A child who looks like me

Bae-il lightly waved their joined hands and smiled softly.

“I hear you’ve heard a lot about me.”

“Yeah. I heard you lived next door.”

“Have you heard my name before?”

“…I heard it for the first time today.”

Ji-heon’s dry response to Bae-il’s question surprised Jeong-o. Ji-heon’s face was noticeably stiff, even more so than when they had met at the tournament venue.

The atmosphere between Ji-heon and Bae-il felt strangely tense, as if they were engaged in a silent battle of politeness in Jeong-o’s eyes.

Jeong-o quickly changed the subject.

“Officer, what brings you here?”

“I’m on my way back after running an errand. It seemed urgent, so I rushed over. Let’s go in together.”

Jeong-o, Ji-heon, and Yena followed Bae-il into the police station.

As they passed through the entrance, Jeong-o handed Bae-il a photo taken by Yena.

“This is a photo Yena took at the tournament today. She was wearing an ivory-colored outfit and bumped into my husband. My husband tried to chase after her, but she had already disappeared.”

“Let’s compare the photo Yena took today with the CCTV footage we obtained earlier.”

The three followed Bae-il through the entrance to the detective division. Compared to the cluttered desks of other detectives, Bae-il’s desk was surprisingly neat, much like his polished image.

“There’s an empty interrogation room, so it would be best to examine it there.”

Bae-il picked up the laptop from his desk and led the way. Ji-heon, Jeong-o, and Yena followed behind.

In the interrogation room, the four of them compared Yena’s photo with the previous CCTV recordings. Bae-il paused the CCTV video at the angle that most closely matched the new photo Yena had taken.

“Both are blurry, but the body shape and facial contours are similar.”

Bae-il remarked, indicating a 90% or higher probability that it was the same person. The identification program’s judgment also supported Yena’s claims.

Jeong-o, with Yena sitting on his lap, tightened his hold around her as he spoke.

“Yena said she recognized her as soon as she saw her.”

“Yena is indeed very smart,” Bae-il smiled as he looked at Yena.

Ji-heon silently observed the scene.

“With this significant evidence, we should be able to obtain cooperation for the investigation more easily. I’ll reach out to the organizers of the Go tournament.”

While Bae-il identified the company organizing the tournament, he received the contact information for the supervising director from Ji-heon and attempted to reach out.

“They said the tournament will wrap up in an hour. You should go check it out with our officer. Unfortunately, I have other matters to attend to this afternoon, so I won’t be able to accompany you. I’m sorry.”

After finishing the call, Bae-il returned and introduced his junior officer, apologizing for not being able to join them.

After greeting the officer in charge of the field investigation, the three of them left the police station. While Jeong-o’s expression brightened with the relief of being able to identify a suspect, Ji-heon’s face remained dark. Jeong-o noticed this and asked with concern.

“Are you okay, Oppa? Your expression has been off since earlier.”

“It’s nothing. I’m fine.”

Ji-heon chose not to reveal any more of his feelings.

Jeong-o also turned his gaze away from Ji-heon and got into the car. After taking a deep breath, he finally had the time to ask Yena about the Go tournament.

“How was the tournament, Yena? Did you enjoy it?”

“Yeah! I won three matches!”

“Three? Wow! You did so well, Yena!”

“Yeah. I could have won the fourth match too, but I couldn’t. I really wanted to win.”

As she answered her mother, Yena’s expression quickly twisted.

“Our Yena really wanted to win. But did you have to stop the match because you saw that lady?”

Yena nodded vigorously, tears streaming down her cheeks as she responded.

“I wanted to win, but I lost…”

Boohoo.

At that moment, it seemed like there was finally space for her shocked heart to cry.

“Our Yena accomplished something more important than the match. You did really well. There will be more opportunities in the future, and you’ll do even better then.”

Jeong-o hugged the child, comforting and encouraging her.

.*. *. *. *. *. *.

With the kids on break from daycare, today was also a break from their Go academy, and since Yena couldn’t come over to play and her husband was at work, Jin-seo was left to spend the day with the two kids at home, feeling completely overwhelmed.

Park Do-bin and Park Do-yoon refused to play the same games and constantly fought over who got to have their mother’s attention. Whenever she played with one child, the other would invariably cause trouble.

This time, while playing puzzles with his daughter, Do-bin entered the room and created a mess.

“Park Do-bin, what is this?”

“Eek!”

At the sound of his mother’s voice, Do-bin flinched, dropped what he was holding, and ran away.

Why did he make a mess if he was just going to run away? It was utterly incomprehensible.

What he had done this time was sprinkle white powder on his younger sister’s dollhouse roof and yard, making it look like snow had settled on the roof. Jin-seo remembered watching a movie with the kids about the Snow Queen the day before and couldn’t help but chuckle weakly.

A pill bottle that Do-bin had thrown rolled across the floor. It was the powder medication for injuries—the evidence of the crime.

“Park Do-bin, come here. Let’s talk.”

“You’re not going to hit me?”

“No.”

“Will you forgive me?”

“Yes.”

It takes energy to scold a child.

Gaining confidence that his mother wouldn’t scold him, Do-bin approached.

“Why did you sprinkle this here?”

“I wanted to express a snow-covered house.”

Wanting to express a snow-covered house, but since his mother wouldn’t let him go to the kitchen, he had taken the powder from the medicine cabinet.

“You need to tell me first before doing things like this from now on. Got it?”

“Okay. If I tell you first, will you let me do it?”

“Let’s see.”

Jin-seo smiled. She was charmed by her child’s free imagination, wanting to express a snow-covered house, and decided not to scold her further.

It seemed her child had artistic talent. Should she look into an art academy for her…

However, the tender and kind dreams of the mother did not last long.

After dusting off the powder medication piled high on the dollhouse and cleaning it up, Jin-seo returned to the children with a pale face.

“Park Do-bin!”

Jin-seo’s voice, filled with anger, made the windows of the whole house shake.

.*. *. *. *. *. *.

Ji-heon, Jeong-o, and Yena met up with the police again in front of the Go tournament venue and entered. The tournament was now approaching the final championship round.

Since the tournament wasn’t over yet, Yena had to watch the matches determining the first and second places on the screen from the stands. Jeong-o was next to Yena, while Ji-heon and the police walked around the venue, inspecting various areas.

After a tight match, when the child who captured the black stone won, Yena clapped her hands without realizing it. Before she knew it, the child had forgotten the disappointment of losing and was watching the match with a pure heart. Jeong-o gently caressed Yena’s face.

Finally, after the award ceremony concluded, the four of them were allowed to enter the tournament hall. In the midst of everyone busily tidying up, they glanced at a man in police uniform. Ji-heon guided him to the head supervisor.

“Hello. We’re from the Gwangjin Police Station.”

“Oh, yes. I received the call. Hello.”

When the police greeted him, the supervisor responded politely. It was an unavoidable situation where they had to actively cooperate with the investigation, as the person they had kicked out a few hours earlier had now shown up with the police.

“We’re looking for this person. They were the supervisor today. Does anyone know her?”

As the police asked the question, they showed a photo taken by Yena. The supervisor squinted at the photo of the woman, staring at it for a while before calling someone else over.

“Oh, it’s her.”

Another supervisor looked at the photo with the same expression and raised his voice.

“I remember she came here after being recommended by the Amateur Go Association for a part-time job.”

The supervisor flipped through some documents he was holding to check the list.

“It says her name is Pyo Ji-ae. However… she’s checked in but hasn’t confirmed her attendance yet. If that’s the case, she won’t be receiving her pay.”

“Do you know where she is now?”

At the police’s follow-up question, the supervisor took out his phone and dialed the number next to ‘Pyo Ji-ae.’ However, after a moment, he shook his head.

“She’s not answering the phone… but there’s a home address listed here.”

Although they couldn’t get in touch immediately, it was a relief to confirm her identity. The four of them secured Pyo Ji-ae’s home address and contact information before leaving the venue.

Since they had identified the suspect, it wasn’t necessary for Yena to stay with them any longer. Jeong-o took Yena home, leaving Ji-heon to accompany the police.

The suspect’s residence was on the third floor of a villa in the residential area of Cheonho-dong. As they got out of the car and looked up at the villa to gauge where the suspect’s home might be, they noticed the open window on the third floor closing.

“I think it’s that house.”

The police nodded in agreement with Ji-heon’s opinion. Just as the two of them were about to ring the doorbell on the third floor, the front door swung open.

However, when the woman standing in front of the door saw someone was there, she immediately tried to close the door. In the meantime, the police quickly intervened.

“This is the police. You are Pyo Ji-ae, right?”

“What? Wh-what’s going on?”

The woman asked in a flustered voice. Ji-heon confirmed the woman’s face from behind the police. It was definitely the woman from Yena’s photo. Behind Pyo Ji-ae was a large travel bag, indicating that she seemed to be in a hurry to leave.

“May I ask you something? Did you happen to pass by the Hagwon area in Hwayang-dong on May 13?”

“May 13? That was two months ago. How could I possibly remember something like that?”

The police showed her a screenshot from the video footage.

“Isn’t the person in the picture you?”

“Oh my, that’s not me. I don’t wear clothes like that. I don’t have a hat like that either. And who’s that kid next to me? I don’t know any kid like that.”

Her reaction seemed almost rehearsed. Pyo Ji-ae, who vehemently denied it, paused for a moment, rolled her eyes as if lost in thought, and then asked the police,

“Wait a minute. You said May 13, right?”

“Yes, May 13.”

“Well, I can tell you something about that. May 13 is my friend’s birthday, and I went to Yeosu to meet her. I arrived around 6 PM.”

Pyo Ji-ae pulled out her phone and showed a photo from her social media account. The post was time-stamped for May 13 at 6:50 PM. The precise date and time made Ji-heon’s face scrunch up.

“Do you see the date and time on the photo? There’s also a location tag.”

It was a solo photo taken in front of a famous sculpture in Yeosu.

Seoul to Yeosu takes over two and a half hours even by high-speed train. Moreover, considering the distance from Hwayang-dong to the station and from Yeosu Station to the location where Pyo Ji-ae took the picture, she could not be the perpetrator of the incident.

If she were the culprit, she couldn’t have been in Yeosu at 6:50 PM on May 13.

However, Ji-heon couldn’t trust Pyo Ji-ae’s words immediately. Although she spoke loudly in protest, she trembled slightly, and her gaze was unstable.

Most importantly, her actions, tone, and eyes reminded him of Cha Eun-bi when she lied and tried to evade responsibility. It seemed that Pyo Ji-ae was hiding something.

Ji-heon glanced at the bag behind Pyo Ji-ae and spoke up.

“It looks like you’re headed somewhere.”

“Yes. I’m going on a trip.”

“You’re going on a trip right after quitting your job as a Go tournament supervisor?”

“Is that not allowed? I had this trip planned all along!”

Sure, that could be possible.

Nodding, Ji-heon turned his attention back to the photo the woman had shown him.

After staring at it for a while, Ji-heon asked again,

“Is this photo from May 13?”

In the photo, all the shops were lit up, except for one place at the very end—a pharmacy that was dark. May 13 was a Thursday. What was the probability of such a large pharmacy being closed at 6:50 PM on a Thursday?

“All the other shops are lit, but the pharmacy is closed. Pharmacies are closed on Sundays, right?”

As Ji-heon pointed this out, the police nodded as if they had just noticed it.

“…Maybe that pharmacy happened to be closed that day! Or perhaps the staff was just momentarily away!”

Pyo Ji-ae strongly denied this with a look of great panic. Ji-heon was now even more convinced that she was hiding something after witnessing her reaction.

“Can I ask the name of that friend who lives in Yeosu and whose birthday is on May 13?”

Under Ji-heon’s calm pressure, Pyo Ji-ae bit her lower lip, trying to hide it. Sweat was forming on her forehead.

“You just need to answer. Why can’t you say anything?”

“Why are you pressing me like this?”

Finally, she burst into tears.