The Handmaiden - Jensoo

Chapter 10 [FINALE]

Warm rays of sunlight peeked through the windows onto the Count's still body, enough to make him jolt awake, his face scratching harshly against the rough blue carpet.

Lifting his head a few inches off the ground, he wiped away the drool on the corner of his mouth and adjusted to his silent surroundings. In his peripheral vision, he could see two figures perched on the end of the bed. Turning fully to face them, he realised that it was two menacing Japanese men sat calmly as they watched him, one unravelling a katana sword from a cloth. The Count leaned back on his elbow as he lay in front of them, letting out an uncomfortable, awkward laugh, to which the two men replied the same, but with a sinister tone. The Count was bare from the waist down, lying like a submissive on the carpet in just his linen shirt and black socks.

He looked around quickly for his trousers, and asked the men with his sweetest voice, "Would you fetch those for me?"

***

Jennie sat in front of a camera in a pleasantly decorated room as Jisoo retouched some of the makeup on her face. Her hair was tucked into a deceivable man's wig; neatly styled, presentable, short and black. She wore a blue pinstriped suit, ready to take the photo as her family watched from behind the camera, where Jisoo went to join them.

The photographer, an old Japanese man, held up the flash device, "Okay, here we go. One, two, three!"

The Count sat squished between the two Japanese men in a car heading towards Kouzuki's estate. His hair was mussed and his suit was crumpled, yet he didn't have a care in the world anymore. The heiress had taken off, leaving him with nothing, and he decided he'd met his end now being forcefully taken by the two kidnappers. With his wrists tied firmly with rope, he reached into his suit pocket to retrieve his cigarette case, pulling out the three remaining white sticks and shoving them all in his mouth, and flicking the gold lighter to inhale the smoke heavily. Two blue sticks were left in the silver case.

Two faces frowned at him as they held their breath and wound down the windows, filtering out the excessive smoke. As the car made its way up the dirt trail beside the cliff's edge, the other men coughed and spluttered as they drowned in the horrible substance.

***

A magnifying glass was propped up at eye level as Gugai removed the Count's photo from his passport with a pocketknife, carefully sliding under the paper as not to damage it and picked it off the book with a pair of metal tweezers. He then proceeded to line up Jennie's disguise photo, now complete with a small moustache on her upper lip, onto the stencil of the official passport stamp and gently hammered in the pattern. They all watched over his shoulder as he perfectly placed the photo where the Count's was previously, not a single detailed neglected and where it seemed entirely legitimate.

'Respected Uncle, it always pained me to see you straining to speak flawless Japanese before the Count from Nagoya and even to quiver your voice like a nobleman. So I'm happy to inform you that you no longer need to do so. That man is the son of a Korean farmhand. Oh, did my gift arrive safely? Please tell this to my gift, in Korean. I'm afraid that in real life, no woman feels pleasure by being taken by force. But, for sending Jisoo out of all the girls in the world, I feel 'slightly' grateful.'

In the dank basement that occupied endless shelved jars, Kouzuki sat at a large wooden table alongside the Count. After losing his fortune of books for good, he abandoned the idea of being a nobleman. His grey hair, once neat and presentable, now stood up in random places and his facial hair, completely forgotten, was left to grow over. Wrapped in only a blanket with rags for trousers, he also abandoned all hope for himself and supposed it was karma for all those years.