TRUTH?

2012, July, Damyang.

The rain poured heavily, flooding the bamboo forest. A luxury car was parked outside the entrance of an old house, water dripping from its glass windows. A man in a soaked raincoat knocked on the wooden door three times. The door opened, and a man neatly dressed in formals emerged from inside the house.

"Deposit the cheque in your bank account," Kang Minseok said, handing over a cheque for 10 million won to Hong Yushik, who stood at the door of his old ancestral home in the bamboo forest.

"You know what you're getting yourself into? There's no going back once I accept this money," Yushik asked, glancing at the cheque in his hand.

"It's not difficult for me to tame a dog that will bite my enemies," Minseok replied carelessly, throwing the cheque in Yushik's face.

"I'm not a domestic dog you can tame for life... you're offering a piece of meat to a hungry wild wolf. The moment you stop, know that the wolf can go berserk and destroy you," an evil smile spread across Yushik's face as he placed the cheque between his teeth, his eyes wide open. He laughed at the thirty-year-old, budding politician Minseok.

Blinded by his thirst for power, Kang Minseok dismissed the warning and walked away from the old house, leaving Hong Yushik alone at the door.

Yushik opened the envelope and read the name written inside. "The first prey..." he chuckled loudly and went back inside the house.

.

.

.

2023, December, National Intelligence Center

Lee Hangyul sat in the dark interrogation room, all eyes fixed on him. This was the most crucial interrogation in the history of the Damyang Murder case, as the main suspect, a fugitive for over a decade, was finally under arrest. He was none other than the heir of the Phoenix Group, a major South Korean conglomerate. The media swarmed outside the intelligence center, clamoring for a statement about this sudden arrest, creating chaos that caused the share values of the Phoenix Group to plummet, affecting numerous affiliated companies.

Senior Detective Kim Haneul stepped into the interrogation room, looking at his blank-faced childhood friend, who sat aimlessly in the metal chair with his arms resting on the desk. Hangyul looked at Haneul, who sat down in front of him, eyes anticipating a word.

"Can you speak now?" Haneul asked.

"What am I supposed to say?" Hangyul finally spoke after a whole night of silence.

Kim Haneul let out a deep sigh of relief at hearing his friend's voice.

"Just tell me… why were you present at the crime scene?"

"I don't know."

"Hangyul, please. I can't help you if you keep denying! YOU AN 34 YEAR OLD ADULT WAS THERE!! NO ONE DRAGGED YOU THERE! YOU REACHED THERE DRIVING YOUR OWN CAR!! YOUR CAR'S BLACK BOX HAS RECORDED EVERYTHING!" Haneul screamed at the clueless suspect sitting in front of him.

The officers standing outside in the observation room were also shocked. Their calm and rational senior was losing his composure for the first time, his emotions pouring out in his helplessness to save his dear friend.

"Haneul, I really don't know. I don't even remember how I got there. I just remember having a panic attack, and then everything went black," Hangyul said calmly.

"Calm down, Kim Haneul, and come out," the head commissioner in the observation room said authoritatively.

Haneul was startled by the commissioner's presence, as he rarely left his office. He stood up and gave Hangyul an angry stare as he walked out of the interrogation room.

"What's wrong with you, Haneul? Is this how you interrogate a suspect, with such an emotional approach?" the commissioner thundered.

"Sorry, sir."

"Go home and do some introspection."

"No… Lee Hangyul…"

"He will stay in the lockup tonight. Let's continue the investigation with a fresh mindset. Everyone is exhausted right now. Let us rest for a few hours. This Damyang murder case is taking a serious turn, and we need to work more efficiently than ever," he encouraged all the officers standing in the observation room.

"But sir, no innocent person shall be punished. I will prove that Lee Hangyul is innocent now and was always innocent since being framed as the suspect in Kim Hana and Yoon Siwoo's murder," Haneul declared with determination.

...

5:30 AM, CBS Broadcasting station

"Only Heir of Phoenix Group Arrested for Suspicious Activity at Crime Scene. Conglomerate Connection to Damyang Murder Case?"

The news flashed on the big LED screen in the lobby of the journalist desk room. Jung Bomin sipped from his beer can, leaning back on the sofa.

"Idiot," he laughed at the breaking news that had been flashing on every screen in Seoul since he arrived at the subway station returning from Busan.

"Who?" an intimidating female voice asked from the window behind the sofa.

Bomin, startled, looked back hurriedly to find Yoon Seong-ah standing there in her night pajamas.

"Noona... Wh- what are you doing here?" Bomin looked at her in shock, surprised to find her in that attire at the office.

"Beer? It's five-thirty in the morning, you dumbhead!" she said while yawning and walked into the lobby.

Bomin looked down in astonishment as she pulled the beer can from his hand but was shocked the next moment to see her drinking the same beer she had just cursed.

"Stop staring at me!" Seong-ah thundered.

"Yeah... sorry..."

"Cut it out... tell me all the information you gathered in Busan," she said, taking a few more sips of beer.

"You're not worried about Hangyul? Didn't you watch the news?" Bomin was confused by Seong-ah's indifference to Lee Hangyul's arrest.

"Am I supposed to cry or what? He's an idiot for being at the crime scene."

"But... but... aren't you worried about his mental health? His anxiety might shoot up any moment in the lockup cell."

"Nothing to do with me."

"Don't you love him?"

"Who said that? Did I ever say it out loud?"

"No... but it could be understood."

"Well... then you've misunderstood the whole thing," Seong-ah said, throwing the beer can out of the window.

Jung Bomin stared blankly at her face, wondering what had gotten into his sunbaenim.

"All I ever wanted from Lee Hangyul was information related to my parents' murder. But I soon realized that Hangyul was never aware of the incidents happening around him..."

"So? Now that Hangyul is arrested, where will you get the information?"

"I don't need him now. All I need is my mother's diary and for Hong Siwoo to speak the truth."

"Can you handle the truth?"

"Tell me, I know you have something spicy."

"Jo Yuri... the murdered prostitute... she is Hong Siwoo's biological mother," he said, displaying an image on his mobile screen which he had clicked at the present-day Red Moon Club. "This photograph was clicked in 2009, a day before Jo Yuri was killed."

Seong-ah took his mobile to see the image clearly. "A family picture?"

"Not really... That man... seems to be her regular customer... all the old ladies there know his name."

"What is it?"

"Hong Yushik."

"Hong? Hong Yushik... Hong Siwoo... are they..." Seong-ah rubbed her palms on her face.

"Looking at this picture, I know where you're getting to..."

The family picture, clicked at the Busan summer festival, showed Jo Yuri and Hong Yushik standing like a married couple with a small child between them. The child's face highly resembled his mother's, but the eyes came straight from Yushik. The picture screamed that they were his biological parents.

"Any whereabouts of this man?" Seong-ah put away the mobile and held her forehead with her hands.

"He disappeared on the day of the murder," Bomin revealed.

Yoon Seong-ah turned her face towards her assistant in shock but then controlled her emotions, refusing to confirm anything without evidence. She stood up and started running outside the CBS Broadcasting station, with Bomin running behind her.

"Noona!!! Where are you running to?"

"You got your bike?"

"Yeah, where do you wanna go?"

"BlueChip Investment."

"Let's go," Bomin said, dangling his bike keys.

Yoon Seong-ah got on his bike as he brought it out of the parking area. In less than 20 minutes, they were in Yongsan.

"Stay here. I'll go check his office," Seong-ah said to her assistant.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes," she said firmly.

Yoon Seong-ah, still dressed in her night pajamas, went up to the 17th floor. There was no one in the office apart from the housekeeping staff. But her movements were so swift that no one could even tell that there was an intruder in the office. She navigated the security checks like a sly fox.

Upon reaching Hong Siwoo's cabin, she was stopped by an electronic lock with a password.

"What could it be..." she tried to recollect all the dates related to Siwoo's existence. She dialed Bomin's number. "Bomin-ah, tell me the date of Jo Yuri's murder."

"14th August 2009."

"The same date as his birth..."

"Oh really??"

Seong-ah entered the password, and her hunch was correct. The door pushed open. She now needed to find her mother's diary. She rifled through the drawers, where Siwoo had kept the diary in the morning when she left the cabin. But it was not there. She searched through every drawer and cupboard where files were kept.

"Where did he keep the diary? Tsk..." she muttered, recalling the chain of events that morning. Seong-ah, after a long struggle, remembered that Siwoo had the diary in his hands when she was walking out of the door. He hadn't hidden it under the desk or inside the cupboard. He had turned his chair around and gone towards the window. That sparked a realization in Seong-ah's mind. She ran towards the window, opened the huge glass pane, and was met with strong winds gushing in. The height from the 17th floor was terrifying, but she pressed her feet on the floor and extended one hand down the window searching for the diary, while her other hand held onto a pillar inside. A metal box touched her hand, making her excited. She looked outside, putting her head out of the window, and saw that the metal box was attached below the window on the side.

"Gotcha!" She opened the box and took out the diary, which was carefully stuck inside it.

But as soon as she lifted her head above the window, a tight grip on her neck pushed her toward the edge of the window, almost throwing her out. She screamed loudly at the sudden attack from behind, unable to look back as her neck was grabbed tightly, forcing her to look down from the 17th floor.

"Leave me!!! Fucker!!! Leave me!!!" she screamed.

"I told you, didn't I? I'm a clinical psychopath... you could've just asked for another reading session... Seong-ah..." a whisper echoed in her ears, and she immediately knew who it was.

"Siwoo!!! Listen... stop... it's dangerous... this is not a game..." she softened her voice, trying to reason with him.

"I know, darling, which is why you're still hanging in my hands, or else... I almost killed my classmates during kids' play..."

"You're a psychopath... complete psychopath... just like... your... father..."

"So you know... hehehe... that's nice..."

"You're not denying???"

"Why would I? There's no reason to deny that."

"Hong Siwoo!!!!!" Seong-ah screamed his name loudly. Siwoo laughed at her helpless figure in his hands.

"Stop screaming, girl... don't forget your life is in my hands... you should be scared of me..." Hong Siwoo whispered softly.

He pushed Seong-ah's head further out of the window, making her hands escape and leaving her hanging outside in the air. Siwoo continued his whispered warning, "You must know that I could kill you anytime, right? So what I advise is... keep quiet... and—"

But in the next moment, Yoon Seong-ah, with all her strength, removed his hands from her neck and pushed him back with extreme force, hitting him with the metal box she had managed to remove while lying on the window's brink.

"That man killed my parents, Siwoo!!! You want me to keep quiet???!!! No wonder you're his bastard son!!!" Seong-ah thundered as the man in the blue suit fell to the floor.

Hong Siwoo managed to get up in a few seconds, his forehead bleeding from a scratch caused by the metal. The blood flowed down his nose in a diagonal stream.

"So... so what??... you think only you're a victim??? Have you seen your father eat your mother's heart??? I'm quite sure you haven't seen that demon eat your mother's flesh?? You were definitely not left abandoned on the streets, roaming homeless like a beggar? You didn't grow up knowing there's an evil parasite inside you, someday going to kill you?? Right? Right, Seong-ah!!! You were a silly little girl living happily with your parents... how could you know my darkness?"

Seong-ah, shocked by the series of revelations, blocked her ears with her palms. "Stop... just stop it..." she begged him to stop speaking any more gruesome facts of his life.

"You were so curious about the similarity with your father's name... that's right... he was the last victim of the serial murders in Damyang... and you should know an interesting fact? He once gave me bread to eat, as I roamed like a beggar in front of your house... Had he not given me that bread that night, I might be a dead person, not standing in front of you now... But you know what? The very next day, he and his wife were killed by that demon! And then I continued hiding from my own father..." Hong Siwoo continued talking like a maniac, staring at Seong-ah, who knelt in front of him, covering her ears.

"You bastard... you used my father's name!" Seong-ah screamed, weeping over her parents' murder revelation.

"The only reason you are alive is because I'm paying the price of that loaf of bread! But now that you know everything... you can't live... you cannot..." He crawled towards Seong-ah and tightly gripped her ankle, laughing hysterically as blood from his forehead flowed down onto the floor. Seong-ah, clutching her mother's diary, kicked her leg with force to loosen his grip on her ankle. She ran towards the door of the cabin, with Siwoo trying to stand up using the desk for support. He couldn't reach her in time as she fled with Kim Hana's diary in her hands.

"Seong-ah! Seong-ah! You can't run far away!" Siwoo screamed at the top of his lungs, delving back into the darkness of his past life.

...

1 AM, Yongsan, Bluechip investment.

Yoon Seong-ah ran out of the elevator and into the parking area, her body trembling. Jung Bomin, who had been waiting for her the whole time, rushed to her side.

"Noona, what happened? Why are you sweating so much?"

"No, it's nothing. Didn't you see Hong Siwoo going up? Didn't he enter from the parking area?" she asked, panting heavily and struggling to breathe.

"Hong Siwoo? Did you meet him? No... I was standing here the whole time! See, you can't even find his car in the parking area. He was already up there waiting for you?" Bomin was shocked.

"I guess... yes. He knew I was coming. Did you report to him?" Seong-ah asked Bomin suspiciously.

"What? Are you mad? Why would I report to him? I report to you!" Bomin was offended at her suspicion.

"Anyway, just take me home. I feel exhausted," Seong-ah said as they both climbed onto the motorcycle. She knew there was no point in arguing with Bomin, even if he had reported to Siwoo. This confrontation with Siwoo had been necessary.

"Bomin-ah, take me to the intelligence center," Seong-ah suddenly instructed, stopping her assistant from taking a U-turn toward her home.

"Weren't you tired?" he asked, turning back to his senior.

"Yeah... but meeting Kim Haneul is more important."

She felt agitated and clueless about the whole situation with Hong Siwoo and his killer father, Hong Yushik. She wanted to extract more information from Siwoo, but his destructive nature was the biggest hurdle. She needed more strategic preparation to confront him effectively.

...

2AM, National Intelligence Center

Kim Haneul strolled through the lobby, the sudden message from Yoon Seong-ah making him restless.

"Meet me."

Just two words. Two words were enough to make him restless at two hours past midnight. The sound of a motorcycle echoed outside the window where Haneul stood, lost in thought. He glanced out and saw Seong-ah dismounting from Jung Bomin's bike.

"Jung Bomin… wasn't he the one caught red-handed consuming drugs in an illegal bar a few months ago?"

As he delved into the past drug scandals of influential figures, Seong-ah approached him and snapped her fingers, jolting him out of his maze of thoughts.

Haneul saw Seong-ah, her hair disheveled, in night pajamas, her face sweaty, and scratches on her palms. His unease peaked.

"Where are you coming from, Seong-ah? What happened?" His concern was evident in his eyes.

Seong-ah leaned against the window and narrated the events that had taken place an hour ago, leaving the senior detective speechless at her reckless behavior in the middle of the night.

"We need to investigate Hong Siwoo! And his house too!" she said with wide eyes.

"Why?" Haneul asked, hiding his already decided plan to investigate the house the next day.

"My gut feeling tells me we'll definitely find something there. And I even got hold of my mom's diary…"

"You should've informed me about such an important document. It could be the biggest evidence in this whole case!"

"I was just waiting to get my hands on it…"

"Have you read the whole diary?"

"No… not yet…"

"And yet you want to submit it directly for the investigation?"

"Yes. Because we can't waste any more time reading it page by page…"

Haneul knew Seong-ah was lying. She had already scanned every single page of that diary on her way to the intelligence center. No way she was going to trust the police department without reading it herself.

Handing over the diary to the senior detective, Yoon Seong-ah turned to walk away and meet Bomin, who was waiting for her downstairs.

"Are you sure about this assistant of yours?" Haneul inquired, looking at Bomin from the window on the second floor.

"You seem quite interested in my assistant, Haneul-ssi," Seong-ah said, joining Haneul to look at Bomin, unaware of their observation, busy with his cell phone.

"Yes, of course. He was found at a rave party near Jeju Island. Thanks to his father's political influence, he escaped legal action. How did you even hire him?" Haneul chuckled.

"Huh… that's a long story… but I know about his background… However, this Jeju party incident is news to me…" she smirked at Haneul.

"Well… then… you must be aware of the illegal activities he was involved in during that drug scandal?"

"Whatever… how does that help our investigation?"

"We'll know soon enough. Very soon. Anyway, won't you meet your lover? I guess you already know he's our guest for the next few days?"

"Yeah… I know… But I can't meet him…"

"Any specific reason? Or just your everyday emotional turmoil of whether you love him or not?"

"How… How do you know that?"

"I know you, Seong-ah. But you know what? He is madly in love with you, while you are utterly confused even after defending him so much at Jeong Suhyeon's murder scene."

Yoon Seong-ah had no answer, no point to argue or debate with her childhood friend. The game she began with Lee Hangyul was slipping out of her control, her emotions clouding her judgment. Although she knew by now that Hangyul was innocent and had no part in her parents' murder, the boy she saw running away from her house ten years ago had other reasons to be there. She wanted to uncover those reasons, but Hangyul's forgotten memories were not helping her investigation.

Despite pretending to be in love with him, her growing feelings towards him were real, and they scared her. She was terrified of falling in love, of starting a new life, until this case was resolved. She saw Hangyul as a distraction from her main goal of punishing the murderer. Even now, if she met his eyes for even a minute, it would be bad for her. The thought of losing him would overwhelm her, pushing her away from the case. He had become her weakness, something she could never afford at such a crucial point when everything was about to be uncovered, and the truth was finally about to be revealed… very soon…