Chapter 58
Chapter 58
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Translator : M.N 1391
Chapter: 58
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Self-imprisonment, a brand-new buzzword, drew public attention, and even though he confessed at the appeals court that he had given false testimony under orders from above, the Supreme Court ended up convicting him only for the insult of writing malicious comments and effectively handed the NIS a free pass on election interference. Was this proof that the intelligence agency’s influence had reached all the way into the judiciary, or was it simply because five years had passed since the incident and all the evidence had been wiped out in the meantime?
What was certain was this: even after disgracing the country to that degree, the signboard of the National Intelligence Service never broke, and would never break in the future.
Why? Because it was, after all, the one and only legal intelligence agency of the Republic of Korea.
Lee Kwan-young stared at Kyung-wan with a face bubbling with anger. The sneer on Kyung-wan's expression said:
‘What, you mad? If you’re mad, then get lost.’
But would a man with no reason to be here, a Deputy Director of the NIS, no less, have come all the way down to this place far from Seoul?
Suppressing the boiling in his chest, he opened his mouth.
“We don’t do those kinds of things.”
“Weee dooon’t~ dooo thaaat kiiind ooof thiiings~.”
Kyung-wan parroted the Deputy Director’s words in a baby-talk lisp. It was the mockery one deserved for trying to cover the sky with one’s palm.
But Lee Kwan-young glared at him with a murderous look and said:
“You think life’s going to be easy for you acting like this?”
“And what are you going to do? I’d love to know.”
“Even if America protects you, you think you’re safe behaving like this?”
“Ohhh~. You didn’t do your homework on me?”
Kyung-wan gasped in exaggerated surprise.
“I did enough.”
“Then you must know that threatening me gets you punched in the face, right?”
Before he even finished speaking,
Grab!
Kyung-wan seized Lee Kwan-young’s wrist and bowed his head forward politely and swiftly.
Of course, he wasn’t bowing to greet him.
Thud!
“Ghhk!”
Lee Kwan-young managed to twist his head aside in time to avoid having the bridge of his nose caved in by the headbutt powered by sheer strength and core muscles, but he couldn’t avoid the sting exploding across his cheekbone.
The guard rushed in and grabbed Kyung-wan, and Kyung-wan backed away obediently.
“You son of a, !”
Lee Kwan-young rolled up his sleeves as if about to start swinging, but Kyung-wan looked at the guards and asked:
“Planning to become accomplices in a group assault?”
At that, the guards flinched back to their senses and hurried to block Lee Kwan-young from getting closer.
“P-please, calm down!”
“Are you telling me to calm down?!”
I’m the only one who got hit!
“You are, um, a civil servant, aren’t you?”
Right. A damn civil servant! Someone who can’t return a punch even after getting smashed in the face!
Grinding his teeth, Lee Kwan-young stiffened, only for Kyung-wan to butt in with perfect lack of timing(?).
“Oh, come on~. Calling someone as high up as the Deputy Director of the NIS a mere civil servant? That’s an insult.”
Then he looked at Lee Kwan-young with a smug face.
“Oh right! If you want to sue me, go ahead and sue.”
“For the love of God, shut up!”
Because of Kyung-wan, who only made the atmosphere worse, even the guards were raising their voices.
Anyway, with other people watching, Lee Kwan-young had no choice but to sit back down, huffing loudly as he glared daggers at Kyung-wan.
“Count yourself lucky.”
Kyung-wan couldn’t help the little snort that escaped him. Lucky? Which one of them was lucky here? Just the two of them, without anyone to intervene? Kyung-wan could bet both his balls that he could make the man in front of him wet himself within three seconds.
“Just spit it out.”
Lee Kwan-young grimaced at the cheapness of the phrasing, but he endured it and finally stated the reason he had come this far.
“We came to you because the country needs your ability.”
“Heard that already.”
“... From here on, it’s tied to diplomatic issues, so personally I’d like you to accept first.”
“Stop buttering me up and tell me what it is.”
Kyung-wan shook his head as he answered the man’s request.
Working with people who waved the flag of national interest while cracking pumpkin seeds behind your back was always a bad feeling. Really committing yourself for national interest was annoying enough, but with the NIS, half the time you couldn’t even tell whether they were serving the country or just serving their own power. Honestly, they were the kind he didn’t want to get tangled with.
And since what they did in everyday life was completely opaque, it was hard to guess what kind of scheme lay hidden beneath this request.
“You need to go to Japan.”
“So I’m supposed to shout, ‘Long live His Majesty the Emperor!’ and pull a kamikaze on Abe-san?”
“What nonsense is that?!”
Lee Kwan-young jumped like he’d been electrocuted. This lunatic was spouting things that could get someone killed.
Kyung-wan continued.
“Then instead of saying that whole cryptic ‘you need to go to Japan’ line, shouldn’t you be explaining who, when, where, what, how, and why?”
Kyung-wan shifted the blame onto him so shamelessly that Lee Kwan-young wiped his heated face with both hands before speaking. He was so worked up he didn’t even notice the pitying looks the guards were giving him.
He finally spoke.
“You know as well as anyone that the world’s gone mad thanks to all these newly awakened superhumans.”
Japan, next door, was no different. A society where anyone who stood out got hammered down had produced people twisted in frightening ways on the inside. Even before, those people were trouble, but once superpowers entered the mix, they became an even bigger headache.
Honestly, hikikomori were fine. A hikikomori with powers was still just a powered-up hikikomori. In fact, for the Japanese government, they were convenient superpowered subjects (slaves) to use.
Even the bizarre crimes committed by antisocial individuals after awakening their powers weren’t all bad. They could divert public attention from political scandals like Moritomo Gakuen.
But then came the real problem. A clash between an anti-Korean superhuman and a Korean-Japanese superhuman in Koto Ward, Tokyo, created collateral damage beyond imagination.
‘I will never yield to your bullying!’
After that declaration spread across Japanese media and social networks, shouted by the Korean-Japanese man as he fled from the anti-Korean superhuman and the rallies supporting him, people who had been bullied and then awakened powers began taking revenge one by one.
For Japanese politicians and the privileged classes, this was an existential threat comparable to rebellion.
The law of the jungle.
The weak must willingly be trampled. That was the basic mindset of Japan’s ruling elites, an ideology of venting injustices and frustrations not upward but downward. Divide the masses into a small number of weak ones, the strong ones who trample them, and the silent ones who don’t want to join in but also don’t resist.
But the ones in power couldn’t behave like the governed. So to maintain their position, they relied on every kind of personal connection: school ties, regional ties, marriage ties, clustering together in closed networks.
In a society like this, if the bullied began enacting revenge regularly, their own privilege would soon be unsafe. Because that privilege ultimately depended on muzzling the public through fear, stomping the weak in dark corners and building a pyramid-shaped food chain based on that fear.
“The ones who know where a fugitive criminal went are usually his family or relatives. So the Tokyo Metropolitan Police want to interrogate them, but they won’t talk easily. And since they want to close the case quickly, they thought of you, someone who travels back and forth to the U.S.”
The criminal he mentioned was the Korean-Japanese man who fought the anti-Korean superhuman. After the anti-Korean superhuman and his group used their powers to terrorize the Korean-Japanese man’s shop, supposedly to display the greatness of the “Great Japanese Empire”, he beat them so badly they were hospitalized for six months, then fled.
On places like 5Ch, comments like “A guy who can’t even beat a Korean-Japanese has no right to be a subject of the Great Japanese Empire!” were spreading, and the Japanese government wanted to catch this Korean-Japanese superhuman to pour cold water on the anti-bullying backlash, the so-called anti-ijime counter-rebellion.
Thus Kyung-wan was chosen. His mind-reading guaranteed rapid investigative results.
But he tilted his head.
“Then why is the NIS getting involved? There’s the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.”
“.. It’s a matter of the state. You don’t need to know more.”
Seeing Lee Kwan-young look away from his question, Kyung-wan felt suspicion gnawing, but he shrugged and asked:
“Then just tell me one thing. What did you get in return?”
“What do you care?”
“Surely you got a guarantee that they wouldn’t spout nonsense like claiming sovereignty over Dokdo, right?”
“Ha! You think you’re that important?”
“Wow~. Even though the U.S. wants to take me, I’m not that important? That hurts my pride. Maybe I don’t want to do this after all.”
“Hey.”
Lee Kwan-young called him sharply in warning, but of course that didn’t make Kyung-wan even blink.
“So what did you get? I’m a citizen of this country too, shouldn’t I know whether my body’s being priced fairly, or if you undersold me?”
“I can’t tell you, but it’s for great national benefit.”
“I’m not gullible enough to say yes to something like that without proof.”
They stared at each other for a moment, then Kyung-wan smirked and made a suggestion.
“Let me hold your hand once.”
“What?”
“I’m not into men or anything, I just want to ask one question. Then I’ll accept the Japan job.”
“....”
“You scared?”
At that, Lee Kwan-young clenched his teeth. Conversations and threats weren’t going to work on Kyung-wan, but this one exit he offered was dangerously tempting.
“Don’t break your promise.”
“I’m someone who could live without laws, you know.”
At that, Lee Kwan-young silently muttered “bullshit” while placing his hand on the table.
Kyung-wan tightly grabbed his wrist, tight enough that he couldn’t pull away, and asked:
“There are people in the NIS who personally take money or entertainment from Japan, right?”
“Wh-what?!”
The question made Lee Kwan-young react like a maiden caught with her underwear down when someone suddenly burst into the restroom. He absolutely did not expect Kyung-wan to ask this. He’d thought the worst would be the standard, “So what is this national interest?” kind of question.
He’d even been prepared with a well-packaged answer, one he almost believed himself.
But this?! Sudden, direct?!
He tried to yank his hand free, but the grip from that deceptively average-looking body didn’t budge at all.
“It’s weird, isn’t it? ‘There’s great national benefit.’ If that’s true, you should explain at least a little about what benefit we’re contributing to, so that I can feel patriotic about helping. But instead, all you do is hide it, like someone with something filthy in the back. That makes a guy suspicious.”
Was corruption by public officials anything new? Mayors with licensing authority took bribes. Even low-ranking officials accepted “express fees” for paperwork.
What? You think that’s ancient history? In rural areas far from the capital, even in 21st-century Korea, escaped salt-farm slaves had their police reports ignored, and cab drivers would take them right back to the salt farms.
What? But the NIS isn’t some closed rural society, they’re in the capital, so they must be different? Saying that is no different than the LH hypocrisy scandal.