A Dark Promise and Hidden Shadows

It took several hours of anxiously waiting for a reply.

Bleep.

With a cheerful notification sound, the deposit details popped up.

[Deposit: 150,000,000 KRW – Lee Mincheol 123-***-*45567]

The sender’s name belonged neither to Yeoun nor to her direct secretary, Secretary Yoon.

In fact, it was fifty million won more than the amount Yehi had requested.

Did her sister think that because Yehi had been cooped up inside the house like this for six years, she would get ripped off no matter what she tried to do?

Yehi offered a lonely smile and sent another text message expressing her gratitude to the chat window, which remained completely devoid of a reply.

Thanks to this, it seemed she would be able to get her hands on Yusin’s trophy.

Having secured the funds for the transaction, Yehi typed in the amount of 150 million won just moments before midnight and was safely selected as the final buyer.

Because the other party requested an advance payment, she transferred fifty million won first.

The location for the physical trade was a storage locker inside a Seoul subway station that Yehi had never visited before.

Since it was operated unmanned and had heavy foot traffic despite having no watchful eyes, it was an ideal spot for a black-market deal.

Now that she was recovering the stolen trophy, it had to be returned to its original owner.

The MVP trophy deserved to be held by Yusin.

Because the MVP of that day was, without question, Yusin.

Yehi prepared to go outside for the black-market trade tomorrow.

It was her first time preparing to step outside the house in a staggering six years.

She packed water, chocolate, and a sedative in case of hyperventilation into her bag, then rechecked Yusin’s home address printed out on a sheet of paper.

Her heart was already pounding wildly.

Yehi took a slow, deep breath.

She had absolutely no intention of confronting Yusin face-to-face like those ill-intentioned fans from the past.

The sole purpose of tomorrow’s outing was to return the trophy to its rightful owner.

Beyond that, she did not desire any form of coincidence or connection.

She would simply leave it beautifully in front of his door and return home.

Nevertheless, she felt it would not hurt to organize what she would say just in case an unexpected situation arose.

She wanted to avoid a nightmare scenario where she stood there holding the trophy like an idiot, unable to utter a single word, ran into Yusin, and got accused of being the thief.

She also needed to leave a letter.

If the trophy was just sitting out there abruptly in front of his house, he might find it suspicious, so she would write a letter explaining that a fan who supports him had paid for this item legitimately and that he could keep it with peace of mind.

She would tuck it safely inside the trophy.

Yehi wrote the letter, pressing her heart into every single character, and noted down the words she would say to him on a small slip of paper in case they crossed paths.

Then, she memorized that slip of paper down to the letter.

Utilizing a highlighter and a three-color ballpoint pen, she underlined words, drew stars, and circled phrases.

Using commas as cues, she slashed sentences in half, and inserted checkmarks in the sections where she needed to breathe naturally.

Yet even after memorizing and practicing like this all night long, she would surely be unable to say a single thing if she actually ran into him.

“H-Hello, Player Yusin… M-My name is G-Gu Yehi…”

It was her first time looking at a person’s face and having a conversation in six years, and to think that person was Yusin.

She would be lucky if her breath didn’t seize entirely mid-sentence.

“I-I will always be… c-cheering for you…. Always… I will always be cheering for you…”

By the time she completed roughly one hundred rounds of practice, it was already time for bed.

Having finished her thorough preparations, Yehi lay down to sleep.

She had been far too busy since Yusin’s retirement.

Was there anyone else in the world who could be this busy all by themselves inside a ten-pyeong officetel?

She didn’t even know how many days it had been since she last sought sleep willingly.

Lying in bed, Yehi glanced sideways at the drawer next to her nightstand with slightly anxious eyes.

Inside were sleeping pills and a dildo.

They were the items capable of granting Yehi a deep, flawless sleep and a languid pleasure.

However, rendering her worries about being unable to sleep entirely useless, Yehi drifted off the moment her head touched the pillow.

It was because she was utterly exhausted from practicing the conversation with every ounce of her strength.

Her heavy body sank into countless overlapping layers of dreams.

The boundary between consciousness and unconsciousness blurred progressively.

Then, arriving within a certain dreamscape, the voice of a longed-for person drifted over.

‘Yehi, run away…’

She missed them to the point of dying, so why was it that she could only meet them again within the memories she wished to forget?

Cruelly, her subconscious cast its anchor into the exact same nightmare she always had.

Sixteen-year-old Yehi, who used to enjoy wearing her PE sweatpants underneath her school uniform skirt, walked home with unusually light steps that day.

Standing in front of her old house—which had now become a murder scene—she presses the doorbell next to the yellowish-brown gate.

Normally, whoever was working inside the house would have welcomed her warmly, but that day, the door opens silently without a single sound echoing.

Failing to notice anything strange, Yehi steps inside the house.

There is no one in the garden.

There is no one in the garage.

Discovering her mom and dad’s shoes neatly placed at the entrance, Yehi becomes even more excited.

Eager to prattle on about what had happened at school, she begins to chirp like a newborn chick from the moment she slips off her sneakers.

‘You were both home? You know what happened at school today…’

Her light footsteps heading toward the living room grind to a sudden halt at the end of the hallway.

Too late, the stench of blood assaults her senses.

Only then does Yehi realize the true identity of the lukewarm liquid soaking through her white socks.

In that horrifying space that looked like a canvas painted with splatters of blood, a voice as frail as a flickering candle blade echoes out.

‘Yehi… run away. Hurry and run away, quickly…’

Why her mom was coughing up blood while calling her name like that.

What her dad was trying to convey as he flailed his blood-stained hands so desperately.

Remaining entirely ignorant, Yehi merely stands there, staring blankly at the atrocity before her eyes.

Ah. It means to run away.

It means the person who turned her mom and dad into that state is still inside this house.

When she finally comprehends that fact, a black hand shoots out abruptly from behind Yehi.

Wrapping a thick forearm around Yehi’s slender throat, it strangles her as if to kill her.

As if to kill her.

“Gasp…!”

Yehi bolted up from the bed, convulsing.

While her consciousness had drifted into the dream slowly, it escaped the nightmare as rapidly as her racing heartbeat upon waking.

It felt like being dragged forcibly out from the depths of deep water.

The moment she opened her eyes, the dreams that had flashed by in layers faded into the distance so faintly that she could not even remember them, but the nightmare constructed from real memory grew sharper, chewing itself back into her mind.

“Gasp, huff…”

Scratching at her bare neck with her fingernails, she spent several minutes catching her breath.

Only then did she realize that everything was a dream, a memory, and the past.

Her entire body was drenched in sweat.

Exhaling ragged breaths, Yehi looked around her surroundings with tear-filled eyes.

Only after seeing that Yusin was present everywhere, including the ceiling, was she able to feel relieved.

Yehi reached out with a trembling hand and tightly hugged the plush doll of Yusin that sat by her bedside.

Then, she soothed herself with her familiar habit of talking aloud.

“I-It’s okay, it’s all a dream. It’s okay, it’s okay…”

If she had known it would be like this, she should have just taken her medicine from the start to sleep pleasantly.

She thought she would be fine because she was exhausted, but it seemed she truly had to be tired to the point of fainting for it to work.

It couldn’t be helped.

She had no choice but to borrow Yusin’s strength today as well.

Patting her startled chest with the blunt hand of the plush doll, Yehi sniffled and opened the drawer.

Then, she pulled out a single sleeping pill and a dildo that was smaller than average.

It had already been six years since she chose to take a sleeping pill and masturbate every night.

Curled up roundly beneath her blanket with her eyes closed, Yehi quickly envisioned Yusin before the painful past could surface again.

It was an image she had taken into her eyes every single day without fail for the past ten years.

Closing her eyes allowed her to picture him in even greater detail.

He possessed a neat face, yet the corners of his eyes became unbearably sexy whenever he smiled.

A red, plump mouth, a thick, masculine neck.

A body with distinct muscles.

Massive hands that could easily grip a volleyball in a single palm…

Shifting her panties sideways, Yehi aligned the tip of the dildo with her lower entrance and slowly pushed it inside.

“Ah…”

What kind of style would Yusin have when making s*x?

Would he be the type to match the speed out of consideration for his partner? Or would he be fierce and intense, just like the rumors claiming he was an absolute beast?

One thing for certain was that the actual size of Yusin’s member would be significantly larger than the dildo Yehi was currently straining to insert.

Even a non-fan could know this fact just by scrolling through a few photos uploaded to the internet.

The fact that Yusin walked around looking like he carried a water bottle inside his left thigh.

Yehi had also initially purchased an item estimated to be a similar size to Yusin’s.

However, no matter how much she exerted herself, inserting it was completely beyond her capacity, so after a series of successive downgrades, the item she barely managed to wedge the tip of inside was this current dildo.

Because its length was short and blunt, the overall shape was a bit crude, but the veins on the shaft and the shape of the glans were well implemented, so it was not to the extent of disrupting her imagination.