chapter 35

BangBangBang. Knocking on the door of the luxurious mansion as the sunset gave out its last ray outside, Tim struggled to loosen his stiff face. Beckman behind his back was still tilting his head with a dubious look, and his flustered partner who was looking at the door slightly touching him in place. After a short time, the door opened. A voice from a round and pretty-eyed child is heard.

“Eh, detective?”

“Ah, yeah, it’s us.”

Barely smiling, Tim waved at the girl. The child’s face seemed to pause in a strange shape than when he saw it at school, perhaps because of his mood, as if she was hiding a piece of a broken vase behind her back.

“May I come in?”

“……no, I’m alone right now.”

“There are shoes on the porch. Is there an adult? I’m going in, Clara.”

Clara swung open the door with a rude touch, and Jude strode into the front door. The girl with the pigtails shut her mouth with a slightly angry face. Feeling the discomfiture of the situation with his whole body, Tim also followed Jude through the door. Beckman, still unconvinced, uttered something like a sigh with an uncomfortable face, finally came into the house with the front door closed.

“This. Looking at the shoe shape, it looks like your father is here. Where is he?”

“I don’t know, Dad is sleeping. Come later, stop!”

The angry voice rang in the house. Not to be bothered by the voice, Jude looked around, shrugged and looked back at Tim. At the end of Jude’s gaze, there was a woman’s handbag on the table.

“Mr. Lance was right. He must be having a secret affair with a woman.”

“Mr. Lance……?”

A glimpse of surprise flashed across Clara’s face. Watching the rapid and small change of expression, Tim put his hand on his stomach to endure the nausea. It was hard to stand the unbelievable words he heard from Lance being revealed one by one. Looking alternately at Beckman and Tim, Jude turned to the girl who bit her lips.

“Come on, Clara. Your father is still working out. You don’t want to let your father know we’re here. So if you show me to the living room quietly, I think I can talk to you there.”

“……well, just do it at the table.”

Sitting in a chair close by, Clara looked at Jude with a slightly angry face. As if not feeling much excitement, Beckman and Tim naturally settled next to Jude, who sat in front of the child. Tim, who felt the edginess of the girl’s suffocating gaze, silently opened his mouth first as if trying to shake the feeling off.

“Well, Clara, I’m here to ask you something…”

“What did Mr. Lance say?”

The little girl cut off Tim’s words mid-sentence, asked, twisting her pigtails with her right hand. From this child, why does it smells like a street prostitute looking at life cynically? A street prostitute? Frightened by his own thoughts, Tim looked at Jude instead of Clara. Jude, nodding his head, recites the words as if he had no awareness of dealing with a child or just that there was no disparity in his attitude to whoever he was dealing with.

“Well, it’s simple. Even though your family may seem prosperous on the outside, it’s actually incredibly rotten, and that’s why you realize the unpleasant truth that despite your young age, the world is a trash can and the people are trash. So you were close to Mr. Lance about it.”

“……he said he’d keep it a secret, but the teacher said it surprisingly easily.”

“Because you put him in the police station, don’t blame anyone. I don’t want to take long, so let’s be simple and concise. You’re the one behind the meet up, right?”

“What do you mean, a meeting, all of a sudden?”

“Don’t play dumb, I’m on my way back from hearing from Josh. We’ve got someone to check on Connie right now. It was you who controlled the children at the center of the meeting, right?”

“Stop talking nonsense! Why would I kill my friends? Why? Reeve, after Reeve died, how much, how much I was……….!”

“Why, it’s to let Reeve be free. I heard you told Josh that’s what you said. It’s a way out for Reeve. But you haven’t told them it’s pretty big now, have you? If Connie talks about you, you can’t help but get involved. It’s a matter of time, so just tell me now. You know you’re underage and you’re not going to jail anyway.”

Clara shut her mouth for a moment. The child, who was looking back at Tim, Jude and Beckman as if to gauge her opponent, sighed and lowered her gaze. Beckman still shook his head at Jude with a suspicious look -because he had a little daughter- but Jude looked at Clara with a shrug of his shoulders and no words. After sitting firm like a doll without moving, facing the floor for a while, Clara opened her mouth to Jude.

“It was…..our hideout.”

Beckman’s eyes grew a little wider. Jude nodded with the face of a man who had fixed the leaky plumbing.

“You mean the meeting?”

“About my house, Mr. Lance told you everything, right?”

“Yes. Well, to the extent he knows.”

The father with a decent high-income job had an affair with a woman about 20 years of age, and her mother was also in the midst of a secret affair with her health club instructor, and rarely stayed at home. During the limited amount of time with her parents, she only heard harsh words and scolding that they should not be allowed to pour on to the child. The housekeeper was aware of it all, but did nothing for fear that her jobs would be jeopardized. However, there was no problem whatsoever with the student records. Both parents live through just like that, a wealthy family. Inside, however, the stagnant purulence was growing bigger and bigger.

“I’m sick and tired of it. But if you look closely at school, there were more children like me than I thought. So, at first, it was just a late gathering. They didn’t have guardians to stop them from getting home late, so it wasn’t that hard.”

“By the way, what’s the reason for the suddenness?”

“This was something Mr. Lance told me, but Reeve, Eli, and Carrie were having a particularly hard time. Their mom, dad, and grandfather weighed them down so much that they couldn’t come to the meeting. They’ve always said they can’t get out of there. No matter how hard we struggle, we’re kids, we don’t have adults who believe what we say, and no one willing to do anything for us.”

“……so……you?”

Beckman turned to Clara in a dismayed look. It’s been a while since Clara began to talk, but it still seems difficult to acknowledge this situation. Smiling once as if laughing at Beckman, Clara continued with a cute voice.

“We had to get something moving. Since I was the first one to make a meeting, and the kids followed me the most, so I told them. It’s not that there’s no way out.”

“You mean the kids followed suit? They’re willing to die, so easily?”

“Of course I said no at first. I’m scared. But that was the only way. It’s hard to say that it’s better to live in the midst of adults for the rest of our life, to endure it for a while, or to be comfortable forever.”

“How do you know death makes them feel better?”

“Keke, detective. No matter how hard it is, it can’t be harder than when they lived.”

Laughing out loud once, Clara quickly returned to her expressionless face and tilted her head slightly.

“We just helped out a little. Aren’t there friends who tell you that it’s easier to do it faster when bungee jumping? Like I did. It wasn’t much. It was a bit hard in the pool, but he kept trying to come up because he was out of breath.”

“So what did you do?”

“Nothing, I just stayed by the side. I told him not to come out.”

Tim raised his hand to the mouth, feeling uncomfortable. With the children gathering by the side all night to watch, there would have been no guarantee that the deceased would live on even if they want to. But they were only about 11 years old. No, it might have been possible because they were children. Holding back as he wanted to shake his head, Tim asked quietly.

“You didn’t know things would get this big?”

“I didn’t know. But I wanted the adults to know a little bit. Kids don’t always get their own way but I didn’t want anyone to know about our group, and I wanted the adults to let us get away from this a little.”

“What about Mr. Lance? Why did you tell me about him?”

“Josh said, I think I made a little mistake. He was very timid. That’s why I told misters about Mr. Lance in advance. It’s like insurance. Many adults do it too, don’t they?”

The child said all sorts of things, as if she was talking about what happened at school. Feeling goosebumps running down the spine, Tim turned unconsciously to Beckman. He was staring at the little child’s face with a blank look on his face.

“Well, that’s why you … Did you let them die? No, I mean, with you and your peers together? Is that why?”

“It’s better to say free than to die. But, yeah. Yes.”

“I can’t believe it! Why in the world did you do that? I mean, I mean, why do you kids think it’s so hard that to die-”

“Mister, do you have a child?”

Looking straight into Beckman’s eyes, Clara asked, and Beckman closed his mouth for a moment and nodded his head.

“I have an eight-year-old daughter.”

“I envy her. She will grow up not thinking the same as me.”

“Like you … thought?”

“How can I run away? How can I stay alone without crying, how can I stay away from adults?”

The child, who was speaking without hesitation, shut her mouth. Before the eyes were filled with tears, Clara raised her head quickly.

“I wish there was another world. There are no adults, only us. We knew that our meet up wasn’t real. I knew I couldn’t really run away, but I had fun while we were together. I knew I was dreaming, but still……”

It was delusional, but Jude nodded once. A virtual world, not reality, a children’s paradise. Like an amusement park where you know it’s not real but an illusion, with so many fun things to do and can’t help but have fun. In the end, Clara quickly wiped her tears with her hands.

“I can’t cry, I’m going to get scolded…….and it’s almost time to end.”

“To end, what?”

When Jude, who was sitting down without much reaction, asked, he heard the door open from inside. Laughter was heard several times in the deep inner room, and soon a blonde woman and a 40-year-old man walked out together. Looking at each other, the giggling man and woman stiffened as soon as they saw the three men sitting in front of the table. It was the man who spoke first.

“Wh, who are you? I’ll call the police if you don’t get out right now.”

“Oh, I’m a cop. I have to take your daughter with me.”

When Jude took out his police badge in a flurry, the man turned to the child with a more confused face.

“Well, what? Clara? Clara, what the hell is going on here? What’s going on?”

“Because of what happened at school recently, we have some investigation to do. That, about Clara’s group of kids’ meet up…”

“Meeting? You mean those kids you’ve been out with every night?”

Tim, who was trying to explain it with as much ease as possible, narrowed his brow with distrust for a moment. What he’s saying is, no way? Jude opened his mouth to the man, throwing out a slightly ridiculous grin.

“You know it?”

“I thought she’d sneak out one night, but what else did you do out there, huh? Did the kids get together and take some drug? What did you do wrong? Why aren’t you talking?”

Strode up to the child, the man squeezed Clara’s shoulder roughly. The nasty vibe on his face caused Tim to take a step closer to stop him, and Jude rose quietly from his seat.

Taking turns looking at her father’s angry face and the bewildered face of the young blonde woman, Clara looked straight at the man’s face with a wry smile. Tears flowed down slowly on the still fuzzy cheeks.

“You don’t know. What it was to me.”

“What? What are you talking about, what did you do?”

“-It was our own world.”

As tears began to mingle with her voice, Tim took the man’s hand off the child’s shoulder. The man rebelled with a slightly rough gesture, but the strength of Tim, which held his shoulders tightly and pushed him away, soon calmed him down. Clara repeated it one more time, keeping her eyes on the man.

“It was our own world. No adult interfere…..”

-It was our own world.

Jude’s eyelashes trembled slightly. As if searching through a faded notebook, several colors of paint were disjointed in his head. His head throbbed like a pounding heart. With this undesirable and unbelievable situation, Beckman, who was overwhelmed, shakes his head once and inadvertently turned to the side and was surprised.

“Jude?”

“Calm down, and for now we’ll…….Jude?”

Tim, who was pulling the man back, turned his head and spat out an unsettled voice. His face as white as marble, stiffened blankly towards the air, without a millimeter of movement. The eyes were not directed at anyone.

-It was our own world.

-It was our own world.

-This is our own world.

“Jude, Jude? What’s the matter, what’s wrong? You have a stomach ache again?”

-This is our own world.

-Our own world……..

The stomach ache that had subsided came back in an instant. Like a tidal wave, a white and black light came in front of his eyes. Something other than the scene he’s seeing now kept trying to invade his vision, and a voice that he had never heard before seemed to whisper in his head. A name tickled on the tip of his tongue.

When Jude felt his sense of equilibrium completely gone, he lost his mind.