Chapter 8

Loan Shark Yu Dong-cheol (2)

The back alleys of Bupyeong Station were as grimy as ever at night.

The damp humidity lingering after yesterday's rain, the smell of alcohol wafting from the nearby entertainment district, and cheap flyers soaked by rainwater and plastered against the sidewalk. Even the reflections of neon signs shimmered in the puddles collected on the pavement.

“Hey, why the fuck are this week's collections such a mess?”

Jo Dae-sik, wearing fluorescent training pants, spat a mouthful of phlegm onto the ground and ground his cigarette out against the wall.

“A few of the girls from the escort service didn't show up. They said they were coming down with colds and stayed in bed.”

“Ah, you fucking idiot. And you just let them get away with that? What did I tell you before? I told you those bitches were all faking it. If you went over there and threatened to shave their fucking heads, they'd come out and work on their own.”

“No, I checked, and they really had fevers of around thirty-eight degrees.”

“Fuck, look at you, acting like UNICEF. Worrying about the health of girls working in escort services. Why? Why don't you send them on vacation while you're at it?”

Right beside him, a fat man named Kim Chung-hwan, whose arms were densely covered in tattoos, scratched his head.

They were delinquents who operated high-interest daily loan-sharking businesses around Bupyeong Station, lending money to escort agencies and runaway youth groups.

“Ah, forget it. Make sure those bitches who didn't show up understand. Tell them that if they don't start working right this fucking second, we'll contact everyone around them.”

“Yes, understood.”

“What are you doing? Why aren't you moving?”

“R-right now? Ah!! Yes, sir!! I'll contact them immediately.”

Kim Chung-hwan hurriedly pulled his smartphone from his pocket and began searching through his saved contacts. And it was right at that moment.

Neatly combed-back hair.

A wrinkle-free blue shirt.

A pale face untouched by the sun.

It was an appearance utterly out of place in this filthy back alley. He looked far more suited to the sophisticated academy district of Sang-dong.

It was Bareum.

“Yu Dong-cheol.”

Jo Dae-sik frowned and abruptly rose from his seat.

Beside him, Kim Chung-hwan's fingers stopped moving across his smartphone.

“Who the hell are you?”

“Do you know Yu Dong-cheol? I heard he's pretty famous around here.”

“I'm asking who the hell you are.”

“A friend? No, let's just say I'm an acquaintance of Dong-cheol's friend.”

Jo Dae-sik gave Kim Chung-hwan a meaningful look.

“You son of a bitch. Do you even know where you are right now?”

—THWACK!!!

It happened in an instant.

Kim Chung-hwan, who had approached aggressively to grab Bareum by the collar, collapsed to the ground.

The hulking man curled up, gasping and groaning without even managing a proper scream.

“W-what?”

The face of Jo Dae-sik, who had been standing behind him, filled with astonishment.

“Next.”

“M-me?”

“Yeah, you. Who else is here besides you and me? Why are you looking around? I'll ask you one more time. Yu Dong-cheol. Do you know him?”

Jo Dae-sik's instincts were screaming that this honor student was no ordinary person. But the experience he had accumulated throughout his life as a predator caused him to ignore those instinctive warnings.

“Fuck, you pathetic little shit. Do you even know where you are?! Looks like some bullied honor student went and learned a little martial arts somewhere. Hey, you fucking bastard. You're dead today.”

Dae-sik pulled out the small butterfly knife he always carried in his pocket. Then, as though performing in a circus, he repeatedly flipped the butterfly knife open and closed, aggressively threatening his opponent. It was much like a wild cat raising its fur when confronted by an enemy.

“Why don't you put the knife down?”

“Why? Starting to realize you've fucked up, you little shit?”

“No, I'm still a little uncomfortable dealing with knives. I don't even know how bad a person you are yet, and I wouldn't want you to accidentally die.”

“You motherfucker. What kind of bullshit are you talking about!!”

Bareum moved.

Three large steps.

To Dae-sik, who was watching him directly from the front, the movement was so fast that it seemed as though Bareum had teleported.

And then came a roundhouse kick.

—CRACK.

With a sound indicating something had gone terribly wrong, Dae-sik's knife-wielding arm bent at an angle no arm should ever bend.

“AAAAAGH!”

But Bareum didn't stop there. As Jo Dae-sik clutched his broken arm and began collapsing to the ground, Bareum seized him by the hair with one hand.

As Dae-sik sobbed from the tremendous pain, tears and snot streaming down his face, Bareum quietly whispered into his ear.

“Now, this really is the last time. You know Yu Dong-cheol, right?”

“Y-yes, I know him. I do. Manager Yu should be at Room 804 of the Thema Officetel in front of the North Plaza around this time.”

His broken arm. The crushing pressure from the firm hand gripping his hair.

Information about Yu Dong-cheol poured freely from Jo Dae-sik's mouth.

“It's true. Today's Wednesday, so it's the day he organizes the ledgers and reconciles the collections. So please, just let go of this······.”

Bareum released his grip on Dae-sik's hair.

Losing his balance, Jo Dae-sik tumbled onto the ground.

“Well, at least you haven't lived quite as wickedly as some others. That's what saved your lives. But from now on, live more virtuously. If everyone worse than you disappears, you'll be next.”

What on earth was he talking about?

But Jo Dae-sik couldn't bring himself to respond. More than the words themselves, the voice delivering them and the eyes looking down at him were simply too chilling.

“Thema Officetel, Room 804, in front of the North Plaza.”

____________

I rather enjoy detective novels.

The intricately constructed tricks, the tiny clues, and the pleasure of building a tower of rigorous logic from them until finally deducing the culprit.

But precisely because of that, I know how meaningless that kind of 'deduction' is in reality. It only works in a closed world, under the absurd assumption that most people act rationally.

The real world is nothing like that.

That's why real investigations begin not with rigorous logic, but with grabbing the most suspicious-looking bastard and squeezing the truth out of him.

From that perspective, the person I found most suspicious was Kim Jin-hwan's friend, Yu Dong-cheol.

Who was he to be so certain that Kim Jin-hwan wasn't the culprit? Besides, suspects were always found close to the victim, and Yu Dong-cheol was a worthless neighborhood delinquent just like Kim Jin-hwan. Killing someone and pinning the blame on a gullible friend? That sort of thing could easily happen in reality.

Puddles of water were scattered throughout the officetel corridor.

Standing before a gray iron door fitted with an old red electronic lock, I lightly turned the handle.

Naturally, the door was locked.

Should I ring the bell?

No. Judging by the reactions of those delinquents earlier, even if I rang the bell and said Jin-hwan had sent me, I doubted he'd willingly open the door.

I slipped my fingers into the narrow gap between the door and its frame. I felt my fingertips catch firmly against the edge of the metal panel. Then I pulled the door outward with tremendous force. It felt as though every muscle in my body had explosively surged into action at once.

—CREEEEAK.

The strange sound of bending metal echoed down the corridor. The thick steel fire door bent like a bow, and the metal plate on the doorframe holding the electronic lock was ripped completely free.

“Wh-what the hell?”

Yu Dong-cheol, who had been working on a laptop at the kitchen island inside the officetel, jumped in fright and sprang to his feet. Of course, he didn't rise empty-handed. He was holding a knife. And not some toy-like butterfly knife like Jo Dae-sik's earlier, but a thick military dagger.

“Yu Dong-cheol.”

“What the fuck do you want?!”

“Put that down right now unless you want your arm broken.”

His gaze darted back and forth between me and the torn-off fire door.

A person tearing open a steel door with their bare hands was an absurd situation. It would have been difficult to believe even if the person weighed a hundred kilograms, but standing before him was a slender man who didn't look like he weighed even seventy. Naturally, the situation itself must have been almost impossible for him to comprehend.

“Fuck. Stop talking bullshit!!”

Yu Dong-cheol swung his knife several times from a distance.

Even at a glance, his movements were clumsy. He clearly hadn't received any proper training.

Without taking off my shoes, I rushed forward and kicked the back of his knife-wielding hand.

Of course, I didn't use my full strength. It hadn't been established that he was the culprit, and I didn't want to turn him into a one-armed man just yet.

—CRUNCH!!

With a sound indicating something had broken badly, the thick military dagger fell to the floor. Yu Dong-cheol clutched his broken wrist and toppled backward, crashing noisily into the kitchen island. A chair overturned, and piles of receipts scattered everywhere.

“W-who the hell are you? Did Hyeong-won send you? Or was it Jo Dae-sik? How much? I'll pay you more, no matter what.”

Looking down at Yu Dong-cheol, who was babbling whatever came to mind in his terror, I casually kicked the fallen knife beneath the sofa.

“Kim Jin-hwan.”

Yu Dong-cheol stopped trembling.

“Jin-hwan?”

Wariness and doubt.

“Why the hell would Jin-hwan send you? Does he think I abandoned him and have been living it up on my own?”

“No, nothing like that. He told me you were struggling all by yourself to clear his name. So I came to help.”

“Fuck······. This is how you help someone?”

“That's why I told you to drop the knife.”

“Then why the hell did you rip the door off in the first place?”

“Well, when I asked around for you outside, the reactions weren't exactly friendly. So I figured it'd be easier to beat you up first and talk afterward. Here, take my hand and get up. Let's sit down and talk.”

He took my hand.

Nothing appeared.

“Hmm, so it wasn't you.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Nothing important. Anyway, the real culprit. Have you found anything? It's already been over two years.”

“Just give me a second. ······Fuck, this hurts like hell.”

Yu Dong-cheol tried moving his right hand briefly, then began operating his laptop mouse with his uninjured left hand.

“First of all, there's absolutely no way that idiot Jin-hwan is the real culprit. Sure, he had a reputation up until middle school. But when I started this business, that bastard got a job making deliveries because he wanted to live an honest life. He was even preparing for his high school equivalency exam. And you're telling me that same bastard suddenly murdered a high school girl he barely knew and poured bleach over her corpse? That's complete bullshit.”

“Yeah, yeah, I think the same thing, so let's move on. You must have tracked down something, right? Tell me about that.”

“The first thing I found really strange was the police. Sure, they found some evidence against Jin-hwan, but it wasn't nearly as conclusive as they made it out to be. Yet they completely brushed aside his claims that he was innocent, you know?”

Yu Dong-cheol turned his laptop screen toward me.

“So I did some digging into the detective who handled Jin-hwan's case. Park Min-jae. He's a detective with Violent Crimes Team Three at Bupyeong Police Station.”

“The detective in charge?”

“Yeah. But he received a special promotion last year.”

“So what?”

“This bastard had only just completed two years since his previous promotion and was still way too junior to be promoted again. But then some video suddenly appeared on the internet, and he got a special promotion because of it. Doesn't that seem a little strange?”

The video Yu Dong-cheol played was from a news program on a general programming cable channel.

It showed a man covering an elderly person who had collapsed on the street with his padded jacket, then hoisting the person onto his back and carrying him away.

“What do you think? Suspicious as fuck, right? I've known that bastard Park Min-jae since he was a patrol officer at the police substation, so I know he'd never do something like that. He was the kind of bastard who was so busy preparing for his promotion exams that he'd casually send away kids who came to the police station asking for help. But suddenly he helps an elderly person who's collapsed? And it just happens to be caught on CCTV from such a perfect angle, and then it gets broadcast as a heartwarming story? Does that make any sense to you?”

“It's not impossible. Even bad people sometimes feel like doing something good as they go through life······ Wait a minute. Stop it there.”

The face of the uniformed man in the video looked strangely familiar.

Park Min-jae, Park Min-jae······.

!?

“Did that guy happen to work at the police substation near the market further inside there seven years ago?”

“Huh? How did you know?”

Park Min-jae.

The police officer who had driven a young girl, fleeing her parents' violence and society's abuse, back onto the streets.

He was the very man I had seen in Eunji's memories.

© Myoyeop#12ipk

Author's Note

Thank you!!