Our Savior Has Come

The man closed the distance in long, easy strides, shamelessly familiar — the sort who could mix in anywhere and take a wall down as if it had never been there. Even Gaon, who had kept her guard up without rest, came to see how convenient he was, and found herself asking him for favors both large and small. She told herself she was being shrewd about it, and didn't particularly mind. She had never taken Han Jun-seok's interest for sincerity, or anything like true feeling. It was the same as Cha Taekyung prodding at her purely for play.

"I think Gayoung would like this."

Still, there was something genuinely touching in the care Han Jun-seok took to bring puzzles for Gayoung.

"Yeah. But… the security cameras will help her, right? I don't think we've ever installed anything like that before…"

Jun-seok let the sentence trail away. When it came to Gayoung, he was always exceedingly careful — as if he were afraid his words might catch on some pathological place in Gaon and tear it open. He genuinely believed that Baek Gaon's own condition was nothing to take lightly.

"Let's just get out of here. Being trapped on this island is only making everything worse. Even a normal person would go strange, stuck alone in a mansion this isolated."

Whenever he found an opening, Han Jun-seok tried to talk her around.

What he meant by it was perfectly clear. Leave Baek Gayoung to be treated at a psychiatric hospital on the mainland, and let Baek Gaon live a life of her own.

"I can't leave Gayoung behind."

The calm of her answer drew a look of concern across Jun-seok's face.

"You have to live your own life, too."

What even is my life?

The question seized her without warning. Just thinking of Gayoung made her chest lock up, her breath catching short. It hurt. It felt as if it were her fault the child had ended up this way. She could barely remember what had happened when they were little, and yet a guilt she could never name had plagued her all her life.

I have to protect her now. I have to take care of her. If even I abandon my little sister, she'll truly be alone.

Even if she left Baekam Island, committed Gayoung to a psychiatric hospital, and tried to live on her own, Gaon knew she would drown in grief and never live it properly. Better, then, to stay at Gayoung's side, to help with her treatment, and cling to her until the very end.

Watching Gaon sink into thought, Jun-seok brightened and spoke up again.

"Looks like Gayoung's gotten a lot better, hasn't she? Last time you said she couldn't take a single step out of her room."

Gaon looked at him, puzzled.

"She still can't come out of her room."

"Oh — really? I just thought, there was a doll on the sofa over there. I figured she'd improved a lot. I remember you saying last time that it was Gayoung's. Haha."

He scratched his head with an awkward laugh. The discomfort on his face was unmistakable.

Gaon sat frozen, staring at the sofa in the parlor.

Jun-seok was right.

In the middle of the dark brown leather sofa set along one side of the parlor, Gayoung's doll Lucy sat all by itself.

Grinning. An artificial smile held on its face.

"Baek Gayoung."

Gaon burst into the room. Gayoung, buried in the bed and still asleep, rubbed her eyes and sat up. The child's bobbed hair was mussed to one side, rather cute — but Gaon pressed her lips tight. Her feelings were surging so wildly it was all she could do to keep her composure.

"What's this? Did you leave your room while I was gone? Why didn't you tell Unni you could come out?"

She took the child by the shoulders, straightening her, and asked, enunciating every word. She had meant to stay calm, but her voice, thick with feeling, came out low and cold. A shabby doll lay sprawled in the middle of the bed.

"Shoulder… hurts, Unni."

Gayoung whined. Gaon loosened her grip without meaning to.

"You have to tell me the truth. Nothing hidden from Unni. Properly. Honestly."

Come to think of it, Gayoung had come out of her room alone a few days ago, too. A child who used to seize and sob with her eyes rolling back just from being dragged through the door — how had she made it down the stairs by herself? Gaon had been so preoccupied with Gayoung calling Cha Taekyung a devil, with the fit that had followed, that she hadn't thought deeply about it.

Maybe she had been able to leave all along, starting from then. What if, just as Kim Ju-yeon had said, Gayoung could come and go through the mansion as she pleased — and simply wasn't telling her? If that were true, Gayoung could not be ruled out as a suspect in whatever had been done to those rats.

Why? Why hadn't she said she could leave her room?

The doctors' diagnoses flashed through her mind.

No. Gaon shook her head, shaking off the noise.

Honestly, when she had found the second carcass in the garden, she had been relieved. Because Gayoung was innocent. Because the rat left in Gayoung's room had been someone else's doing. She had wanted to believe her sister's condition couldn't have gotten worse — that her little sister was getting better and better, that she would eventually be cured and they would escape this island — and she had wanted to stand in front of Baek Jeong-hak and Kim Ju-yeon and show them exactly that.

"Tell me. Tell me!"

Her voice rose at last.

"It wasn't me, Unni. Why are you being like this? I already said it wasn't me."

The child whimpered, frightened. Gaon drew a slow, steady breath. This wasn't the way. There was nothing to be gained by browbeating her. Calm down. Calm down, and then talk.

"Then why is Lucy in the parlor? Who else could possibly touch your doll? I'm honestly the only one who comes in and out of this room. Be honest with Unni. I won't tell you we have to leave the island. I'll understand why you've hidden it until now."

"I told you it wasn't me."

Gayoung, who had been wearing a tearful face, answered quietly all of a sudden. The expression that had gone cold on her was stiff and icy, like a corpse. Gaon lost her words, staring at her sister's face.

The next moment, Gayoung smiled — a strange, uncanny smile. She was beaming so brightly it warped her little face.

Gaon had never seen her sister smile like that. Before she knew it, she had let go of the child's shoulders and taken a step back. Her little sister could become a stranger in a single instant. It had been that way for some time now.

"I told you the devil had come."

"That's right. That was the problem. You've been off somehow ever since the guests arrived. You had a seizure that morning."

Gaon muttered it under her breath. Gayoung, still smiling, tipped her head to the side with a sharp little jerk. Her bobbed hair swayed, swishing with the child's movement. Gaon thought Baek Gayoung's face looked just like a doll's.

"Han Jun-seok."

At Jun-seok's brief introduction, Gil-ho glanced over.

"I'm Attorney Baek Jeong-hak's lawyer. I also help Gaon with various things. This time, too, Gaon asked me for a favor, so I came out to the island while I was at it."

A thoroughly good-natured smile sat easy on Han Jun-seok's face as he carried the conversation along. Cha Gil-ho, seeming reassured, smiled back and returned the greeting. Cha Taekyung, on the other hand, wore his usual dry, expressionless look. Unable to tell what he was looking at, Gaon followed his gaze and realized he was staring at an orchid in a pot, set in a corner of the kitchen.

"I heard the gentleman beside you is your nephew…"

In the end, Han Jun-seok was the one to speak first. Cha Gil-ho pressed a handkerchief to his forehead, blotting at the sweat as he answered.

"A-ah, yes. I had no choice but to bring him along to Baekam Island, in part for his recuperation. This is Cha Taekyung."

It was as good as introducing him on his behalf.

Even as the conversation turned to him, Cha Taekyung showed no sign of wanting to join it. Cha Gil-ho didn't seem to expect anything of Taekyung, either. No prompting to greet anyone, no urging him to speak — no suggestions of any kind. He had clearly given up on a nephew whose social skills had hit rock bottom. Han Jun-seok let out a hollow little laugh. The wariness in his eyes as he studied Taekyung was unmistakable.

This strange gathering was Uncle Baek Jeong-hak's handiwork. An impulsive suggestion — that with so many guests on Baekam Island for the first time in a long while, they ought to all have dinner together — had brought everyone to the table.

It had been a while since Gaon had seen Cha Taekyung, too. She met with Cha Gil-ho about every other day for counseling, but this was the first time she had seen Taekyung since the incident in the garden.

She had thought that if they ran into each other it would be terribly awkward, or at the very least uncomfortable. It wasn't, more than she had expected.

That's strange…

The reason, she supposed, was that thoughts of Gayoung filled every corner of her mind.