreasonable like this…”

Seeing Ki Joon, looking like he might collapse at any moment, stubbornly clinging and pleading, the officer openly showed his reluctance. Not only the officer handling Ki Joon, but other officers and civilians also began to turn their attention.

But Ki Joon didn’t even feel embarrassed. He rubbed his burning eyelids with his fists and bowed his head.

“I’m sorry for troubling you. But this is really urgent. So please… just this once. I’m begging you… like this.”

He had never begged anyone this abjectly in his entire life. He had never hoped for something from someone so desperately. But now, Ki Joon felt like he was spitting blood. It didn’t matter whether the person he was kneeling and bowing to was a police officer or a gangster.

If only he could find out where Gawon was. If only that kid could come back unharmed.

“Alright, just get up. I’ll send a patrol right now, so please stop this. There are so many people watching… this makes things difficult for us.”

It was only after begging, bordering on being a nuisance, that he managed to get a promise. After making the officer swear repeatedly to contact him without fail, Ki Joon lifted his trembling legs and left the police station.

He returned to Gawon’s house. He stood in the alley and waited for the patrol he had been told would be sent. No matter how much he searched his phone contacts, there was no one who would know about Gawon’s whereabouts. He even asked the homeroom teacher who had come to the funeral yesterday and a few classmates, but no one knew where Gawon was.

He felt like he was going crazy. Ki Joon banged his head against the wall. The reality that the kid had vanished like he’d evaporated and there was nothing he could do, that he himself was unable to take any action, felt utterly powerless.