episode_0576

576

“Well, you never know~ But if she’s coming out like that, Shinbi doesn’t seem like someone who’s totally closed off in that way… I bet she’s had a lot of experience like that, right?”

“Why don’t you talk to her and see if something can happen? I’ll talk to Semi and let you touch her breasts~ Bare skin!”

Cheoljin subtly nudges Siwoo with his shoulder, playfully urging him.

Cheoljin gives Siwoo playful eyes and expressions.

Siwoo feels a mix of pity and a slight sense of superiority, seeing Cheoljin arbitrarily assuming Shinbi has had a lot of experience.

When he thinks about it, Siwoo has already been intimate with three people who participated in the meeting.

By the way, after the meeting, did Cheoljin get closer to Semi?

Or were they close before that?

From some point on, Cheoljin started comfortably calling the older women by their names, like friends or subordinates.

Siwoo feels a simultaneous sense of bewilderment and discomfort at Cheoljin’s attitude.

At the same time, he momentarily becomes tempted and his heart wavers at the thought of being allowed to touch Semi’s bare breasts.

“You crazy bastard! Tone it down! Back then, we didn’t know who was on our side, so I was just trying to reduce the number of heads in the room!”

“I had to say that to get you out of the room! If you had taken a proper stance and explained yourself clearly, none of that would have happened!”

“After getting caught up in such a ridiculous thing and even going to the police station together, you’re still talking nonsense like that?”

Siwoo raises his voice at Cheoljin, as if denying his own wavering feelings.

Other students from the academy had already come up to the rooftop and were resting in scattered groups or talking among themselves.

Siwoo’s irritated voice echoed on the rooftop, and the other students who had come up earlier turned their heads to see what was going on between Siwoo and Cheoljin.

“Alright! Dude! I was just thinking of you, and you’re getting mad! Still, you owe me for that, so remember that! Got it?!”

Cheoljin, showing an annoyed expression at Siwoo’s outburst, continues speaking as if doing him a favor.

The students around them seemed to realize that the conversation between Siwoo and Cheoljin was just a minor squabble or argument, and they turned their attention back to their own conversations and interests.

Siwoo felt as if the attention that had been focused on him and Cheoljin scattered into the air in an instant.

**

Siwoo and Cheoljin pulled out drinks from the vending machine on the rooftop and moved to a corner with a ventilation fan.

In that location, even if they raised their voices a little, they could have comfortable, secret conversations without attracting the attention of others.

Cheoljin had been glancing at the smartphone he had been holding in his hand since earlier.

Could he be repeatedly checking the photo of the slave contract from the ledger that Siwoo sent?

The topic of the meeting came up, and Siwoo thought about asking about things he was curious about, but he hesitated and stopped.

If he asked questions hastily as before, he would inevitably lose the initiative and be swayed by Cheoljin…

Instead, Siwoo sips his drink as if he has no interest, and looks down at the scenery of the athletic field over the safety net that surrounds the rooftop.

The athletic field seen from the rooftop was full of energy.

Students who had taken over the center were quickly moving back and forth across the field, kicking a ball.

Their voices and footsteps blended together, creating a noisy commotion.

The movement continued constantly, and it felt like being swept up in a complex and diverse flow.

Siwoo felt like all the moments were harmoniously meshing together in that complex movement and noise.

“So, what is it?”

Siwoo asks Cheoljin in a nonchalant tone, as if letting it slip out, while looking down at the scenery of the athletic field.

“What?”

Cheoljin, who had been looking at his smartphone, reacts inadvertently to Siwoo’s question.

“No, didn’t you say we should talk at the cafeteria earlier? Didn’t you call me up to the rooftop because you had something to say?”

Siwoo pretends not to know about the photo he sent in a text message during class, and asks Cheoljin as if testing him.

Cheoljin looks at Siwoo’s expression for a moment, as if trying to figure him out.

“I just thought there were some things we hadn’t talked about yet~ Wouldn’t it be good if we asked each other what we were curious about?”

Cheoljin replies to Siwoo, glossing over it in a slick way.

Cheoljin didn’t seem like he would easily reveal everything he knew just because Siwoo sent him a photo of the slave contract from the ledger.

From the start, Siwoo hadn’t even grasped how much Cheoljin knew about the existence of the slave ledger.

The expression that appeared on Cheoljin’s face after seeing the photo of the slave contract that Siwoo sent might have been just a mixture of bewilderment and curiosity about a slave contract he was seeing for the first time.

“What are you curious about? Ask me anything you want~ Who knows? Maybe I’ll let you touch other girls’ breasts to your heart’s content, even if it’s not Shinbi or Sehee’s?”

Siwoo tests Cheoljin and makes a suggestion, more explicitly hinting at information about the slave ledger.

Siwoo’s line seems to imply that he might have more slave contracts of other people…

At that moment, Cheoljin’s eyes sparkled again.

The slick and hazy expression he had been wearing until just now disappeared, and his face changed to one with seriousness.

Siwoo captures subtle anticipation and trembling in Cheoljin’s eyes and expression.

It was as if a tightly woven net had grasped something heavy from the unseen depths of the water.

That subtle sensation was conveyed to Siwoo from Cheoljin’s expression.

For the first time in his conversation with Cheoljin, a strange sense of awareness and pleasure that he was in control of the overall flow rose from deep within his heart.

“But I have something I need to check before class, so if possible, I’d like to finish what we need to talk about here quickly~?”

Siwoo glanced at the clock on his smartphone screen and threw the words at Cheoljin as if he was busy.

Cheoljin, with a face that showed it was impossible to know what he was thinking, stared at Siwoo silently for a moment.

“I knew it… you had it, Siwoo?! Right?”

Then, looking down at the smartphone Siwoo was holding, Cheoljin raised the corners of his mouth and smiled as if he knew it all along.

In that moment, Siwoo felt a chilling sensation run down his spine.

Cheoljin seemed to know for sure about the existence of the ledger.

Rather, he reacted sharply to the information related to the ledger that Siwoo had dropped, as if he had been looking for it all along.

Siwoo gestures to Cheoljin as if telling him to wait.

Instead of answering Cheoljin’s question, he sends Cheoljin the photo of teacher “Lee Jina” that he had found in the restroom earlier.

A person that Siwoo and Cheoljin both knew…

Not just someone they vaguely knew the face of, but someone they had spent a year with in the same academy, as an English teacher and a student.

Cheoljin checks the photo that Siwoo sent him on his smartphone.

Siwoo watches Cheoljin’s face with a tense expression, to see if Cheoljin already knew about teacher Lee Jina.

Cheoljin’s eyes widen in surprise as he looks at the photo of teacher Lee Jina’s slave contract…

The expression on Cheoljin’s face was different from when he had checked the slave contract sent during class earlier.

Was this the expression Siwoo had when he first saw the photo of Mrs. Gyu-ri’s slave contract?

Cheoljin seemed to know about the existence of the slave contract ledger, but he didn’t know exactly which people and how many were included in it.

“I couldn’t have received it directly from the deceased… I wouldn’t have known back then… then since when…?”

Cheoljin was muttering to himself as if still stunned, asking the question as if reciting it.

“What?”

Siwoo asks back in an irritated tone, as he couldn’t hear Cheoljin’s voice well.

“Ah~ no… you don’t have to answer that. I think I know roughly~”

Cheoljin was smiling in a way that was hard to tell whether he was happy or disappointed, and he was telling Siwoo as if he was sparing the question.

Siwoo, seeing Cheoljin’s stunned smile and expression, thinks that now might be the time to check the things he was curious about.

“How did you end up going to the meeting that day? You were talking about the names of the people on the lease agreement, right?”

“Who are those women? Did you know you’d run into them at the police station? Did you know in advance that all the participants were related to the slave contract?”

“Why does such a meeting even exist in the first place? What were they trying to make people who were related to the slave contract do by gathering them separately like that?”

Siwoo demands the answers he didn’t hear properly that day, and begins to ask questions.