He tried to picture how their encounter might go. Perhaps she would be surprised? Excited? “What a coincidence,” he’d say. “Would you like to get a cup of coffee with me?” He imagined her raised eyebrows, the delight crossing her features.
“Right now?” she might respond. Junyoung’s version of Dahye batted her eyelashes and licked her lips. “I’d love that.”
Before he could muster up the courage, the train slowed to a stop, and Dahye got out. Junyoung, who was still daydreaming, barely made it off before the doors shut. It took him a second, but he found her in the crowd going up the stairs and dashed after her, pushing people out of the way. She transferred to the Light Blue Line; Junyoung did the same. On the train, he had the sudden realization that he was aroused. He liked following her around. Liked watching her while she had no clue. Junyoung moved closer to the wall and put his hand in his pocket to adjust his erection, feeling a rush of elation. Then he looked up to the window to watch her reflection. Dahye was sitting between two elderly women, her head bent over her phone. Her eyes were narrowed in concentration.
Someone pushed past him to get closer to the doors, and in that brief moment when he looked away, Dahye had noticed him. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Dahye half standing, hesitant, one hand reaching out to tap him on the shoulder.
All his bravado vanished. The familiar arrival jingle began to play over the speakers as the train slowed. Before she couldtouch him, Junyoung leaped out onto the station and lost himself within the crowd. The doors closed. Dahye was gone. He stood there, looking at the place she had just been, listening to the annoyed murmurs of the people stepping around him.
All of a sudden, a wild whoop burst from deep within his gut and escaped out of his mouth. The pedestrians gave him strange looks; one woman grabbed her young son and pulled him away from Junyoung, apprehension clouding her face.
Junyoung didn’t care. He let out another whoop, quieter this time, and started laughing. For the first time in a long time, he felt … alive.
A dozen notifications bounced around on his phone’s screen. There was one voicemail he had missed, and when he tapped on it, he saw it was from Lee Sunhwa. Junyoung pressed the phone to his ear.
“Hello, Mr. Cho,” the message began. “It’s Lee Sunhwa from work again. I came by your desk earlier to chat, but your neighbor said you weren’t feeling well and had gone home early. Hope you’re able to get some rest.” Sunhwa cleared her throat. “People are saying that the person we talked about previously had … some kind of mental problem. A breakdown. Something about her sister killing herself ? In any case, it’s all anybody can talk about in our department. Terrible, really. Anyway, I wasn’t sure if you’d heard and thought I’d give you a call. Let me know if you have any news. I’ll stop by again tomorrow.”
Junyoung lowered his hand to his side, thinking hard. A mental breakdown seemed plausible. Everything he had seen seemed in line with that theory. She was acting erratically, cutting ties with her family, abruptly quitting her job. But she was a woman after all, and women were prone to fits of hysteria. Junyoung knew that firsthand, having experienced it with his mother.
Shortly after his father had left, she had been diagnosed with hwabyeong—anger disease. For weeks, she hadn’t been able to sleep and complained constantly of a headache, dry mouth, and palpitations. She startled easily, even when she knew Junyoung was around. The worst was when she stopped doing her motherly duties: making him meals, washing his clothes, cleaning the apartment.
After enduring weeks of this, Junyoung had grabbed her by the shoulders and shaken her. Hard. Her teeth had rattled around in her skull, and for a moment, her eyes rolled so far back that he thought he’d killed her. When she cried out, Junyoung shook her again.
“Get it through your head,” he had hissed. “This is why Abeoji left. Because you’re weak and pathetic. And if you don’t stop, I’m going to leave, too. Is that what you want? To be an old, lonely woman without any purpose in your life?”
Loving someone meant that you had to have their best interests at heart. Sometimes it was giving them a wake-up call like he had done with his mother. He could help Dahye. He wouldn’t shake her as hard, of course. His mother was old and stubborn and needed more encouragement. But Dahye was young. Pliable. It wouldn’t be hard to mold her into his ideal woman.
His phone vibrated in his hand, and when Junyoung looked down, he saw that Kangmin had messaged him on KakaoTalk. His heart sank. Kangmin rarely communicated with him outside of work. It meant only one thing.
Kangmin:Heard you went home early with food poisoning. Hope you’re not puking
Kangmin:I’m ready to collect on that favor you owe me
Kangmin:Have you seen the foreign woman that was just hired on the software dev team? She’s a redhead. Natural, you think?
Kangmin:Send me what you have on her. I want to see if the carpets match the drapes. Haha
Fine, Junyoung started typing. He didn’t give a shit about that woman, whoever she was. But before he could hit send, four more messages came through.
Kangmin:Also. Do you know a woman named Park Dahye? She’s in finance, fifth floor
Kangmin:Rumor is that she lost her mind and suddenly quit without notice
Kangmin:Did you see anything unusual on the fifth floor?
Kangmin:Scratch that. Just send me the videos, and I’ll investigate
Junyoung froze, his fist curling at his side. The exhilaration he had been experiencing earlier had vanished. Fucking Kangmin. Fucking rat-faced bastard. Dahye was the one thing that had given Junyoung’s life meaning, and now Kangmin wanted to take that from him.
A series of images flashed through Junyoung’s mind: Kangmin, squashed flat by a passing bus. Drowned in the Han River. Dead from poisoning. Junyoung had a box of rat poison left over in his apartment from a few years ago, when a pesky little rodent had made its way into the kitchen and eaten through a sealed bag of rice. His mother had lifted the bag up, and the grains had spilled all over the floor, causing her to scream. Thepoison was in the form of pellets, small and pink, with a crumbly texture. It would be so easy, slipping a handful of them into Kangmin’s morning coffee. Or in a pastry, offered during the midafternoon slump. A gesture of goodwill.
No. Too many things could go wrong. The container had instructions on dosing for a single rat or multiple rats, but Kangmin was at least fifty times bigger than that. How many containers would it take? It wasn’t as if Junyoung could simply search “How many containers of rat poison does it take to kill a human?” on Naver. Plus, Kangmin was a young and healthy man. He worked out three times a week—or at least claimed to—and a premature death could trigger suspicion. Autopsies. Investigations.
He looked at the messages again. Felt heat flare up in his chest.
“The best way to handle aggressive dogs is to neuter them,” Abeoji used to say. “It reduces their testosterone levels. Plus, when you cut off their testicles, it shows them you’re the boss.” Junyoung smiled. He could handle someone like Kangmin, who was all bark and no bite. Why had he let Kangmin have any power over him in the first place? Kangmin had no proof. Kangmin didn’t have access to his computer or any of the footage. And as far as Junyoung knew, Kangmin didn’t even know where the cameras were located in the bathrooms.
The thing about overconfident people, Junyoung thought, was that they underestimated everybody else.