This Is Faster Than the Law
The two detectives were just about to climb the stairs to the second floor when a flurry of frantic footsteps came charging up behind them. The guards, having caught wind of the situation somehow, burst hurriedly into the room.
“Take care of this—”
K waved his hand flippantly at the guards, almost playful, and fists flew straight at the two detectives.
As expected. He's good.
Reporter Wi marveled at the crisp, exhilarating action unfolding on the other side of the screen. The staging followed the classic buddy-cop formula to the letter — front and back, the two men standing shoulder to shoulder, each dispatching the enemies before them.
“Kill them!”
“Look at this punk's mouth. Congratulations, that's an extra murder charge.”
Detective Gwak was the one who silenced a gang member swinging a weapon with a joke and one bone-rattling blow.
“You sons of bitches…!”
Detective Yoon looked down on the gang members like so many insects and took them down with clean, economical self-defense moves. He never said a word, letting his body do all the talking, but every time his loosened shirt billowed open, the audience's gazes turned distinctly pleased.
Yoon Hyeon-jo is about to get some serious fan service mileage out of this.
Reporter Wi had no doubt whatsoever that this sequence would become the thumbnail for Faster Than the Law's InTube promo video.
“This is V0. Wrap things up.”
K said it with a smile, calling someone, somewhere. It wasn't hard to predict that more gang members would come pouring in soon.
Yeo-reum crawled under a table and inched her way toward the detectives on her belly. Her utterly terrified face filled the screen.
The sight of Yeo-reum pressing her lips into a miserable flat line made her look impossibly small and endearing. The audience was already reclassifying her from hopeless screwup influencer to one of ours.
BANG!
“Waaah!”
Something shattered. By the time Yeo-reum had barely scrambled out from under the table, Detective Yoon and Detective Gwak were standing in front of her.
“Hey. You stay nice and quiet over there and play with your balloons.”
Detective Gwak waved her off. As Yeo-reum crawled earnestly toward the corner where the balloons were, the two detectives turned and beckoned to K.
“You. Come here.”
K smirked shamelessly at that, then picked up one of the balloons floating near him. The moment he grabbed a single balloon from the dozen or so bobbing in the air around him, the rest trailed after it in a long, glittering line.
Click, click. The Zippo lighter in his other hand rasped open and shut, a grating little sound.
“I'd like to commend you on your diligent effort. But—”
K was grinning as he lit the Zippo. Then he lifted a napkin off the table. Both detectives sensed what was coming and shouted.
“Hey, you little—!”
“You son of a bitch!”
K hurled the burning napkin straight into the pile of funny balloons. The flames spread like an explosion.
“Kyaaaaah!”
Yeo-reum screamed. At the same moment — clunk — a door in the corner of the second-floor room swung open. There was another emergency exit after all.
“You'll never catch us—”
K even poured out the whiskey sitting on the tables as he went, leisurely, so the flames would burn that much hotter.
Then he scooped up the bag of funny capsules and strolled out through the emergency exit. The gang members around him scattered after him.
BOOM!
“Kyaaaaah!”
With funny balloons littered across both the first and second floors, the fire leapt from one to the next without pause.
The detectives couldn't chase K right away. Most of the people left in here were unconscious, and if they abandoned them, those people were certain to die.
“Fire extinguisher! Fire extinguisher!”
“Goddammit…”
The two detectives set off hunting for extinguishers before the flames could grow worse. Detective Gwak stripped off his jacket and slapped it against the burning balloons. The yellow smiley balloons were melting away.
“Hnngh…”
Sniffling, Yeo-reum tried to edge deeper into the corner of the wall — and then, clunk, something caught against something.
“Is this…?”
Through welling tears, what she'd found was a fire extinguisher.
“Here! Fire extinguisher here! Here!”
The moment Yeo-reum shrieked with a radiant smile, Detective Yoon came running. Unlatching the bracket, dousing the raging flames — the whole sequence looked for all the world like a scene straight out of a movie.
As if to let the audience savor every frame of him, the screen switched to slow motion.
“You filming your own movie over there? For god's sake, put it out and let's go after him!”
When Detective Gwak needled him, Detective Yoon furrowed his brow.
“Then you should be going while I put it out! Your head, I swear— ugh.”
“Ah, right, fair.”
Detective Gwak bolted without a moment's hesitation. To catch K.
Tap-tap-tap-tap. Tak-tak-tak-tak.
K jabbed at the elevator button in a hurry. But no red light came on. Dead.
“Hey, why isn't the elevator working?”
The elevator was the fastest route down to the underground parking garage. Snapping at his men, K had no choice but to sprint for the stairs. The sound of several pairs of expensive dress shoes echoed down the emergency stairwell.
BANG—BANG—BANG—!
Then it came. A sound like someone descending the stairs nearly a full floor at a time.
“You little rat— STOP! Police—!”
“Oh, what the hell is this guy?!”
K panicked at Detective Gwak's voice. With a jerk of his chin, he sent his men back up the stairs to block him.
But Detective Gwak timed it perfectly — vaulting the stair railing while kicking their faces clean off. Two of them went tumbling down the steps.
“All at ONCE, come on! All at once!”
So the remaining gang members all rushed him together.
“Ah. Thanks for the consideration. I'm touched, kid.”
The rest went down just as easily. The takedown was so fast that in a blink, only K was left. K drew a blade — a modified three-section staff — from inside his coat.
Clack—! He flicked the staff downward lightly, and the blade hidden inside gleamed sharp.
“Blue collar, huh? You people will manufacture anything, won't you.”
“Shut your mouth, you rat.”
K handled the blade like someone who'd clearly been trained somewhere. There was nothing casual about the way he aimed for the carotid artery.
What K wanted was escape, so he slid down along the stair railing, swinging as he went — to keep them from catching him.
“You couldn't catch us if you tried!”
Detective Gwak seized the wrist of the snickering K and answered.
“Yeah. Caught you.”
Then he threw him in a dazzling shoulder throw. K's spine slammed into the stairs and he groaned in agony. Detective Gwak pried open the bag clutched in K's hand.
“…What is this?”
But only a few capsule baggies remained. K, sprawled across the floor, snickered.
“Told you. You'll never catch us…”
As Detective Gwak stared down at K's bloodied face, something snagged in his mind. An image superimposed itself. Suspect K. The shadow boss of Club D.K, the supplier and distributor of the Funny Series…
“What is this? Hey, didn't you take a laser to the face? No. His mole's on the left.”
And the one with the mole under his right eye—
“Why would it be Club D.K… it's not even a K…”
The K Detective Gwak was pinning down right now had no mole under his right eye. This man's mole sat under his left eye. Like a decalcomania.
“It's the D in Double K, you idiot. Hhk—”
K was a twin.
“You know what double spelling is? Answer me.”
“…”
“Guys who don't know a damn thing are always the ones obsessed with English.”
“I don't know! Forget it — hey, I'm getting compensation for all of this. Property damage, emotional distress, my guys' hospital bills, all of it. Do you even know who you just messed with?”
K bared his nastiness in full, the picture of the newly rich.
“Cutting down one of you isn't even work for me. You get that?”
“Eh. Don't care.”
A world where money bought everything. K, who feared nothing, kept raging on, his face a mask of blood — yet the contempt in his eyes still gleamed, glossy and undimmed.
“Do it by the book then, you bastard!”
“By the book?”
“Yeah! By the book!”
Detective Gwak drove his fist into K's face, and K went out cold on the spot.
“This is faster than the law.”
Slapping on the cuffs, Detective Gwak immediately got on the radio.
“Issue BOLOs on every vehicle registered to K's— no, to the shell corporation! Lock down the airport!”
The fire extinguisher finally emerged from beneath the wreckage. Even so, a faint flame still smoldered.
Detective Yoon, who had never heard the radio chatter about a second K, stripped the jacket off a man lying unconscious on the floor and smothered the remaining fire with it.
“Detective, go! Now!”
But Yeo-reum still had the radio pressed to her ear. She seemed to have appointed herself part of the detectives' team, and she shouted at Detective Yoon:
“They haven't caught the other K yet!”
“What are you talking about?”
“K is one-one-one! Ah — there's another one!”
Detective Yoon seemed to process it instantly. He plucked the radio from her ear.
“Which way do I go?”
Yeo-reum snatched the jacket out of Detective Yoon's hand and beat out the flames creeping across the floor with it.
Detective Yoon fixed the radio to his ear, then spoke to Yeo-reum — who had, at some point, kicked off her heels and was diligently stamping out the fire barefoot.
“I'll be back. Careful with the acting.”
Watching him vanish at speed, Yeo-reum looked around.
There, as it happened, was a lovely designer scarf. She eased it off a fallen woman, soaked it in water, and wore it over her face like a mask.
“Nnngh…”
Then, when one of the downed gang members showed signs of trying to get up, she brought her discarded heel down on his head. With no attempt whatsoever to hold back — CRACK! The sound rang out loud and sharp.
“Ugh.”
Staring down at the newly re-unconscious gang member, Yeo-reum decided better safe than sorry, and bonked each of the men around her on the head one more time, just to be sure.
CRACK! CRACK! CRACK! Listening to those sounds as he ran, Yoon Hyeon-jo found his legs picking up speed.
At that moment, the other K was hard at work behind the wheel. Turning the supercar's steering wheel with lazy ease, K chuckled to himself.
“God, what is so easy about this world?”
Cutting across Cheongdam-daero, he felt as though everything in it belonged to him.
The watch on his wrist appraised in the hundreds of millions of won, the thick gold rings, the designer shirt, the belt, the shoes… every last item bought with money earned far too easily.
“All you need is money in this world, and anything goes?”
The words dropped from his mouth like a sneer at a world full of fools — and a red light flared up ahead. Just as he ignored the signal and pressed harder on the accelerator.
“Fine for running a red light. Seventy thousand won!”
As an arm cinched his throat in a vice grip from the back seat, K wrenched the wheel hard.