[Incest] Creating a Friendly Family 586 (Cheol-jin) (Oksang) (Assumptions and Hypotheses 3)

586

“But apart from the academy, it’s true that I wanted to check things out personally…”

“The faces of those slave bitches getting dragged to the police station because of the meeting and their kids.”

“And I wondered what kind of reaction you, Shi-woo, would have seeing those moms being brought in…”

“Plus, how Teacher Yoo Ye-na would handle the situation…”

Cheol-jin was telling Shi-woo, emphasizing that the incident at the police station was no accident.

“You wanted to check my reaction and Teacher Yoo Ye-na’s response?”

Shi-woo asked, looking puzzled, as if he didn’t quite understand what Cheol-jin was saying.

It seemed Cheol-jin had reported to the police that day, not just to see the moms’ faces, but also to observe Shi-woo’s reaction and Teacher Yoo Ye-na’s response.

“Yeah! Based on your behavior and attitude so far, Shi-woo, I figured you weren’t heavily involved with the meeting, but I couldn’t be 100% sure…”

“You might be putting on a perfect act in front of me, and you could’ve gotten new information or formed relationships at the academy or somewhere else.”

Cheol-jin was explaining why he wanted to check Shi-woo’s reaction.

“And even now, I still have a lot of suspicions about Teacher Yoo Ye-na…”

“Ever since she talked about the slave contract and the meeting, and asked me for favors related to it.”

Cheol-jin continued, explaining why he wanted to see how Teacher Yoo Ye-na would respond.

“At first, she called me in as if she was worried about rumors about the meeting, right?”

“But in the end, it just looked like she was leaking internal affairs to me, an outsider.”

“I started to feel like Teacher Yoo Ye-na might not be that interested in finding that thing.”

“If that thing was with you, it would’ve been faster and easier for her to check with you directly through Shin-bi Noona or Seul-gi, so why would she bother telling me?”

Cheol-jin continued, expressing his doubts about Teacher Yoo Ye-na’s request strongly.

“I thought Teacher Yoo Ye-na would be the first one to rush to the police station among the guardians when we all ended up there…”

“She knew about the meeting, and she was the one who told us to contact her first if anything happened.”

“I figured she was secretly watching nearby or had some kind of safety net in place…”

“If Teacher Yoo Ye-na had shown up at the police station, I thought I could roughly guess her relationship with those slaves by seeing them greet each other or interact.”

“I wanted to see Teacher Yoo Ye-na’s position among the slaves, and the hierarchy based on how they treated each other.”

Cheol-jin was telling Shi-woo that he had even suspected Teacher Yoo Ye-na’s intentions and attitude, and had planned to gauge her position and standing…

“Whether they were pretending not to know each other and acting awkwardly… how they would talk to each other, things like that…”

Shi-woo looked at Cheol-jin with a dumbfounded expression, laughing in disbelief.

“Well… that’s why I reported to the police for various reasons…”

“It’s also true that I thought it was a sure way to save Se-hee Noona and Se-mi… that’s the biggest reason, though…”

Cheol-jin said, adding an afterthought to his lengthy explanation, smiling awkwardly along with Shi-woo.

“Well, it seems Teacher Yoo Ye-na didn’t come to the police station by the time I left…”

“But I did realize something from the reactions of the people who gathered at the police station…!”

Cheol-jin said with a faint smile, nodding his head as if he was convincing himself.

“Realized what?”

Shi-woo asked, tilting his head slightly as if curious.

“First of all, those moms seemed to know each other to some extent…”

“But it was obvious that they were pretending not to know each other and acting clumsily.”

Cheol-jin began to talk about the attitudes and reactions of those moms that he had observed inside the police station at the time.

“And at first, I was half-doubtful, but it seemed almost certain that they didn’t recognize me, Se-hee Noona, or you, Shi-woo.”

“Even though they made eye contact with a surprised look, it didn’t feel like they were recognizing someone they knew.”

“But the strange thing is, as soon as all three of them entered the police station, they immediately turned towards us as if reacting to something…”

“It was like they hesitated as if surprised as soon as they entered, before even checking our faces, and then turned towards us…”

Cheol-jin continued, replaying the situation at the time, continuing his questioning as if talking to himself.

“As soon as they entered, before even checking our faces?”

Shi-woo repeated the first part of Cheol-jin’s words questioningly, with a puzzled expression.

“Yeah, all three of them! It was almost the same reaction…”

“As soon as they entered, they paused as if flustered and turned towards us, and then turned their heads and pretended not to know us, as if nothing had happened?”

“But I think I knew right away why those Ajumma turned towards us and acted flustered…”

Cheol-jin raised his hand as if giving a hint, scratching his nose and telling Shi-woo.

Shi-woo frowned as if pondering Cheol-jin’s words for a moment.

“Why is that?”

Shi-woo asked Cheol-jin, as if he couldn’t figure it out at all.

“This…”

Cheol-jin tapped his nose with his finger, emphasizing what he had realized, appealing to Shi-woo as if giving a hint…

“Nose?”

Shi-woo asked, looking at Cheol-jin tapping his nose with a puzzled expression.

“Smell!”

Cheol-jin said with a confident tone, staring intently at Shi-woo, telling him as if revealing the answer.

Shi-woo suddenly recalled the scent of the perfume he had broken in the room cafe that day, as if hypnotized.

The perfume he had received as a gift from Se-young, saying she had made it at the academy…

Had she told him to spray it every three hours after going out?

If those Ajumma reacted to the perfume scent, it meant they had definitely smelled that scent before…

Shi-woo’s mind went blank for a moment.

Shi-woo couldn’t seem to recall what that meant right away.

“The perfume you were wearing then… did you get it from Teacher Yoo Ye-na? Or someone belonging to Teacher Yoo Ye-na?”

Cheol-jin asked, as if trying to bring Shi-woo back to his senses.

“Huh? Uh…”

Shi-woo reacted absentmindedly, answering Cheol-jin’s question.

Cheol-jin seemed to be thinking about something for a moment.

“If that’s the case, then even if I hadn’t reported to the police that day, we were probably destined to go to the police station…”

Cheol-jin said with a confident voice, as if drawing a conclusion.

At that moment, the pre-bell rang throughout the academy, signaling the end of lunchtime.

**

“That’s everything I’ve experienced, the facts I’ve learned, and the things I’ve been suspicious about, told exactly as they are.”

“Does that answer the questions I asked at the beginning?”

Cheol-jin said to Shi-woo, wearing a truly honest expression.

Shi-woo mulled over the words Cheol-jin had just spoken, with a blank face, as if he had forgotten the questions he had asked earlier.

“Tell me about that thing in detail later. Looking at your face now, it seems like it’ll take you a while to sort things out.”

“I think I’ve told you everything I can tell you here. Let’s go down, we can’t be late for class.”

Cheol-jin urged Shi-woo, unusually concerned about class time.

Cheol-jin threw the cup he was holding into the paper recycling bin on the rooftop and headed towards the iron door on the rooftop where the stairs were.

Shi-woo suddenly snapped out of it, took a deep breath, and quickly followed Cheol-jin towards the iron door.

“But you and Se-hee Noona seemed to recognize those Ajumma, Shi-woo?”

Cheol-jin said to Shi-woo in a casual tone as he went down the stairs.

Shi-woo flinched for a moment, and the breath he had chosen was disturbed again.

“Well, maybe~”

Cheol-jin laughed as if it was nothing, nudged Shi-woo, and quickly went down the stairs ahead of him.

**

Shi-woo returned to the classroom with an awkward feeling.

While the academy was ending, Cheol-jin did not talk to Shi-woo separately about the meeting or the magic academy.

Cheol-jin was just exchanging light jokes with his friends around him as usual, spending his break time peacefully…

Shi-woo looked at the photos of the slave ledger’s contract that he had taken with his Smartphone.

The slave contract, which he had initially thought was just a perverted act of adults or a dangerous game, now began to feel like part of a huge conspiracy or a manipulated order.

A family photo that seemed to have been taken with his dad and Teacher Yoo Ye-na when he was young…

And the beautiful middle-aged woman in that photo.

The slave contract with that middle-aged woman’s photo attached was located right behind the ledger’s index.

That person who was registered as the first in the order of slave contracts.

Slave Shin Joo-hee and Yoo Seok-hyun, the owner of that slave…

Two people presumed to be Shi-woo’s grandmother and grandfather…

Perhaps Shi-woo recalled the assumptions and hypotheses that the beginning of all this was from those two, as if unfolding them in his head.