LIGHTNOVELONLINE Chapter 145: Vicious Murder (3)
Chapter 145 < Vicious Murder (3) >
“If you’re curious, why don’t you ask him yourself…”
Yoo Yeon Seo frowned as she heard the whole story. She swallowed the words that Cha Yun-ho wouldn’t get a straight answer from the director even if he asked.
“Tsk, how annoying.”
He muttered. He didn’t need this emotion for his upcoming acting.
“Don’t go if grandfather calls you again.”
“Why? He looked happy to see you.”
Yoo Yeon Seo stared at Cha Yun-ho without a word.
“Yes.”
His expression didn’t change, but he felt scared somehow. He nodded his head at her unapproachable aura.
Yoo Yeon Seo sighed as she watched Cha Yun-ho distance himself like a runaway. She was being generous because he did it out of goodwill without taking the reward from grandfather. She got up from her seat and sat next to Kang Cheon-hee, who was sitting far away.
“We were in the same class, right?”
“Yes… Thank you for that time. How can I repay you…”
“I don’t remember what I did… I’ll just take your thanks for now.”
Yoo Yeon Seo brushed it off and looked at the script in Kang Cheon-hee’s hand. The script was tattered and full of scribbles, as if he had looked at it countless times.
“Hey, Park Ji-woo, do you want to practice your lines?”
They were the same age in real life and in the drama. It was better to communicate through the work than to make small talk. His eyes changed at her words.
***
“Grandfather! I’m leaving!”
“Oh, oh… Come back soon.”
Hwang Min-jae shouted. Hwang Dae-sik hesitated and greeted him, still feeling awkward.
But his grandson’s outfit was strange as he was about to leave the house. The new semester had started, but the weather was still midwinter. Hwang Dae-sik eventually stopped him.
“Wait, don’t you have any other clothes?”
“Ah… I don’t feel the cold much. I think I’m going to be late.”
He scratched the back of his head, feeling embarrassed, and hurriedly left the neighborhood, using being late as an excuse.
“…It’s still cold.”
He always wore the same clothes. He didn’t want to give him any affection, but he felt sorry for him wearing a thin layer of clothing alone in the winter.
So Hwang Dae-sik decided to take the welfare benefits that he had refused to accept even though he knew about them. But the answer he got was cold.
“You don’t meet the criteria, sir.”
“Excuse me?”
Was it because he had a criminal record? He thought he had seen it somewhere… But the answer he got was unexpected.
“You have someone who is obligated to support you, so you can’t do it.”
“Excuse me?”
The old man kept asking the same question, and the staff sighed softly and handed him a paper.
“Here, Hwang Sun-hye.”
There was a strange name written at the end of the pen. It was the name of his daughter who ran away from home, saying that she was sick of living in a crumbling house and that her brother, who was a lunatic, was annoying. He didn’t know if she was alive or dead, since he had no contact with her.
“But… She doesn’t contact me.”
“I’m sorry, but we can’t help you.”
“No, she never supported me…”
“I’m sorry. That’s what the law says.”
“No, wait a minute. Then there’s no money I can get…”
“Yes, next please!”
The staff repeated that it was impossible like a parrot and gave up on him. Hwang Dae-sik was pushed aside by the next person and stood there for a long time before giving up.
‘He didn’t have any decent clothes…’
He kept thinking about it, and Hwang Dae-sik decided to make money with his own hands. It was the moment when Hwang Dae-sik, who had been living aimlessly after being released, regained his motivation one by one.
Meanwhile, Hwang Min-jae, who transferred to the school, attracted the attention of all the students in the class.
“Wow, what’s that? He’s handsome.”
“Is it common for a senior to transfer?”
“He’s so tall.”
[Even like this, your face doesn’t look crushed, Yeon-seo.]
The director said as he looked at Yoo Yeon Seo in a uniform. She had lost weight, bent her posture, and lowered her bangs to cover her eyes, but her natural face still made her stand out.
[Then let’s change the character setting a bit, it won’t affect the story anyway.]
According to the original setting, Hwang Min-jae was a common high school student that could be seen anywhere. He was ostracized because of his gloomy and insecure behavior.
But the actor’s body was so handsome that it was better to trigger the jealousy of his classmates. And he suppressed his depressed and passive personality that he set up in the beginning and filled the empty space with a bully.
“Why do you have to do the work?”
“I have to do it too.”
“Don’t push me. I’m fine.”
“I’m not fine.”
And one of the classmates who was displeased with the attention-grabbing Hwang Min-jae saw him pushing the rear car of Hwang Dae-sik, who was picking up trash, while he was handing out flyers on the street.
“Huh? That person…”
“Why? Mom, do you know that grandfather?”
“He’s famous in this neighborhood. He must have been released.”
“Released?”
The mother bit her tongue because of the hard situation, but the student who caught the opportunity laughed maliciously. He picked on Hwang Min-jae at school the next day.
“Hey, your grandfather is a murderer.”
“What?”
“This is, your house’s story.”
The phone that the other person handed over had contents that he couldn’t have imagined.
A 70-year-old man who killed his mentally ill son
He killed his son who suffered from schizophrenia… He tried to commit suicide with his partner because of financial difficulties
“Wow, I know this incident.”
“That was Hwang Min-jae’s grandfather?”
“Then you live with the person who killed your dad? You have a lot of guts.”
“Hey, stop it.”
The students who were buzzing either stopped him or watched. Hwang Min-jae slowly read the article on the phone. He had heard the rumors from the people in the neighborhood. They all said it was hard and pitiful. So he thought it was nothing.
Hwang Min-jae choked up. So what do you want me to do? I have no one to rely on but my grandfather.
“But how do you know my grandfather? Are you a beggar too?”
“What?”
“If you know that rumor, you must live in the beggar’s neighborhood. Like me.”
“Pfft!”
At that remark, a student who was lying down at the end of the corner burst into laughter. The students’ eyes turned to him.
“Kheuk… Puhahaha!”
The student who was laughing and snorting raised his head. It was the first appearance of Park Ji-woo, the role that Kang Cheon-hee played.
“He’s funny. Stop it.”
“What are you?”
“This guy is a jerk even if you help him.”
Park Ji-woo became the only existence that Hwang Min-jae could call a friend and peeled off the blind affection he had for his family.
“What are you doing here again?”
That’s how the happening at school ended and Hwang Min-jae looked for his grandfather when he had nothing to do. And he pushed the rear car that he was driving. Hwang Dae-sik was only annoyed by that. But he gradually found a smile on his lips as his grandson approached him warmly.
“Why did you come out again when you should study at home?”
“What’s the point of studying, I can’t go to college anyway.”
He looked at his grandfather’s small back.
‘Why did he do that?’
He was calm at the time, but he kept thinking about what happened at school.
“But… I heard something weird at school.”
Hwang Dae-sik stopped walking. And Hwang Min-jae didn’t say anything more. It wasn’t a question that he wanted an answer to.
You don’t know unless you experience it. The situation where the hospital doesn’t admit you because you’re a severe patient, the sorrow that the state doesn’t support you. He thought he might as well die than live like this ten times a day.
But if he left like that, how would his son live without him… He thought about it and spent the same day. It took a long time for him to come to the conclusion that he would just go together.
“Living isn’t that great.”
He wanted to escape to death, but what came back was his son’s cold corpse. The bitter reality that he killed his child.
“Then how are you now?”
“…”
Hwang Daesik did not answer.
The old man who had been picking up trash while walking along the road muttered quietly to his grandson who was supporting him from behind.
“Don’t expect too much from me.”
“…I’ll take care of myself.”
He got a gruff reply instead of the one he had hoped for.
His mother had never given up on him despite their dire situation. But his grandfather in front of him looked like he would fly away with a gust of wind. Hwang Minjae shook his head vigorously to shake off that thought and forced a smile.
“Grandpa. Are you done with work? I’m hungry.”
“Hungry? Then…”
“Please buy me that.”
He pointed at a snack cart at the end of his finger. He ate fish cake skewers and tteokbokki that he couldn’t afford back then with his grandfather side by side. A smile appeared on Hwang Minjae’s gloomy face.
“Grandpa! Can we try the doll machine?”
“How do you do that?”
“Watch this.”
The grandson stood in front of the doll machine for a while. He felt sorry when he saw the doll fall at the last moment, and he was very happy when he finally got one.
And the cheerful scene was for the upcoming tragedy.
****
“Did you catch a cold? You were coughing.”
“I guess so.”
Yoo Yeon Seo was sitting next to Park Seunghwan, who was getting his makeup done for a long time, and looking at the script.
He was actually fine. It was just that Hwang Minjae in the work had a distorted attachment to his family, and that made him think of another family, and that resulted in a bloody outcome.
“How do you think our movie will do?”
“…Critics might like it, I guess?”
“Jaeho said he’s training to get used to the hate comments that say he’s already got the art disease.”
“What kind of training is that?”
Yoo Yeon Seo smiled faintly. The flow of ‘Profane Murder’ was calm. It captured the situation of Hwang Daesik, who was pushed to the edge of the cliff, as calmly as possible. Yoo Yeon Seo didn’t hope for a box office hit either. He just thought it would be nice to have something like this in his filmography.
“Isn’t it hard to do makeup and act?”
“It’s hard. I did it for nothing.”
Park Seunghwan acted spoiled, but Yoo Yeon Seo was quite impressed. He acted like an old man without any awkwardness despite the suffocating makeup. He calmly maintained the bent posture, and he even sounded like he had a cold on purpose because of the acting.
“What do you think of Hwang Daesik?”
“Well, I don’t disagree with him.”
He knows that there is such a thing as an inevitable choice. Anyone would have thought that way in Hwang Daesik’s situation.
“What about you?”
“Me?”
What is he talking about? He turned his head and swallowed his breath at Park Seunghwan’s gaze. He meant Yoo Yeon Seo and Lee Hee Seo, not Hwang Minjae and Hwang Daesik. Yoo Yeon Seo let out a sigh.
“I didn’t expect you to bring that up…”
Her story was a taboo among the people around him. They all just looked at him, but no one ever said it out loud. Park Seunghwan was the first one to do so. Maybe if the question was before 2018, he would have thrown something at him.
“We’re close enough to talk about this.”
“…I don’t know.”
He was sure of the culprit now. He also saw it on video. But he couldn’t talk about it, so he brought up the emotions he had in the past.
“I couldn’t hold on to her in the end. Minjae was the same, right?”
When he remembered the feelings he had then, he couldn’t help but choke up. Yoo Yeon Seo instinctively kept that emotion. The next scene was him holding on to Hwang Daesik and wailing.
Park Seunghwan saw that and smiled satisfied.
“Let’s go, we’re ready.”
“…Yes.”
Yoo Yeon Seo followed him, realizing too late that it was a question to bring out the emotion of the other actor.