The Unwanted Inheritance

Perhaps because she had washed with cold water, a lingering chill clung to her. A faint tremor ran through her body as goosebumps broke out across her skin.

The shaking remained even after she dried off and dressed. The moment she stepped out of the bathroom, Hae Su saw the landscape outside flash with a bolt of lightning and realized why.

‘Where is that fcking btch! Jo Hae Su! Jo Hae Su! You fcking piece of sht!’

The sight of shattered glass and scattered blood. A tattered school shirt. Socks soaked through with rainwater after fleeing without even putting on shoes properly……

The memories were too similar to that day.

And it was because of the weather.

Hae Su clenched her fists tight and drew the curtains to hide the view outside. The house fell into an even deeper darkness.

After a heavy sigh that broke the silence.

Vrrr.

Vrrr.

Hae Su’s head turned toward the sound of a vibration coming from somewhere. It was her phone, still inside the bag she had tossed aside.

The only place likely to call this early was the office. Moreover, since Jae Woong had visited this morning, she thought it might be him.

Hae Su walked to the living room and pulled the phone from her bag. However, contrary to her guess, the call was from a Seoul area code.

Narrowing her eyes, Hae Su endured the vibration tickling her palm before pressing the answer button.

“Hello.”

—Is this Jo Hae Su?

Hae Su frowned slightly at the unfamiliar voice asking for her.

“……Yes, speaking.”

—Ah. I see. Um…… I am Sergeant Park Tae Woo, working at the Gangbuk Police Station in Seoul.

A call from a police officer at the Gangbuk Station looking for her. Hae Su gripped the phone, her expression growing more puzzled.

After a brief pause, the man’s voice echoed in her ear once more.

—This…… may be sudden, but I am calling regarding a case involving your mother, Jo Mi Yeon.

Her mother, Jo Mi Yeon.

The moment she heard those words, Hae Su felt it.

Ah, today is truly a sh*tty day.

Immediately after Sogol in front of Yeocheon Station vanished, the redevelopment compensation went entirely to the pimp. The prostitutes, who couldn’t receive a cent, were forced to scatter across the country into an unintended freedom.

For those who had lost even their only shelter, their bodies—which they had sold to men—were all they had left. To survive, they threw themselves back into the gutter.

Hae Su’s mother, Jo Mi Yeon, who began prostitution at the age of seventeen, was no different.

Hae Su didn’t know where or how she had been living for the past six years. No, she hadn’t even been curious. But news reached her simply because they were each other’s only remaining family.

‘Jo Mi Yeon was found dead in her residence.’

The news she heard after visiting the Gangbuk Station was something she had imagined at least once.

If either she or her mother were to leave this world first, their severed ties might inevitably be reconnected.

And Mi Yeon was dead.

The police informed her that the body was discovered after a neighbor reported a foul odor leaking from the door. No suicide note was found at the scene, but they added that since there were no signs of forced entry, it was presumed to be a sudden death, such as a heart attack.

Sadly, it was a plausible end.

She had lived a miserable life where even if she met a sudden death, she would be left neglected unless someone happened to check in.

However, there was one thing.

While there were no signs of foul play, it was unexpected that the police had summoned and investigated the person Mi Yeon had spoken to right before her death as a witness.

‘We investigated Kim Seong Geun, who has records of multiple calls with Jo Mi Yeon before her death. His alibi is solid, and he testified that the deceased relied on drugs just before her passing. We will have to proceed with an autopsy, but it is possible it was a sudden death caused by drug complications.’

The person she spoke to was what made Hae Su suspicious.

Kim Seong Geun.

He was the pimp from the vanished Sogol.

The police concluded that Kim Seong Geun, with his solid alibi, had nothing to do with Mi Yeon’s death, but Hae Su couldn’t shake the unpleasant feeling from the moment she heard that name.

The fact that Mi Yeon was in contact with the cruel pimp who had kicked her out onto the street without a penny, and that she happened to be talking to him right before she died.

She couldn’t help but wonder if it truly had nothing to do with him.

However, just as he had testified during the witness investigation, Mi Yeon had passed away due to drug addiction.

‘The autopsy results confirmed that Jo Mi Yeon’s cause of death was a sudden death due to drug poisoning. A hallucinogen called PCP (Phencyclidine) was detected in her blood exceeding lethal levels. Since three other types of drug components were also found, it is presumed she ingested synthetic drugs.’

The investigation was closed based on the autopsy results, and the handover of the body was handled much faster than expected.

And the funeral for Mi Yeon—which no one else could or would perform—fell entirely on Hae Su. She didn’t tell anyone she was observing a period of mourning for her mother.

Hae Su took sick leave on the pretext of feeling unwell and finished the funeral in a single day. She had no intention of receiving mourners, and there was no one who sought her out to grieve the death anyway.

“……”

The sorrowful wailing of people sending off their dead followed Hae Su everywhere. In the empty funeral hall, at the crematorium, and at the memorial park.

Standing alone in her mourning clothes before the enshrined urn, Hae Su stared silently at the three characters of Mi Yeon’s name.

‘I should never have given birth to something like you.’

‘F*ck…… Do you look down on me too?’

‘You think you are different? No…… This version of me that you despise so much is your future. You b*tch.’

She was sending off a person who had hurled countless curses at her, yet she didn’t feel particularly relieved.

Hae Su dropped her gaze from the empty air.

In her eyes, which she had pressed shut and opened, she saw her tightly clenched hand. A distorted zipper bag, and the phone inside it.

‘This is Jo Mi Yeon’s phone.’

Hae Su opened the glass door and placed the phone she had taken from the thick zipper bag into the niche with the urn.

‘The recovery?’

‘All done. Even the deleted stuff should be back.’

She shouldn’t have done it, but she used Jo Seon, a private investigator who ran an illegal agency and was always quick to bow down to the police because of his many past crimes.

‘But why bring it to me instead of leaving it with the police?’

‘……Do not be curious. It is none of your business.’

The police station in charge had already closed the case, and it was impossible to run a DF (Digital Forensic) investigation within the police for a personal matter.

Therefore, she asked Jo Seon, who operated an illegal agency without a detective license. To be precise, it was an order disguised as a request.

She knew she shouldn’t get her hopes up, but she thought she might be able to find out what happened while her mother was alive. Since it was a world where you could do anything as long as you had a phone.

To be honest, it was something she didn’t have to seek out. She could have just buried it quietly and lived her life perfectly forgetting it, as she had done until now.

If she hadn’t answered the phone in the first place. Or if she had answered and flatly refused, saying she didn’t want to receive such contact since their ties were severed long ago, it wouldn’t have come to this.

But she had already heard it, and knowing herself, it would inevitably pop up in her mind, tearing through her thoughts and making her uncomfortable. She couldn’t ignore it.

Even if it concerned the biological mother she hated so much, she felt she could only be satisfied if she checked it herself.

And finally, she found out.

Why she had to die.

—Representative Park is a human being with more to lose than others, right? If people find out he fcked a dirty whre like me—at seventeen, no less—it would be a disaster. Plus, what would happen if they heard that wh*re gave birth to an illegitimate child?

—Set up a meeting with Park Dong Jun. Then I will give you a twenty percent cut, Boss.

—Fck, twenty percent? Are you joking? Do you think Park Dong Jun will just meet a whre like you because you ask? How can the brokerage fee be that low for bringing in a high-value target?

Representative Park.

Park Dong Jun.

As confirmed by the automatically recorded calls, he was a person mentioned every time in the conversations with Kim Seong Geun.

Jo Mi Yeon, who was conspiring with Kim Seong Geun to blackmail this ‘Representative Park,’ suddenly met her death? It was a suspicious circumstance to be labeled a mere sudden death.

Only one thing was certain.

The “illegitimate child” born between Park Dong Jun and Jo Mi Yeon—the one they intended to use for blackmail—referred to her. And even though they hadn’t seen a single hair of hers in the last six years, she had been dragged into this.

“……Until the very end, you never thought of me as your child.”

She was a child born because she couldn’t be erased, raised because she couldn’t be discarded, and intended to be used for her mother’s own gain.

Click.

Hae Su closed the glass door and turned away.