Something in His Pocket

What was that?

Gaon thought it dully, staring at nothing. She had been sure the skies had cleared for good, that the spring rains were finally over—but for days now the rain had started and stopped, started and stopped. Vicious, stubborn rain, too relentless for spring. Typical of Baekam Island's fickle weather. All day long, the mansion stayed clammy.

He must have had something in his pocket.

She tried to soothe herself with the most generous explanation she could muster. Something enormous had happened—something unknown, something she still couldn't quite grasp. It was more grotesque, more frightening, than even the discovery of the dead rat.

Gaon ran her hands absently over the garden flowers. These days, whenever the rain let up even a little, she patrolled the mansion and the grounds, searching for any other corpses that might be waiting to be found. The more evidence she stockpiled, the better. If she gathered enough of it—enough that no one could deny it—even Baek Jeong-hak, who doted on Kim Ju-yeon, would have no choice but to throw the woman out of the mansion.

There was no telling when her uncle would leave for the mainland again, but she wanted the matter settled completely while he was still on Baekam Island.

Long. Hard. Enormous.

Her body wandered the garden, but her mind kept circling back to a few days ago—to the moment she had fallen into Cha Taekyung's arms. If only it had been a simple accident. If only she had lost her balance, and he had caught her, and that had been the end of it: an ordinary bit of help. Nothing more.

But the sensation of her hand coming down on his right thigh was too vivid to deny.

The moment that shameless man's low voice surfaced in her memory, Gaon stopped dead in her tracks. The air felt damper, more suffocating. How she wished she had snapped at that brazen face, Well, I do. Instead, in the next instant, she had shoved him away in a panic she couldn't control, then fled the scene in a fluster. She didn't need anyone to tell her that her pale face must have flushed scarlet. The reaction itself was proof that what had happened was anything but ordinary.

In the days since, Gaon hadn't laid eyes on Cha Taekyung. She had made a point of staying out of his path, and he hadn't sought her out either. It was fair to say they were avoiding each other.

It wasn't average.

Gaon held her hand in the air, trying to estimate the thickness she had felt through her fingers. The length, she had no idea. If she had groped downward far enough to find that out, Cha Taekyung could have sued her for sexual harassment without a second thought. Compared to that, the way he had teased her with words would have been nothing.

Even a rough guess at the girth was enough. Something enormous—something that far exceeded any "average size"—hung between Cha Taekyung's legs. That much, Gaon now understood.

A tree branch?

She wrapped her fingers around a thick pine bough. It filled her palm snugly—and whatever she had felt had been thicker still.

Baek Gaon was not sexually ignorant. For a girl locked on an island since the age of fourteen, learning about sex should have been nearly impossible—but she had been exposed to a rather unusual environment. Baek Jeong-hak had once taken an interest in rare books, and had piled the inner study of the mansion high with them. Among those volumes, the ones that had captured Gaon's attention were the bizarre aestheticist tomes of the late nineteenth century. Leather-bound books whose covers had gone to ruin, giving off a faintly rancid smell. Through those pages, she had learned of every kind of deviant, malformed sexual culture.

In the erotica she had read back then, a man's penis was typically the thickness of something that fit in one's grip. Anything thicker, she knew, was literary exaggeration. So she couldn't quite believe that the first male organ she had ever actually felt with her own hand had been a monster like that.

Dwelling on Cha Taekyung's body over and over like this—like someone who had eaten something she shouldn't have—was perverse in its own right. But wouldn't anyone who had felt that alien sensation chew over the same dark curiosity?

"Gaon."

The sudden voice of a young man made her startle to her feet. Holding a pine branch wasn't a crime, and yet her heart shrank in advance.

A man stood in the garden, dressed like a visitor who had only just arrived on the island. A suit—utterly out of place here. The damp air must have been choking him; he loosened his tie as he smiled.

"It's been a while."

"Attorney Han..."

For a split second Gaon had thought it was Cha Taekyung. The tension drained out of her all at once. Then she frowned, finding her own reaction ridiculous.

"Why so startled? I told you I'd stop by this month."

The man approached, smiling in slow, easy circles. Han Jun-seok, the attorney—one of the people who managed the family's assets.

"I didn't think you'd come this soon."

At thirty-five, he was young to have become Baek Jeong-hak's lawyer, and he hadn't held the position long. Even so, he had grown closer to Gaon faster than any of the previous attorneys. He was that sociable, that shamelessly smooth.

Above all, he took a keen interest in Gaon. An interest not unlike Cha Taekyung's. The way he looked at her was thoroughly impure. The day Cha Taekyung had turned that same kind of attention on her, Gaon had found herself thinking of Han Jun-seok. As it happened, she had had a favor to ask of him, and had called from the mansion's phone to request it. Jun-seok had agreed without hesitation.

"What were you thinking about so hard you didn't hear me calling?"

"You called me?"

"Yeah. From the garden entrance."

Jun-seok looked around the mansion as he drank from a sports drink. The climb up the hill must have winded him; his breathing was a little uneven.

"This place never changes."

Looking at the plastic bottle in the man's large hand, Gaon finally found a comparison that fit. About that thick, she thought. Cha Taekyung's penis. A round sports drink bottle. Too thick for even an adult man's hand to close around in a single grip.

"A plastic bottle..."

"Huh?"

"It's nothing."

Gaon walked ahead, ignoring the odd look Han Jun-seok gave her.

"I wanted to come running the second I heard Baek Gaon of all people had a favor to ask me. I had a mountain of work piled up, though. Still—I wrapped it up as fast as I could and came."

He followed her with a shameless grin, his face bright and open.

"Did you really come all the way here just for that favor?"

She had clearly asked him to pick something up while he was here on other business.

"Well, two birds with one stone. Let's say I came because of your favor."

Han Jun-seok smiled. He was a man who smiled easily. Unlike Cha Taekyung's uncanny laugh, his was bright and open. If Cha Taekyung was a striking, dazzling beauty, Han Jun-seok had a warm, handsome face and a sociability that melted everyone he met. He was probably popular with women on the mainland. Why a man like that took such an interest in Baek Gaon, she couldn't understand. Then again, as she had already thought—sexual taste was that varied, that inexplicable.

"About the favor I asked?"

"Oh. Straight to business before we've even caught up."

"The situation is rather urgent."

"I brought them. But why surveillance cameras?"

What Gaon had asked Han Jun-seok for was cameras. She planned to install surveillance cameras in several places around the mansion. Nothing elaborate—a few decent home cameras would do.

She had no intention of telling Han Jun-seok the whole story. As of now, Baek Jeong-hak was a suspect too. Jun-seok was a man her uncle had hired himself, and Gaon didn't trust him. But he was the person who granted her requests most readily. In truth, he was close to the only one. And Gaon was in a position where every single person with a connection to the mainland counted.

"I wanted to keep an eye on Gayoung."

Gaon smiled, hiding what she really meant.

"Ah, right. How is Gayoung doing?"

"She's much better since we changed her medication. She'll keep getting better."

"Mm. That's a relief."

Jun-seok nodded.

"You're still having a hard time, huh. You're the one who has it worst—take care of yourself, and hang in there."

He offered the comfort with warm eyes. When they went inside the mansion, a local who had carried Jun-seok's luggage up from the shore was waiting. Gaon had seen the face a few times before. A fisherman past sixty who lived with his widowed mother, if she remembered right. The man bowed to Gaon as well, his face simple and honest.

"Thank you."

Jun-seok pressed some money into his hand with a smooth smile.

"Oh—I bought Gayoung a present."

Once the man had gone, Jun-seok dragged his trunk toward the sitting room as if the thought had just occurred to him. The right-hand corridor stretching from the hall held several guest rooms and a parlor. At the far end were Cha Gil-ho and Cha Taekyung's bedrooms and study.

The counseling room visible in the distance sent Gaon's thoughts back to Cha Taekyung. More precisely, to his plastic bottle.

"Here."

Jun-seok handed her a wrapped gift. Every time he came to Baekam Island, he brought presents large and small. Especially for Gayoung.

"Gayoung likes puzzles, right?"

The warmly smiling man couldn't help but soften something in Gaon. She was weak to this kind of consideration. Or rather, she was awkward with it. She had so few memories of anyone treating her kindly.

"Thank you."

Still, Han Jun-seok's kindness had its uses. Gaon smiled willingly and accepted the puzzle.