Apollo’s Heart

Chapter 94

Jae-won froze, it was a good few seconds before he regained his senses. He first hung Tae-jun’s clothes, took out two water bottles from the refrigerator and placed them near his cousin’s head. It was an act of kindness in case he woke in the middle of the night due to thirst. After that, without an extra glance at the unconscious man, he turned off the lights and strode out of the suite.

“Are you heading home? Should I contact the driver?” The manager on his night shift noticed Jae-won and greeted him courteously.

“I forgot something at the office. I’ll take care of the driver. ”

Jae-won returned to his office with a stiffened expression and turned on the computer. He booted the program and typed in the security code. Then, he recklessly opened up a file. He found what he was looking for. He let out a small cry at the name that popped up on the screen.

“Oh my goodness!”

He roughly rubbed his face with his dry hands. Suddenly everything started to make sense: every inconceivable thing Tae-jun had done finally made sense.

The file that Jae-won was looking at was a list of guests who had canceled their hotel reservation. It had to be here … The name that Tae-jun called for when he was drunk … that name had to be here … 

[Yuri Han.]

The name that he called out so sorrowfully and intimately … wreathed in such pain.

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Late at night, Jin-wook poured soju for a man at an old bar nearby.

“How’s work? Is it doable”

The man receiving the drink was an ex-manager of Hotel Jinseong, and current valet parking employee of Hotel Seoin. He was the man who recognized Yuri Han from the picture.

“It’s getting difficult to work since I’m becoming old … But what other choice do I have? My first-born just started college a year behind. The youngest just started freshman year in high school.” He replied with a depressed voice.

“Oh, I’m sorry to hear, but I also understand how you’re feeling. My youngest is also in high school,” Jin-wook said calmly.

And thus, the two men nonchalantly chatted about life and other important things as they drank. Jin-wook decided  to get to the point when the bottle was almost empty.

“Driver Su-won Han … What was he like as a person?”

“You mean Mr. Han? To be exact, Mr. Han was called a ‘driver,’ but actually, he wasn’t someone who should be working under others. He graduated from a prestigious college, you see, and he even owned a business in Seoul.” There was a degree of respect in his voice, and he truly meant every word of praise.

Jin-wook was a little surprised. Throughout his research so far, this was something he hadn’t come across. He had assumed the man would be an ordinary blue collar at the most, surely not a learned one.

“Then why did he work as a driver for President Jin?” he asked.

A graduate from an ordinary college could easily find a white collar job to say nothing of people like Su-won Han who had passed out of prestigious college. So, this man had chosen to toil for a scum like Myung-je Jin when he could be sitting in a posh office in a business suit.

“The two were neighbourhood friends since childhood. I heard Han borrowed quite some money from Jin when he was expanding his business and his wife got ill. Later, he even took out loans under Jin’s name. Jin was a President, but he wasn’t a brainy one. All he knew was how to order gangsters to break a few things here and there. So when the business expanded, he wanted a person he could trust and rely on, but someone he could look down upon at the same time.”

“And that was Mr. Han.” Jin-wook concluded in the end.

“You can put it that way.”

The man ordered another bottle of alcohol and opened the lid. Jin-wook who was busy jotting down in a small notebook popped a question.

“How well do you know of Mr. Han’s accident?”

“Just as much as the newspaper articles. It did seem quite odd, though. Mr. Han never drank typically because he didn’t know when President Jin would call for him. But a man like him ran towards a car intoxicated-”

“Did you see Mr. Han on the day of the accident by any chance?” Jin-wook probed.

“The day of the accident? To be frank, Mr. Han had gone missing a few days before the incident. There was someone else driving President Jin around.”

This was news, nowhere had he come across this. And needless to say, the seeds of doubts were sprouting. Jin-wook dug in.

“What has happened?”

“Well, he had quite a big argument with President Jin.”

“Because of what?”

The man was more than willingly chirping the whole story non-stop when suddenly, he shut his mouth like a clam. A puzzled Jin-wook stared at the man.

The man awkwardly tried to change the topic. “Working outdoors is so cumbersome now that I’m an old man. I would like to switch to a position that works inside of the hotel before the weather gets any colder.”

The man’s intentions were obvious. He was expecting a reward for helping. Well, there are no free lunches, and who better than the cadaver dog Jin-wook to know it best? He simply nodded in assent.

“That would depend on what you are able to give me. Do you have anything special you would like to share with me?”

The man’s eyes glistened as he happily noticed an opportunity. He said slyly, “I have the security camera footage of President Jin and Mr. Han arguing in the hotel lobby. To be honest, Jin had told me to delete it, but I kept a backup just in case. Now that Jinseong Construction is out of business and Jin dead, I thought it had become irrelevant, but like they say nobody knows what the future holds.” He smiled in satisfaction apparently basking in self-praise on being insightful.

“I’ll make sure to report it to the executives. I don’t have the right to make decisions about the reward by myself.” Jin-wook stated matter-of-factly.

“Hope to hear from you.”

As an afterthought, Jin-wook asked, “By any chance, is there anyone else who knows about the argument between President Jin and Mr. Han?”

“Hyeon-ah Kim.” The man muttered a name and looked up. “Right, she should know about it. That day, I was late to work because my shift started in the afternoon. I got a hang of what was going on only after I watched the security camera footage. The person in charge of the lobby was Hyeon-ah Kim that day.”

Hyeon-ah Kim. Jin-wook cringed as the face of a woman with a kind smile and hidden intentions appeared in his mind. She was a woman he could not predict even after years of working with all sorts of people.

The man emptied the last glass and got up from his seat. Something felt very strange. He didn’t expect things to become so serious when he initially started his search for Yuri Han. Looking at how things were panning, even a veteran investigator like him couldn’t help wonder- What was at the end of all this? 

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