CH 55

“There’s a huge metal door downstairs. To go down to the floor that she’s on, we need to find another key. We didn’t know what to do, so we came back up.” I felt like I could hear the eyes rolling up to look at me. “I wanted to rest. Did anything happen up here?”

“…”

“If nothing happened, could I go back to my room?” As I turned my back to the group, the comedian, Seogeung, hurriedly called me back, “Hey, you…”

Sitting at the head of the table, Seogeung had his arms crossed. It was a fitting seat for someone to lead a group because the whiteboard was right next to him. The moment our eyes met, he cleared his throat before asking, “Why do you have the dead Goyeon Lee’s flashlight?”

Confused, I knitted my brow. Hyehyun explained, flustered, “The damaged flashlight that you left, we didn’t know, but each flashlight has a person’s initials engraved, but…”

I didn’t need to hear anymore. I only had one thing to say. “Because Goyeon took my flashlight. She said she broke it, so we exchanged lights.”

“Didn’t you say you were looking for the battery?” Seoyoon Kim was the one who asked this time. He was sitting at the center of the table with his arms crossed as he watched me. I recalled what I had said and nodded, not thinking too much of it.

“Yes, I did.” I grinned. “I wonder why you’re asking me this?”

I could clearly see through their intentions, but I ignored them on purpose. Hawoo Kang, who was sitting not far from Seoyoon, picked up the baton. He glanced at Seogeung and asked quietly compared to the others, “Goyeon’s corpse… Didn’t it look strange?”

I thought back to her body, staring up at the ceiling. It was strange, very much so. “It didn’t look like she fell from stepping into the floorless room because she was happy to see the window-shaped wall hanging.”

The way her corpse was positioned made it look like she fell backward instead of face-first. Moreover, there were fingernail marks on the doorframe. It was clear from the circumstantial evidence that she didn’t fall accidentally. Someone stood in front of that room and pushed her. She didn’t die by accident—she was murdered.

However, it was still unclear if the other party pushed her accidentally or intentionally.

I looked around the hall. Thankfully, Goyeon’s stylist wasn’t in the room. It wasn’t something that I could stop from hearing, but I didn’t want to let her know that a close person was murdered.

“Something about it didn’t seem like an accident.”

“That’s exactly it!” Seogeung banged the table with his open palm, just like he was getting a confession from a murderer.

“You pushed her, didn’t you?!” Seogeung yelled as he glared and people yelled his name in horror. This only showed that he jumped to conclusions too soon. However, it was better for me that Seogeung brought this up first. Everyone already had their suspicions, so it would only become tiring and bothersome the longer this dragged on.

“Isn’t that why you stepped forth first? To dispose of the evidence?”

“Did you forget that I also went down with him just now? I wasn’t reluctant to go down and I didn’t see him try anything suspicious when I was with him.” Woorim raised his hand and declared quietly in response to Seogeung. I didn’t want to break it to him, but his declaration did nothing to clear the doubts of anybody. We didn’t even get close to Goyeon’s body. Obviously, he wouldn’t have seen me do anything suspicious.

“You don’t know if he tried to do anything while you weren’t watching!”

Woorim smirked, “Yeah right, he doesn’t even have a flashlight.”

He was clearly scoffing at Seogeung with his smirk, so the furious Seogeung bolted up from his seat. Seogeung looked like he wanted to stomp over and grab Woorim by his collar, but Woorim didn’t seem to care at all. He simply looked at me and shrugged. “What do you want to do? They say the first witness is always the first suspect.”

He was right. This was exactly that situation.

I placed the blanket that I was carrying on the table. They were light sheets, but since I’d been holding them for a while, my arms and shoulders ached. I massaged my sore muscles and continued, “Let’s say that I really killed her. What would be my motive?”