There Are No Cats on This Island
The ground was frozen solid, making it nearly impossible to dig. The weather had warmed a good deal, but rain had fallen only a few days earlier, the lingering spring cold snaps refused to let up, and Baekam Island had always run colder than most places. With the small trowel she had found in the shed, Gaon strained to carve out a hole.
"Give it here."
Unable to watch any longer, Cha Taekyung took the trowel from her. She could have held on if she had truly wanted to, but after several minutes of wrestling with soil that had barely yielded an inch, she stepped back without protest. Taekyung dug into the same earth with an ease that made it hard to believe it was the same ground at all, thrusting deep with every scoop. His thick forearms flexed with each effort, muscles rising into sharp relief. It was an obscene body, so at odds with that cold face.
"It wasn't a cat."
Gaon spoke while standing there watching him work.
"There are no cats living on this island. Someone did this on purpose."
The entire time she had been digging—and now, watching Cha Taekyung dig—her mind had been turning without rest.
She kept circling the question of why someone would deliberately kill a rat.
This was already the second carcass she had found.
Taekyung dug the hole as deep as he could, then picked up the rat with his gloved hand and dropped it in. The headless thing, insides spilled open, was revolting beyond words. With the same neat, efficient motions he covered it over with earth.
"What sort of intention?"
he asked. Gaon pulled herself out of her thoughts and met his gaze.
Why wasn't this man leaving to do whatever he had come here for? Why was he helping her, talking with her?
Still holding that quiet doubt, she answered.
"An intention to make Gayoung look like a bad child?"
"……."
Cha Taekyung simply stared down at her without answering. Gaon nodded as if already persuaded.
Yes. That was right. The first rat had been found in Gayoung's room. After that, beside the shed.
Thoughts linked one after another.
The culprit is inside the mansion.
Gaon ran through the people currently living there.
Kim Ju-yeon, who glared at her with open resentment.
Lee Yong-hoon the gardener, who moved like a shadow.
Baek Jeong-hak, whose ceiling was plastered with talismans.
Cha Gil-ho, sweating buckets and fidgeting as if terrified of something.
And then the unreadable madman Cha Taekyung.
Right now the most suspicious by far was Kim Ju-yeon.
When they first found the rat in Gayoung's room, Ju-yeon had twisted her face into the ugliest scowl she could manage and scolded Gaon.
"This is going too far."
And more recently, when they had collided in the kitchen, what had she said?
"I heard she even came down the stairs lately. In my opinion, keeping the lights on upstairs all the time is a waste."
Had she staged this to back up her claim that Gayoung could roam the mansion freely? To argue that Gayoung was completely insane and needed to be locked away in a psychiatric hospital? Gaon needed to grasp the purpose behind this pointless, purely cruel stunt.
"Your eyes… they're completely gone."
Just then Cha Taekyung lowered his head to meet her gaze and murmured.
The moment those pitch-black eyes locked onto hers, Gaon snapped back to herself.
She took a sharp step back and glared at him with open heat.
"I warned you not to come that close."
"Did you?"
"Yes."
"I see."
Cha Taekyung straightened.
"Your eyes are genuinely unsettling."
They were so black the pupils disappeared; looking into them felt like staring into an abyss. At least he wore glasses. The reflected light softened those unpleasant eyes a little.
Gaon spat the words as if chewing them. Whatever scrap of courtesy she had left had evaporated somewhere along the way. Strangely, standing in front of Cha Taekyung made it easy to forget composure, basic manners—everything. He himself never seemed to care about such things, so she found herself discarding the distance as well.
"I hear that a lot."
He nodded without the slightest hint of offense.
"Then maybe take a little care."
"Understood."
At times like this he was oddly obedient.
When he complied without any pushback, Gaon felt embarrassed instead. He had helped her, after all—had even dug the hole to bury the rat. Had she bristled too hard?
"Thank you for digging the hole. Now go do whatever you need to do, Cha Taekyung."
He did not leave. He stayed right where he was and asked another question.
"If you believe someone with an intention is doing these things, Baek Gaon, what do you plan to do next?"
"……."
What did she plan to do next?
Gaon looked down blankly. The spot where the hole had been was a darker black than the surrounding earth. In time weeds would grow and every trace of digging would vanish.
She had to find the culprit. She had a duty to protect Gayoung. But how was she supposed to find them?
"Are you going to wander around watching people the way you watched me?"
Taekyung said.
"Are you mocking me?"
"No. I'm asking because I'm genuinely curious. I want to help."
Only then did Gaon lift her eyes.
"Why would you?"
"I told you I have a great deal of interest."
Gaon reached her conclusion. He was mocking her. This remote island offered not even a speck of entertainment, so Baek Gaon must have looked like excellent material to Cha Taekyung. Even the first time they met he had seemed quite interested in her. She had sensed that quiet curiosity. Interest like that did not have to be romantic. "Play" was more than enough.
Cha Taekyung was not the first person to show her this kind of attention. Among the doctors who had come to the island, there had been one who neglected Gayoung's treatment and instead hovered around Gaon with clear romantic interest.
Play between a man and a woman was more thrilling than any other game; dopamine came flooding. Gaon was twenty-three—not especially young. She was not completely ignorant of how far a man and a woman could take such play.
Of course, until now there had never been a single person she had wanted to play with.
"I'm not interested in you, Cha Taekyung."
"After following me around like that."
He sounded faintly hurt. The words were so mismatched with his blunt, cold face that Gaon felt a chill instead.
"If you're bored, go back to the mainland. There's no reason you have to stay on this island."
"I have to convalesce beside my uncle."
"Ah. Because of the OCD and the mysophobia?"
"Does it look that way?"
When Gaon looked at him as if to say Then isn't it?, Taekyung smiled faintly.
"From the looks of it, the mysophobia has improved quite a bit."
She said it while remembering him digging without hesitation in dirty work gloves and lifting the rat carcass. The sense of futility—why was she talking this long with this man?—grew fainter the longer the conversation continued.
"I simply can't have sex or kiss."
Gaon blinked, turning over the suddenly explicit words. He had pronounced them so flatly she almost doubted they were the words she knew. Cha Taekyung kindly added an explanation.
"Because human bodily fluids are dirty."
"……I don't particularly want to know."
"But I think I could do it with you, Baek Gaon."
One more word. Gaon stared at him without blinking.
"Sex or a kiss."
"You crazy bastard."
As if her curse were a reward, Taekyung looked positively pleased. He gazed down at her with generous eyes that seemed to say, Didn't I tell you I was crazy?
Gaon turned away in disgust. The longer she talked with a madman, the more she was the one at a disadvantage.
City people who came from the mainland were addicted to stimulation, and among all forms of stimulation the most potent content was, without question, the act of sex. The points at which humans felt sexual arousal were as numerous as the stars in the night sky. So she could understand that in a place like this—an isolated mansion on an isolated island—any man and woman of similar age sharing the same space could easily feel sexual impulse.
But every human Gaon had ever known, no matter how blinded by desire, had at least worn a minimal mask. Pretending to be decent. Pretending to be wholesome and pure. Pretending they had no ulterior motives and only wanted what was best for her.
Cha Taekyung, however, wore a gaze that was bitterly cold and rational behind his glasses while openly displaying filthy lust toward Gaon.
What's wrong with his head?
Something was clearly, thoroughly broken.
Because of those icy eyes and that blunt expression she had never believed the claim of "romantic interest" in the first place. She had naively placed romantic interest in the realm of pure love. There had been no need.
He was clearly a promiscuous man who treated sex like a game.
Once she sorted it that way, the situation suddenly became simple. The startled feeling settled, her head cooled, and a shrewd calculation took shape.
I have to find the culprit. The culprit. I have to protect Gayoung. Gayoung has no one but me.
If Cha Taekyung helped, what exactly would that help look like?
Gaon stopped where she stood and tilted her head.