“…Choo-ja.”

Choo-ja, her body crumpled as though in anguish, hugged Lee-yeon tightly.

“Lee-yeon, what happened?”

Choo-ja was agitated by the unprecedented situation, but Lee-yeon just buried her face into her shoulder without a word. She bit her lip and fought the urge to burst into tears. Something scary and hard to face was just around the corner. She hid her face deeper.

“You don’t have anyone to flirt with, so you’re using me, huh?” Despite her sharp words, Choo-ja patted Lee-yeon’s body which trembled even as she did so. “I heard that if it wasn’t for Chae-woo, you would have been in real trouble.”

“….”

Lee-yeon flinched at her words, but the older woman didn’t notice a thing.

Meanwhile, Chae-woo gazed numbly at Lee-yeon, who refused to look at him. His facade of kindness and deceit had vanished entirely. In that instant, he crushed the bottle of saline in his and it burst like a carton of milk.

* * *

The evaluation period is now over.

It was Lee-yeon who passed the third evaluation, just as he’d said.

Lee-yeon slept in a daze all the way back from the mountain.

As Lee-yeon made the journey back down the mountain, her mind was consumed with a hazy fog. But upon her return, she put on a brave face, pretending as if nothing had changed between her and Chae-woo. She smiled and laughed, going through the motions, even though her heart felt heavy.

Chase-woo, too, seemed to have returned to his old self, his strange and manipulative actions and words now a distant memory. All in all, it was as if the entire ordeal had been nothing more than a fleeting nightmare. A plausible peace began to fill the gap between them.

“Director! Are you listening to me?” Dong-mi’s voice interrupted Lee-yeon’s thoughts, pulling her back to the present.

They were sitting around a small tea table in the front yard of the house, the shade providing a welcomed relief from the hot sun. The ice in their glasses clattered as Dong-mi stirred her iced tea with her straw. Lee-yeon quickly shook off her thoughts and wrapped both hands around her own glass, the coldness bringing her back to her senses.

“I’m sorry. It must be the heat,” Lee-yeon apologized, “Please continue.”

Even as she said this, she was studying Dong-mi’s complexion.

On this relaxed Sunday afternoon, while Chae-woo was gone grocery shopping, Dong-mi had dropped by, her face stunned for some reason. Her usually calm and cold friend looked as thin and fragile as a broken leaf, a dull look in her eyes.

“It’s… It’s so hard to put into to words, I feel like I’m going crazy…” Dong-mi sighed deeply and wrapped her hands around her head in distress.

“My man…, doesn’t seem like himself.”

“…What?”

Lee-yeon’s fingers, which had been wiping away the water droplets from the surface of her glass, froze.

“The guy I’m harassing, no, I’m attacking, no, I’m seeing.”

“You can just say you like him…”

“I can’t stand getting emotional.”

Dong-mi scratched her forearm as her earlobes turned red.

It was nothing Lee-yeon hadn’t heard before. They’re not dating, but Joo Dong-mi has been seeing a guy. However, as she gripped her phone tightly in her hand, checking it frequently, looking nervous and restless, Lee-yeon had no choice but to lend an ear to her ranting.

“Well…”

Suddenly, Dong-mi looked around nervously and lowered her voice. It was as if she was afraid someone might overhear.

“He was burying someone.”

“…!” Lee-yeon felt her heart drop. It was difficult to maintain her composure, but she managed to swallow the lump in her throat.

“At first I thought it was a ghost. Did I missee? You and I, we’re hikers, so we know. There are tons of ghosts in the mountains! Furthermore, that mountain is the site of a major accident, so for a while I tried to convince myself that something terrible latched onto me and it was all just a big misunderstanding……!”

Dong-mi’s desperately scrunched up expression gradually subsided as if she were regaining her calm.

“But, I’m not an idiot.”

“……!”

Lee-yeon exhaled quickly and lowered her gaze.

“He was really burying someone. My man, the man I slept with……!”

“…….”

“What am I going to do, Director?”

Lee-yeon drank the iced tea she still had not touched. It felt like something was suck in te pit of her stomach and she had troubling swallowing her tea. Her heart was pounding and she felt dizzy.

“The reason I’m telling you all this is……”

Lee-yeon subconsciously chewed her lip, unsure of what to say or do to help her friend.

“At that mountain. You know the guy who looked like Godzilla with a loud squeaky voice, who looked like your family.”

“Oh, yes. My cousin.”

“Yes, the Godzilla. He was the one my man was burying.”