Chapter 2

“Our family has a big secret.”

I heard those words from the age of sixteen to twenty-six.

Every few years, Dad would suddenly say them again.

He always brought it up just as I was about to forget about it, leaving me desperate to know more.

My family was ordinary. We weren’t even particularly comfortable.

So I’d always suspected that Dad’s big secret was that we were actually wealthy, that he and Mom were secretly rich.

Maybe they’d kept it from me all these years to toughen me up, like something out of a comedy.

Yesterday, I’d celebrated my twenty-sixth birthday.

After I blew out the candles on my cake, Dad said those words again.

This time he was even happier than usual. “You’ve finally grown up! Tomorrow I can tell you our family’s big secret!”

Of course, I was the happiest of all.

After the cake, I brushed my teeth, washed my face, and hopped into bed, giddy at the thought of the wonderful surprise my parents would have for me in the morning.

But the next day, Dad never got to tell me his secret.

Because he was dead.

The moment I opened my bedroom door, I saw him hanging from the electric fan in the living room, his eyes wide and glaring at me.

His upper body was intact. But the flesh and skin were gone from both thighs, leaving only bloodstained bones held together by sinew.

At first I couldn’t take it in. By the time I understood what I was seeing, I’d collapsed to the floor in terror.

All I could do was crawl back to my room, trembling, pick up my phone, and dial 110.

Although Dad was hanging from the fan, he had died of blood loss.

For a while, the police struggled to decide whether it was suicide or murder.

The autopsy and the preliminary police findings suggested murder.

Someone had apparently threatened or persuaded Dad into hanging from the fan, then used a scraper to strip the flesh from both his thighs while he was still alive. He had finally died from the extreme pain and loss of blood.

Hanging himself up and scraping away his own flesh was surely impossible for one person.

No one could be that brutal to themselves. However strong their will, the physical pain would make them pass out.

Even more surprising was the note the forensic examiner found under Dad’s tongue.

It was soaked with his saliva and bore only a few words.

[Sweetheart, get away!]

The police had no idea what to make of it. They asked me what I thought it meant, but I could only shake my head in bewilderment.

I had no idea.

Why did Dad want me to run?

The question that had lingered in my mind for years grew more baffling than ever.

What secret was my family hiding?

The scraper that had killed my father lay quietly on the living-room floor.

The police found only Dad’s fingerprints on it. No one else’s.

Yet all our doors and windows had been shut. There was no trace of anyone other than the three of us having been in the house the night before.

Neither Mom nor I had heard anything strange while we were asleep.

Neither of us had a motive, either, and nothing at the scene in the living room proved we’d harmed him.

The case suddenly became a mystery.

The police questioned Mom and me separately. In the end, they had to turn their suspicions elsewhere and began looking into other suspicious people in our residential complex.

Our home had been sealed off as the crime scene, so until the case was solved, we had to stay somewhere else.

I rented two rooms at a hotel across the street from our complex for Mom and me.

Once I had the room keys, I couldn’t help rubbing my eyes.

I’d cried so much that my eyelids were red, swollen, and itching.

Suddenly, as if noticing something, I turned to Mom.

“Mom, aren’t you sad that Dad’s dead?”