Chapter 10

Inspector Park Min-jae (2)

“I didn't do it. I swear to heaven, I really didn't.”

“Yeah, sure. When I asked whether you knew Kim Minju, you swore to heaven you didn't know her either. But how did that turn out?”

“No, that was because you were being so frightening, Detective······. Besides, it's true that we didn't know each other personally. She appeared in my suggested friends on social media, and she was just so pretty. We weren't even mutual followers. I was just following her on my own.”

“Right, Kim Minju was so pretty that you started following her around. Got it. So even though you kept following her around, she showed no interest in you, and in a fit of anger, you impulsively, huh?”

“No!! What are you talking about? Who was following her around? All I did was follow her account and look at the pictures she posted.”

Under the fluorescent lights of the interrogation room, Kim Jin-hwan's voice rang out, strained with indignation.

But Park Min-jae, sitting across from him, remained completely unmoved.

—Tap, tap, tap.

After tapping the corner of his file against the metal desk several times, he leaned forward slightly.

“Jin-hwan.”

His breath reeked of instant coffee and cigarettes.

“You think the police are idiots? That night, between one and two-thirty in the morning, you parked your motorcycle in the corner by the stairs on the first floor of the Bupyeong shopping center and went inside. It's all recorded in the GPS data from your delivery motorcycle. An hour and a half. A whole hour and a half. What exactly were you doing there for all that time?”

“How many times do I have to tell you it was because the rain was so heavy!! I couldn't see a thing ahead of me. I seriously thought I'd slip and get myself killed if I kept making deliveries in that weather. I only went inside to get out of the rain for a little while.”

“Right, it was raining heavily. But an hour and a half is rather long for someone just taking shelter from the rain, don't you think?”

“That's because!!”

He leaned forward without realizing it, causing his handcuffs to rattle.

“I was exhausted from taking delivery orders all day, so I sat down on the stairs to rest for a bit and accidentally dozed off.”

“You dozed off?”

Park Min-jae chuckled.

It was a laugh filled with utter disbelief.

“Sure, I suppose you could have dozed off. When people are tired, sometimes they even collapse and fall asleep on the street. But isn't it strange? In the third-floor restroom of the very building where you claim you were sleeping, Kim Minju happened to be strangled to death that same night. How are you going to explain that?”

“Th-that's······.”

—BANG!!!

Park Min-jae slammed his palm against the desk.

“Of course you can't explain it. Because you killed her!!”

“C-CCTV!! There's CCTV, isn't there? If you check that, you'll see I was just sleeping on the stairs······.”

“CCTV? Right. If only we had that, I wouldn't have to waste my time taking this tedious statement from you. Such a shame. Of all nights, lightning happened to strike so severely that it knocked out the shopping center's entire recording system.”

The CCTV was unavailable because of severe lightning?

Bareum sensed something fishy about Park Min-jae's words. Unfortunately, however, the person sitting here was not Jeong Bareum, a brilliant student who had competed for the top grades at a prestigious foreign language high school, but Kim Jin-hwan, a delivery worker with only a middle school education.

“Th-that can't······.”

“And since you keep going on about CCTV, CCTV, I guess you've seen something about evidence-based investigations and forensic science somewhere. In that case, you've probably heard of fingerprints, right?”

Park Min-jae pulled a document from his file and thrust it forward.

It contained a photograph showing a large, dark-blue container of bleach alongside a corpse too horrifying to describe in words.

“Urgh······.”

“Now, take a good look. Trying to destroy evidence with bleach, fine. I suppose you saw that in some drama. But why didn't you think about fingerprints? Your fingerprints were found on the bleach container recovered from a nearby trash can. How are you going to explain that? What? Were you cleaning a restroom nearby?”

“Th-that's impossible. I've never seen that thing before. I've never even touched anything like that!!”

“You've never touched it, yet your fingerprints were found on it. How remarkable. Jin-hwan, let's not make this difficult. Let's make things easy for both of us, okay?”

Indignation, fear, frustration.

Jin-hwan felt his breath catch in his throat. It was as though an enormous, incomprehensible evil had seized him by the neck and was crushing his entire body.

“Kim Jin-hwan. Stalking, aggravated rape and murder, mutilation of a corpse.”

Park Min-jae rose from his seat.

“Let's just sign the papers and get this over with. I'm giving you this advice because I'm genuinely worried about your future. In South Korean courts, it's not just the criminal act that matters. The criminal's attitude matters too. What does that mean? It means bastards who stubbornly insist, 'I'm not the culprit,' get punished even more severely because the judges find them insolent, while those who bow their heads, say, 'I was wrong,' and submit letters of remorse get some leniency. Understand?”

“I-I really didn't do it. I swear I didn't!!”

As Jin-hwan was dragged toward the holding cell, screaming desperately about his innocence, Park Min-jae quietly took out his smartphone.

—Don't worry about a thing. I'll make sure everything is properly taken care of, Chief.

A satisfied smile.

And with that, the world shattered into pieces once again, like a broken mirror.

Back in reality, my right hand was still gripping Park Min-jae firmly by the collar.

“Y-you······ Who the hell are you? Are you with the Royal Gang? Are you trying to get the police to investigate the Family Gang? Fuck, you've got the wrong idea. You think our police are that incompetent?”

“I know. Your police chief has pocketed so much money, after all. And you're just his errand boy. They wouldn't investigate the Family Gang just because one errand boy got killed. No, wait. You've done so much dirty work for the chief that perhaps you're more than just an errand boy.”

!?

Suspicion, followed by shock.

“Y-you, who the hell are you? What kind of nonsense are you suddenly talking about?”

“Yeah, it's quite admirable. Staying loyal right up to the brink of death. But let's see whether you can maintain that loyalty when you really think you're about to die.”

I placed my left hand on his shoulder.

Then I applied crushing force with all five fingers.

—CRUNCH.

“AAAAAAAAAAGH!!!!”

A horrific scream.

His right shoulder was literally shattered. As he stared at the shoulder that had collapsed like crumbling clay, overwhelming terror spread across his face.

“Shhh.”

I covered his mouth with the hand that had been gripping his collar.

But it seemed my voice wasn't reaching the ears of a man already halfway into a panic. His piercing screams showed no sign of stopping.

—CRUNCH.

So this time, it was his right knee.

With just my thumb, index finger, and middle finger, I crushed his knee like a walnut shell.

“G-ghhk!!!”

A scream beyond screaming.

The excruciating pain prevented even a proper cry from escaping his lungs.

“See? Isn't it much better when you're this quiet? Now listen carefully to what I'm about to say. Keep your answers clear and concise. You still have another shoulder and another knee. And even after those are gone, there are plenty more joints in your body. If you want to find out exactly how many joints you have, feel free to keep resisting.”

At last, his mouth, smeared with tears, snot, and saliva, closed.

“Good job. Now let's get to the point. If you keep listening and do exactly as I say, you might get to keep your remaining joints and your life.”

“······.”

“Here's my first question. Why the hell did your police chief go so far as to fabricate evidence to make Kim Jin-hwan the culprit? Who exactly was he trying to protect?”

______________

“Ugh, look how muggy the air is. Seriously, why the hell do we have to go outside to smoke?”

“Min-woo hyung says he's quitting smoking.”

“Come on, that guy tries to quit smoking three hundred times a year.”

Two lackeys from the Family Gang opened the third-floor emergency exit and stepped outside for a cigarette.

“Hey, wait. Isn't that fucking Detective Park's car over there?”

“Looks like it. But that bastard left ages ago. Why is his car still······ Hey!! Over there!! Isn't that Detective Park? Don't tell me that dumb bastard is getting mugged over there!”

“Hey!! Get inside and tell the boss right away.”

“What about you?”

“I've got to go save that bastard first, don't I? If some fucked-up shit happens right in our backyard, we're all going to be screwed.”

Jo Du-hyeok, the lackey who had volunteered to go down first, threw his cigarette onto the ground and sprinted down the stairs like a madman.

“Hey, you motherfucker!! Get your hands off him right now!!”

Detective Park, who was being held by the mysterious assailant, looked far worse up close than he had from above. One shoulder had collapsed, and his knee was bent at a strange angle. He was barely managing to breathe.

More than anything, there was that bizarre, cheap mask beneath the hood.

Seven years spent working as a low-ranking thug in the underworld.

Jo Du-hyeok's instincts sounded an alarm. That bastard was fucking dangerous.

“You fucking bastard. Do you even know where you are right now? And do you have any idea who the man you're laying your hands on is? Let go of him and leave quietly while I'm still asking nicely. The others will be coming down here in a whole crowd any moment now, you know? If they come down carrying weapons, you're seriously fucked. If we encase you in concrete and dump you in the waters off Incheon, you won't even float, you little shit. They'll only find you as a fossil someday.”

Bareum's gaze shifted toward the third-floor back door from which Jo Du-hyeok had emerged. Indeed, Jo Du-hyeok hadn't been bluffing. Six large men in suits came pouring down from there.

“Fuck, it's not too late. Let go of him right now and run like hell.”

Had Jo Du-hyeok's threat worked?

The man dropped Detective Park onto the ground.

“Yeah, that's right. Good. Now all you have to do is run away without looking back. That way.”

“Are there only seven of you?”

“What?”

And that was the last thing Jo Du-hyeok remembered.

Excruciating pain.

When Jo Du-hyeok opened his eyes, the area around him was littered with gangsters lying sprawled on the ground, just like him. Then—CRUNCH!!—he saw Choi Min-woo, the gang's enforcer captain, bringing an axe down on the assailant's shoulder from behind.

'Got him!!'

Du-hyeok rejoiced.

The heavy blade of the hatchet tore through the hoodie and struck the assailant squarely on the shoulder. It was a blow carrying the full weight of Min-woo's considerable body. An impact powerful enough that it wouldn't have been surprising if it had done more than destroy the shoulder and severed the entire arm.

But that was all.

“······Wh-what the fuck? What is this? Why won't it go in?”

The axe blade had failed to penetrate the assailant's body properly. It wasn't as though he was wearing stab-resistant clothing. The skin where the axe had struck had clearly split, and blood was welling up from the wound. But that was all. That heavy axe had failed to cut through a human being's muscles.

The man slowly turned his head.

“You don't hesitate at all to swing a blade at another person, do you?”

“M-monster!!”

His hand closed around Choi Min-woo's throat.

And at that moment, Du-hyeok felt that something had 'changed.' It was a strange sensation he couldn't put into words. The assailant, who had seemed completely calm even after being struck in the shoulder with an axe, now spoke in a savage voice.

“You won't do.”

“Wh-what are you talking······ GAAAH!”

He released his grip on Min-woo's throat. Just as the massive man, suddenly freed, tried to regain his balance, the tip of Bareum's right foot struck his lower back with precision.

—CRUNCH.

The sound of something being severed forever.

“······.”

His spinal cord was crushed in an instant, forcibly cutting off every nerve connection to his lower body. Faced with such tremendous pain, Choi Min-woo couldn't even scream.

Jo Du-hyeok, lying on the ground and watching the scene, covered his mouth.

A monster.

That wasn't a human being.

Before that monster's gaze could turn toward him again, Jo Du-hyeok quietly closed his eyes without a second's hesitation. For now, pretending to remain unconscious was probably his only chance of surviving this hell.

The alley fell silent once more.

Bareum pulled the hatchet dangling from his shoulder free and turned toward Park Min-jae. The bleeding from his shoulder was already stopping rapidly. It was the effect of his Durability stat of 50 and Stamina stat of 50, both of which had slightly surpassed the limits of humanity.

“Now then, Detective Park. Shall we finish the conversation we were having?”

© Myoyeop#12ipk

Author's Note

Since it's the weekend, the story managed to sneak onto the Today's Best list.

It's all thanks to everyone who clicked on this story within twenty-four hours of its release.

In this sweltering weather, I hope you all stay healthy!!