“Park Hana.”
I had to put my hand on the floor to steady myself as the words slammed into me.
“She showed me pictures she had. You were in all of them.”
I closed my eyes as a wave of vertigo crested over me.
“Describe them,” I said faintly, opening my eyes just in time to watch his expression morph into something…
Sad.
He sighed, reached for me again, but pulled back at the last second.
“The photos from the Christmas ball,” he said. “The shoes you wore, they didn’t cover your tattoo.”
I frowned and looked down at my foot, the vines and flowers so clear even in the dim light.
“She had other pictures of you when your foot was bare. Your tattoo… the photos matched.”
“That’s not enough proof,” I said, needing to put effort into the words to get them past my numb lips.
It felt like I was being pushed closer and closer to a cliff, and at the bottom lay the jagged shards of having the world suddenly know exactly who I was.
I shivered, rubbing my arms, noting with some detachment the goosebumps that pebbled my skin.
Jihoon shook his head, looking down at his hands. “There were more. Many more. That time in Myeongdong…”
The rain photo. Where Jihoon had been caught clearly in the arms of a dark-haired woman, who we’d believed hadn’t been identifiable. Stones slipped into my stomach, weighing me down, and drawing me closer to the cliff’s edge.
“She has photos from different angles. Your face... It’s clear.”
The visual his words drew felt like a blow to my gut.
“Oh, shit,” I breathed, holding a hand to my forehead, feeling myself sway.
Jihoon reached for me again, grasping my elbows, not to hold me up, but to provide strength. My world was tilting, or I was.
“There were more,” he said quietly. “She must have been collecting them. I think–I think she knew who you were to me for a long time.”
As if my mind had tugged at a loose thread, a memory suddenly pulled tight. I remembered a time Hana and I had sat together together after a long day of work. I had pulled my my shoe and sock off to massage my aching feet. Hana had seen my tattoo. I knew she had. I’d caught her staring at it.
I made a sound that was halfway between a groan and an expletive as I leaned back, righting myself. The hand I pressed to my chest was some attempt to calm my racing heart, and to keep the pieces of myself together, even as I felt them slip away. The parts of myself I had built up over the past three years. A life, an identity, now at risk of exposure for a life I didn’t have anymore. I took several deep, calming breaths, trying to rationalise this in my head.
“She really was behind theTabs, wasn’t she?”
He nodded. “She didn’t say it, but she did not need to.”
I groaned again. I knew it. I just hadn’t wanted to be right.
It didn’t feel like there was a middle ground. Either she kept her mouth shut, presumably at some great cost, or she leaked the cache of photos, revealing my identity out for everyone to see, causing who knew how much irreparable harm.
Just when I thought it couldn’t get worse, this incomprehensible blow, Jihoon kept talking. And somehow, it was worse.
“Jagiya… I know you hate me. But I need you to try and understand that I – I tried to do the right thing.”
His hands trembled where they held me, his fingers running back and forth as if he was trying to sooth himself by soothing me. There was a not insubstantial part of me that wanted to comfort him, but I pushed it down because I had a feeling I needed to hear him now, loud and clear.
“She blackmailed me,” he stated, like it was a precursor to whatever was coming next.
