Holy Idol [EN]: Chapter 877

◈ 877. Shin Jo-woon’s Side Story (2)

Jang Tae-ri’s eyes widened, caught off guard by the sudden mention of her brother.

“What…?”

But surprise made her answer without thinking.

“Do it.”

Her heart pounded. It was only then that Jang Tae-ri fully understood what he meant, and her eyes widened further.

The person responsible for her brother’s death.

Shin Jo-woon rarely brought up that subject. In fact, he almost never did.

And when he did, it was always for a serious reason.

Jang Tae-ri stared intently into Shin Jo-woon’s eyes before asking nervously,

“Why? Did you… find that person…?”

“I might.”

“Really?!”

Jang Tae-ri blurted out, nearly biting her tongue. She desperately wanted more details.

However, Shin Jo-woon seemed to have already gotten what he needed from her and started walking again.

Jang Tae-ri hurried to catch up, asking,

“Where? Where are they?”

“Still investigating. I’ll tell you when I know for sure.”

That answer wasn’t enough for Jang Tae-ri. This was about the enemy who killed her brother, wasn’t it?

But before she could press him, the homeroom teacher, coming up the stairs, stopped them.

“Shin Jo-woon, you’re the graduate representative. You need to go to the stage. You should practice once before you go up.”

Shin Jo-woon turned as if he’d been waiting for the summons and lightly tapped Jang Tae-ri’s arm.

“I’ll tell you later.”

With those words, he headed in a different direction.

Jang Tae-ri’s eyes trembled as she watched him go.

Found them? He found the enemy who killed her brother? Who did he find? Is it certain? Was the blood on his face earlier… related to this?

* * *

The space resembled an ordinary office, with several desks, but only three people were there.

One of them was the deputy team leader of Nakru Team C.

She paced anxiously, then, unable to contain herself, pressed the team member at the large monitor.

“The location tracking? Anything yet?”

She’d asked for the tracking to start a while ago, but there were still no results, and her frustration was mounting.

The team leader, flipping through a newspaper at his desk, clicked his tongue at her anxious tone.

“Wouldn’t the results come if you just wait?”

“I’m asking because I *have* been waiting! Aren’t you worried that your team member’s contact has been suspiciously cut off?”

“When you’re working, contact can be cut off. Didn’t he go to meet the Saint candidate? Maybe he fought the Saint and lost?”

The deputy team leader gave him an ‘are you crazy?’ look.

“How could he fight with the Saint? The Saint! Why do you think they call them a Saint?”

“He was talking to a suspicious man at the end, right?”

“Team leader, this Saint candidate was a woman.”

“He went to meet the Saint candidate, but there might have been another man with her. A friend, a boyfriend, a family member.”

The team leader’s nonchalant words only fueled her frustration.

“That’s not the point right now!”

“Got it!”

Just then, the team member clicking the mouse, supposedly tracking the phone, finally shouted.

“Connection established! Tae-yeol’s phone location confirmed!”

“Where is it?”

The deputy team leader rushed over to the monitor.

“School?”

Her voice rose sharply.

“High school?!”

* * *

Since the other team members were out on missions, the deputy team leader, along with Kang Won-hee and Dong Gu-jong, went directly to the high school.

Kang Won-hee packed his things, constantly worrying about her.

“Shouldn’t you stay, Deputy Team Leader? You were just discharged from the hospital.”

“I’m fine now. Besides, I’m the only one who recognized that bastard’s voice.”

Dong Gu-jong chewed gum and chuckled.

“What good is that? How are you going to find him with just a voice?”

“It’s better than nothing.”

“Won-hee is tracking the phone.”

Dong Gu-jong didn’t seem too concerned, as if he thought Joo Tae-yeol was safe.

The deputy team leader forced herself to keep checking the time, suppressing the urge to hit Dong Gu-jong on the head.

They arrived at the high school.

“The location? It’s inside?”

The deputy team leader checked with Kang Won-hee again, hoping the phone wasn’t inside the school itself.

But Kang Won-hee looked at his phone and answered firmly.

“It’s inside.”

There was no choice. They had to go in.

However, it would be difficult for the three of them to enter a school full of people.

Normally, anyway.

“What’s going on? Those people don’t look like students, but they’re going in just fine?”

As they looked around, worried, they noticed people who definitely weren’t students entering the school gates.

There were also many cars and a generally chaotic atmosphere. Many of these non-students were carrying flowers.

Street vendors selling flowers lined the area.

“Ah, it’s graduation! It must be graduation day today.”

Dong Gu-jong’s exclamation made the deputy team leader immediately walk to a nearby stall and pick up a bouquet.

“Perfect. How much is this?”

* * *

Shin Jo-woon was in the waiting room next to the auditorium, listening to the teacher in charge of the graduation ceremony.

“Go up those stairs, then stand next to the podium over there, right? Greet the people, then turn and stand at the podium again. The script is printed out there, so just read that.”

The teacher frowned when he saw Shin Jo-woon looking out the window.

“Shin Jo-woon, do you understand?”

Shin Jo-woon smiled immediately.

“Of course.”

“Why are you looking out the window so much? Are you waiting for your family?”

Shin Jo-woon’s smile deepened.

“They might be family to someone.”

“?”

* * *

Two teachers stood in front of the school gate but didn’t stop the three people with the flowers.

They couldn’t check everyone who came to congratulate the graduates, no matter how vigilant they were.

Kang Won-hee kept looking at his phone as he walked, but that didn’t seem particularly strange.

They passed through the school gates without issue.

Even as they walked along the path to the main building, sticking to the side, no one paid attention.

The deputy team leader, confirming that people were busy talking, asked Kang Won-hee quietly,

“Still inside?”

“Yes.”

But a problem arose at the crossroads. The families, walking in the same direction, veered off towards the auditorium instead of the main building.

Kang Won-hee looked back at the deputy team leader, embarrassed.

“What do we do? We need to go to the main building.”

Dong Gu-jong suggested,

“After the ceremony, don’t the graduates and their families go to the classrooms together? Should we join them then?”

The deputy team leader shook her head.

“No. There will be too many people. It’ll be more suspicious if we search then. Let’s go in now. If anyone asks, we’ll say we took a wrong turn.”

Fortunately, no one stopped them from entering the main building.

Most people had gone to the auditorium, but some families were wandering around the main building, whether by mistake or not.

The group went up to the third-year hallway. Unlike the noisy outside, the hallway was empty, and the classrooms were deserted.

While Kang Won-hee searched for Joo Tae-yeol’s phone, the deputy team leader anxiously looked down at the playground through the window.

Dong Gu-jong, watching the stairs and hallway, urged Kang Won-hee.

“Are you done yet?”

“Got it.”

Just as he asked, Kang Won-hee answered and walked off, looking at his phone.

The deputy team leader clenched her fist and followed. Who could it be? Who made those remarks using Joo Tae-yeol’s phone?

“It’s here.”

Kang Won-hee stopped in front of a locker inside a classroom. It had no lock.

The deputy team leader called Joo Tae-yeol’s phone. It vibrated inside the locker. This was the place.

She slowly reached out, grabbed the handle, and yanked the door open.

At that moment.

There was a pop, and something exploded.

The deputy team leader stumbled back, and Dong Gu-jong exclaimed, “Surprise!”

“What is it? What was that?”

The deputy team leader glanced down the hallway and looked inside the locker.

“Balloons.”

Kang Won-hee, standing at the back and less surprised, picked up a piece of balloon from the floor and muttered.

“I think it’s a balloon.”

Dong Gu-jong looked back and forth between the balloon piece and the remaining pieces in the locker, then cursed.

“They connected the locker door to the balloons! It would explode when you opened it. Damn it. Did the bastard who took Tae-yeol’s phone know we were coming and set this up?”

Joo Tae-yeol’s phone was still vibrating inside.

Feeling uneasy, Dong Gu-jong quickly reached in, grabbed the phone, and slammed the locker door shut.

“At least we found the phone.”

He quickly rejected the call. The classroom, which had been vibrating ominously, became quiet again.

The deputy team leader stared silently, then gritted her teeth.

“He’s not here.”

“Huh? What’s not?”

Kang Won-hee turned his head as he turned off the tracking device.

“Tae-yeol. The culprit deliberately hid Tae-yeol’s phone here and even set up a trap. Would he have left Tae-yeol here? And Tae-yeol was definitely attacked.”

Dong Gu-jong gritted his teeth and put the phone in his pocket.

Kang Won-hee kicked the balloon pieces on the floor and frowned.

“But if the culprit attacked Tae-yeol, why would he bother putting the phone at school?”

“It must be someone related. A graduate, a student, a teacher, or a staff member. We’ll find out if we investigate. The problem is Tae-yeol. Did he have his phone stolen and run away, or did he get caught by the culprit…?”

The three became gloomy and left the main building, following the other people who had taken the wrong turn.

The number of people outside was smaller than before. Instead, more people were gathered around the auditorium.

Dong Gu-jong muttered as he looked at them,

“The culprit might be inside there, right?”

Kang Won-hee was worried because it reminded him of a horror movie.

“What if the culprit put Tae-yeol in a storage room or something?”

The deputy team leader checked the time and suggested,

“Shall we look around a bit more before we go? If the culprit didn’t have time to go anywhere else and brought the phone here, he might have hidden Tae-yeol somewhere here too.”

The three went back into the main building and searched the empty classrooms, bathrooms, and janitor’s office. But Joo Tae-yeol was nowhere to be seen.

After about 30 minutes, the only places they hadn’t checked were the auditorium and the cafeteria.

Dong Gu-jong asked,

“Are we going to check those places too? There are too many people in the auditorium to hide him. And the cafeteria is connected to the auditorium, so it seems difficult to hide Tae-yeol there.”

The deputy team leader shook her head.

“Still, let’s check the cafeteria since we came all this way.”

Kang Won-hee and Dong Gu-jong followed.

However, the deputy team leader suddenly flinched and stopped, then ran towards the auditorium entrance. She stood at the doorway and stared intently inside.

“Why is she doing that?”

“I don’t know.”

Wondering, Dong Gu-jong and Kang Won-hee followed.

As they approached the door, they heard someone speaking into a microphone.

Kang Won-hee admired without realizing it.

“Wow. His voice is really good.”

Kang Won-hee stood on his tiptoes and looked over the heads of the parents. A handsome male student, the graduate representative, was reading something on the stage.

“Wow. He’s going to be so popular in college. He must be good at studying too. Isn’t the graduate representative usually someone smart?”

Then Kang Won-hee was startled by the deputy team leader’s expression. It was just an ordinary graduation scene, but her face was grim.

“Deputy Team Leader, you look scary. What’s wrong?”

“That voice… it sounds like him. The person who asked if we were Nakru on Tae-yeol’s phone.”

Kang Won-hee’s eyes widened.

“Really?”

Shin Jo-woon, having finished his speech, looked around at the applauding students.

He casually scanned the crowd, then smiled as he spotted the people staring at him at the auditorium entrance.

*So, you’ve come.* Someone else’s family.