Atonement, About it's Cruelty - Chapter 14
Seo-ah stood hesitantly, and once again there was a knock.
Knock, knock, knock.
Her already startled heart reacted sensitively to even the smallest sound. Seo-ah had an unexplainable intuition that it was not the innkeeper outside her door. She considered pretending not to be in the room, but it didn’t feel right.
“….Who is it?”
No answer came.
Unable to stand still any longer, she slowly walked towards the door and asked with as much calm as she could muster.
“What do you need?”
She half expected no reply again, but this time a voice came from the other side of the door.
“I’d like to see your face and have a chat. Can you open the door?”
“……”
The voice outside was deeper than any she had heard before, its depth seemingly pulling her heart down.
“…If you have something to say, you can say it like this.”
“Well, the matter I have requires seeing your face.”
“Why do you need to see my face for this matter?”
She asked boldly, but then heard a faint laugh from outside. Her fingertips trembled.
“Well…”
The presence outside drew out their words. For a moment that felt like eternity, the deep voice monotonously seeped through the door crack.
“Do you even know where you are?”
Seo-ah inadvertently held her breath, feeling as if the recently consumed food was stuck in her throat.
“What do you mean? This is an inn…”
“Is it?”
“……”
“Seems a bit different from what I know.”
“…Yes?”
“Well, asking someone to open the door in the middle of the night is odd, isn’t it?”
“……”
“What if you look above the doorknob? There should be a latch. Lock it and open the door just enough to show your face if you feel uneasy.”
“……”
What should she do?
Her heart seemed to race uncontrollably.
The man outside had kindled doubts that now filled her with anxiety. After a moment not being able to do this and that, she felt the man step back.
“Alright, no choice then. But you should really find out what kind of place this is at least once.”
Then he walked away without a second glance.
His presence was so heavy and unmistakable that Seo-ah wondered how she had not sensed it before. Could this place not be an inn after all? Then what was it?
Seo-ah checked that the latch was secured before unlocking the doorknob. Just as he seemed to have vanished, she opened the door.
“Excuse me…”
Her trembling voice melted into the darkness outside, and she felt the receding footsteps halt abruptly.
“Wait.”
A slit of chilly air pushed its way through the narrow opening. Darkness and coldness surged towards her as if they had a form.
Within this darkness, a figure moved.
He turned and approached her with deliberate steps.
His stride was wide.
Before she could count a few steps, the murky veil of darkness was torn apart. There was no time to hide from the figure that now filled the doorway.
Seo-ah gazed up blankly at him.
It was a man in a white shirt, so tall she had to look up considerably. Beneath the black hair that shadowed his forehead, his piercing blue eyes were striking.
He was alarmingly beautiful, and equally menacing. Smoky haze swirled around him; he seemed to be crafted from the darkness itself.
Her blood seemed to drain towards her feet.
* * *
Pale and small. And strangely intriguing.
These were Oscar’s thoughts as he faced Seo-ah. Even through the narrow door gap, she seemed to be fully visible. When their eyes met—her wide brown eyes locking with his—Oscar felt an unexpected sense of loss.
Was this woman really in possession of the key? How could such an important key end up in the hands of someone like her?
The woman’s fear seemed to tickle the skin. The woman who briefly met his gaze before quickly looking away, was unsure of what to do since she couldn’t disappear beyond the door. She seemed to regard the door as her only protection.
It was then that Oscar’s focus intensified toward the woman behind the door.
“Guest? Guest?”
A loud voice echoed up the stairwell, followed by the noisy rush of someone sprinting up the stairs.
Oscar’s eyes darkened.
“Just a moment!”
Even the sound of the voice seemed to carry a disreputable scent.
Oscar flicked his spent cigarette to the ground and stomped it out, then took out another and lit it. The smoke seemed like a necessary reprieve from the stench of the place.
Meanwhile, the owner of the brothel who had purchased Seo-ah for five thousand was gasping for breath but didn’t stop approaching Oscar.
She had gone out to meet this prestigious yet unidentified guest herself, delighted at the prospect. The woman who had unexpectedly rolled into her life in the middle of the night seemed like a raw gem.
But the moment she heard that this mysterious guest was standing in front of the room of a woman who might not even realize she was in a brothel, a primal instinct screamed danger.
“Guest?”
As she breathlessly reached him, she tried to muster a courteous smile.
“Is there anything you need? Perhaps a room for the night…?”
However, her attempt to remain pleasant dissipated like smoke.
A hand carelessly stuffed in his pocket, the glow of his cigarette nearing its end, and the blue eyes that were visible through the dissipating smoke after he ran his fingers through his hair, all sharply etched in her mind.
Standing like a mountain, his gaze seemed to pierce through her, and the silence surrounding him felt as ominous as the calm before a storm.