Chapter 288

“…It’s not my fault. I did everything because I was told to.”

“…By whom?”

The detective asked Dalli in a disinterested tone. He couldn’t afford to show any emotional disturbance in front of a criminal, so his expression remained perfectly calm. However, his mind was in complete turmoil because of Dalli’s claim.

The likelihood of a planned crime, which the victim had been convinced of, skyrocketed. However, the possibility that the perpetrator had acted under the orders of a third party was something the police had never anticipated.

‘If someone else was involved, we would have found traces of it long ago … Is he lying?’

The detective, quietly processing the information, didn’t think it was a lie to simply get out of the situation. His instincts, honed through years of experience, told him so.

From their first encounter, he had realized that the suspect had a very weak mental constitution. After continuously applying intense pressure, the suspect had now reached his breaking point. In such a situation, someone who wasn’t particularly intelligent and was not skilled at concealing his emotions wouldn’t be able to tell a lie clever enough to deceive the detective.

The detective recalled the investigative notes he had briefly jotted down in his notebook and concluded that it was unlikely Dalli could have acquired the stolen vehicle with such meticulous planning.

‘He’s not the kind of guy who could commit a planned crime…….’

‘If the crime was committed because of a conflict, why wait? With such an impulsive nature, if he had the capacity to harm, he would have acted immediately on the day the conflict occurred.’

‘Don’t get impatient. Don’t get impatient.’ He muttered to himself several times as he waited, but Dalli remained sitting there, motionless.

“…….”

His expression was blank, as if his mind had been wiped clean.

The detective, seeing his face, had a gut feeling that something wasn’t right. Just as he opened his mouth to urge him to answer again, Dalli, who had been staring blankly at the floor under the desk, suddenly uttered a few words.

“…I don’t remember.”

The detective closed his eyes tightly at the hollow answer. However, during that time, Dalli had only shown unusual behavior, such as repeatedly banging his forehead on the desk as if he had a headache.

‘Let’s start from the beginning again.’

As he made up his mind and was about to ask Dalli another question, Dalli grinned, twisting the corners of his mouth into a smirk.

“Oh, I remember!”

The detective nodded slightly, as if to say ‘Go ahead, speak ‘. However, Dalli didn’t even glance at him. Instead, he suddenly jumped up from his seat, consumed by intense excitement, and shouted.

“Father!”

“…….”

“My father told me to do it! I’m telling the truth! He told me to give back to him exactly as much as I suffered because of Kang Hyukwoo!”

“…Ha, so now you’re saying your father told you to do it?”

Dalli grabbed the man’s hand, who was too dumbfounded even to scoff, and asked with a bright smile.

“You know, I promised not to disappoint my father anymore … So, what do you think? Have I finally become a son he can be proud of? Just like my little brother!”

Hearing those words spill out with a bright smile while still gripping his hand, the detective couldn’t hold back and let out a brief scoff. Then, after glancing at the clock, he picked up the items on the desk one by one, held them in his hand, and rose from his seat as he spoke.

“Hey, come to your senses, 28 year old Kim Youngki. Can’t you make a single decision on your own? You’re past the age to be acting like a child.”

“…….”

“I’m a father myself, so I will answer that. There’s nothing more disappointing and shameful than knowing your own child has harmed someone. A son he can be proud of? Don’t make me laugh. You’re just one of the many pathetic criminals I’m sick of seeing.”

.

.

.

At those cold words, Dalli became agitated as if having a seizure and started to thrash around. However, the detective didn’t even spare him a glance and simply opened the interrogation room door, stepping out.

He turned to his fellow detectives and shook his head, “He’s just not right in the head, that guy. He kept talking about his family for over two hours, saying his father told him to do it, but it’s all nonsense. I bet his parents are just as troubled.”

“He doesn’t even seem to understand the simple fact that running away from the scene of the accident will work against him … I don’t think we’re going to get any useful testimony out of him.”

“The statements made during the interrogation might lose their validity due to his mental instability. In the end, it was all a waste of effort.”

“Honestly, I didn’t expect his condition to be this bad. Just in case, let’s also look into Kim Youngki’s father. Though, I don’t have high hopes it’ll turn up anything important.”

It was common for criminals to give contradictory lies during interrogations. Therefore, the detective judged Dalli’s statement, ‘ I did everything because I was told to ‘, as just a lie to escape the intense pressure, and dismissed the possibility of a third party’s involvement from his mind.

“The victim was convinced it was a premeditated crime, but I suppose it won’t be easy to prove it.”

“There’s nothing we can do. The victim was so sure, but in reality, there wasn’t a single piece of evidence to prove his connection with Kim Youngki. If only there were phone records, a photo they took together, or witness testimonies from people around them. A few CCTV cameras wouldn’t mean anything. It’s such a busy area, so it could easily be written off as a coincidence.”

“He can’t even tell us what that personal grudge was about. If he doesn’t cooperate like this, there’s hardly anything we can do to help him.”

Even though there are still some uneasy parts, what else could be done? There was no way to have a proper conversation with Dalli, and there was nothing more that could be done.

“We’ve done everything we could, so let’s just leave it at that. Let’s go get something to eat.”

In this way, the only opportunity to uncover that Seo Yutae was involved vanished for good.

“The interrogation is over. There wasn’t a single mention of you, and the other statements seem to be dismissed as nonsense or lies.”

And Seo Yutae, at this very moment, received all the information through Choi Jeokhyeon.

“That’s impressive. I never thought you could block all that information so perfectly.”

Seo Yutae briefly glanced at Choi Jeokhyeon’s face, which was radiant like a rose in full bloom and wreathed in a bright smile as he chattered endlessly, then sighed and turned his head away.

‘…What in the world did he do to get that information?’

Choi Jeokhyeon called Seo Yutae great , but in Seo Yutae’s eyes, it was Choi Jeokhyeon, who was receiving real-time information on the confidential investigation and evidence, that seemed more impressive.

‘He’s really great.’

The problem was that the word ‘ great ‘ wasn’t the ‘ outstanding ‘ kind, but the ‘ serious ‘ kind. 1

“How did you do it? I trusted you because you sounded so confident, but to be honest, I was pretty worried.”

‘Trust me? That’s nonsense … he just had confidence that if things went wrong later, he could just turn everything upside down.’

With clenched teeth and closed eyes, Seo Yutae did his best to avoid the chilling blue gaze of Choi Jeokhyeon that showed between his long eyelashes and the curve of his smile. He knew that if he honestly told him everything he asked, it could lead to an irreversible catastrophe.

“…….”

The last words Dalli uttered during the interrogation were not a lie.

Because he really believed it was the truth.

To explain the full story, we had to rewind to the day Seo Yutae faced the Pantheion members at the hotel.

“Guess what I said.”

“…You said Seungbeom-hyung is a fool.”

Do Yuda had repeatedly asked Seo Yutae to use the ability that day.

In truth, up until then, Seo Yutae had resolved to avoid using the ability as much as possible to minimize the usage of cost, and had hardly used it at all. However, at that moment, he was feeling particularly weak toward Do Yuda, who had gone through a lot of emotional distress because of him. It was akin to a parent, out of guilt for neglecting their family, buying everything their child asked for.

As a result, Seo Yutae couldn’t bring himself to coldly reject Do Yuda’s request. After reluctantly using the ability, he opened the laptop to check how much cost remained.

And then, he noticed that something had changed from before.

‘…What is this?’

[GIFT]

[Eraser in My Head: COST 10]

At first, only the button for the gift with the lowest cost, presumed to be an eavesdropping ability, was activated among the several gifts. But now, the button for another gift below it was activated as well.

Seo Yutae immediately realized that it was an ability related to manipulating others’ memories. After all, he was the one who had forgotten countless memories because of that ability.

“…Does this mean I can use this ability now? Since when…….”

However, he wasn’t certain what the consequences of using that ability recklessly would be for the target. Even if it didn’t cause harm, he believed he shouldn’t arbitrarily erase someone else’s memories. Therefore, Seo Yutae waited for the right moment without using it.

Then, the moment he came face-to-face with Dalli, Seo Yutae tested that ability for the first time while Dalli was on a call with Kang Hyukwoo.

“This is impossible. How are you still alive!”

Clearly, Dalli initially remembered that he had hit Han Seungbeom. However, right after Seo Yutae used the ability, Dalli started to feel a sense of discomfort in his head and slowly started forgetting the memories of that incident.

“I hit him as you ordered, I hit him just like you told me to … uh, huhhh?”

Just like the morticians who were with Seo Yutae and Choi Jeokhyeon.

“…What was I talking about?”

Memories erased in that way were either treated as if they had never existed at all, or fabricated into plausible false memories. The former was the case of the morticians who had forgotten the very anomaly sensed from the weight of the corpse, while the latter was the case of Seo Yutae, who had misunderstood the reason for his own death.

Seo Yutae, after meeting Dalli, became convinced that he was now able to use that ability and used it once again in this plan.

“…I don’t remember.”

As it turned out, Dalli truly forgot all memories of having interacted with Seo Yutae after the accident. Even the memory of being kidnapped by Choi Jeokhyeon that day was completely erased.

And the gaps in his memory were immediately replaced by other memories.

“My father told me to do it! I’m telling the truth!”

Since Dalli equated Seo Yutae with his own parents, the person most suitable to replace Seo Yutae, while still preserving all the emotions he had felt at the time, was his parents. For that reason, Dalli came to genuinely believe that his father had ordered him to kill Lim Seunghoon.

It was nothing new for him to ramble nonsense, as he had been suffering from a mental illness for a long time. So, neither his parents nor the detectives noticed anything unusual.

Dalli’s heartfelt pleas were only used as grounds for a psychiatric evaluation, and, in the end, helped to weaken the validity of the statements he made during the interrogation process.

In addition, since Lim Seunghoon had destroyed all the records under Kang Hyukwoo’s orders, he ultimately failed to prove his connection or conflict with Dalli in a way that wouldn’t harm him .

“Director-nim, please help me … You know it too! That bastard did it on purpose! All you need to do is testify a little!”

Lim Seunghoon, who was getting further and further away from the ‘ just punishment ’ he had hoper for, trembled with indignation and asked Kang Hyukwoo for help, but Kang Hyukwoo turned his back on him.

“…Seunghoon-ya.”

No, to be more precise, it would be correct to say that he pressured him.

“Keep your mouth shut.”

“…What?”

“You’ve already annoyed me enough by rambling on about intentional crimes and all that.”

“What, what do you…….”

“Now you can’t even move your legs, so you can’t run away. If we heard news right now that you were so depressed over the accident that you committed suicide, no one would think it was strange … Do you want to die silently, like you never existed?”

Kang Hyukwoo wanted to hide his past mediaplays using online communities and his contact with sasaengs at all costs, so he began to put in place various tricks to wrap up this incident as an ‘ accidental ‘ one.

And he had not the slightest idea that all of this was part of Seo Yutae’s plan.

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