The Old Apartment

The old man's face twisted with rage when he heard what Yuna said.

"How could you say something so outrageous? "You're going to feed someone's ashes to the dogs? You monster!"

Yuna crossed her arms with a scoff "Old coot, cut the act already. Just how much is Finn paying you? You're quite the convincing act."

"Why you!"

"Whatever," she interrupted him with a wave before turning to walk down the stairwell. "Finn, I know you can hear me. Are you trying to scare me off with this act? Do you think I'd fall for something like this?"

She kept talking in tandem with the sound of her heels echoing throughout the stairwell, saying, "I knew who you were the moment you took the fall for Joe back then. You wish to make me feel guilty with this performance? Hah! Dream on!"

I drifted after her.

Conflicted emotions swirled in me as I watched her march toward her car.

She sat in there for a long time with her fingers tightly gripped around the steering wheel.

Suddenly, she slammed her hand against the horn, causing an ear-piercing shriek as the honk echoed across the old neighborhood.

"Fine. You're all going to keep up the act, are you?"

She pulled out her phone and made a call.

"Look up where Finn's parents went. Yes, I want all records, including medical, transport, financial transactions, and everything else. Don't leave even a single stone unturned."

After that, she made another call. "Joe, what did the federal officers say?"

Joe was audibly frustrated. "Don't ask. I don't know who dug up the information from back then. Yuna, the truth will be exposed if Finn doesn't show up to take the blame!"

"He'll do it," Yuna confidently declared. "He always did what I told him to back then. There's no way he'd disobey me this time."

"Didn't his neighbor say he's dead?"

"That's fake news." Yuna clicked her tongue. "I know him like the back of my hand. He may be incompetent, but he's an absolute coward. He'd never have the guts to actually die. He's likely just panicking while hiding away from me."

After a moment of silence, Joe said, "Fine, but be quick about it. The election will start next month."

"Understood."

She hung up and started the car.

I thought she'd be driving back to her office, but I realized she was heading into a rather old neighborhood after a few turns.

I knew that place well.

It was where the two of us stayed when we got married.

She wasn't a CEO, and I was still a carefree young man.

We rented a rundown apartment about 400 square feet with a leaky toilet and a greasy kitchen. When winter came, it would be as cold as an igloo.

Even so, we had spent those days like the married couple we actually were.

She pulled to a stop beneath the building and looked up at the window on the fifth floor.

She eventually walked up the stairs after standing there and staring at the dilapidated building for a long, long time.

The lock had been changed long ago. It was clear that she hadn't expected this, as she paused before reaching up to feel the top of the door frame.

The key was still there.

That was one of my habits.

She always forgot to bring her keys, so I would hide a spare on the door frame.

As she pushed past the heavy door, she found herself in an apartment covered in dust and rotting furniture.

The decorations we bought for the wedding were still hung up on the walls. The paper had turned white from the dust, while a corner flapped in the draft.

She stood there in the doorway, unmoving.

I floated up to her and noticed she was staring at the dining table, which was being held up by bricks due to a missing leg.

Surely, she still remembered our time here.

We were flat broke back then. Even so, I scrimped and saved in order to buy a lipstick for her on Valentine's Day.

She could not bear to use it, so she would hide it under her pillow. Every night, she had the habit of taking a peek at it before we fell asleep.

Later on, she gave that lipstick away to a client.

When I found out, she told me not to be so petty and look at the bigger picture. In her eyes, it was just a lipstick, and I was overreacting.

I did not say a single word.

She walked to the bedroom.

The bed was the same old bed we slept on. The folded-up quilt was my doing.

No one had bothered tidying up after I was gone.

There was a photo on the side table. It was taken when we got married.

She had a bright smile on her lips while I stood there stiffly. I could still remember how nervous I had been, and it really showed.

She picked up the photo and brushed one finger across the faces displayed on it.

Her lips moved as if she wanted to speak, but no words were uttered.

However, I could see her eyes turning red.

Still, everything flashed by so quickly that her reaction felt like a hallucination.

She soon thumped the photo back on the table, speaking in a low and dark voice. "Finn, don't forget how useless you were back then. When Joe moved back, you could not even afford to treat him to a meal."

Joe's return home...

Yes, everything had changed upon Joe's return.

She began to complain that my cooking tasted awful. She disliked how little I earned. She hated how I was never able to act and speak with eloquence.

She forgot about the days before Joe's return.

She forgot how I was the one who carried her on my back and ran three bus stops just to get her to the hospital when she burned up with a fever.

She forgot that I was the one who braved the bitter winter to bring her supper when she had to stay up late to work overtime.

She had conveniently forgotten all I had done for her.

Personally, I was of the mind that she figured all of those memories were worthless after Joe's return.

I could still remember the first time Joe dined with us in our home.

He was dressed in a fine suit and had brought two bottles of expensive wine. The moment he walked in, he scowled and asked Yuna how she could live in such squalor.

She had flushed bright red in mortification at the time.

She changed after that night.

Yuna sat by the bed for a very long time. I thought she had fallen asleep from how long she had sat there.

Suddenly, her phone rang.

It was a call from her assistant.

"Ms. Lane, I've gotten the information you asked for."

"Talk."

There was clear hesitation in her assistant's voice as they rattled off the results of her investigation. "I've looked into Finn Chance's parents. According to the hospital, his father passed away from a heart attack five years ago. He passed away at 10.23 p.m.

"His mother passed away three days later due to a brain hemorrhage. She passed away at 4.15 a.m. The two individuals' death certificates were filed and recorded by the office on North Street."

There was a pause before they continued, "Also, according to the funeral parlor, no one has collected their ashes or even paid the storage fees for five whole years."

Yuna shot to her feet as if she had been struck by lightning. The hand holding the phone up trembled. "That's impossible! You've got it wrong. Keep investigating!"

"Ms. Lane, I've checked it three times..."

"I'm telling you it's impossible!" she practically roared. "They were healthy back then. How could they have died in a flash?

"Joe even told me they were doing fine last month! I was shown their chat records!"

Her assistant fell silent.

After a long moment, she tentatively brought up, "Ms. Lane, are you sure it's last month? Because that's impossible. I've looked into their numbers and all associated social media accounts. They had all been deleted five years ago."

I Truly Hate Myself

Night had long fallen by the time Yuna left the old apartment.

She immediately drove toward Joe's apartment.

Joe answered the door, dressed in a set of loungewear. He was startled by how lost she looked. "Yuna? Why are you here?"

She stood there, stammering for a long time with quivering lips before she finally forced out her words. "Finn's parents are dead..."

Joe's hand, which was holding a glass of wine, froze mid-air.

He placed it down and walked over to wrap an arm around her shoulders. "Come in. Tell me everything."

Yuna was in a state of complete disbelief as she was guided to sit on the couch, murmuring blankly, "My assistant looked into it. There were medical records, death certificates, and storage records from the crematorium."

She looked up at him with red eyes. "Joe, they're actually gone. Finn's father died five years ago, and his mother died three more days later."

I watched as Joe's face turned stiff for a few long moments.

Then, he knelt down and held her hand with his, gently stroking the back of it with a thumb. "Yuna, it's not your fault."

"But..."

"No buts," he said, interrupting her. "You didn't know this would happen, right? No one would've foreseen such a tragedy.

"If anyone is to blame, then it has to be me. If I didn't need Finn's help with the case back then, you wouldn't have gotten into such a terrible spat with him. If none of that had happened, you wouldn't have lost the chance to see them one final time."

Then, Joe put on the wounded look, pinning the blame on himself to gain her sympathy. Surprise, surprise. It worked like a charm.

"Don't say that, Joe!"

"I'm telling the truth. You've done more than enough for me over the years, Yuna. Once this election is done, I'll personally visit his parents' graves and apologize."

Tears continued to stream down Yuna's cheeks. She held tight to his hands like he was her last shred of hope. "What about Finn? His parents are dead. How do we find him now?"

Joe thought for a moment before speaking in a softer voice than before. "Think about it, Yuna. If Finn is truly dead, who would have organized his parents' funerals? Why has no one collected their ashes for five years?"

Yuna was surprised. "You mean to say..."

"I just find it suspicious. You know how Finn is. He may look like an honest man, but he's the greatest schemer ever. Back then, he only agreed to take the blame for me because he knew you would think well of him."

He turned away from her, a bitter smile painting his lips. "Sometimes, I truly hate myself. Yuna, you wouldn't have been forced to marry him if I had returned sooner."

"Don't say that, Joe!" She walked over and wrapped her arms around him. "I was a blind fool back then. Don't worry. It doesn't matter whether he's dead or alive. I swear I'll make sure to support you through this crisis!"

As I watched the two cling to each other, a chill spread through my translucent form.

What a loving couple.

They loved each other so much that they would scheme to make the victim of their malicious plots forgive them.

My abusers were delusional and totally sick in the head.

Missed Calls Years Ago

Yuna stayed in Joe's apartment until midnight.

The moment she left, the gentle and warm look on his face vanished.

He returned to the couch and dialed a number with a scowl on his face. "Hey, it's me. Just where did Finn go? Yuna found out that his parents are dead. Now, she's searching everywhere for him like a madwoman."

Whatever the person on the other end said only made Joe more impatient.

"I don't care where he's hiding! Find him! There's one more month left to the election. If no one takes the blame for that case, the federal officers will come after me first!"

After a pause, he smirked.

"He wants to fake his death? If he had the nerve to do so, he wouldn't have taken the fall for me back then. He's an absolute loser, and losers value their lives the most. He wouldn't die."

After ending the call, he slammed his phone back on the coffee table. Then, he took a swig of wine.

I drifted before him, observing the frustrated and scheming look in his eyes.

Suddenly, I found it all laughable.

He thought I had hidden away, so he knew nothing at all.

It was another sleepless night for Yuna.

…

The very next morning, she summoned her assistant to her office. "I want every record from the day Finn was released from prison. Who picked him up, where he went, who he met—leave nothing out."

Her assistant was surprised. "Ms. Lane, didn't I…"

"Keep looking into it. Dig deeper."

Too scared to ask any further, the assistant left the office.

…

That afternoon, a stack of documents was left on Yuna's desk.

The first page she flipped to was the discharge records from the prison.

My name was sloppily scrawled across it.

The second page was a still image from the prison entrance's surveillance records.

In it, I was standing right outside the metal grates, squinting up at the sky while dressed in the same outfit I was imprisoned in three years ago.

The person who picked me up was not Joe's driver but a middle-aged woman with gray hair.

Yuna pointed at the image. "Who is that?"

"The mother of the fraud case's victim, Serena Zodd. Her son committed suicide after being cheated out of over two million back then.

"She raised her grandson all alone until he was diagnosed with leukemia at five. As there was no money to treat him, he passed away too."

She flinched. "She picked up Finn?"

"The surveillance record shows Mr. Chance talking to her for a few moments before they got into a gray van."

The assistant held out a photograph.

The van was parked by the side of the road. The word "Logistics" was printed on its side, and its rearview mirror was held together by some tape.

"That van got onto the Hillside Express that afternoon. This was the last photo we have of it."

The assistant flipped to the next still from the surveillance cameras. In it, the gray van was speeding down the expressway. The driver's face could not be seen.

Yuna's frown deepened. "What next?"

"There was nothing after that. Two hours later, someone reported a car crash near the mountain. By the time the firefighters arrived at the scene, the van was completely consumed by the fire."

The office was so silent that the only sound heard was the buzzing of the air conditioning.

"Oh, right. I've found the police's report of the incident." The assistant pulled out the last document of the stack. "They concluded that the driver lost control as the brakes stopped working. There were only two individuals in the car. Finn died on the spot, while Serene was left heavily injured."

Yuna did not say a single word. She stared at the documents and photos spread across her desk, motionless, as if she had been turned to stone.

…

After a few long moments, she violently shot to her feet. Her lips trembled, opening and closing, but no sound came out for ages.

"That's impossible… No way! How can Finn be dead? If he's dead, why wasn't his family notified?"

"The police did look up his profile. You were listed as his spouse. According to the report…"

The assistant glanced at her before continuing on in a lower voice. "They said they called you multiple times, but no one answered."

Yuna was stunned.

She frantically rummaged for her phone. However, the call records from five years ago had already been erased.

Still, she remembered that time full well.

Joe needed more money and connections back then.

She was so busy networking on his behalf to counter the federal office's investigation into the fraud case.

Her phone was in Joe's service every hour of the day. She never answered any calls that came from unknown numbers.

Back then, she thought the calls came from scammers or marketing firms.

She had thought of a million different possibilities, except for the chance that I was dead.

At that thought, Yuna slowly crouched down. With her back against her desk, she wrapped her arms around her knees.

She did not cry.

Instead, she curled up in silence, like a snail that had its shell shattered by a cruel stomp.

After a long time, she finally spoke with a hoarse voice.

"Does Joe know about this?"

The assistant shook her head. "Mr. Farrell shouldn't know about it. According to the information we found, there were no traces of his knowledge of the crash."

Yuna buried her face in her knees.

After another few long moments, she finally replied, "Keep digging. Find out how Serena knew when Finn would be discharged from prison."

She raised her head up. Her eyes were bloodshot. "Only Joe and I know the date of his discharge."

The assistant's face twisted in shock.