Chapter 24.2

Chapter 24.2

Which meant this… waking up in Ham Yoehee’s body, crying over the death of a woman I’d only met a handful of times… it wasn’t me at all.

It had to be Ham Yoehee. This woman’s temperament. The longer I stayed in this body, the more the boundary between mind and flesh blurred.

Memories of Yoehee and memories of Geummi overlapped. Sometimes my mind and this body reacted differently to the same thing. These tears right now were probably because Ham Yoehee was the type to bawl over nothing.

I quickly wiped my eyes. Mourning is mourning, but I had far more pressing matters.

I picked up paper and pen and moved to a corner of the cell. I stared at the blank sheet for a long time, unable to figure out who I should even write to.

“…Huh?”

After a while, a single name surfaced.

Oh Myeong-ja.

No memories came with it, yet it felt familiar. Not my memory, so it had to be Yoehee’s. Maybe it was her mother.

Nothing to lose. And no matter how hard I tore through my mind, nothing else came. I pressed the paper to the wall and scribbled a simple message saying I was Ham Yoehee and asking the recipient to visit me, something harmless no matter who opened it.

I folded the paper neatly, slipped it into an envelope, and wrote “Oh Myeong-ja” in the recipient box. Then, to my surprise, my hand continued smoothly, writing the address that followed.

Cheongjin-gun, Sunam-myeon, Haesong-ri, Ban 7, No. 15.

Seeing the completed envelope made my heart pound strangely.

Why Cheongjin-gun? Was Ham Yoehee from around here? Then why had no one come to visit?

“……”

I didn’t know what kind of place this address was, and I didn’t know who “Oh Myeong-ja” was, but right now I needed to claw at any crack I could find. With that thought, I pressed the flap of the envelope closed, firm and tight.

I was brushing my hand over the envelope when the sound of a metal latch clanking open cut through the room, followed by the sense of someone entering. Before I even turned my head, a familiar voice reached my ear.

“7059, step outside.”

I looked over. Beyond the open barred door, Deputy Ki was standing there. I still couldn’t see his eyes beneath the visor of his cap, but it was clear he was looking straight at me.

It wasn’t infirmary cleaning day, and Saturdays had no morning labor.

I slid the envelope out of sight so he wouldn’t notice it, then got up and followed. As I crossed the cell, Yerai’s knife-sharp stare clung to me like she wanted to tear me apart on the spot.

I slipped on my shoes and stepped into the hallway. He shut the barred door behind me and moved ahead without a word, expecting me to follow. Since he was dragging me somewhere without so much as a hint, I hurried after him and opened my mouth.

“Why? Where are we going?”

Deputy Ki’s demeanor was completely impassive. A man who had always been like a wall now felt like reinforced steel, impossible to budge no matter how much you knocked. My stubborn side flared up, so I stopped asking and simply dragged my feet along behind his broad back.

He led me to the building where the workshop was.

For a moment, I wondered if he planned to do something to me. The thought flickered and died just as fast. At the very least, I had an unearned certainty that Deputy Ki wasn’t that kind of bastard.

But contrary to my confidence, he brought me into the laundry storage room where we’d had our secret meetings. Half disbelief, half a strange flutter because of the location, I felt a surge of confusion. He showed no such reaction. Instead, he jerked his chin toward a box in the corner of the room.

“…What is that?”

“Those are the defective items from 7059’s work quota.”

“…What?”

What kind of nonsense was that? I dragged the cardboard box over, crouched down, and rummaged through it.

“What’s defective? I put everything in straight.”

The waribashi looked perfectly fine no matter how I checked. Sliding wooden chopsticks into small white plastic sleeves printed with bamboo was such a simple task that there was barely room for error.

I sifted through the box but couldn’t find a single flaw. I lifted my head to question him again. The large man answered in the same flat tone as always.

“They say everything inside is in an unusable state.”

“…What?”

I grabbed any packet at random and pulled out the chopsticks. Each set held twenty pieces, and just like he said, about half of them had ends that were blackened or splintered.