Pay With Your Heart

Chapter 212: The Search

When Mrs Lee and Jae-Hyun stepped into the private room in the restaurant they saw the private investigator already waiting for them.

“Madam Lee, Master Mo” He rose to his feet and bowed the moment they entered the room but Mrs Lee waved for him to seat.

Mrs Lee and Jae-Hyun took their seats opposite the man. “What did you find?” Mrs Lee anxiously inquired.

Passing a brown envelope towards them, he shook his head and sighed, “Nothing much, but you can see what I found.” Jae-Hyun received the envelope and opened it.

There were picture photographs inside and a birth certificate.

“So it’s true she really had a child?” Jae-Hyun asked in surprise after looking at the photographs of the pregnant woman. He passed the pictures and the document to Mrs Lee after looking at it.

“Yes it’s true” The man affirmed.

.....

“I told you Jae-Hyun. I told you she wasn’t making things up.” Mrs Lee chirped. She was happy to find this out, this was the first tangible thing they’ve found out since their search began. She had tried to convince Jae-Hyun that the woman wasn’t crazy but he didn’t want to believe her.

Jae-Hyun had tried to believe her, but deep down he felt like the woman in question was mentally derailed and could be imagining things due to the severity of her mental illness but Mrs Lee had discarded that thought. She had said no mother would forget about having a child no matter how crazy she was. So she was of the opinion that the woman wasn’t making things up. Crazy or not she must have had a child.

Their search started over one year ago on one of their outreaches when a woman had ran to meet Mrs Lee and seized her begging her to help look for her child. She kept muttering, “Find my daughter. Help me find my daughter.”

Mrs Lee looked at the tattered woman and helped her up with a concerned look on her face she asked, “Where is she? Where did you leave her?” She thought the woman must have dropped her child somewhere but little did she know that was not the case, and that it would take as year just to confirm the woman was indeed pregnant.

The woman scratched her head before shaking it vigorously, “They took her and they’re going to killing me. Please hide me and find my child.” She begged as she hid behind Mrs Lee like she was her saviour. Mrs Lee was surprised by the woman’s actions, Jae-Hyun had tried to send her away but she refused to. Mrs Lee asked a few people around the province what had happened to the woman and they told her how the woman had suddenly appeared at the province twenty three years ago and she has been muttering the same words since then. Everyday she goes out to carry a search around the area for her ‘imaginary daughter’, but there was nothing.

Mrs Lee was shocked to hear that. She felt sorry hearing that.

She further asked if she had lived there before, maybe in the past, but the older people said she mysteriously appeared at night, and when they woke up the next morning they saw her. They asked everybody but no one knew her. She had no relatives there and she has been living in an abandoned building since then.

Mrs Lee sighed when she heard the woman’s ordeal. She wondered if what the woman said was true and why did she suddenly appear in a place like that, if she had no one there.

Mrs Lee brought her back to the city and have being taking care of her since then. She put her into a family home where she was catered for, though her mental state remained the same as she still kept looking for her child on a daily basis, other than that she looked much better now, physically.

Mrs Lee felt sad whenever she saw the woman frantically looking for her child, crying for her child and the nurses taking care of her sometimes reported cases of her having nightmares. Whatever the woman must have gone through must be a sad experience.

She promised the woman to help her find her child and that’s what she had been doing since then. She was going to keep her promise till her dying day. She was going to find that child, as no mother was supposed to live that way, craving for a child. Even if the child was dead she’d find her grave, maybe that might give the woman some closure.

Jae-Hyun had always been skeptical about the whole situation until now. Mrs Lee had always tried to convince him, and he finally decided to compromise by helping her do whatever she wanted. Though there was nothing to validate the ‘crazy’ woman’s claim, Mrs Lee had surged on. How they knew the child was a girl, was because the woman said so.

After a long search for the child all to no avail, he had tried convincing her that the child might be dead or something, but the woman was adamant and bent on finding the child, dead or alive.

But seeing the evidence in front of him, Jae-Hyun felt bad for not believing the woman or at least Mrs Lee in the first place.

Paying attention to one of the pictures Jae-Hyun noticed a few details. The picture seemed to have been taken from a CCTV footage, because it was quite blurry, but her face was still visible.

And from how low her stomach looked he was sure she was close to term. And she was seemed to be running bared footed. On two of the pictures she looking over her shoulders as she ran, but what was must eye catching was the color of the taxi in the photographs, “This is country A’ airport.” Jae-Hyun pointed out.

The private investigator nodded his head affirmatively, “Yes you’re right. It is indeed the international airport at country A.”

“Why was she at a airport in country A, and how did she end up here?” Jae-Hyun asked.

That was strange.