The Koreungtang Incident
I was dragged out in handcuffs and shoved into a black sedan, the whole Koreungtang affair playing out exactly as the rumors described. Their expressions made it clear that any resistance would end with me getting knocked unconscious, so I went along quietly.
“Wait, what did I even do—”
“Shut your mouth, you bastard!”
THWACK!
They smacked the back of my head. Maybe it was because I was used to police stations from my original world, but I genuinely couldn’t predict what these guys would do next.
When we arrived at a gloomy building, I was pulled from the car and hauled somewhere inside. So this was the Daegong Bunsil—the National Security Agency’s interrogation room. No exaggeration, it was terrifying as hell.
Once inside the building, I walked through an interior so uniformly gray it felt like it could drive someone insane. Before I knew it, I was shoved into a chair.
“There, there. Must be disorienting to get dragged in so suddenly, right? And you probably have a rough idea where you are, so you’re scared too, yeah?”
Hiiik hiiik hiiik. Some thuggish-looking middle-aged man sat across the table from me. His voice was gentle, but the orange desk lamp swayed faintly, casting shifting colors across the all-gray room and creating an eerily ominous atmosphere.
“But if you were that worried, you shouldn’t have made something like that, Miss I-seo. Pretty bold of you to even go on TV, huh?”
What the hell did I even do? Was making a rhythm game really enough to get hauled in like this?
“The Soviet Union collapsed not that long ago, yet you already went and depicted Soviet music and architecture? I really don’t get it. We keep rounding up those Jeonchonghyeop bastards and the TV stations run propaganda non-stop, but you just ignore all that and try to praise communism again?”
Ah, shit. It was because of Tetris.
“Can I at least have a lawyer?”
“You think that’s gonna happen? Just listen, kid.”
Ugh, this is so frustrating I could die.
“I get the general idea. Parents dead, no relatives, easy to go down the wrong path. But why did it have to be an anti-government movement? Sure, commies supposedly sprout naturally in the rice paddies, but this is a bit much, don’t you think?”
I never did anything like that!
“You’re cornering someone without any evidence? Is that even allowed?”
“Evidence? Oh please.”
The man rummaged through a folder beside him and began pulling out sheets of paper one by one.
“These are materials we requested from KUST. You created a temporary club, and two of your members have already been brought in. One of them even wrote a statement with me right here.”
When I get out of here, I’m going to demand the school change that rule about needing more than ten members. The problem was that I’d dragged in people who barely showed up to class and didn’t even know what was going on.
“And… special notes say your whereabouts become untraceable every break… you don’t even use PC communications, yet your internet and electricity bills are consistently and excessively high… Why don’t you just admit you’re communicating with North Korea?”
I’m literally just a hikikomori. The bills were high because of server communications, emails, SounDrive checks, running Digital Inside, and a ton of other stuff.
“Look, logically speaking, if I were communicating with North Korea, wouldn’t I use a shortwave radio? Why would I use the internet? Our internet is routed through Korea Telecom—does Korea Telecom relay communications with North Korea? If so, wouldn’t that make them a den of spies colluding with the North?”
“The data we requested from Korea Telecom says this: intermittently transmitted random numbers that cannot be decrypted at a consistent length.”
Ah. He was talking about the encrypted packets during login. Of course they can’t decrypt it—I used hashing.
“Please request the data from Korea Telecom again. Check the destination address on the packets containing those random numbers. It should be listed as KIN Computer Cafe. The building right next to the arcade that was the topic of that TV debate I appeared on last time. I have never, under any circumstances, communicated with North Korea or any communist organization.”
I explained as calmly and thoroughly as I could, since I couldn’t just sit there. I kept emphasizing that one more request to Korea Telecom would clear everything up.
“…Section Chief Park. Go ahead and make the request.”
In the end, the investigator who got tired of my repeated explanations raised the white flag. Nothing ruins someone’s mood quite like hearing the same story over and over.
“It’s way past lunchtime. Hang on. I’ll get you something to eat.”
I’d been talking so much I hadn’t even noticed how much time had passed. When the food finally arrived…
“Seolleongtang?”
“Don’t want it? I’ll take it back.”
“N-no, that’s not it… You’re not going to suddenly grab the back of my head and slam my face into it while I’m eating, right?”
“How old is this kid, bringing up stories from years ago?”
Well, it had happened before. So the rumors were true—Koreungtang really was the National Security Agency’s signature “information creation” technique.
The meal was surprisingly delicious. I’d skipped breakfast and lunch after being dragged in that morning, so I was starving. It couldn’t have tasted bad even if it tried.
The interrogation continued all night. The investigator even suspected I’d received spy training after watching me stay wide awake while he only drank one cup of coffee. Honestly, even I didn’t understand why I was like this, so I could only say I didn’t know.
The next morning, several documents arrived on the investigator’s desk.
“Data submission from Korea Telecom… That was fast.”
The investigator kindly read it aloud for me.
“The highest volume went to K… how do you even read this? Anyway, it’s an internet cafe… Second highest is a residential home in Seoul… What the hell? This is that Kim guy’s house you visited the other day? What’s your relationship with this bastard?”
It was obviously Kim Mu-sik. I’d wondered why I hadn’t seen him lately. So he’d been here the whole time. Still, he didn’t seem like the type to be involved with activist circles…
“…What happened to him?”
“He was released due to insufficient evidence. Oops, I wasn’t supposed to say that.”
The investigator must have been mentally foggy from staying up all night.
“I’m getting out soon anyway, so I’ll hear about it then. Just keep reading, please.”
“You talk like getting released is already decided?”
Because it is.
“Third is the British National Laboratory… fourth is KUST. Everything else is domestic. Hmm…”
“See? I told you I didn’t do anything weird.”
In the end, the investigation concluded due to insufficient evidence and I was released. I was forced to sign a confidentiality agreement, so I couldn’t talk about it openly, but I’d only been locked up for less than twenty-four hours. It felt like I’d been in solitary confinement for weeks. Maybe my stamina really had dropped lately.
To be released, someone had to sign the prisoner transfer document. Fortunately, Eunji—who had been working hard at home—answered the phone and signed for me.
When I stepped outside, Eunji and the club members were all there waiting.
“Oh my, oh my! Look at her face—she’s practically a skeleton!”
“This is the first time I’ve seen her with dark circles this bad.”
…It wasn’t that bad. The dark circles had always been there. More than anything, the tension that had been keeping me upright simply melted away. Honestly, I’d spent the entire day braced for the possibility that they might really make me drink water through my nose. My whole body had been tense the whole time.
“Let’s just go home. I want to go back and sleep.”
“Aigoo, those National Security Agency bastards have finally broken I-seo! There’s no way those words would come out of her mouth!”
“I guess even the Agency uses human masks these days. How terrifying.”
…Was this also part of my karma?
After that, I returned home surrounded by the noisy, cheerful atmosphere I thought would never involve me again. I accepted that my sleep schedule was completely ruined and took a long nap. Not that it had been in good shape to begin with.
When I woke up, it was seven in the evening. For some reason, Eunji was lying next to me. Completely half-naked.
“What the…? Did I do something?”
My brain couldn’t process the sudden situation, and a thousand thoughts flashed through my mind. Only after a long while did I finally understand what was happening, breathe a sigh of relief, and have a simple dinner with Eunji using some instant rice and side dishes from the fridge. Then I headed to the arcade for work.
My tasks were the same as always: coding the rhythm game, surfing the internet, writing columns.
Even with the air conditioner on, the heat refused to go away. When would this insane heatwave finally end? This was the first time in my life I’d ever prayed for a typhoon to arrive.
I was thinking of making global warming the topic of this column. The conclusion would probably end up being “don’t pass the burden onto future generations,” but still.
Because of the extreme heat, even the number of people coming to the arcade had dropped sharply. The arcade had always been stuffy even with the AC running because of all the body heat from the crowd. I couldn’t imagine how bad it must be now.
I hadn’t wanted to spend my summer vacation this miserably. There was only one month of break left. How could this be?
I’d been commuting to the PC bang for a few days, but eventually even I surrendered to the heat and stayed cooped up at home. Of course, Yoo Ji-young and Kim Jeong-a came to visit occasionally. Watching Ji-young draw or petting the mascot-like girl became major sources of vitality in my otherwise boring days. Eunji would always watch me with a strange look in her eyes during those times, though.
During the break, Yoo Ji-young’s drawing skills improved by leaps and bounds. As long as the computer could handle it, she was now producing illustrations that even I thought were quite good. Of course, she still couldn’t surpass me. Blue comes from indigo but is not as vivid as indigo, Ji-young! You still have a long way to go!
With absolutely nothing to do, checking the newspaper that was delivered every morning and making graphs in Excel became my new hobby. There was a strange pleasure in watching the charts gradually take shape. It wasn’t as fun as games, though.
“Have you finally gone crazy?”
Whenever Eunji and the others heard about it, they treated me like a lunatic.
“It’s actually pretty fun once you try it. Come on, give it a shot~”
Of course, no one listened. I hadn’t expected them to anyway. Even I could admit it was a pretty weird thing to do.
It was the season when the Maillard reaction occurred in the brain.
It was summer.