Chapter 60
Chapter 60
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Translator : M.N 1391
Chapter: 60
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At Hong Young-hye’s words, Kyungwan placed his hand on Kim Myunghwan’s shoulder. Oh Doo-gwan immediately asked a question.
“Do you know the whereabouts of Kanemoto Akira, Korean name Kim Myung..?”
“.. Why are you people asking about that?”
Kim Myunghwan couldn’t help being puzzled. It was only natural, none of the people in front of him looked remotely related to the Japanese judicial authorities.
After being tormented by them for so long, Kim Myunghwan had reached a point where he could identify, just from someone’s expression, their posture, or the atmosphere they carried, whether the man was Japanese prosecution or Japanese police.
At that question, Hong Young-hye let out an awkward laugh.
“There are… some complicated interests between the countries.”
In truth, that was the only thing she was allowed to say. Whether NIS, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, or the government had promised anything to Japan over this incident was not something a field agent like her needed to know.
“Anyway, please focus on the question.”
“.. Are you just pretending?”
At Kim Myunghwan’s remark, Oh Doo-gwan gave an awkward smile. He wasn’t shameless or conscience-less enough to openly explain that the man with his hand on Myunghwan’s shoulder was the famous mind reader, and that whether he liked it or not, the truth would be seen through.
Oh Doo-gwan looked to Kyungwan instead of answering, and Kyungwan simply shrugged. It meant to continue the interrogation.
Oh Doo-gwan asked Kim Myunghwan again.
“Do you really have no idea where Kim Myung, Kanemoto Akira, might be hiding?”
When Kim Myunghwan shook his head, Kyungwan shook his head as well. With a heavy feeling, Oh Doo-gwan continued questioning. No matter how much national interest was involved, it left a sour taste not to be able to help a fellow Korean being discriminated against in Japan.
“Please be honest. If he keeps wandering around like this, the discrimination and oppression against Zainichi Koreans in Japan will only get worse.”
At those words, Kim Myunghwan clenched his teeth. In his once-dull eyes, resentment and hatred flared. How many times had he been discriminated against as a Zainichi Korean? Japan being Japan wasn’t new, so nothing about it was surprising anymore.
But what right did Korea, who had stood by and watched while Zainichi were mistreated, have to stand here, right in front of him, and spout such nonsense?
What he hated even more than “Japan being Japan” were the people who sold out their own countrymen.
Seeing his attitude shift, Oh Doo-gwan sighed regretfully and finally unfolded a map. He pointed out regions one by one, Tokyo and its surrounding areas, and asked whether Kim Myung, Kanemoto Akira, might be there. No verbal answer was needed; Kyungwan simply kept shaking his head.
Only then did Kim Myunghwan begin to grasp the situation. He slowly turned his head upward and looked at Kyungwan.
“Y-you!”
“I’m kinda famous, you know?”
As the mind reader who stopped a terrorist incident, his name was famous, but his face wasn’t well known because the U.S. government pressured the media not to reveal it. So delayed reactions like this were common.
Kim Myunghwan’s face flushed.
“And you still dare call us compatriots after doing this to us?!”
His voice rose. To someone who had endured the pain of being abandoned by his own roots yet held on through pride in his heritage, these words were a sharper blade than any knife.
Kyungwan shrugged.
“If you studied Korean history even a little, you’d know, this country is built on the descendants of traitors who sold out neighbors and countrymen, and those same families became the wealthy elite.”
“So you want to sell us out too?!”
“Aww~. I’m still an unpardoned criminal, remember? Don’t blame me. Blame the NIS over there. They jumped at this with great enthusiasm.”
“Mr. Lee Kyungwan!”
Oh Doo-gwan raised his voice. His expression twisted with displeasure, understandably so. To anyone listening, Kyungwan’s words made it sound like the NIS routinely sold out fellow Koreans.
But Kyungwan smirked.
“What’s with that face? It’s not like selling out citizens in the name of ‘national interest’ is new for the NIS. They sold out the comfort women’s information, sold the info of activists and civic groups protecting Dokdo to the Japanese far-right, sold everything. And now you get sentimental about ethnic solidarity?”
Oh Doo-gwan’s face flushed with shame. Because the NIS employees who handled the secret task force for the comfort women negotiations had indeed been promoted afterward, he couldn’t deny it.
But admitting it openly was another matter.
“.. We acted for national interest, ”
“That’s called a cowardly excuse, or cognitive dissonance.”
Kyungwan cut him off. There was no need to hear more.
A traitorous organization that sells out the country, now once again helping sell out fellow Koreans, and insisting it was all for the nation, for the people, for “national interest”?
Self-justification at that level might as well earn them a “Founding Contributor of Great Manchukuo” medal, they would still say it was unavoidable in service of the Korean people while selling them out again.
At Kyungwan’s mocking bluntness, both Oh Doo-gwan and Hong Young-hye twisted their faces, staring at him as if asking, “And what about you?”
Kyungwan shrugged.
“Me? I’m the most foreign substance in the Korean ethnic community.”
It was true. As an infinitely reincarnating being, no sense of ethnic unity or brotherly love was going to stir in him.
He continued.
“To me, there’s only one rule more important than ethnic ties. Want to know? If a bastard acts like a bastard, treat him like a bastard. Simple, right?”
But since they still looked uncomfortable, Kyungwan pushed ahead without reading the mood.
“Let’s just get this over with. We finish quickly, and this gentleman gets to go home sooner.”
No matter how unpleasant, the job still had to be done.
Kim Myunghwan tried desperately to empty his mind to resist Kyungwan’s mind reading, but he was just an ordinary person who had never trained for anything like that.
Finally, when Oh Doo-gwan’s finger pointed at a certain area on the western side of Tokyo, he let out a deep sigh.
He had tried, but this was his limit. He thought of the young man whose name differed from his own by only one character, the neighbor who had resisted discrimination and injustice.
He hoped desperately that the young man could escape this discrimination-ridden Japan safely..
= = = = =
The Zainichi villain, Kanemoto Akira, Korean name Kim Myung, was hiding for a while at his ex-girlfriend’s house.
There, he worried about his future. Should he seek asylum in Korea or America? He probably had to.
In this country steeped in discrimination, even awakening superpowers only turned people into toys for those in power. To his eyes, the Japanese public, who discriminated against people like him yet kept silent toward injustice by the powerful, looked no different from slaves.
And yet those slaves never resisted the ones exploiting them. Instead, they chose the weak and minorities as scapegoats, acting as if they were someone important, pretending to be patriotic heroes. Anti-Korean sentiment, mixed with Japan’s political logic, was the pinnacle of such bullying.
What country was easier to bully than one they had once colonized? A backward nation into whose economy they had inserted straws everywhere to siphon profits like a cormorant?
So the hatred blooming across Japan didn’t end with hate speech, it escalated into a terror attack on a Korean Wave shop he frequented.
Kim Myung awakened his powers before the media had a chance to sensationalize “superpower awakenings,” but he didn’t want to boast about them, not in a country where Zainichi were discriminated against.
Even if he bragged, he would always be just a Zainichi. Even if he naturalized, the Zainichi label would never disappear. Just as burakumin still carried their label and were discriminated against, he would remain a non-citizen within Japanese citizens.
“Having great ability will solve everything”? Carlos Ghosn, the savior of Nissan, had been discarded like a used rag. And in a time when even anti-Korean bigots were awakening powers, his own awakening wasn’t anything special.
“You’re still here?”
His ex-girlfriend entered, asking in a calm tone. Hiding him like this was a huge burden to her. If not for past feelings, she would have reported him instead of hiding him.
“I have to wait for the call.”
Japan had a “midnight escape service” for people who wanted to disappear voluntarily. It was created for those whose lives had become unbearable, people desperate to flee their reality.
How much demand must there be for such a business? 100,000 Japanese disappear every year.
Kim Myung was waiting for their response. Hokkaido, smuggling to another country, anything was fine. As long as he could escape this situation.
Fortunately, the service understood him well. Among their main clients were people who suffered bullying after others discovered they were of burakumin origin. As a Zainichi discriminated against and on the run, Kim Myung wasn’t much different.
A superpowered criminal? Hardly anyone viewed him that way, not someone who had fought desperately to defend a neighbor’s shop from an anti-Korean extremist planning a terror attack.
But the reason people didn’t defend him publicly was because they didn’t want to anger the powerful who had branded him a criminal. A superior’s decision was the group’s decision; a superior’s perspective became the society’s perspective. No one could oppose it, lest they disrupt “peace and harmony.”
This was the hidden side of Japan’s much-praised ideal of harmony, wa.
When he said he needed to wait, his ex-girlfriend began to speak.
“How long, ”
Bang! Bang! Bang!
“Kimiko-san, are you home?!”
Someone pounded on the door. Kimiko tried to hide her tension and spoke before opening it.
“Who is it?”
“We’re the police!”
Kimiko and Kim Myung exchanged glances. He quickly put on his coat and grabbed his wallet and phone. She grabbed his shoes by the door and threw them to him.
“Hurry, open the door!”
“Kyaa!”
A crowbar wedged into the door crack, snapping the lock and forcing it open as police officers rushed inside.
By then, Kim Myung already had his shoes on, the window open, and was escaping.
It was a third-floor apartment, but jumping wasn’t scary. He was a superpowered awakened, after all.
Bioelectricity surged through his entire body. A refreshing sensation flooded him as his body renewed itself.
The harmony between a fully controlled body and a brain aware of its exact limits allowed him to absorb the impact from the third-floor jump with fluid ease.
Rolling once, absorbing all the kinetic energy of the fall, he marveled at the agility of his body and the abilities that made it possible. Then he ran.
He didn’t know where to go, but he had to get away from the police first.
And beneath it all, he felt injustice boiling.
He had only tried to protect a neighbor’s shop from an anti-Korean attacker, so why was he the one branded a violent criminal? He had scoured the news, but there was not a single report of the anti-Korean extremist being arrested or charged.
This was clear discrimination. A clear sign the Japanese state was promoting anti-Korean hatred, hatred against Zainichi.
Turning himself in under such a system would be idiotic. Japan was supposedly a democracy, citizens had the right to resist unjust state power.
Then, suddenly, a police officer dropped from the sky with a superhero landing pose before standing up.
“Kanemoto Akira. Surrender quietly.”
He was clearly a superpowered cop from the Tokyo Metropolitan Police.
Retreat wasn’t an option. It was a narrow alley; going back meant running into more officers.
Knowing he couldn’t avoid a fight, Kim Myung drew out his power. Electricity crackled from his fingertips. Maybe because he liked Pokémon, he had awakened bioelectricity as his ability.