Chapter 218.1

Chapter 218.1

For three days she suffered a brutal fever, and still, afraid she might starve to death, she crawled across the floor to tear open the emergency rations.

She did not remember drinking, but the empty water bottles rolling around were flattened enough to prove she had gulped them down.

Seoryeong shrugged off her soaked clothes and stepped out from under the blanket completely naked. Her white hips rose and fell, moving like the curve of an apple.

She was no longer a fugitive, and her body did not betray her. She could go anywhere now.

But where should she go…

After a hot shower, she emptied the necessary items into her backpack, pulled on a hat, and went outside.

Having been sick for three straight days, she unexpectedly found herself in the old quarter where people had gathered to mourn Yuri Solzhenitsyn.

Every time she tried to avoid looking, the words on the placards stabbed at her.

‘Rest and peace for the boy.’

‘May you sleep in peace.’

‘Goodbye today, until we meet again.’

Damn it… she bit her lower lip at the sight of it all. Candles lined the street as the sun started to set, and sprays of white baby’s breath stretched on and on. In front of the photo of a boy everyone had once admired, people prayed with heavy, solemn faces.

She hated the sight of strangers sobbing. The air felt stifling, so she pushed through the crowd as if fleeing, but the harder she tried, the more the memorial procession trapped her.

Gasping, clutching her throat, Seoryeong staggered and ripped Yuri Solzhenitsyn’s photograph from the wall.

‘What kind of nonsense was this… Do not hang my man’s picture here without my permission. Do not speak of his death lightly. Do not pray for him. Do not say he is dead!’

She tore down every photo she could see from the walls until the alley ended.

Folding the pictures until her veins stood out, she panted out of anger.

‘I am his wife and I have not acknowledged this! I have not accepted anything yet!’

While she huffed and raged, someone thrust baby’s breath into her face. An old priest offered her the flowers.

“Sister, please pray for his soul.”

Silently a tear fell. Her expression hardened and, with jittery movements, she accepted the white flowers. The flower’s meaning was death and sorrow. Her already stiff fingers clenched with force.

Staring blankly at the baroque Orthodox cathedral, she glared at the old priest. Petals wilted one by one under her furious grip.

“Let us lay down all worldly things and pray that he will enjoy everlasting life by the Lord’s side…”

“Am I out of my mind? For whose benefit?”

Seoryeong did not hide her reddened eyes.

“Who is supposed to be by whose side forever?”

“Oh my, sister…”

“No. Do not force me. Do not say such ominous, unlucky things.”

She passed the priest with a cold look, then turned back and flashed a fierce glare. Pointing to a photo pasted on a wall, she grit her teeth.

“That man will never go to the Lord.”

She spat the words out, each one deliberate.

“He cannot go. I will never allow it.”

She had kidnapped the deputy director of the National Intelligence Service and even messed with a Chinese fishing vessel. If it was to see Lee Wooshin again, she could reach for the highest heights and commit deeper sins. The priest’s wrinkled eyes clouded with pity. From his basket he offered her another sprig of baby’s breath and spoke.

“Deciding to want something is not faith.”

“…!”

“Pushing past what I cannot see as if crushing it is not faith, sister. Do not lean on feelings without evidence. That is nothing but nasty blindness.”

His calm voice carried a worried concern, but Seoryeong felt as if a knife had struck her. She forced her unwilling lips to move.

“A priest I met in Korea told me you do not need a reason to believe something.”

“That is an overly simplistic thing to say.”

“…”

“Think with common sense. How can you believe something without substance or evidence?”

“Are you insulting the priesthood by yourself?”

“No.”

He gave a weary laugh.

“Simple emotion cannot become faith. Repeating it only becomes self-brainwashing, the work of charlatans.”

Her father’s rambling voice flashed into her mind like an ambush.

‘I had no choice but to keep believing that I saved them. I told myself even now that I was protecting and guarding them. Even if it was fake, I had to live believing it. If I did not believe, I could not endure it.’

Her vision went dark all at once.

‘Maybe I was weakening like him, and I would eventually go mad. Maybe I would collapse to a point where I could not endure unless I believed, even if it was a lie. No… wasn’t I already in that state?’

‘No, I was different. I was different! How could Lee Wooshin be dead? I had only just begun to accept him, and now this had happened to him.’

Seoryeong swallowed the black doubt rolling over her like the soup she had forced down the previous night. Still, his lecturing tone made her gradually angrier.

It felt like he was denying the fragile belief that kept her upright, and she could not stop breathing hard. She tore the baby’s breath with her teeth.

“…!”

The fresh-flower scent mixed with bitterness, crushed and chewed in her mouth. Lee Wooshin was alive. That remained an unchanging fact and the only belief that must not change.