The Sun to my Moon

Chapter 34: Pacemaker

A few days later, Go Hae-ri was as good as new and had thrown herself wholeheartedly back into the case. She'd been tirelessly running down leads, trying to track down anything she could on Hong Mi-do and An Minguk. So far, however, she hadn't found anything solid.

"Dammit," she said, hanging up her phone. She looked over at Cha Dal-geon, who was reclining on her couch. "The State Records office has no birth certificate on file for a child born to Hong Mi-do. No marriage certificate for Hong Mi-do, either."

"Hmm."

"So we still have no idea of what his name is, or what his father's name might have been."

"That's too bad."

"I bet he had Ahn Minseok go into the system and erase any evidence of the birth certificate."

"Possible," Dal-geon agreed.

"But then what about his social security card?" Hae-ri mused aloud. "You need it when you're applying for a driver's license, and you often need it when you get a job for your form. You know, employee eligibility forms. And you need a birth certificate to get it."

"Majayo," he said absently.

"Maybe he kept it after he had Ahn Minseok destroy the original record of the birth certificate?"

"Maybe."

"Do you think there's a way to track down someone's birth certificate from their identity card?"

"Mollayo."

"Course, that's kind of a moot point, since we have no way of finding the social security card without the birth certificate," she reflected.

"I suppose."

"Maybe I'll put Snow White on it. She might be able to figure out if there's some way of tracking down an identity card if you know the person's mother's name."

"Snow White certainly is very industrious with such things," he agreed.

Hae-ri wasn't really listening. "Then again, he might have destroyed the identity card, too. Maybe he's been living under an assumed identity for so long he doesn't ever use his real name for anything."

"Or multiple identities," he put in.

"In which case it's going to be damn near impossible to find him," she groaned.

Dal-geon shrugged. "Well, we won't be any further from finding him than we are now."

Hae-ri got a stubborn set to her jaw. "Ani. He can't be that good. We have his mother's name. There has to be a way to track him down from that."

"We can only hope so," he said distractedly.

Hae-ri looked back at him. "Ya! What's with you? You don't seem that interested in this whole Hong Mi-do angle."

"I'm interested," he assured her.

"You've barely been paying attention to a word I've said."

"I'm listening. I'm just thinking about something."

"What's that?"

He shook his head. "I'll tell you in a minute. Please, carry on."

"I want to hear your take. What do you think about the mother?" she prompted him.

"I think she was depressed," he told her.

Hae-ri blinked. "Based on what?"

"You know that movie Gi Tae-ung told us about?"