Heart of Ice

Haein

Slightly trembling, Yewon continued reading the journal. She read about Soonyoung's escapades with women she didn't care about, in gross detail that she didn't need to know. She just kept holding on to the hope that maybe, just maybe, Mingyu's story would appear.

It didn't appear.

She held the diary close to her chest, gulped and let her thoughts settle and draws conclusions from what she read.

The facts were that Soonyoung explicitly asked her to read the diary, and explicitly asked her to read Mingyu's part. There was no Mingyu, but there was that one story that resembled Mingyu's to an alarming degree.

Soonyoung did find someone covered in blood in the hallways the night of Jeonghan's murder. And Soonyoung did drag this person into his room. But that person was not Mingyu. It was never Mingyu; it was Haein. Soonyoung wanted her to know that.

It all suddenly clicked. Soonyoung's strange story about Mingyu suddenly made sense; Soonyoung was never interested in men, and he didn't just disregard the blood when he saw it. The fact that it was a woman that was covered in blood gave him a very convincing pretense.

Soonyoung had assumed that it was Haein's own menstrual blood. But it wasn't Haein's blood, was it? It was Jeonghan's. Soonyoung had just been under the mistaken impression that it was hers, which is why he ignored it.

The whole image was terrifying, and Yewon began to tremble as she considered it. She couldn't even reason her way through the mess of her thoughts because she was so petrified by them.

She drew back slightly and fell into this state of denial. No, no. Maybe it was Haein's blood. Maybe Yewon was reading this wrong and coming to erroneous conclusions. It didn't make sense for Haein to have killed Jeonghan; that fact simply did not align with everything else that Yewon knew about her.

The denial calmed her down a little. She made herself believe that this was all a mistaken impression, and that the resemblance between Haein's story (that Soonyoung had written) and Mingyu's story (that Soonyoung had told her) was just a crazy coincidence. Blood was probably just a kink of Soonyoung's that just so happened to be common between Mingyu and Haein.

But the more that she sat on this new information, the harder it was for her to maintain that this was all a coincidence. It couldn't be a coincidence; this was what it was: Haein was the killer.

For the first time in a very long time, Yewon felt so alone. Someone that Yewon had trusted and loved for so long turned out to be like this, and it took such a toll on her.

Was there no one who was genuine around her? Was there no one she could trust?

It was a sleepless night of jumbled thoughts as she processed and came to terms with what she had found out. She had so many questions and so much she wished to understand. Why did Haein do it? What was Mingyu's role in this? And why did Soonyoung lie to protect her?

But the one question that troubled her most of all was: what was she supposed to do with this new information?

The one thing that she knew she couldn't do was face Haein directly. The thought of that woman now sent shivers down Yewon's spine: a woman who had the heart to kill Jeonghan in that brutal way, so much so that she was covered in blood. A woman who was able to seduce another man and sleep with him not long after committing that murder. A woman who was able to fool Yewon for as long as she knew her.

Yewon had always known that Haein was far too intelligent to be just a maid. Haein also had too many political convictions to be a maid. Haein was with the resistance against the war, like Wonwoo... and also like Mingyu.