Chapter 64
Chapter 64
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Translator : M.N 1391
Chapter: 64
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“Eat it. Hurry up, you bastard.”
Kyung-wan used the one Japanese curse word he had picked up in the meantime as frugally and effectively as possible, forcing the police executive to comply. The man reached out with trembling hands and put them into the chicken bucket.
At that moment, Kyung-wan snapped his neck sharply to the side.
Pop!
Whoosh!
A beat later, sparks burst from the floor, rubble scattered, and a tearing sonic crack split the air.
A sniper.
Even with the shockwave and heat brushing past the side of his head, Kyung-wan didn’t bother taking cover. He lifted his gun toward the direction the sniper had fired from and triggered his Sixth Sense.
S-particles spread out from his body. Along with them, the radius of his intuition expanded. Within the widening cone of perception, he felt the sniper’s location. It was a window on about the 10th floor of the building across the street.
As he quickly sidestepped, the floor cracked and another bullet, breaking the sound barrier, ripped through the air with a delayed sonic boom.
The sniper missed again.
But Kyung-wan had no intention of giving him a third chance.
He aimed his handgun at the sniper. Let’s see… wasn’t a handgun bullet roughly Mach 1?
His Sixth Sense picked up the flow of the wind. Predicting how the wind would shift wasn’t easy, but for now it was steady. He couldn’t be sure what would happen after he pulled the trigger, but Kyung-wan bet on the likelihood that a sudden gust wouldn’t kick up.
He aimed for the center of the sniper’s head and pulled the trigger.
If you want to kill someone, you’d better be ready to put your own life on the line.
Bang!
“Hm…”
Kyung-wan wasn’t too pleased with the result. He had aimed for the head, but perhaps there had been a calculation error, or perhaps trying to achieve sniper-rifle effects with a handgun had been a greedy fantasy. It seemed he hit the shoulder, not the face.
After neutralizing the sniper, he once again forced the wide-foreheaded police executive to eat the chicken, and the man reluctantly chewed and swallowed.
After about three pieces?
His eyes glazed over, and he slumped.
Kyung-wan clicked his tongue.
“Wow~. That’s some strong stuff.”
They had laced the food with a truly brutal drug.
The policewoman swallowed hard as she saw him turn toward her. According to the command relayed directly through her radio just now, she must absolutely not provoke the suspect. Yet he had just discovered that the food meant for him had been drugged. Of course he would be angry.
Not to mention, she had also just witnessed his terrifying marksmanship, even sniping a sniper with a handgun. She’d even heard the scream from the building across the street and watched an ambulance pull up to carry away someone in special assault gear.
The man in front of her clearly possessed some kind of firearm-related supernatural ability.
While she was stiff with tension, Kyung-wan asked:
“So when’s the chicken coming?”
“Um.. well…”
“I still have one bullet left.”
Perhaps recognizing the tone as an imitation of that famous movie line from that actor rumored to be CG, the policewoman made a sour face and nodded.
She happened to be a shy Korean-wave fan.
While Kyung-wan waited for his chicken, maintaining his standoff with the police, a new figure appeared.
This time, someone who could actually speak Korean.
“I’m the Korean Ambassador to Japan.”
“Ah, yes. Nice to meet you.”
Kyung-wan casually greeted him like a man who had simply stepped out for a walk.
Seeing that, the ambassador cursed him as a genuine madman in his head, but outwardly kept calm and attempted to persuade him.
“How about stopping this now?”
“Stop what?”
“This hostage situation.”
“And if I stop, what do I get?”
“What do you want?”
“Hmm.. first of all, I’d like to see the face of whoever tried to starve me to death?”
“To starve you to death?”
The ambassador widened his eyes, hearing it as if for the first time. He had rushed over only because Japan requested he help persuade an unrelated Korean national to surrender peacefully.
After hearing everything, he was dumbfounded.
All this over missing two meals? You’re going to disgrace your entire country over that?
“All that over that little bit of, ”
“A little bit? That little bit?”
Kyung-wan, offended, slipped his finger onto the trigger and spun the gun playfully. The ambassador snapped out of it and quickly tried soothing him with softer words.
“There must’ve been a misunderstanding. The Japanese are famous for not moving unless it’s in the manual, right?”
“A misunderstanding? Even so, you can’t starve a person.”
“Yes, yes, I understand. I’ll treat you to some excellent sushi. You said you wanted chicken, right? But isn’t sushi better than chicken?”
The ambassador tried to coax him nicely, but he hit an unexpected snag.
Kyung-wan answered with genuine disbelief.
“Of course chicken is better than sushi. Don’t tell me you’re one of those cultural-subservience types who think sushi is a superior food? You represent Korea in Japan, for crying out loud.”
The ambassador replied calmly.
“Come now, would I think such a thing? But it’s a fact that sushi is more expensive. I thought you might take this opportunity to try something of higher value.”
Indeed, he hadn’t risen to his position for nothing, his tongue was smooth.
But Kyung-wan wasn’t having it.
“Sushi is just an overhyped food. Objectively, chicken tastes better.”
High praise for sushi was nothing more than image-making that Japan had poured huge sums into.
Cooking was simply a branch of survival skills. The slogan of “preserving the ingredient’s natural flavor” was something uttered by people who didn’t understand what the human tongue and human body actually desired. Cooking evolved precisely from the human struggle to make inedible or barely edible things palatable.
Meaning: if it had enough calories, digested well, and contained the trace nutrients necessary for metabolism, humans would find it delicious.
Even if it were a shoe sole made of cowhide, if it met those criteria, humans would eat it gladly.
Kyung-wan continued:
“And I’m not eating radioactive sushi even if you give it to me.”
Ahhh, .
The ambassador felt his scalp tighten. Reporters were already broadcasting the situation, so why bring up Japan’s radiation issue now?
If he said he’d serve only certified, radiation-free sushi, the Japanese would bash him.
If he said radiation wasn’t an issue, Koreans would tear him apart.
Being the Korean ambassador to Japan wasn’t easy these days.
As he silently agonized over how to spin this, thankfully, the chicken arrived.
A satisfied smile lit up Kyung-wan’s face.
“That was fast?”
“There was a Korean chicken shop nearby, thankfully.”
The policewoman answered honestly.
Kyung-wan, muttering “of course, it’s K-FC,” examined the bright-red sauced chicken, then said to the policewoman who had brought it:
“Try it.”
“…Huh?”
“Who knows whether you put drugs in it this time too? You try it.”
“.. Understood.”
She nodded, hesitantly picked up a piece.
Her throat reflexively gulped. Whether from fear that it might indeed be drugged, or from recalling the taste of Korean chicken she had once eaten, she couldn’t tell.
But the way she reached for the piece annoyed Kyung-wan.
“Hey, hey! Who told you to eat the leg? Eat the dry piece.”
“The dry piece means…”
“The breast.”
Seeing his warning look, she reluctantly set the drumstick down and picked up a breast piece. She ate one piece, then another.
After about three pieces, with her lips stained red from the seasoning, and no odd reaction at all, Kyung-wan nodded.
“Give it here.”
She cautiously handed him the bag with the chicken box while still on guard.
Then, wary of the police surrounding him with guns, Kyung-wan backed away. Back to where?
To the holding cell he had come out of.
And it didn’t end there. He stepped directly into the very cell he had escaped from and even shut the bars himself before starting to dig into the chicken.
The satisfied smile on his face said it all, this is it!
Hunger made everything taste better.
Reporters tried to enter the cell for coverage, but the police blocked them.
In any case, since the suspect had voluntarily released the hostage and returned to his cell, only one task remained for the Japanese police: retrieve the handgun with the remaining bullet.
A police executive asked the ambassador for help. From a third-party perspective, Kyung-wan did seem a bit calmer after the ambassador arrived.
And that much was somewhat true.
He simply wasn’t hostile to people who weren’t hostile toward him.
“Is it all over now?”
The ambassador stepped forward to retrieve the gun.
As he spoke, Kyung-wan shrugged while chewing his chicken.
“Well, I’d like to see the face of whoever tried to starve me, but honestly, I don’t expect that to actually happen.”
“Isn’t ‘trying to starve you’ a bit exaggerated?”
“People die if they don’t eat. I was shouting ‘rice, meal please’ in a foreign country where I can’t communicate, and the Japanese police ignored me completely, feeding everyone but me like I was a barking dog. And I really felt like I might starve to death. Does that still sound exaggerated to you?”
Not knowing how much exaggeration or whining was mixed into that, the ambassador could only sigh.
“All this over a meal…”
A perfectly understandable lament from someone who had to worry about Korea-Japan diplomacy.
But to Kyung-wan, that lament sounded like an opening.
“Aren’t you Korean, Ambassador?”
What is this guy about to say now?
The ambassador cautiously answered.
“...I am.”
“Then don’t you know how important food is to Koreans? Don’t you remember that mayor who opposed free school meals, got a referendum going, and became infamous for ‘trying to starve kids’?”
Still, the fact that he actually resigned after the referendum failed, that part was commendable. Most politicians would have babbled nonsense to dodge responsibility. Some said he only used resignation as an excuse because he couldn’t handle the mess his predecessor left, but still.
In any case, food was that important to Koreans. A nation serious about eating. They could probably compete with the French for world ranking.
But the ambassador did not want to discuss food any longer.
“So you’ve given up on identifying the culprit?”
He wanted to confirm that point clearly.
Kyung-wan continued:
“They’d just present some random scapegoat. And since I can’t even speak Japanese, I can’t properly ask who ordered it… so I’m ending this as just a warning this time.”
“A warning…”