207. Leave No Trace 5

Cheon Seong-beom expressed his apologies, saying that his curiosity had inconvenienced Yoon Tae-ha by making her come all this way. He seemed to have anticipated his grandson’s unfavorable reaction but didn’t care.

“Many interesting things happened while I was bedridden. I wanted to hear the story directly from you, rather than through others.”

“I was also bedridden for quite a long time. Chairman and I, we have quite a few things in common.”

Saying that, Yoon Tae-ha repeatedly opened and closed her right hand. Cheon Geon-young watched her actions with an indifferent expression. The movement was plausible. It seemed she had even grasped her minor habits.

While the two were deeply engaged in conversation, Cheon Geon-young excused himself and briefly left.

Entering indoors, he ignored the second floor, which was his grandfather’s space, and headed for the guest restroom. He closed the door, turned on the faucet to the coldest setting, and plunged his hands into the stream of water. He washed and rewashed his hands until he felt a numbing sensation in his fingers.

After compulsively lowering the temperature of his hands, he exited the restroom with an unconcerned expression. At that moment, Cheon Geon-young almost collided with an employee holding a new towel at the door.

“Oh, I’m sorry!”

She hastily bowed. Moving too quickly, the dry towel slipped from her hand. Cheon Geon-young bent down to pick it up and hand it to her. But he paused for a moment when he felt a hard object between the soft fabric.

“I’ll get a new towel. Please give it to me.”

The woman straightened up and looked at him with a resolute gaze. Cheon Geon-young naturally pulled out the thin storage device tucked between the towels. And pretending to adjust his sleeve, he slipped it into a small compartment attached to the lining of his suit sleeve. The space, designed for exchanging small items in addition to the pocket on the jacket waist, was put to good use.

“Here you go.”

As he politely handed over the towel, the woman rolled it up, confirmed that the item inside was gone, and then left.

Afterward, Cheon Geon-young, returning to his seat, noticed that the chair Bae Hee-joo frequently sat in had disappeared.

“...The eyebrows of the guys who hung out with me were always half-singed. When they didn’t have a lighter, everyone would gather around me and offer me cigarettes. I bet you could even make fireproof gloves out of singed eyebrow hair if you mishandle the fire control.”

It seemed the two had continued their conversation diligently while he was away. The woman sitting opposite burst into laughter at Cheon Seong-beom’s joke. Jokes about mistakes made when first manifesting abilities were a favorite topic of Cheon Seong-beom’s.

Cheon Geon-young, having returned, naturally joined the flow of the conversation. He also made eye contact several times with the woman imitating Yoon Tae-ha. He even told Cheon Seong-beom that he could call him anytime if he had something for him to do.

“Your eldest uncle is busy these days.”

Cheon Seong-beom reprimanded his grandson, his voice filled with a suppressed chuckle, at the sly tone.

Seated around the round table, the three enjoyed a peaceful afternoon. When it was time for Yoon Tae-ha to leave, Cheon Seong-beom suggested she take his car.

“Geon-young. You’ll have to see our guest off instead of this old man.”

“You don’t have to.”

She declined, but Cheon Geon-young complied with the request. They silently headed to the location where the car was waiting.

When the chauffeur opened the door, the woman got into the car with an abashed expression. Cheon Geon-young wanted to leave immediately, but the person who rolled down the window spoke to him, making him stand his ground.

“Mr. Cheon Geon-young.”

“I’m listening.”

“Honestly, I came because I was curious about you. Chairman said he’d let me meet Mr. Geon-young. I thought you wouldn’t meet me with various excuses unless it was a surprise visit.”

“Has your curiosity been satisfied?”

The woman smiled, her eyes crinkling.

“I think I’ll know after meeting you a few more times.”

“There will be opportunities.”

“I’ll be looking forward to it.”

Finally, the car carrying the woman departed. Only then did Cheon Geon-young loosen the necktie that was uncomfortably constricting his throat.

That day, upon returning home, he opened the storage device secretly given to him by the employee and checked its contents. As expected, it was something Bae Hee-joo had left behind. She seemed to have given instructions beforehand to deliver it to Cheon Geon-young if she disappeared.

The file she had written was a kind of logbook. From the first day she guided Chairman Cheon Seong-beom until recently, Bae Hee-joo had meticulously recorded his changes.

Being able to read memories through others’ dreams. That’s how Bae Hee-joo described her ability. She had written down what she saw in her dreams like this:

<...At some point, I started seeing an unknown woman crying and calling him ‘Father’. That’s strange. Did Cheon Seong-beom have a daughter I didn’t know about? What does it mean that ‘Dad took his daughter away’? I want to find that woman, but each time, I’m expelled from the dream without ever learning her name.>

After reading the log, Cheon Geon-young immediately contacted Kwon Hyuk. He wanted to find Bae Hee-joo. Kwon Hyuk ordered a search of all vehicles that had recently left Chairman Cheon’s mansion, and five hours later, he summoned Cheon Geon-young.

The place Cheon Geon-young and Changcheon headed to was a private property on the outskirts of Gyeonggi Province. Deep in the lush forest was a small house barely visible even with satellite confirmation. There were no private residences nearby.

On a dark night with no moon in sight, Cheon Geon-young set fire to the low mountain where Cheon Seong-beom’s Espers were densely guarding. Dry branches and leaves crackled, carrying embers with fierce speed. The fire, driven by will, was unstoppable.

Fire trucks didn’t come. The police didn’t come. Kwon Hyuk had temporarily blocked the communication network in that area, preventing the enemies from sending news outside.

Meanwhile, Cheon Geon-young walked through the flames and brought out the woman who had been imprisoned in the basement of the crumbling mansion. The thick locks melted like sugar in the heat, and the embers falling on his head were more harmless to him than snowflakes. His childhood memories, which had driven him to the fear of death, felt like nothing more than a mirage.

The rescued Bae Hee-joo made a terrified expression as she heard the screams of the Espers who had imprisoned her, dying at Changcheon’s hands. Cheon Geon-young said that none of them would be able to convey what had happened today to Chairman Cheon Seong-beom. Only then did she accept the water bottle Cheon Geon-young offered, her face much more relaxed.

The flames that had scorched the mountain to a reddish-black gradually subsided as the screams died down.

“Did you read it?”

Bae Hee-joo, watching the Esper guarding the mansion’s entrance being subdued, spoke.

“You must have read it if you were able to come here.”

“I read it.”

“Then you must know why you decided to help. You are no longer the family of the man I used to despise.”

Bae Hee-joo continued speaking in a terribly hoarse voice.

“The grandfather you remember might no longer exist in this world. Because the person inside Cheon Seong-beom’s body now is completely different. I wasn’t sure until recently, but just before he woke up, I heard someone calling a name in my dream.”

“Who is it?”

Bae Hee-joo, steadying her trembling breath, looked at the young man who was ready to hear any answer. The acrid smell emanating from the remnants of the fire filled the air around them. Bae Hee-joo’s thin lips struggled to part.

“Y-Yoon, Professor Yoon. Yoon Jung-hoon.”

As the man’s name came out, the subsiding flames flared up strongly for a moment.

“That man had been targeting Chairman Cheon for a long time. It’s definitely Yoon Jung-hoon. At first, it was brainwashing. He gave commands to the red-haired woman. He told her to brainwash Cheon Seong-beom and bring you back to his laboratory. That woman seemed willing to risk her life for Professor Yoon’s words... And it worked. It was a process of subtly implanting information into Cheon Seong-beom’s mind over a long period, telling him to trust Yoon Jung-hoon. But he wasn’t satisfied with brainwashing.”

Bae Hee-joo muttered deliriously, weaving together fragments of memories she had seen in her dreams. Her face was pale, like someone possessed by a ghost.

Just then, Kwon Hyuk, who had finished resolving the situation, approached from a distance. He too began listening to Bae Hee-joo’s story with a serious expression.

“Then he researched a method to transfer souls entirely. I know why he did it too. Yoon Jung-hoon was dying. He coveted an Esper’s body that could gain power from a guide. As an ordinary person, he couldn’t recover his health through any contact with a guide, but Espers... They’re different, aren’t they?”

For a moment, Bae Hee-joo hugged herself tightly with both arms. Cheon Geon-young got a blanket from a passing agent and draped it over her shoulders. Bae Hee-joo laughed hysterically, like someone out of their mind.

“Crazy bastard... He’s a crazy bastard. Who else would come up with the idea of changing bodies? An ordinary person stealing an Esper’s body for guiding.”

Kwon Hyuk’s face contorted in horror as he listened to her words. It was clearly a story he, who had lived his entire life with the limitations Espers had to endure, could not accept. Kwon Hyuk, unable to hold back, blurted out,

“There were rumors that Chairman Cheon Seong-beom had secretly invited guides to his mansion for several years. A man who only received public guiding from the Protection Bureau after his first wife died. It’s not surprising for an Esper to have hedonistic relationships with multiple guides, but everyone disbelieved that Cheon Seong-beom would do so, so it remained just a rumor. Can you confirm if that’s true?”

Bae Hee-joo, clutching the blanket tightly, laughed with a tear-streaked face. It was a laugh drenched in self-loathing and self-reproach.

“It’s true. You probably won’t find witnesses. He must have killed them all. And that wasn’t Cheon Seong-beom’s doing. It was Yoon Jung-hoon, completely intoxicated by guiding, who did it. The Chairman I served was not a man who would bring any woman other than his deceased wife into his bedroom.”

Kwon Hyuk, unable to overcome his disgust, covered his mouth with his hand. A high-ranking agent standing nearby rushed behind a still-burning tree and vomited.