Corruption Exposed (2)
As the rotten, festering truth of the nation's upper echelons was laid bare in real time, even past one in the morning SNS and every community site began to blaze. People who had swallowed the red pill—that every baffling verdict and absurdly lenient sentence for crime after crime had been the product of connections—poured out their fury and rose like wildfire.
I didn't stop at the texts and call logs. I kept dumping Telegram chats, investigation files, everything, showing just how thoroughly the top of the country had rotted. The young cop who had been digging alone into the Freezing Moon Club case they tried to quietly bury, killed and staged as an accident. How government assemblymen, media chairmen, corporate executives and high ministry officials lived such debauched, filthy lives...
Even as two in the morning drew near, the breaking news never stopped, and everyone watching TV could only spit curses of rage. That dawn's exposé became the starting point of what would later be called the Kid G Scandal.
"Hey! President Jung! What the hell is your station doing right now?! Kill the broadcast immediately!"
Government assemblymen who had been sleeping comfortably at home jolted awake to urgent calls, saw Kid G's exposé pouring out of their TVs, and immediately phoned the stations to scream. Shouting changed nothing.
"Th-that's... we're under a signal hijack right now. We're not the ones broadcasting this."
"Then force a shutdown!"
"Assemblyman, it's not that simple... to shut this down we'd have to blow the entire base station. That would ruin our network. And if we destroy a base station in this situation, we'd only be proving that everything Kid G is saying is true..."
"You fucking—!!!"
Of course the ones suffering weren't limited to assemblymen and broadcasters.
—The number you have dialed is not available. Please leave a message after the tone...
"Goddammit! Why is the landline dead too?! What the hell are the staff doing?! What the fuck has that bastard XXX been doing to get his phone stolen out from under him!!!"
National Police Agency.
"These fucking... Hey, editor-in-chief! Call in every team leader and every reporter right now—emergency shift! Prepare a rebuttal piece and make absolutely sure the public knows every word out of that bastard Kid G's mouth is a lie and a fabrication!"
Every media outlet.
"These insane bastards just leaked our people's names too! PR team! Draft a press release immediately saying this is all manipulated and false!"
"Sir, Your Skin already called about the CF shoot Lena was scheduled for—what do we tell them? She's the nation's little sister image, the damage is especially bad..."
"Fuck... put the call through to me. Tell every employee to lock down their SNS and not breathe a single word anywhere!"
Even the entertainment agencies.
That night, past two in the morning, more people in Korea were awake than at any dawn since the founding of the nation.
When Kid G's exposé began, Eun Seol, Kim Sejin, and Nightingale had been at a restaurant. They couldn't simply stay forever even though the place had extended its hours for them, so they finished their meal in a hurry and moved to a nearby pub to watch the rest unfold.
The pub, normally lively, had fallen unusually quiet as every eye locked onto Kid G's broadcast. Only his voice filled the room. With each new revelation, gasps and curses of pure rage erupted among the patrons, and the three watching were no different—except for one. Nightingale alone simply squeezed her eyes shut against the flood of revelations.
"How... how can this be... The government... is this all the government really is? The government I was taught... was just, stood at the front protecting its citizens, always pursued fairness... That's how I was raised..."
Watching the world she had learned and believed in shatter to pieces, Eun Seol's voice trembled violently. The true face of the government that Kid G had ripped open was a nest of ugly corruption—covering one another's scandals, taking endless sexual hospitality from entertainers and women sold in nightlife venues in exchange for favors, and when things went sideways, even eliminating a police officer who had been investigating too diligently.
Stunned by a rot she could barely believe even as she watched it, Eun Seol turned desperately to Nightingale.
"Nightingale... is the government really a place like that? All the education and values the government taught us... was all of that really a lie?"
Nightingale only patted the shoulder of the girl looking up at her like a child begging for answers.
"Valkyrie. I'm sorry, but I can't give you that answer."
"Why not...! You know the government and the Union better than anyone! You're S-class!"
"It has nothing to do with rank or strength. I'm simply a human who has no right to say anything on the matter. Compared to you, who have held fast to what you believe, I'm nothing but pathetic trash. So Valkyrie, the person who can give you the answer you want isn't me."
"Nightingale..."
Eun Seol looked at her with pained eyes, but Nightingale deliberately turned her gaze away.
"I don't... I don't understand. Nightingale, what am I supposed to do now? If everything Kid G said is true..."
"Whether the things you learned and believed are lies or not is something you have to decide for yourself. And if you decide they were lies, then don't hesitate to follow what your heart tells you to do. If you decide they weren't lies, then you're free to do as you please then too."
"I don't know... If the government has been doing things like that behind the scenes... if that isn't even the end of it, then what exactly have I been fighting for? Was everything I've done until now meaningless? Have I... have I really been realizing justice at all? I wanted to become like you, Nightingale... a hero everyone loves, who judges villains and brings peace to the world..."
"Valkyrie, you are a valuable person, and what you have done is not meaningless. But don't try to become like me. I'm not someone worth becoming. You are yourself, and you don't need to be anyone else. I'll say it again—act as your heart moves you. If you don't want to leave yourself with regrets later."
Nightingale comforted Valkyrie, who had lost the pillar of her heart, but she offered not a single word of advice on which direction to take. After Kid G's exposé ended, Nightingale loaded the two of them into her car, dropped them at a midpoint on the way to their respective homes, left them with a bitter smile and a farewell, and drove off.
Even after Nightingale left, Eun Seol simply stood rooted in place, staring blankly with the expression of someone who had lost her country at the empty spot where the car had been. Unable to watch any longer, Kim Sejin prodded her in the side.
"Hey... you okay?"
"What... what have I even been doing all this time."
"That's why I kept telling you the Union and the government aren't just pure good places. I didn't know it was this bad, though..."
"...Yeah... Why didn't I believe you. I just thought you were talking nonsense... I grew up learning that the government was absolute good and existed for its citizens, and I took it for granted... At this rate I can't even call you an idiot anymore..."
"So if you hadn't found out, you would've just kept treating me like an idiot?!"
Kim Sejin bristled, but looking at how utterly depressed Eun Seol seemed, she couldn't bring herself to scold her any further. In the end she simply comforted Eun Seol, telling her to take care of herself, and they parted ways. Back in her studio apartment, Eun Seol felt a hollow emptiness as if a hole had been punched straight through her chest and tried in vain to sleep.
That guy... I need to meet that guy. Then... maybe I'll find some kind of answer...
Even asking herself how meeting him would give her answers, she had no idea. But right now the only place Eun Seol could lean on, even a little, was "that guy."
The next day I went to school for the first time in several days. I had never been a diligent student to begin with, so no one particularly cared that I had finally shown up—except for two people.
"Hey, Lee Yechan! What kind of person only comes to school once a week? You trying to get academic probation?"
Despite having raised hell at the operation site yesterday, somehow Kim Sejin still hadn't been punished at home and had shown up at school looking perfectly fine.
"Hahaha, right? I lost track of time having fun."
"There's actually someone more hopeless than me. You keep saying you'll just borrow Seol's notes when you're bored, right? With her personality she's not gonna keep covering for you forever. If you don't want academic probation and to get held back for real, maybe show up to school properly? Listen to your noona."
"Haah... I've fallen so far that I'm getting lectures from Kim Sejin of all people. Guess I really need to get my act together now."
"Hey! What's that supposed to mean?!"
As always, Kim Sejin's reactions were fun. While I was bickering with her, Eun Seol walked into the lecture hall with her bag. The moment she spotted me already there, she strode straight over, casually set her bag down on the seat next to mine, grabbed the edge of my sleeve, and pulled.
"Come with me. I need to talk for a second."
Normally that tone would have carried pure stubbornness—"I'm saying what I want and that's that"—but today her eyes looked like a kitten that had just found its mother cat again after days of being lost. Sensing that yesterday's incident had hit Eun Seol hard, I smiled and followed her out.
The cracks running through the illusion she had so firmly believed in were clearly visible.