Taboo (2)
"Cha Seoyoon."
I knew the name already, of course.
"I know. So what were you doing?"
I blocked the doorway and put the question to her.
"...I was investigating."
Cha Seoyoon's eyes narrowed to a glare. I stole a glance around the room. A faint warmth still clung to the air, and a meager little spread of refreshments sat out on the table. This was a room that had received a guest. You wouldn't set out tea for someone who had come to threaten you, or to shout you down.
"Then... may I go?"
"You've been trying to leave since the moment I got here."
"Something urgent?"
Hana and I offered Yongho's mother a brief greeting.
"Hello, ma'am. I'm Han Jaehee, Grade 4 Librarian, dispatched from Headquarters to investigate the recent disappearances."
"I'm Seo Hana, Grade 5 Librarian."
The worry clouding her face lifted for a moment. When she rose to prepare a fresh tray, we stopped her and sat.
"Seoyoon. Why don't you sit, too?"
Seoyoon stood with her back to us and said nothing. This time, what I saw there wasn't a tremor. It was hesitation.
"Doesn't look like you're finished. While you're at it, how about we do the rest together?"
I went on without turning around.
"It's cold. Let's close the door."
The mother had said there was a taboo.
The kind passed down by word of mouth in every Yellow Zone. Don't let the children wander late. Stay out after dark and the monsters will take you. Stories like that. Once the sun went down, you did not cross that line. Beyond it, monsters had lived since long ago. Of course, by now it had become a true taboo.
The people here lived with a prohibition that had hardened into a rule of survival. They might brush against it for a moment, but almost no one ever stepped over the line. And even in a Yellow Zone, the security team still ran its patrols. And yet the disappearances had suddenly begun to multiply.
Even if the children broke the taboo, how far could they really go? At most a ball went over, or a pet dog, and they went to fetch it back. For children like that to keep vanishing—and only recently...
"Librarian Han Jaehee, it is late. Please return for today."
Cha Seoyoon stood and nudged me lightly with the toe of her shoe. So she had something to say.
"Ma'am, we'll be going now."
"Aigoo... please... I'm begging you."
Both of her hands clutched mine, shaking hard. She hadn't let much of it reach her face, but I couldn't begin to measure how she was burning up inside.
The moment we stepped outside, a bitter wind raked across my face.
"So. Why'd you call me out?"
"If you heard that much, you will have realized."
"If an aberration were behind the disappearances, the alarm would have sounded."
Far off, in the middle of the village, a structure rose stark against the sky and caught my eye. She was right. As I'd thought a moment ago—how far out could the children even get? If an aberration had come in that close, the alarm would have gone off without fail. No. The residents would have reacted first.
Hana's brow knotted tight as she spoke.
"I feel like whatever we say next ought to be careful."
Things you could piece together from even a short look. This was not a disappearance caused by an aberration. Which left two worst-case conclusions. First: they knew, and they let it happen. Second: plain incompetence.
"I will be going. I have to return."
Her pink twin-tails swayed, forlorn, as she walked away. Whether she still couldn't trust us, or whether she was hiding something we hadn't seen—either way, in this incompetent, useless security team, she was the one person most likely not to be like the rest. I had to get hold of her.
"We'll keep making the rounds of the victims' families!"
I called after her.
"We'll be at it for a few more hours, so if you care, call us!"
She seemed to falter for a heartbeat. Then she kept walking.
"Grade 6 Twin-Tail, Cha Seoyoon!!"
Huh. I could've sworn she turned. I spun on my heel with Hana and set off for the next house.
"Headquarters did send people, but they're nothing but greenhorns."
"Yes, sir. Don't worry. We're still tracking their movements."
"I was already planning to put someone on them."
"Yes, yes. I'll lock it down properly."
Jeon Taeho, who had been bowing and scraping into the phone, kicked the door open in a fit of temper and came down.
Ha... that bastard and this one both. Do they think I'm a fucking joke?
"Hey, Kim Myeonghwan. That bitch Cha Seoyoon out wandering around again?"
Kim Myeonghwan, sprawled on the sofa and fiddling with his phone, took his time getting up.
"Yessir. She's been gone a while."
"Call her in. About time I taught her a lesson. Never liked her from the start."
"You letting me in on it?"
Kim Myeonghwan looked at Jeon Taeho with a filthy curiosity gleaming in his eyes.
"Just make the damn call, you little shit."
"Fucking bastard."
Kim Myeonghwan whispered the curse so it wouldn't carry. Just as he moved to radio her, Cha Seoyoon walked into the security office. She saluted Jeon Taeho without a word and headed for the stairs.
"Hey. You think you can just run around like that?"
"It was my personal maintenance time."
"Kim Myeonghwan. Was that actually her personal maintenance time?"
"Probably."
"You little shit! I told you to check!"
Glaring after Cha Seoyoon as she climbed the stairs, Jeon Taeho spoke.
"Cha Seoyoon. New orders."
"Stick to those new bastards and watch them."
"Sir?"
"'Sir?' Get your head out of your ass and go watch them."
"What are you standing there for? Move!!"
Jeon Taeho slammed his hand on the desk and bellowed. Cha Seoyoon hesitated a long while over whether to press the call button.
What a mess. A long breath left her and drifted apart like cigarette smoke. The team I used to be on was a good one... After I left, how many years did I wander, stuck at Grade 6. I envy them...
She turned the old days over. The first time she became a Librarian. Her first battle. The first time the work had felt worth it. The resolve she had carved into herself when she left that first team, and the promise that went with it. We'll see each other somewhere higher. That was what they had said. And in the end she had sunk all the way into a pit like this, with nothing left but to play the spy—deceiving people, looking the other way. Was she the same kind of bastard as the rest of them?
I wanted to do it right...
She didn't know anymore. Her thumb pressed the call button down.
"Hana. If the team leader had shown up, you think they'd still have acted like that?"
I asked her after we'd visited the second house.
"If she'd come with the seal off, I think so."
Hana swept her palm through the empty air, right about at the team leader's height.
"Yeah. And then the second she flashed that seal, all hell would've broken loose."
The thought of her getting brushed off as some little kid made me laugh.
"Wouldn't she have just gone 'You bastards!!' and smashed the lot of them?"
Hana clenched a fist and did an impression of the team leader. She'd been quietly good at that earlier, too.
"Still, a Special Grade would never have any reason to come to a place like this. So of course they'd act that way."
"Jaehee, I was shocked when I heard you drop the polite speech."
Hana looked at me, impressed.
"Felt good. Thanks."
I'd been quietly startled at myself, too. Still—a Special Grade having no business in a place like this. That much was true. It was strange enough that the team leader had attached herself to us at all. I was special, sure, but that special? Well. The team leader probably had reasons of her own. Enough. I'd think about it later.
Riiing—
She'd taken the bait. But already?
"Who is it?"
Hana leaned in far too close, trying to see the caller.
"Twin-Tail."
I kept it short and answered.
Hello? An awkward way to start.
"It's fine. What do you need?"
Somehow my own casual tone was starting to feel awkward.
"Hmm... what am I even supposed to tell you."
So she already knew where everything was? My certainty about Cha Seoyoon kept growing.
"We're going to look into Kim Yuri. You know where that is?"
"Good. See you there."
Click.
If I'd asked those guys, a hundred out of a hundred of them wouldn't have known.
"What? She's coming?"
Hana asked, her guard easing.
"Yeah. Let's go."
Kids were kicking a ball, weaving between the people passing through. In a corner a cluster of girls had gathered, laughing bright and easy. It looked like an awkward place to play, busy as the street was. Took me back. I'd played just like that at their age—on the wide yard of the orphanage, of course. Were Grandpa and the kids doing all right?
What was my oldest memory? The oldest memories are supposed to be faint. That's only natural. Mine, somehow...
"Did I keep you waiting?"
"Uh... no. Ten minutes, maybe?"
I looked up, and Cha Seoyoon was standing right in front of me.
"Should I quit the casual talk now?"
I brushed my pants off and held out a hand.
"It's just awkward... haha."
Cha Seoyoon took the sheepish handshake and answered.
"No. Please continue."
Holding a grudge? She was quietly holding one. Unbelievable.
"Yeah? Then I will."
"Well then. Let us go in."
Having Cha Seoyoon with us was good. But the timing was too perfect. She would have reported back to the security team, and then latched onto us again this fast? Those men, who hadn't the slightest interest in the investigation, had assigned Cha Seoyoon to us? The intent was painfully obvious. I didn't drop my guard. Just as they knew nothing about us, we knew almost nothing about them.
Thirteen disappearances in a month. Three in the past week alone. We worked through the more recent cases—Kim Yuri, Kim Seokhyeon, and Park Yonghyeon. Estimated times: noon, evening, evening. A geographical thread in common...
I really couldn't tell. I wasn't from around here, and Hana looked every bit as lost. Cha Seoyoon probably wasn't a local either.
Huh? Cha Seoyoon was picking at a fingernail. She'd found something.
"Seoyoon. You figure something out?"
"..."
I was sure of it. She had found something.
"Why are you hesitating to say it?"
I put a little pressure on her.
"There is a common point..."
To avoid the question that was hard to answer, she chose the one that was easy.
"Please look."
Hana and I stepped in close beside her.
"In every case, the testimony is the same. The security team did not see them."
In a way, that was obvious. If the security team had seen them, they would not have disappeared.
"But there is no way they failed to see them."
Seoyoon's hand tightened around her phone.
"Until now it was only suspicion. After hearing about Yuri, I am certain."