Stigma | 낙인

CH 5 PART 2

When he had almost reached the brothel, SeoYoon felt that something was off. A crowd had gathered in front of the brothel
He didn't know what had happened, but he had an ominous feeling.

"SeoYoon-nim, are you happy?"

He recalled her voice and her expression as she called out to him just as he was about to exit through the door this morning. The ominous feeling worsened.

"Excuse me, please let me through."

SeoYoon walked through the crowd and entered the brothel. All the prostitutes were out in the hallway. Their faces were filled with fear. The normally easygoing madame's face was full of horror.

"Move!"

SeoYoon's dread worsened.

"I said move!"

He pushed through the frightened prostitutes and frantically ran through the hallway.
He ran up the stairs. Just before he reached EunSeo's room, he smelled the stench of blood.

"No way... It can't be..."

It couldn't be. The scene he was imagining inside his head couldn't be true.

"No..."

His trembling hand opened the door.
The door creaked open, and the stench of blood became stronger. The whole room was drenched in red. The walls, the blankets, and the ceiling. It was all covered in blood.
It was as if the blood had burst and drenched the whole room.

And in the midst of all that blood, she was sitting there. Her face and her hands were covered in blood. However, she didn't look to be in pain.

"EunSeo?"

SeoYoon entered the room and began to approach her. He suddenly stopped. There was a corpse next to her. The blood in the room didn't belonged to her. It belonged to this corpse. The corpse was a man, and SeoYoon recognized its face.

"General... Oh..."

General Oh. The old man.

"Why General Oh..."

Why was General Oh dead in this room?
Someone had decapitated General Oh.
No, why was General Oh dead?

"EunSeo, just what happened..."

"I merely paid my enemy what he was owed."

EunSeo spoke with a firm voice as she sat in the blood.

"Enemy...?"

"I wondered who caused my brother to die, and it turned out to be this man."

"What do you...?"

SeoYoon didn't understand. General Oh caused EunLib to die? No. EunLib died by SeoYoon's hands. It wasn't General Oh.

"That day, my brother told us that he'd be leaving the palace early. However, that didn't happen. I asked around, and I found out that before the scary events had taken place, one man had asked my brother to take his place for night duty. The man claimed that his wife was in labor, and so he asked my brother to take his place that night. My foolish brother agreed to it because his own wife was pregnant. My brother, who shouldn't have been there that night, died there."

"What does this have to do with General Oh?"

"This man, General Oh, was the one who lured my brother there and made sure he was present during the uprising."

SeoYoon paled at EunSeo's words. So it hadn't been a coincidence that EunLib had been there that night? He had been purposefully lured there so that he would be present that night. By none other than General Oh.