Deceit | Vincenzo Kdrama | Jang Han Seok

Chapter 9

Kim Solmee was the personification of bad choices. 

Bad choices had led her to drugs in her youth. 

Bad choices had  landed her in the clutches of Choi Myunghee.

Bad choices had made her kill a man. (Well multiple men and a few women, but still bad choices.)

Her latest bad choice: getting drunk enough to think bringing Jun Woo back to her bed again was a good idea.

As his conversation veered more into interrogative territory during their date, she had thought that if she plied him with enough alcohol he would shut up, but as they both got drunker his questions became even more prying. 

Her last resort was to distract him and keep him quiet using other means, and so she had climbed in his lap and pressed her mouth to his and told him to come back to her place.

A necessary sacrifice at the time, but now a regrettable one.

She wakes before him this time, and glances at his sleeping face with a grimace. Maybe it was time for her to quit drinking.  Her drunken decisions had never done her any favours. 

With a huff she stretches out her limbs and heads for the shower.

He is still sleeping when she returns to the room wrapped in a towel with damp hair dripping down her shoulders.

She has a sneaking suspicion that he is pretending to still be asleep. But she had no time to indulge him as there were more pressing matters. There was only a small window of opportunity for her to complete Choi Myunghee's job.

She heads to her walk in wardrobe and fishes out a sports bra, running shorts and jacket. After drying off her hair she ties it in a ponytail, pulls on a pair of black running gloves and then heads to the kitchen to prepare a water bottle. The key weapon for her calculated plan.

She leaves a note for Jun woo telling him she's going for a run and to be gone by the time she gets back, and then slips into her running shoes, grabs her phone and heads out the door.

As soon as he hears the door shut he opens his eyes.

He find's the note on the pillow beside him and laughs. 

After getting dressed, he decides to search the room again for that mysterious box. Out of interest, he checks under the pillows first though and notices her gun had gone.

Had she relocated it or taken it with her?

He supposed he'd find out by looking around a little.

He doesn't find her gun but he finds the box when he searches her walk in wardrobe, it was hidden away quite cleverly actually inside one of the many shoeboxes she had stacked inside.

Inside the box the first thing he saw was a small red leather diary the size of his palm. It was padlocked with the name on the front scribbled out. He picks it up to examine, testing the strength of the lock by pulling it. He stops and thinks. 

He could easily snap it off but then she'd know someone had looked at it. Was there a key?
He continues to examine the box but doesn't find one. It must be somewhere close by. She certainly didn't keep it on her from what he remembered when undressing her though.

He pulls the cover away from the pages as much as he was able to, to see if he could make out any words, and a small folded piece of paper falls out.

He unfolds the piece of paper and frowns. It was a drawing made by a child, with horrific anatomy and a few too many legs. The only thing that actually looked normal was the flowers, despite the fact that the scale of them was a little off and they were almost double the size of the boy and the girl in the picture.

The girl must have been Solmee, but who was the boy?

Did she have a brother?

He didn't want to push his luck staying for too long trying to find it, so he slips the diary into his jacket pocket. If she found out it had been taken and mentioned it he could always have Han Seo take the blame since Han Seo frequented her house.

Speaking of his brother, he decided he'd give him a call and have breakfast with him, he might know a thing or two.

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 Solmee was 18 when she first came across Choi Myunghee. 

She snaked her arm upwards, curling her wrists and intertwining her fingers until her joints clicked.

Rolling her shoulders she picked up a cloth and wiped down the countertop as another shaky drunken hand spilled the majority of their martini.

It wasn't long left until her shift was over, then she could finally get out of this hell hole, get out of this dress that was both too tight and too short, smoke some cigarettes and maybe go to a party and get high.

Despite it's luxe dress code, the club was the same as any other, booze, drugs, money everything for the depraved to indulge in. The only difference was that this club catered to the cities elite. After work they would all gather, congressmen, lawyers, doctors, prosecutors, chaebols, to drink and gamble away their money with a pretty underage girl serving them drinks and another sitting on their lap.

As long as she batted her eyelashes and smiled and laughed on cue, they would give her whatever she wanted, money, drugs, pretty jewels. It had been fun at first, but she'd been here for several months now and the excitement had faded, like a normal 9-5 job it had become monotonous, she was bored of talking to the same old men over and over again pretending she was interested in their complicated marriages and schemes for more promotions and power.

As the club hired new, younger girls she was no longer a favourite, stuck behind the bar now instead of serving tables. She didn't like not being wanted. So she had resolved to find a way out.

Then she heard Choi Myunghee mutter under her breath as she sipped from a glass of whiskey at the bar.

"Aish. If I could kill that bastard it would solve all my problems."

The bastard in question had been a prosecutor from Choi Myunghee's department, and he had spent the whole evening whilst the team drank and gambled, criticizing her for simply being female (and not even a pretty or feminine one at that.) From what Solmee had gathered, the man had gotten the promotion Myunghee had wanted, and kept going on and on about how superior he was to the woman. 

Solmee had expected a fight from the way Choi Myunghee had looked at the man, and was disappointed when the woman just laughed and downed her drink, beating him at a hand of blackjack. All night Solmee had been thinking, and she decided Choi Myunghee would be her way out.

Choi Myunghee was just about to leave for the night when Solmee approached. "I can help you."

Solmee said to her, the woman had looked her up and down and laughed. 

2 days later Choi Myunghee had heard the news; Prosecutor Ko had been found dead. He had been at a restaurant with a few friends, and left them after a few beers to relieve his bladder, after 15 minutes of him entering the restroom another customer had went in and found the man dead, lying on the floor with his eyes frozen in terror, hands still covered in soap and bathroom tap still running. CCTV hadn't shown anyone else enter or leave in the time between him entering and being found.

Later that night Choi Myunghee returned to the club looking for the girl.

"How did you do it?" She asked. Solmee had played dumb and shook her head. "Do what?" 

Myunghee knew it had been her.

There had been no proof, nothing to trace back to the girl, but her gut feeling was absolutely certain. 

By the end of the night the shift Solmee had been working for the club was her last, and Choi Myunghee had become her new employer.

Solmee remembered what the woman had said to her. "Any girl working at that club could have given me information or exposed a prosecutors dirty deeds for the right price, do you know why I chose you?"

"Because you think I killed that man?"

Myunghee had smiled. "Because I can't prove you killed that man."
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Han Seo had arrived at his brothers apartment to find him not there. He waited anxiously, alternating between sitting and standing, whilst the staff worked in the kitchen preparing breakfast. Once the table was set and everything was plated up they had left, and Han Seok was still nowhere to be seen. 

5 minutes later Han Seok arrived.

"Sir." Han Seo sprang to his feet. 

He noticed his brother wearing the same clothes he had left in yesterday.

Han Seok winked at him, slapping his back as he said. "Sorry i'm late, had a long night."

Han Seo clenched his teeth.

"You waited for me to get here before eating. Good." Han Seok settles into a chair.

"Come on then lets eat, i'm starving."

"Ah yes, sir." Han Seo nods sitting in the chair opposite and picking up his chopsticks.

Han Seok, swallows a spoonful of soup before turning to his little brother.

"Come on, aren't you going to ask me about my date?"

Han Seo swallowed. He didn't want to know. "How-how was your date?"

Han Seok smiled. "You know I think Solmee really likes me. Do you think I should ask her to be my girlfriend?"

Han Seo chokes on his soup. Solmee doesn't do relationships. She wouldn't say yes. Would she?

He didn't doubt Solmee, but his brother was infuriatingly charming. One of the reasons why he got away with so much, like literal murder.

"Anyway, did Solmee ever tell you about a brother?" Han Seok asks through a mouthful of rice, raising an eyebrow.

"Brother?" Had she mentioned something to Han Seok about her brother? He thought he was the only one she had told. He shakes his head. "She never said anything about a brother."

Han Seok narrowed his eyes. "You're friends but she never told you about her family?"

She had mentioned a brother, never a name but all she'd said to him was that when she was younger her brother had abandoned her. 

"She, she never talked about them."

Han Seok rolls his tongue in his mouth, so Chayoung and Han Seo didn't really know anything about her either?

It was odd. More than odd.

"Did you tell her about your family Han Seo?" He asked with a warning. Had Han Seo mentioned all the things he had done, the schoolmates he had killed or his father?

With wide eyes Han Seo shook his head.

He had told Solmee, but he couldn't let Han Seok know that, not if he wanted her to be safe.

"Of-of course not sir, our family matters are private."

His brother nods pleased, and Han Seo lets out a quiet breath of relief.

Han Seok reaches into his jacket pocket with a grin that makes Han Seo uncomfortable. "I wonder what interesting secrets are in here." He smirks at his brothers panicked expression as he waves the small red book. The lock jingles as he shakes it. 

"Aren't you curious too? Don't you want to know if Solmee's written anything about you in here?"

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Solmee arrives at the park. It wasn't densely populated, but there were just enough people so that she wouldn't look out of place and just enough that she wouldn't be focused on.

There were a few other people jogging, some people walking their dogs, a woman with a child in a stroller, a group of female students doing yoga on the grass and some kids playing football.

Solmee finds her target. 

Another prosecutor that had rubbed Choi Myunghee up the wrong way. He was pretending to be resting on the bench near the girls yoga class, exactly were Choi Myunghee had said he would be. Every Tuesday when the classes were held he would go to the park to leer at the young girls. Pretending to be an exemplar of health by going for "Morning exercise." Really he was just a pervert.

Solmee loosens her shoelace, unzips her jacket to show off her cleavage and makes her way over to his direction in a casual unsuspecting jog.

"Your shoelace is undone, be careful or you'll trip."

Solmee stop and smiles. "Oh you're right!" 

She places her foot on the bench, stretching her leg in front of him. As he looks at her bare calf she places her water bottle down next to his. 

Myunghee had told her that Prosecutor Baek was very particular about the brand of water he used, he would never drink any other brand. So Solmee had made sure the bottle of water she used was his favourite kind.

She bends her knee to her chest, pushing her cleavage up as she ties her lace into a bow.

Prosecutor Baek reaches for a bottle of water, watching her and distractedly picking up hers. 

Solmee stands upright, grabbing his water bottle. "Enjoy your day!" She smiles at him and waves as she jogs off around the park.

In the distance she can hear the girls Yoga class screaming.

By the time Solmee reaches the hospital for her shift, the Prosecutor was already dead in the morgue.

Myunghee had the toxicologist on her payroll, so no trace of poison would be found. It would simply be and accidental death from choking on his water. The perfect kind of stupid death Choi Myunghee would get a giggle from.

During the beginning of her hospital shift Han Seo calls Solmee. "Can we meet after you finish work?" He sounds troubled, so Solmee immediately agrees.

"Of course. Is everything alright?"

"Call me when you finish and i'll pick you up."

When Solmee heads to the hospital Reception to clock out, she sees a familiar suited figure waiting for her. 

"Han Seo, I know you hate hospitals, you should have waited in the car." She sighs as she approaches and he jumps up from the chair he had been waiting in, grabbing her hand and pulling her to the car park. "What's wrong? Why are you so antsy?"

He waits until they're both in the car before he turns to her. 

"Your date..." He starts, but trails off unsure how to approach the topic.

Solmee remembers absentmindedly  that she hadn't responded to any of Jun Woo's texts. He'd been texting her almost every hour.

"You wanted to meet to ask how my date went?." She rolls her eyes. "It was just like any other date, nothing special-"

"-He's been lying to you." He blurts out. Solmee stops.

"Jun Woo's not his real name." 

Solmee blinks, "It's not?" 

Han Seo wears a grim expression, and his voice becomes a whisper, almost as if he was afraid of someone overhearing. "His real name is Jang Han Seok."

"Jang Han Seok." Solmee repeats slowly. "As in your brother?"

Han Seo gives a sharp nod.

Solmee is silent for a while.

"I slept with him. Twice." She'd slept with Han Seo's asshole brother that had abused him for years. She looks at him through the reflection of the car window at her side, not wanting to look at him directly. "Please don't be angry at me."

True he didn't liked the fact that she'd been with his brother, and he had every right to be angry.

He sighs. "I'm not."

Another sigh.

"Don't see him again, I don't want him to hurt you."

"Maybe I'll hurt him first." She grins. She's relieved he isn't angry with her.

Han Seo still looks troubled. "He's dangerous Solmee, don't do anything to make him angry." He grabs her hands and looks at her with pleading eyes. "Please, I want you to be safe."

That look makes her chest itchy. "Alright. I won't date him anymore." She promises.

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A/N: So we got some sneaky Solmee this chapter, doing some naughty stuff. 

Do you think the diary Junwoo found is Solmee's ? What do you think is in it? Do you think Solmee will notice it missing?

And Han Seo told Solmee who Jun Woo really is, how do you expect their next confrontation will go?

So the Vincenzo kdrama is finally over, anyone else feel like the last episode was a bit lacklustre compared to the rest of the series? And not just because of that certain scene which shall not be spoken of. Don't get me wrong the way Han Seok and Myunghee met their end was so satisfying and perfect for their character but idk the rest of it felt a little off.

Hope you enjoyed this chapter, till next time my loves<3