A/N: Merry Christmas again :)

"Woo Bin, what's up?"

"Hey bro, you got a second?"

"Why?"

"You remember that guy you wanted me to check into?"

"That guy?"

"Yeah, Kim Gong Yoo."

"Oh." In truth, the subject of that long ago encounter had slipped his mind. His senior exhibition had passed several months ago, and he now found himself overwhelmed with work for his Master's in Arts Administration, an internship with the Wetterling Gallery, and preparations for his return back to Korea. Plus, he'd meant what he said to his father the night of his exhibition. He refused to be another pawn in his grandfather's chess game. The night he'd finally burned those photos of Ga Eul was where it had stopped. Two years ago his grandfather's threats had scared him, but on that night with the critics' praises still ringing in his ears, the whole thing seemed rather foolish. After all, his grandfather may have paid for his education and his therapy, but he couldn't have convinced Yi Jeong to take up pottery again. Ga Eul was the only person able to get through to him, and every piece of art he had created since then had been inspired by her in some way. She was the single greatest muse he'd ever had, and muses, unbidden or not, were never to be ignored.

Of course, there was another reason he couldn't think of leaving her now—one that had taken a while for his brain to register and was taking even longer for him to admit to her. He didn't know when it had started exactly. Maybe he had loved her for a long time and had just never realized it.

"Yi Jeong?" Woo Bin's voice brought him back to the present. He shifted the phone to his other ear and rifled through some papers on his desk.

"What about him?" Yi Jeong asked. "Did he go to see Ga Eul again?"

"He's dead."

Yi Jeong's hand stilled.

He was dead. Yi Jeong felt something akin to relief, although he knew that was not the most appropriate response upon hearing someone had died, particularly someone he knew Ga Eul had been close to. Still, he hadn't been able to shake the bad feeling he associated with this vague character from Ga Eul's past.

"How did he die? Recently?"

"You're not going to like it."

The ominous feeling returned.

"Why?"

Woo Bin lapsed into silence, which only made Yi Jeong sit up straighter and ask him again, more insistently this time, "Why?"

"Bro, what I'm about to tell you…it's confidential."

"What is it?"

"The thing is, he was working for my father. Actually, he had been for some years, but it was all undercover. First he was in Japan. He was in Japan for a long time, and then for the past two years he's been back here."

"I thought you said you couldn't find anything about him."

"I might be the heir, but there's still some things only my father has access to. Whatever Gong Yoo was working on for him, it must have been pretty important. Even in our records, he was under a different name, different birthday, different place of birth. I mean, where he grew up, where he went to school, this guy changed everything about himself. He was right under my nose, and I couldn't see him. He was good at what he did, I'll give him that. You never know what makes a guy like that snap."

"'Snap'?"

"A few days ago there was supposed to have been a…meeting…between my father's men and some of my father's…associates. It was supposed to be, like, thirty minutes, but nobody heard from anybody for the rest of the afternoon, and when we went to check it out, everyone was dead."

"Everyone…including Gong Yoo?"

Woo Bin paused again, and Yi Jeong could tell he was figuring out how much to say.

"There supposed to be some money exchanged—about five hundred million won. At first we thought it was someone we hadn't accounted for who had taken off with the money, but when we played back the security footage, it was all Gong Yoo. Took out seven armed men just like that, then put the gun up to his own head and pulled the trigger. You know, he looked right at the camera as he did that, like it was some kind of message. I'm still trying to piece it together, but we never found the money. It doesn't look like the footage was tampered with. My guess is Gong Yoo got ahold of it before the meeting and stashed it away for someone to pick up later. But he wasn't even supposed to be there. That's what I don't get. He just walked in there like he was the angel of death or something and started shooting. I don't know what his trigger was, man, but whatever it was, he snapped hard."

He paused again, then said, "There's something else too."

"I'm listening." Yi Jeong was, indeed, all ears.

"My father said he was picked up that way, moved up through the ranks. He was involved in a local branch of my father's organization when he was in high school and killed one of his higher-ups, but he got lucky. Turned out the guy had been stealing money from their boss and Gong Yoo had found him out. My father said he had a lot of rage back then, told his boss he could care less about the money, that he had beat the guy up because he killed his best friend. I guess that struck a chord or something. The guy cheated death. Instead of a beat-down he got promotion after promotion."

Yi Jeong frowned.

"His best friend was Ga Eul's brother. But she said he died in a car accident."

"Maybe it wasn't such an accident."

A sudden chill came over Yi Jeong.

"Was her brother involved in-?"

"Not that I can tell."

"Do you think Ga Eul and her family are in any danger?"

"From something that happened ten years ago? Nah. I've had my men keep an eye out though. They haven't seen anything to worry about so far…I don't think Ga Eul knows anything about this. Do you want to tell her?"

"Aniyo. He's dead now. They're both dead. Can you bury it?"

"Bury what?"

"I owe you one."