Rabbit Hole

IV. Lee Hyejin

There was one thing a certain little boy always heard from his mother.

“Draw things that are beautiful.”

The mother took things for granted as a naive young girl, so she never was able to savor the small, beautiful moments in her life. Perhaps she wanted her son to become someone unlike his parents so she told him such things, but the child's view and standard for beauty had become twisted as he grew.

Sung Heejae sat in the middle of his atelier, once again admiring the look his mother had in passing through a painting. A work he made, and considered his masterpiece.

The only thing he deemed as his magnum opus yet.

Sung Heejae had always wondered why he was unable to create something as such again, even after all the years that had passed. The strokes he made in that certain painting had an obvious look of amateurity in it, yet it evoked far stronger feelings from within him whenever he stared at it, compared to his other works which only managed to make him remember the feeling of cutting the lives of those paintings’ subjects.

He didn't find them a single bit significant at all. They were all mediocre, much to his disappointment. All those canvases did was take up space in his studio, and he was beginning to get sick of them.

But there was something bigger bothering him at the moment.

It had turned out that his cousin had been forced to abuse a familiar, horrible drug. And to make matters worse, Min Yeonji found out an incriminating fact. Sung Heejae recalled what his acquaintance informed him.

– I think he was groomed. I overheard from a server in a bar she owns that she's older than she looks. Maybe as old as Yeongrae-oppa?

‘Ridiculous,’ he thought. Yet, it made sense.

With her youthful look from all the photos Heejae had seen of her, he couldn't believe she'd be in her thirties already. But one can't still deny the possibility. Not to mention Yoo Yoohyun's answers that one time. Heejae could tell there was more to the two's relationship, and he became more sure of his assumptions through Yeonji's findings.

“Haah…what a damn mess.”

So far, all of his murders didn't have a specific pattern to them like only killing women or killing with a symbolic meaning, which helped him be unable to be easily found out by authorities. But if there was a similarity between them, it was that he found them worthy to paint on a canvas or got in his way to an annoying degree.

And the latter was what Lee Hyejin was to Heejae at the moment. She was the reason a lot of his plans got delayed, making her a nuisance both to him and his uncle's family. A damn pest who couldn't keep to herself and didn't know her place. That's why Heejae made up his mind easily.

He stood up from the floor and went out, leaving his grisly paintings behind.

He had a favor to pay back.

So far, Yoo Gangcheol had already prepared everything he'd need, along with the place and procedures they should take after Heejae was done with his business. The only thing left to do now was to confirm the details about Hyejin, so the young man was on his way to meet up with Min Yeonji. They decided to rendezvous at their university, since he also had to hand over his thesis which would’ve almost passed the deadline if he had to stay at Yoohyun's house for a couple more days or so.

From his residence in Incheon, Heejae took a taxi to Incheon station Line 1. Compared to other residences in the area, his house definitely was a lot exceptional. Of course it would be that way, because it was given to him by a conglomerate's chairman. Heejae was aware how lucky he was to have been that person's grandson, so he made sure to return the favor whenever the opportunity arose.