Chapter Text
Former Mayor Choi Siwon was charged with the murder of Kim Yerim and Park Sooyoung as well multiple allegations of child rape, assault, and position of child pornography. Leeteuk told Johnny that there was absolutely zero chances of Siwon serving anything less than 50 years in jail. By that time, it seemed like no one was able to take Mary in, so Johnny took her in temporarily until they found her next of kin.
Johnny had learned to trust his intuition. He asked Taeyong to return to the scene of the ritual where Astril drank the bowl of blood. Taeyong ordered his men to bring their shovels and dig the ground up. Eventually they found the skeleton of a young boy wearing a white dress. It would take years to conduct DNA analysis of skeletal remains but there wasn’t any need to, because buried with the body was a gold bracelet with the initials KRW on it.
So the mystery of Kim Ryeowook came to a tragic conclusion.
Mary was broken since her father’s arrest. She cried day and night for him, stomping wildly and throwing fits. Her therapist said that she was extremely dependent on her father and not having that has caused a cycle of turmoil.
“She must deal with her own trauma in her own way.” The therapist said.
Johnny decided to heed the therapist’s advice. He let Mary do as she pleased, redecorating his apartment, moving furniture, making dolls. Once she turned her room upside down and tried to push the bed out. It didn’t matter very much to him as he was now moving up in his career. As far as he was concerned, as long as Mary was okay, he was okay.
Taeyong was immediately voted to become the next mayor of Silent Man. It was almost automatic. Jaehyun and Doyoung had argued that no one would say no to him being mayor because ‘who would be stupid enough to’. Still, he insisted on calling an election. It was Lee Taeyong vs Kim Joonmyun, the ex-banker who now ran a horse ranch.
The results were a landslide.
Taeyong and Mark moved into the Mayor’s official residence. Seulgi was promoted to Captain of the police force with Officer Mingyu as her assistant. The first thing Taeyong ordered was for all of Mayor Choi’s belongings to be removed from the property. He didn’t want to be reminded of the horrors that took place there.
Since Siwon was arrested so quickly, no one really had any time to clear his house out. Mark went into Mary’s room, which was covered in sweet pink wallpaper with a huge dollhouse and lots of dolls on her bed. He felt bad about tossing away Mary’s belongings. She didn’t deserve it. She was an innocent child haunted by a monster parent.
Mark picked up one of the dolls on her bed and stroked her hair. How soft and supple.
Feels just like the real one.
Mark dropped the doll in horror.
Oh no.
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“Do you like what I’ve done to the place?” Mary asked Johnny for his opinion after she picked out a new set of drapes for his apartment.
“I love it.” He smiled, sipping the tea she made for him. “That’s very sweet of you.”
“It’s my pleasure. After all, things should be spick and span when your boyfriend visits.” She teased.
“He’s not my boyfriend.” Johnny blushed a little at the memory of Ten. “Not yet anyways.”
“You guys are so cute together!” she squealed happily. “I’m so excited to have a guest come and visit us!”
“Why don’t you get changed Mary? When he arrives we’ll go out for dinner.”
“Okay, I just have to go get my clothes from the laundry pile.” She said, dashing into the laundry room.
Johnny felt his phone buzz in his pocket. He smiled at Mark’s name that appeared on his screen. “Hello?”
The call lasted no more than 3 minutes. Johnny ran to Mary’s room and emptied out her drawers. He flipped the bed, ducked underneath the bed and found a doll underneath it. He ripped the hair off the doll and massaged it in between his hands.
It’s real.
He ran his fingers under the lining her bed and found a small packet of leaves inside. He tipped his cup and found similar leaves at the bottom of the cup. The same cup Mary made for him.
Oh fuck.
Johnny’s knees went weak and his head started spinning. He fell on the bed, body shivering and convulsing as he felt his vessels constricting, cutting off air circulation.
“Shhhh.” Mary closed his eyes with her hand.
“Don’t tell daddy.”
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Mary, unwillingly but eventually, plead guilty to the murders of Kim Yerim and Park Sooyoung, and shockingly, Kim Ryeowook as well. She said Ryeowook was an accident. She had pushed the older boy down a flight of stairs during a fight because she was angry that her father was paying more attention to him than her. Her father was horrified, but he helped to bury the boy and created the whole missing charade to cover up the incidence. She promised she would never do it again and her daddy promised to ‘give her lots of kisses and tingly feelings’.
Siwon could not keep his penis to himself. He soon attracted Sooyoung, who was thrilled to be playing Astril so that she could boast about it to her friends. Mary poisoned her in the forest and using a pulley system she learned in school, she was able to disguise it as suicide. She thought nothing about dumping the rope in her father’s room, knowing he would protect her.
Yerim wanted to play Astril because she was obsessed with the legend and was convinced she was real. It took absolutely nothing to convince her to come out to Eve Creek to look for Astril sightings, then push her into the Creek once the poison took effect. She took bits of each girls hair because ‘daddy liked girls with long hair’ and occasionally braided them onto her dolls, a solemn reminder of those who crossed her and died regretting it.
You could come up with a million reasons why Mary did what she did. For attention, jealousy, but the fact is, she was a monstrous child born by a monstrous father and mentally warped under his touch. She wanted her father all to herself. She was jealous when someone else won his attention. The last time Johnny saw her before she went to juvenile, he blamed no one but her poisonous father. A child weaned on poison considers harm, and even death, a comfort.
If Ten was even a second late to Johnny’s apartment, Johnny would have died then and there. He was rushed to the hospital for immediate treatment and after two surgeries and a transfusion, he was able to survive the poison and recover.
Johnny knew all along Ten was the one for him, even before he rescued him from dying. He would eventually get on his knee and ask Ten to marry him, and Ten would sell off his hotel to marry the man of his dreams.
When it came time to decide for college, Renjun did not hesitate in choosing an out of state college. After all that he had been through, he really couldn’t wait to leave and never return. His parents knew they could not stop him so they didn’t. They just hoped that one day their baby would miss them enough to at least come home and say hi.
Taeyong did not stop Mark from wanting to leave. Jaehyun and Doyoung pulled their resources to send not just their son, but also provide a scholarship to Donghyuck so that they could study in the same college as well. Lucas and Jungwoo married and were considering moving into N-City so that Lucas could expand his bar business there, to which Jaemin was thrilled by because it meant being in the same city as his friends.
Jisung’s oldest sister Jimin married the high school football jock after graduation. She didn’t tell anyone she was also 3 months pregnant but Jisung knew. It was hard to disguise vomiting for anything else. It didn’t matter to him anymore because he was finally getting away from his sisters’ shadow. Kun was keen to send Chenle to China to study Chinese medicine, but the teenager said ‘fuck that’ and chose to go to N-City with the rest of his friends to pursue his dreams of becoming a singer.
The only caveat that did not tie together was Chenle’s claim that he saw Astril the night before Yerim died. Mary denied she invited Yerim out the night before so if no one was around that night, who did Chenle see? Mayor Choi went mad in court trying to explain that Astril was real and he only did what he did to ‘satisfy her’. “She is real!!” he raged. “I am the one keeping the town safe! I am the one protecting it! Without me that town would be dead!!”
He went on and on about the legend like a possessed man until the judge had enough and slapped the cuffs on him. It was so bad that Mayor Choi was called the ‘delusional monster’ by members of the media. In the midst of the craziness surrounding the Choi family, Chenle’s story was soon pushed to the back and forgotten. Chenle didn’t talk about it either, unless he wanted to sound like a madman too.
Chenle never forgot what he saw, and he couldn’t shake off the inkling that Mayor Choi might be right about something. The night before he left Silent Man, hopefully forever, he went back to Eve Creek and he swore he saw her again. Except this time, the lady in white turned and faced him. She had a face.
And she smiled.