Good Night

“Ah, I doubt it.” Jun-ho waved the little girl off before steering them back onto topic. “Has your Uncle Jung-bae ever mentioned your Appa being in trouble before? Like, does he know of anyone who might want to hurt your Appa?”

Ga-yeong nodded. “Yeah. He and my Appa owe some mean people a lot of money ‘cause they keep spending it all at the horse tracks.”

Jun-ho internally winced. He had seen it all before. The gambling addiction that destroyed families and lives, whether it be crippling debt or people going missing because they couldn’t repay the debt in time. The young detective suppressed a shudder at the memory of finding one such debtor in a back alley with their liver and a lung cut out. Jun-ho would’ve assumed that Seong Gi-hun had been another such casualty if not for the strange card Ga-yeong had handed him.

Still, the mark of a good detective was following every lead presented to them. So, Jun-ho would be thorough.

“Did you ever overhear you Appa talking to these mean people? Did he ever mention any names?”

Ga-yeong thought for a moment, tapping a finger against her cheek as she did, before she shook her head. “No, I never heard any names. But, I know where my Appa talked to them!”

“You do?”

“Uh-huh! I overheard him talking to my grandma about it a couple years back. He needed money ‘cause he sprained his wrist helping Uncle Jung-bae out at his bar, but he already spent too much money at the horse tracks. He said he spoke to some people in Seoul and they gave him money!”

Jun-ho’s heart sank a little bit at this new information. Seong Gi-hun borrowed some money from some “mean people” in Seoul. Yeah, like that won’t be hard to track down and verify. All he had to do was track down and talk to the miniscule nine million people. Should be easy, why not do it before lunch the next day?

“So…” Jun-ho tried to sound as neutral as possible, despite the information he just received. “Your Appa borrowed money from some mean people he spoke to in Seoul.”

“Yep!”

“And you’re certain it was in Seoul… why?”

“Because Seoul’s the capital of South Korea. I remember learning that in school!”

“Right, yup.” Jun-ho scribbled this information onto his notepad. I’m going to be pounding the pavement for months on this aren’t I?

“But he only spoke to them on sunny days.”

Jun-ho blinked. “He… huh?”

“He said he got money from someone in Seoul. But he only got it when the weather was sunny. That’s what I heard him tell my grandma anyway.”