MERRY 44

The only one who had gotten fired up over their departure was Somerset Quinn, and the only one left in a state of chaos by the sudden separation was also Somerset Quinn.

The funeral used for the deception had apparently been held in a different city, with various acquaintances gathered for the occasion. If I had been there at the time, believing he was dead, I would have sobbed my eyes out. I might have drained every drop of moisture from my body and still felt it wasn’t enough.

That didn’t mean, however, that I was grateful to Ethan for leaving in silence without causing me grief. There are plenty of other agonizing emotions besides grief. Everything I had been nurturing in a corner of my heart while thinking of him fell into those categories.

Whether or not I believed what Ethan was saying was no longer the issue. I bit the inside of my cheek before letting go and asking:

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“There was no particular need to.”

“Did it never occur to you that I would look for you?”

“…”

“Was a person who was your neighbor for just one season not worth that much? Was I… was I nothing to you?”

I shook my head, barely swallowing the lump rising in my throat. Interrogating him like this wasn’t helping. Half of me didn’t even want to hear the answer. I felt like a coward, fearing that Ethan might reply with a nonchalant face, ‘You were nothing.’

“If you vanished like that, you should have stayed gone. Why did you show up again?”

I threw a different question, and Ethan spoke—taking off his glasses and wiping them with his tie, acting indifferent.

“There’s no longer a need to protect me.”

He said he couldn’t give me the details because it was classified, but his family had finally found safety. Since it couldn’t have been easy to live in a new place with a new identity through the power of government agencies, I should have been celebrating the fact that they finally got their peaceful daily lives back.

However, whether it was because the series of circumstances lacked a sense of reality, or because I’m just a very selfish bastard, my displeasure wouldn’t subside. I was still clenching my jaw and glaring at Ethan with a dissatisfied face.

“So what? Are you telling me you came to find me because you’re free now?”

“How did the conversation lead to that?”

“If it’s not that, then what is it?”

“Because protection is needed.”

“You literally just said there was no longer a need to protect you!”

The moment I raised my voice out of habit, Ethan’s gaze seemed to drift far away. I almost felt a sense of yearning in the ripple that rose in his emerald eyes. It was a massive misunderstanding. He pointed at me with narrowed eyes.

“The one who needs protection is you, Somerset Quinn.”

Every human memory has a starting point. In Ethan Reed’s case, it was the sharp sound of a gunshot. A man, falling while bleeding, mouthed something toward the child. The silent last words merely pierced through the child’s vision like a bullet; their meaning was never conveyed.

It was only later that he learned the man who died that day was a diplomat scheduled to be dispatched to Europe.

In the pitch-black darkness, the one holding the gun was Serena Reed. The black clothes wrapped around her body blurred her silhouette. She was like the darkness itself.

— L. L! Respond.

The voice coming from the comms was also familiar to the child. It belonged to the man who sang gentle lullabies every night. Dad was repeatedly calling Mom by a strange name.

— L! L!

‘What’s the rush? I took care of it. Now I just need to make it look like a suicide…’

— There’s no one in the car.

‘What?’

— The kid is gone!

Silence. It was a state of total noiselessness. All movement seemed to fade away as if time had stopped. Underneath the table, the child held his breath instinctively. Only after the beep of the comms sounded did Mom lower the barrel of the gun and touch her head.

‘Not in the car? What does that mean? I saw Green taking him with my own eyes.’

— I lost contact with Green.

‘What on earth…’

— Green has disappeared. And so has the kid!

The child realized the ‘kid’ they were talking about was him. The friend of his mother who had put him in the car was Leslie, but just like his mother, he might have had a different name. The child had secretly slipped out of the car when the man let his guard down to find his mother.

Following her into a house, he had cheekily started a solo game of hide-and-seek. Having only dealt with adults who were favorable to him until now, the child thought everyone would be happy and entertained if he suddenly appeared in a stranger’s house. And then, he had run into the current situation.

He never dreamed that not being where he was supposed to be would cause such chaos.

‘My god.’

— Is it a kidnapping? Did Green get hit? Someone took out Green and then the kid… How did they approach? Who was the person who suddenly gave you the order?

The child was a natural at moving quietly. He had excellent motor skills and his brain worked fast. His development was exceptional compared to other children his age, and he was precocious. Although his face was youthful, his limbs were long, making him look about seven years old, but he was actually five.

It was difficult to fully grasp the situation, but he recognized that what was in his mother’s hand was not a toy gun but a real one, and the scene unfolding before his eyes was not a play. She had killed a person, and he had witnessed it. The child had come here after dodging her friend because he wanted to be with his mother.

He tried to think rationally in his own way, but the more he did, the more he hit a wall. The mother the child knew was a good person, but killing people was a bad thing. He was confused. His head throbbed. If he had been in a more extreme situation, he might have just blacked out and collapsed, but what the child saw now was his mother searching for him desperately.

‘Ethan. Ethan?’

She looked incredibly fragile as she called for him while trembling. He wanted to protect his mother, who looked like she might collapse at any moment, but he hesitated. Because he was scared. Because he was afraid of his mother, and no one else.

— Dammit. I just got word. Green was hit. They say he said it when he briefly regained consciousness. The child wasn’t there. When he got out of the car, he saw the back seat was empty.

‘Oh, God. Thank you.’

— The problem is where he went. We’re searching the area with our personnel now, but he’s nowhere to be found. We can’t even file a missing persons report.

‘It’s okay. As long as he didn’t fall into danger—if it’s not that…’

Mom, who stopped talking abruptly, dropped the comms.

— L. What is it?

Her eyes grew wide as if they were about to pop out. The child was too young to read the fear in her wandering pupils. She was overcome with pain, swept away by the fear stemming from the fact that her child had witnessed what she had done. After a fierce struggle with the suffocating agony, she finally regained her senses.

— L. L!

‘I found him.’

Picking up the comms, she spoke to the person on the other side and knelt down.

— You found him? Really? Is the kid safe? Nothing happened, right?

‘I’ll explain when we meet.’

As the comms cut off, silence fell. A heavy quiet, thick enough that even a small pin drop would be audible, flowed together with the tension. The presence of the two people living and breathing in the same space was as faint as that of the dead man.

Quite a while passed like that. Mom reached out both hands toward the child, who was hiding under the table without a single movement. The hands wearing black leather gloves were relaxed, quite different from when they held the gun.

‘Sweetie, come here.’

She spoke in a kind tone, just like when she gave the child a morning greeting.

‘It’s Mommy. Mommy came to get you.’

His heart wavered at the soft, melodic voice. He wanted to jump into her warm embrace, but the child was still buried in confusion.

Was it really his mother? Could a wicked demon be wearing her skin? The child experienced his first moment of distrust in his life. He was in such a weakened state that he was tempted by absurd suspicions. His shoulders shook intermittently.

‘Ethan.’

He had unintentionally sharpened his senses and stood guard, but the moment his name flowed from her lips, his guard softened. Even if his mother was the source of his fear, he instinctively felt she was also the only one who could drive that fear away.

A thin breath drifted in and out through his slightly parted teeth. Following that, as the tension in his body released, it felt like tears might prick his eyes. The child, barely swallowing his sobs, slowly lay flat and stretched his right hand outward.