Chapter 36
Chapter 36
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Translator : M.N 1391
Chapter: 36
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Yang Seung-tae, the assemblyman, sensed something was wrong when he saw Kyung-wan suddenly rushing toward him and tried to step back, but he was eventually caught. Before the surrounding fellow lawmakers could even reach out a helping hand, Kyung-wan’s forearm wrapped around his neck.
“Gehk!”
Kyung-wan strangled the resisting Yang Seung-tae to subdue him and swung the sashimi knife around the area as he hurried his steps. Yang Seung-tae grabbed at Kyung-wan’s arm with both hands, trying to peel it off his neck, but it was as solid as if it were tightened by a machine, there was no way he could pry it open.
When Kyung-wan finally backed up against a wall and the human wall surrounding him was completed, Kyung-wan aimed the knife at Yang Seung-tae’s face.
A security guard shouted stiffly.
“Let go of the assemblyman!”
“I just want to ask some questions.”
Kyung-wan loosened his arm slightly to let Yang Seung-tae talk. The assemblyman, whose face had turned pale, sucked in the air he lacked and screamed.
“H-help!”
“Assemblyman Yang Seung-tae.”
“I said help! Aaargh!”
Even when Kyung-wan whispered by his ear, the panicked Yang Seung-tae only kept begging to be saved. Then he screamed again when he felt a sharp pain in his thigh. Kyung-wan had lightly stabbed him.
“Are you a bit more clear-headed now?”
“W-who are you!”
“Shouldn’t the more important question be why I came to see you?”
“Why are you doing this to me!”
“Did you order the killing of Prosecutor Kim?”
“Who the hell is that!”
“Kim O-min of the Criminal Proceeds Recovery Department at the Central District Prosecutors’ Office. The one you disguised as a traffic accident and killed.”
“I don’t know anything!”
“So he’s a stranger to you?”
“I said I don’t know!”
“But your body says otherwise.”
“Nonsense!”
“People’s mouths lie easily, but bodies don’t lie very well.”
“Bullshit!”
Yang Seung-tae tried to argue, but Kyung-wan let the words go in one ear and out the other. What came out of Yang Seung-tae’s mouth didn’t matter. His bodily reactions were more important.
“Anyway, did you kill Prosecutor Kim O-min?”
“I didn’t!”
“You didn’t do it yourself, but did you give an order? A request? Or a hint? Oh! You gave a hint. Then I’m curious about the name of the person who executed this so-called hint that’s really an order.”
“I’m not involved!”
“Let’s make this easy.”
“I said I’m not, aaaargh!”
The tip of the sashimi knife sank into Yang Seung-tae’s thigh. Kyung-wan twisted his wrist, and the blade churned through the muscles.
“Let’s make it easy. If we don’t, it becomes troublesome for me and painful for you.”
Yang Seung-tae gritted his teeth. He could not spit out that name. It was the same as confessing that he had ordered a murder. Everything he had sacrificed and built up to reach this position would crumble in an instant.
His old habits from the legal profession made him resist desperately.
“Evidence! You don’t have any evidence!”
At those words, Kyung-wan used the bloody hand holding the knife to push back the lawmaker’s bangs, revealing the shiny scalp beneath.
Smiling, he said:
“Assemblyman, I don’t need evidence. It’s enough that you know and I know.”
“Who the hell are you!”
“I’m pretty famous these days… Do you know the name Lee Kyung-wan? That’s me.”
Murmurs spread. They came from reporters and media crews filming the National Assembly session.
“Lee Kyung-wan? The one who ripped out that scammer’s tongue?”
“They say he’s a living lie detector. Is that true?”
Kyung-wan whispered into Yang Seung-tae’s ear.
“Lies don’t work on me. So tell me the killer’s name. Let’s not get tired.”
“I’m innocent-heeeek!”
The knife point stabbed into his thigh again.
“There you go lying again. Let’s not do this.”
He whispered:
“Keep lying and I’ll cut off your ears. One lie for the left ear, another lie for the right. If you still don’t wake up, I’ll slice your nose, and then gouge out your eyes one by one. How does that sound? Doesn’t it make your knees go weak enough to speak the name?”
Yang Seung-tae shuddered at the horrifying plan. But he still couldn’t reveal that name. He was a member of the National Assembly, proudly reelected to a second term.
“Y-you can’t! I-I’m a lawmaker!”
“Oh, please. Let’s stop with the tiring nonsense.”
“Aaaaagh!”
“Kyahhh!”
Yang Seung-tae’s scream burst out. Women nearby also screamed as blood spurted from his ear.
Kyung-wan dropped the severed earlobe onto the floor between his thumb and the blade.
“How about now? Still think I can’t?”
“Uuuugh!”
Yang Seung-tae groaned. Kyung-wan stroked his eyebrow with his thumb, leaving a blood smear behind, and the blade followed, scraping away the eyebrow with a crisp scratching sound. The cleaned, bloodless eyebrow area gave him no sense of shame, only fear.
This criminal was no ordinary madman.
Stabbing him suddenly in the thigh and slicing off his earlobe, he was utterly insane.
Kyung-wan swung the blade. The blood droplets painted an arc on the floor in front of the security guard.
“You’re inching closer. That’s the limit. If you approach more, I can’t promise what I’ll do. Act wisely.”
Just that awareness, that he was watching them, broke the security guards’ plan to stealthily close in while the suspect was supposedly focused on the hostage.
The blade once again pointed at Yang Seung-tae.
“Who is it?”
“Shin… Shit! O Tae-gwang!”
He didn’t want to say it, but the warm blood trickling down his neck forced him to speak. You couldn’t negotiate with a lunatic like Kyung-wan.
Kyung-wan asked again:
“That’s not enough. There are lots of people with the same name, aren’t there?”
He complained and swept the blade again, scritch scritch, shaving the side of Yang Seung-tae’s already thin hair, making it even thinner.
Feeling the blade brushing his skin, Yang Seung-tae shouted desperately:
“O Tae-gwang, chairman of Taegwang Industries!”
“He sounds like he’s old… Probably not the one who did it personally. Did he plan the hit?”
“H-he only ordered it!”
“Is it some gangster company? You tell them to kill someone and they kill?”
“That’s how the company works!”
“It’s like corporate gangsters, then?”
“...”
He shut his mouth, knowing further words were dangerous. But flashes burst everywhere.
Kyung-wan shaved off his left eyebrow too and asked:
“But why would he dare kill a prosecutor? Because of the 40 billion won paper company?”
“Y-yes!”
“Right. If it were revealed he was tied to Wang Dae-han, who pulled off a Ponzi scam in the billions, even a corporate mafia wouldn’t survive that. Same goes for you, Assemblyman.”
“I-I never told them to go that far!”
“You said something like this, right? ‘Use any means necessary to shut him up.’ Whether he died in the process is whatever, and if he could be persuaded, that’d create an ally. I bet that’s your conclusion, since persuasion failed, they killed him. Right?”
“...”
“Hehehehehe!”
Yang Seung-tae’s silence was an admission. Kyung-wan just laughed because he found it funny. Hard to explain, he just did.
A human life was frighteningly light.
Everyone who heard that laughter felt chills down their spine, including those watching the live broadcast.
“Anyway, whether Prosecutor Kim O-min dies or not, all you care about is shutting him up. And now he’s dead… Who takes responsibility?”
“I-I never said to kill him!”
“With no evidence and the fact you’re a lawmaker, proving even implicit intent would be difficult. You and I both know the truth, but a court that doesn’t know the truth, can it deliver justice? And you’re a former prosecutor. Do you really think your juniors in that legal mafia will properly investigate their exalted senior?”
“...”
Shut up! You’re a criminal!
He screamed it only inside his head. Provoking a madman was suicide.
Kyung-wan looked at the parliamentary badge pinned to his collar and removed it. It wasn’t the modern magnetic type, still the old pin style.
Holding the knife in one hand, he inspected the badge, then pressed the sharp pin against Yang Seung-tae’s eye and pushed with his thumb.
“Aaargh!”
The assemblyman thrashed, grabbing Kyung-wan’s wrist with both hands, but strangely, he couldn’t overpower him.
Blood trickled down his cheek, mixing with tears and groans.
“Aaauugh!”
“Let’s see~. The angle’s uncomfortable. Did it go in cleanly? Hey, camera, come closer.”
Kyung-wan beckoned the nearest camera.
The cameraman panicked.
“M-me?”
“This is a scoop, a scoop. Don’t you want to get closer? Security, please open a path. Before I jab him again.”
It was a devil’s whisper. But the cameraman was still somewhat decent, somewhat ethical. Could he film such a thing just for ratings?
Another reporter stepped in.
“I’ll do it!”
“N-no! I’ll do it!”
He snapped out of it. If he backed away now, his boss would tear him apart. They’d call him a halfwit who couldn’t even eat from a meal placed right in front of him.
More afraid of losing his job than failing journalism or morals, he cautiously approached the suspect with the camera, ignoring the glares of the security guards.
And just like that, the cameraman gained the comforting belief that not all trash journalists become trash because they want to be.
Kyung-wan grabbed the jaw of the blood- and tear-covered assemblyman, turning his face so the camera could clearly capture the badge embedded in his eye. Satisfied, he smiled.
Then he said:
“How is it? Can you see the duties of a lawmaker a bit more clearly now?”
You gouged out his eye and you’re talking about ‘seeing’? What nonsense.
“From now on, I’ll make sure you can’t look away from your duties as a lawmaker. It’s nicely embedded in your eye, see?”
Enjoying himself, Kyung-wan sounded terrifying. Crying, Yang Seung-tae pleaded.
“Please… stop…”
“Come on… That’s not right. Prosecutor Kim O-min is dead. Not by accident, he was murdered. Someone has to take responsibility.”
“I’ll turn myself in! I’ll turn myself in, just…”
“You’re a former prosecutor, and current prosecutors revere you. Why talk like that? You told Deputy Chief Prosecutor Yoon Geun-hwan to cover up the case, didn’t you? It’s obvious, given your relationship. A slap-on-the-wrist indictment, mitigating circumstances, suspended sentence. Classic repertoire, but classics are classics for a reason.”
“N-no…”
“Seems you forgot, lies don’t work on me. Why else would Prosecutor Kim O-min thank me and offer to buy me chicken?”
“N-no!”