AGENT 44

With the scent of freshly steamed dumplings wafting through the street, Yongnae crossed the road and headed straight for Joe’s Dumpling.

“…”

Even though he had visited twice before, he had only thought of it as a hidden gem of a restaurant. Now that he knew it was the place from the anecdote about the man he’d heard from Weizhen, the shop—barely eight pyeong in size—felt new and wondrous, as if he had stepped onto a movie set.

The old, yellowed wallpaper, the tiny tables barely large enough for two people to sit at, and the welcoming face of the owner—Joe—who greeted him as if he had arrived at just the right time, all felt like scenes from a film.

This was the place that suited the man’s taste so perfectly that he made sure to come once a week. When the shop hadn’t opened, the man had gone out of his way to pass by every two days to check on it.

Pffft.

A small laugh escaped Yongnae’s lips. It wasn’t a situation where he should be laughing, yet he did. It was because he felt he understood why the man had been so persistent about sticking to this place.

He had wondered why Koreans weren’t lining up at such a delicious restaurant, but it turned out the man was visiting every week. He really was Korean.

Discovering these small bits of information seemed to make his helplessness and depression fade for a moment. He really was beyond help.

“——,——.”

Just then, Joe spoke to Yongnae, perhaps remembering him as the one who had been sleeping until dawn yesterday.

“——,——,——.”

“Pardon?”

“——,——,——!”

When Yongnae showed an expression of not understanding a word of Cantonese, Joe seemingly decided that verbal communication wouldn’t work and pulled something out from under the counter.

“…That isn’t mine.”

What Joe pulled out was a jacket. The high-end suit jacket that had been draped over his shoulders last night. It wasn’t his, but Joe seemed to be mistaken.

“Uh… um, not mine…”

Despite telling him it wasn’t his, Joe looked at him with a question mark on his face. Yongnae crossed his arms in an ‘X’ and shook his head to indicate it didn’t belong to him.

“I told you, it’s not mine…”

Yongnae pushed the jacket back toward Joe with a troubled look, but Joe, with a face full of certainty that it belonged to him, forced the jacket back into Yongnae’s arms. Then, as if he didn’t want to bicker anymore, he turned around and went back into the kitchen.

“Ah…”

Left with the jacket foisted upon him, Yongnae let out a groan and stared blankly at Joe’s back. With what kind of certainty did he insist this jacket was his? Yongnae let out a small sigh and took a seat at a random table.

Sniff, sniff.

Then, without thinking, Yongnae buried his face in the jacket and took a breath. Yesterday, the jacket had smelled of perfume and incense, but after being in the restaurant for over a day, those scents had all vanished. Now, only the smell of dumplings wafted from the jacket.

Rustle—

As he was about to fold the white elephant of a jacket neatly and set it aside, he heard the sound of something paper-like crinkling in the inner pocket. Yongnae reached in and pulled it out.

It was a small piece of white paper folded in half.

[Get my jacket]

Inside, a sentence was written neatly in English. Get my jacket? Was this a borrowed garment the owner of the clothes wanted back? Only that sentence was written on the paper in a concise script; there was no sender, nor was there any postscript.

Yongnae was about to fold the paper back in half and put it in his pocket since the content was nothing special, when suddenly, he stopped. He slowly brought the paper to his face, his eyes filled with a “could it be” look. As he caught the scent, Yongnae’s pupils began to dilate visibly.

Faint, yet permeating the entire paper, was the scent of vanilla and apple. It was a scent he knew all too well.

“…”

Yongnae stood up quietly, took the jacket, and approached Joe.

“Joe.”

He called his name. Joe, who had been trimming ingredients for dumplings with his back turned, straightened his hunched posture and looked back at Yongnae. When their eyes met, Yongnae raised the jacket without hesitation and asked.

“Susu?”

“…”

Yongnae’s expression wasn’t simply asking for the name of the jacket’s owner. He was asking if the person who had covered his shoulders with this while he was dozing off in the restaurant was indeed Susu.

Nod—

As Joe slowly nodded, the sound of his heart—which had begun to race like crazy—went thump, thump, echoing in Yongnae’s head.

Until just a moment ago, he had thought everything was over and that he wanted to quit, but the fact that the man had draped this jacket over his shoulders—no.

— Get my jacket.

The fact that the man was looking for him made adrenaline surge through him from head to toe.

Clack—

“——, ——.”

Joe placed dumplings on Yongnae’s table. It was already his second plate. Since Yongnae wasn’t a big eater, one plate would have been perfectly sufficient, but Joe was showing kindness by providing a very friendly dumpling refill.

“Thank you.”

He didn’t feel particularly thankful for the extra food, but Yongnae gave Joe a short smile before looking down at the screen again.

In Yongnae’s hand was a smartphone; it didn’t belong to Yongnae, but to Joe. Since Yongnae had dropped his phone into the sea during the escape yesterday, he was currently in a state of having urgently borrowed one from Joe.

The reason he had borrowed a smartphone so urgently was that he obviously couldn’t get the information he wanted from a standard paper map. What was Yongnae looking for?

[Search : Temple]

It was a temple. A temple in Hong Kong. But why a temple all of a sudden? Was he looking for one to offer a prayer of thanks for the man’s action of covering his shoulders? While he did feel that way, that wasn’t it.

— Get my jacket.

He had to find Seo Soo, who was telling him to bring the jacket.

Of course, there was a possibility that the note wasn’t addressed to him, but the probability was extremely low.

A man who was essentially the right hand of a drug organization like Seo Soo wouldn’t have borrowed this jacket from somewhere, and he certainly wouldn’t have stolen it. The thought briefly occurred to him that he might have since he was a criminal, but both the first and second times he saw Seo Soo, he was wearing clean, expensive-looking clothes. Thus, there was a very high probability that these clothes belonged to Seo Soo.

And with looks like that, shop owners might have come running out with open arms just seeing him pass by, begging him to wear their products.

One might ask how that sentence could possibly be directed at him, but Yongnae just knew instinctively. The strong perfume and faint incense scent on the clothes. And even the man’s signature scent on the paper. Everything told him the man had left hints for him to find him.

The vanilla and apple scent lingered because the man had written the note himself, and the incense smell on the jacket must be where the man was waiting. That was a temple. However, since he had to figure out which temple it was, Yongnae was currently using Joe’s borrowed smartphone to search.

Reaching into his memory, he recalled the faint, subtle smell of incense. If the scent was strong enough to cling to clothes, it meant the place wasn’t a small-scale one that only burned a single stick. So, he searched to see if any Hong Kong temples burned a lot of incense.

[Man Mo Temple: Filled with incense coils hanging from the ceiling to make wishes, the smell of incense is thick everywhere you go]

There was one temple with many reviews regarding its incense. When Yongnae clicked the photo, he saw the interior of a temple that, unlike other famous tourist temples, was quite small in scale. But he had a strong feeling that this was the right place.

Quiet yet sacred. Unlike his flashy appearance, it was a place that suited the man’s atmosphere very well. He would go there.

Man Mo Temple was located on the opposite side, Hong Kong Island, and since he had no phone, he had to write down all the directions and information by hand. He thought about how ridiculous this was in the 21st century, yet Yongnae was currently feeling incredibly excited.

Seo Soo remembered him. Seo Soo and he had met at the club that day, and the memories he recalled weren’t dreams. And, while he might have doubted it if the strong perfume hadn’t been sprayed on the jacket, that scent made it clear.

Seo Soo was telling him to prove it. He was testing whether he truly could find him even from 10km away.

That was why he was excited. He wondered what kind of proposal he would make if he passed this test.

Whether he would let him stay by his side.