'Golden Mary'

Part 36

Seohyun raised her eyes to glanced at the house she couldn't see before nodding and wondered if there was a reason why he was so cautious. She had suggested a quiet place like a coffee shop, but Hong Chong Il had said he wanted somewhere more private to talk. At the end, they found themselves a special room at the public library where a row of desks sat parallel to one another. A white bookshelf sat in the middle of the back wall and every special tag in the room had acrylic on them. A room for the blind, she supposed.

The room was particularly tiny, a perfectly square sized room with poor light seeping in from outside. Seohyun found out later that it was because a large tree shaded the window from the hot sun. Hong Chong Il decided to leave the lights off and walked to a desk in the middle of the room. Dragging a random chair over, Seohyun took a seat across from him.

"Why are you looking for me?" Hong Chong Il asked, his tired voice sounding as if he'd given up on any chance of life.

"By me saying government, do you understand what I'm going to ask?"

He opened his mouth to speak but retreated back into the shadows by shutting them.

"Noh Ki Young's left hand man," Seohyun said slowly, "right?"

He averted his eyes as if guilty.

"I heard from Noh Ki Young's butler that you've been dismissed." Seohyun told. "May I ask why?"

A long moment of silence followed. Seohyun realized he was having a hard time releasing the truth.

With a sigh she leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms, "I'm not a cop, Hong Chong Il. I'm an agent, here to find something valuable. My partner and I are going to set things right. It's important I get your cooperation. After all, because of you Luhan has become involved."

His eyes shot over at her.

"Ring a bell?" Seohyun smirked before leaning forward. "I heard that you and Luhan have been in contact when he went overseas to study. Do you know that he's come back?"

Hong Chong Il's eyes went deathly wide and it honestly shocked Seohyun to see it do so. Was it wrong of her to bring it up?

"No!" he sprang to his feet. "Was that why he stopped writing me? No! He can't be back! They're going to kill him!"

Seohyun glanced up at him, "Who?"

"Where is he? Luhan, where is he!?"

"Would you kindly sit down first?" Seohyun questioned, a murderous edge to her voice.

He glanced at her with a glint of fear in his eyes before sitting back down uncomfortably. Tapping her fingers on her arms Seohyun tilted her head back slightly.

"So that we're on the same wavelength, I need more details." Seohyun told. "What e-mails were you sending back and forth? What were you talking about? What did you say that made someone such as Luhan come running back to Korea? Who's going to kill him?"

Hong Chong Il crouched over and seeing him do so was scary indeed. Seohyun pursed her lips. He ran his eyes back and forth from side to side repeatedly. He really looked crazy and mentally disabled. What a sight for someone who used to be Noh Ki Young's left hand man. Just what had happened to him?

"They're watching." He mumbled. "They're going to know that I met with you, a woman."

Seohyun turned to look around the room feeling the wrong kind of paranoid. He wasn't talking about ghosts, she had to tell herself. She twisted her neck to glance at the window. Surely, no one was standing outside the window. No one had followed them in.