My Land Is a Money Cushion - 5
"Representative Jeong, haha. All you have to do is perform that whole 'collapsing from the pressure' act convincingly."
When Jeong Suhwan clutched his chest with a strangled "Ugh," his lawyer burst out laughing.
The way things worked in redevelopment corruption investigations was simple: the CEO just had to plead ignorance.
Pin everything on the site managers, cut off the tail, and walk away clean.
The bribes he'd paid the tenants' association chairman and the double books he'd kept? Not his problem. The illegal splitting of subcontracts — civil engineering to one firm, construction to another — to dodge the ban on re-subcontracting work he'd already won? Not his problem. Even the bribes to a Gangdong District assemblyman to alter the design plans? Not his problem. As long as Jeong Suhwan claimed he knew nothing and insisted it was all committed by his underlings to prove their loyalty, he was untouchable.
Even if a building collapsed during demolition and crushed someone to death, even if he built so-called "boneless apartments" that skimped on the rebar, it was never the CEO's fault.
All a construction company president had to do was issue a public apology and grease the right political palms.
The only reason Jeong Suhwan was consulting a lawyer right now was his fear of a business suspension order or restrictions on future redevelopment projects.
So when the lawyer advised him to testify in court that he'd collapsed during the investigation, that the pressure had driven him to the brink of suicide—
"Uuuugh!"
The man actually went and clutched his chest, toppling over as if he were really fainting.
"Haha, excellent! You almost had even me fooled. And get this — if we play it up in the media as 'prosecutorial coercion nearly cost Representative Jeong his life,' the assemblyman has agreed to step in for us."
THUD.
Jeong Suhwan slid off his chair and hit the floor, his consciousness fading.
"Representative? You're — you're not breathing! Somebody, somebody get in here!"
The lawyer shouted himself hoarse, but Jeong Suhwan's soul was already gone.
Damn it — what is this?
It felt as though an invisible blade had stabbed him through the heart. Blood surged backward in his throat and his head went numb.
His vision blurred, and he found himself standing on a fog-shrouded ferry dock.
Where am I?
As he looked around, he saw lines of people waiting to board a boat.
"Excuse me, where is this? I was just at a Japanese restaurant in Cheongdam-dong with my lawyer. Why am I here?"
"Did you eat puffer fish? You were at a Japanese restaurant, and now you're here — makes sense to me."
"Wh-where is 'here,' exactly?"
"Where do you think? That's the Samdocheon River."
Samdocheon? Next to the Jungnang Stream?
Jeong Suhwan's eyes darted around, and then he jumped as if electrified.
"I-is that — is that the river the dead have to cross before they go to the afterlife?"
"Tsk, tsk! Only just now realizing you're dead, are you? Say, you there!"
The old man who'd been offering his two cents glanced at Jeong Suhwan's neck and recoiled.
"What on earth did you do in life, to be wearing that?"
The man pointed at Jeong Suhwan's throat. Reaching up to tug at it, he found a black iron chain hanging there.
"Wh-what is this? Who put a dog collar on me?"
"That would be your karma."
"Karma? What's that supposed to be?"
"Heh heh. What is karma, you ask? Everything you said, did, and thought while you lived — that is karma. Curse someone, and bad karma piles up. Show kindness to someone, and good karma piles up in its place."
The old man's figure scattered like fog, then coalesced again.
Jeong Suhwan had taken him for a retired grandfather out on a hiking trip, but now he'd transformed into some kind of divine spirit, white robes billowing around him. And his eyes flashed a gleaming yellow. Staring into them was like meeting a tiger's gaze head-on; a chill crawled up Jeong Suhwan's spine.
He stumbled backward to flee, but somehow the old man was already blocking his path. It was as if he'd teleported.
"Wh-who are you? Why won't you let me through?"
"Stopping wicked creatures like you from running away instead of going to the afterlife — that is my job."
"I'm not a wicked man! I'm a construction company CEO!"
"That's merely a job. The karma you built up over your lifetime is wickedness itself."
As the old man swept his robes, visions bloomed before Jeong Suhwan's eyes: his birth father, Jeong Hyeontaek, dying of a heart attack.
Back then, Jeong Suhwan had been a college student, cradled in the arms of a startlingly young Cho Eunsun.
Jeong Suhwan was trembling. His father could have been saved with nothing more than heart medicine slipped into his mouth — but instead, he had taken Cho Eunsun's hand and gone upstairs to his own room with her.
"You abandoned your own father to save him, bewitched by a woman."
The vision shifted. Jeong Suhwan, now the young president of the newly founded Seongdo Construction, signed document after document without reading a single page. Cho Eunsun sat on his desk with her legs crossed, and he played the puppet exactly as she commanded.
"You brought rivers of bloody tears down on countless victims."
A luxury sedan pulled out of the parking garage of Seongdo Construction's gleaming new headquarters, bought with every manner of graft and embezzlement.
The moment Jeong Suhwan stepped out of the car, victims waving picket signs swarmed around him, desperate for a single word about compensation.
"We're bouncing between bathhouses with our children right now! Right this minute!"
"My marriage is falling apart. Please, you have to give us a solution!"
"We poured in every won we saved our whole lives! And you talk about exercising a lien? SD Financial is Seongdo Construction's own affiliate!"
He'd built apartment buildings on his own and demanded even more construction fees from the buyers — pay the extra installments, he'd said, or your unit goes to auction. People who'd lost their homes in an instant and been thrown into the street had begged him for mercy, but Jeong Suhwan was too busy massaging the legs of Cho Eunsun, seated right beside him.
To him, the victims were less than ants. How stupid do you have to be to end up like that? You couldn't even scrape together a measly two hundred million won more, and you wanted to own an apartment in Seoul? Thieving bastards, the lot of you. That was what he'd truly believed.
But now—
I think I'd better admit I was wrong. Now, while I still can.
Otherwise, that white-robed old man was going to drag him straight down to hell.
Jeong Suhwan steadied his voice and spoke.
"Th-thinking it over again, I suppose I did do some wrong things. But I didn't know back then! I genuinely had no idea I was doing anything evil!"
"Not knowing is karma too."
"What kind of nonsense is that? It's not like I did it on purpose!"
"You stood in a position where not knowing was unforgivable."
The old man stretched out his arm. Jeong Suhwan's body slid forward as if pulled by a current, and his foot plunged into the Samdocheon with a splash.
The water lapping at his ankles crept steadily up his calves. The riverbed of the Samdocheon was drawing him in.
"Aaaagh! I'm sinking! Okay, okay, I get it! I'll board the boat!"
Jeong Suhwan pointed frantically at the long line of people queuing at the ferry.
"Your evil karma is too heavy — you cannot board. And hell is not across the river, but beneath it, through the riverbed itself. There is only one way out for you: wash away your karma."
With a soft hiss, the old man dissolved into mist — then reappeared, seated atop a boat crossing the river.
"H-hey! Hey! Damn it, this is terrifying— huuurk!"
Water flooded over his thighs, then across the deck itself. The icy grip of the riverbed muck clutching at his feet raised goosebumps all over his body.
At last the water rose past his nose, and he could no longer breathe.
"Uuuugh!"
The Samdocheon that had swallowed Jeong Suhwan began to boil. It was scalding. His flesh felt as though it were being cooked.
He looked down and saw the riverbed bubbling like magma beneath him.
His body plunged downward, and he arrived at the first hell — the Hell of Fire.
And then—
"Fa... Father?"
There stood Jeong Hyeontaek, char coal-black and burning.
"So you were here too."
Jeong Hyeontaek, in his greed to push a private expressway through Gangwon Province, had conspired with Assemblyman Joo Changnam to massacre the villagers of Ugok 5-ri. Then, promising to build a theme park in Yeongcheon County, he'd deliberately defaulted and spawned countless more victims.
I always figured he'd go to hell when he died. So it's real?
The problem was that Jeong Hyeontaek had been dead for more than thirty years.
"Don't tell me I have to spend the next thirty years here too."
It was beyond anything Jeong Suhwan had imagined.
That there were eighteen great hells in all, and a hundred and thirty-six lesser hells within them. And that the Fire Hell — the first one he had just arrived in — was only one among so many.
"Aaaaaagh!"
The flames swallowed Jeong Suhwan whole.
At Cho Eunsun's shrine on Achasan, the police had begun a full search of the surrounding area at Detective Jeong Hyeoncheol's request.
It was a murder scene, after all.
Cho Eunsun had stabbed her own subordinates to death.
Officers were posted along the hiking trail connected to her home to catch the subordinates who'd fled.
"Master, if you will permit me, I shall re-erect the barrier for a time."
"Go ahead."
Abe cast a barrier over part of Cho Eunsun's shrine grounds.
"J-just kill me instead. Please... please... I'm begging you."
Cho Eunsun crawled toward me on both arms and clutched at my feet, pleading.
"Don't bother pretending to be weak."
I slid my foot free, shaking off her grasp, and turned to Abe.
"Put her inside the barrier too."
"As you command, Master."
Abe chanted an incantation and raised the barrier. A transparent membrane shimmered into being.
I crouched down, meeting Cho Eunsun's eyes.
"That photograph you sliced apart a little while ago with the blade you honed so carefully from your curse. It was a picture of Jeong Suhwan of Seongdo Construction as a newborn baby."
This is exactly why I keep telling people not to upload photos like that to the internet.
Cho Eunsun's bloodshot eyes flooded with horror.
"Th-then... the curse went to Suhwan."
"That's right. According to Abe, the curse struck Jeong Suhwan's heart with deadly precision."
"Is he dead?"
"He is."
"Hnnngh! Aaaaagh!"
"What are you wailing about now? You'll be joining him soon enough."
I straightened up as I spoke.
"The underwear I'm wearing was brand new, bought at the market. The birth date your lackey dug up on me was the real one. So a fraction of the curse you hurled did find its way to me after all."
At the time, I had been watching Cho Eunsun's handiwork from inside the barrier Abe had laid.
And I had punched a hole through the barrier so the curse would fly toward me — then, the instant the killing intent portion of it veered my way, I sealed the barrier shut again and fired the rebound back at her.
They say a curse rebound returns at many times the killing intent you sent out.
That was exactly what had reduced Cho Eunsun to this wreck — the rebound striking her at several times the malice she had unleashed.
The resentment, the grief, the rage, and the hatred of Boram Loan's victims had become the offering that swallowed her whole.
"Just kill me instead... please, kill me."
"That's not my call to make."
I turned to Abe.
"Abe, what do you want to do with her? Whatever you decide for Cho Eunsun, I'll honor it."
"I believe it would be best to seal her within the barrier, Master, and leave her there."
"I suppose that's the fitting choice, isn't it?"
Perhaps enduring, for a long, long time, all the pain and sorrow and anguish that Boram Loan's victims had suffered would be worse than simply dying. Which was rather the point.
In the end, Abe and I stepped out of the barrier, leaving behind only Cho Eunsun — still wracked by the rebound, buried under the reversed curses of her victims.
"No! Don't leave me behind! Please, please!"
But the moment the barrier sealed shut, her shrieks fell silent.
Trapped inside with her broken body, she would now feel — and suffer — every agony that Boram Loan's victims had endured.
Hey, Abe. One thing, though. Won't she starve to death in there?
"Time stands still within the barrier, Master. Unless I myself undo it, Cho Eunsun will remain imprisoned in there for eternity."
So she got exactly what she always wanted. Eternal life.
Abe would soon be returning to Japan. There would be no one left to release the barrier.
"Yoonho!"
Jeong Hyeoncheol came hurrying into the shrine grounds.
"Are you all right? You could have been seriously hurt. By the way — do you know the Police Commissioner personally?"