Chapter 72
Chapter 72
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Translator : M.N 1391
Chapter: 72
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Animals normally feel curiosity toward suspicious objects and approach them, but once they get burned, they learn their lesson and register it as off-limits, don’t they?
But this fellow didn’t get swept up by that kind of animal instinct at all, and somehow managed to connect this so-called channel again. He must have had some nerve.
Kyung-wan replied indifferently.
[What about it?]
[Inside you, there is that, ]
The voice, which had been about to say something, trailed off. When it actually tried to put it into words, it seemed it couldn’t even describe it linguistically.
That was only natural. If a primitive human suddenly became an astronaut in a spacesuit and realized, in the vast emptiness of outer space, that the pale speck far below was the place where they had lived all their life, could they really explain that in words?
Just as the only thing a mayfly, living for a single day, can understand about a turtle that lives for over a hundred years is the intensity of life itself, the only thing the voice could understand about Kyung-wan was that he was human. And everything beyond that… was impossible to comprehend.
Compassion overflowed, contempt overflowed, joy overflowed, rage overflowed, sorrow overflowed, love overflowed, hatred overflowed, and emptiness overflowed.
Fragments of the infinite memories of an infinite reincarnator were compressed like that and projected onto the telepath. And to the one receiving that projection, it could only be understood as madness.
So, paradoxically, the voice could not understand Kyung-wan, and yet it did understand him. Every act he had committed so far, and even his choice to remain in prison. How could someone with a mind like this possibly live a normal life in ordinary society?
[What is it that’s inside me?]
Kyung-wan played dumb out of sheer spite. It was hard to gauge how great the shock the other side had received was, but it was obvious that it was large enough to make them consider cutting the channel entirely.
The voice asked again. This time, it was genuinely serious.
[What on earth are you?]
[What would you like me to be?]
[What do you mean by, ]
The voice, having been counter-questioned instead, faltered, and Kyung-wan gave his answer.
[You decide. If you treat me as a person, I’ll treat you as a person. If you treat me as a monster, I’ll treat you as a monster. Simple, isn’t it?]
Malice for malice, goodwill for goodwill.
That was the bare minimum rule by which Kyung-wan interacted with the world now.
After a brief pause, the voice replied.
[…I will treat you as a person.]
At the very least, it was better than dealing with a monster.
At that answer, Kyung-wan snorted and responded.
[Well, you’ll find out when the time comes.]
In this world, there are people who guard their words as if they were their lives, and there are also people who act as if they have selective amnesia and feign ignorance. And Kyung-wan still didn’t know which side this telepath belonged to.
[So, can I sleep now?]
[…Yes. Then… let’s get along well from now on.]
[Get along how? Nothing’s been decided.]
When Kyung-wan nitpicked, the voice replied with something like “That’s true,” left a brief farewell, and shut down the telepathic channel.
But when would they realize, and understand the meaning of the fact, that Kyung-wan had never once been curious about their name until the very end?
Kyung-wan would not bother remembering today’s events.
= = = = =
[The government and the National Assembly, in order to curb the ever-increasing number of superpowered individuals and their crimes, have enacted the Special Act on Superpower Management…]
[After prolonged delays, a bipartisan agreement finally reached! Superpower Crime Investigation Unit established!]
Although Kyung-wan had rejected Lee Gwan-yeong’s proposal and returned to prison, the high-ranking figures who couldn’t easily give up on his abilities sent various other talented individuals in Lee Gwan-yeong’s place. And every single one of them was brimming with ambition, to make a name for themselves with one big achievement, or to latch onto the right line and climb up.
Among them, there were guys like this too.
‘Do you know who my dad is?!’
‘I know perfectly well that you’re causing headaches because of your daddy’s-boy brat. You pathetic loser.’
‘What did you say, you bastard?!’
‘When I think about how your mother must have eaten seaweed soup after giving birth to you, thinking she’d had a sturdy son, only for you to turn out like this, a papa’s boy who can’t do anything without his daddy, I’m moved to tears. Do you really think your mother could close her eyes in peace when she dies?’
If they just gritted their teeth and stormed off after a few of Kyung-wan’s vicious verbal assaults, that was the better outcome. Some couldn’t hold it in, hurled all kinds of insults and threats, only to have Kyung-wan grab them by the neck and counter-threaten them with the prospect of developing habitual dislocations in their neck or lumbar joints.
Well, while there were morons like that, there were also people who came to see Kyung-wan not merely out of naked ambition, but out of a genuine belief in the rule of law.
But when Kyung-wan asked whether, if they truly believed that, they shouldn’t first thoroughly uncover the gang rape case involving the third-generation heir of a media conglomerate and a politician from a legal background, they turned mute, like they’d swallowed honey, and left after only a few words.
Did a rule of law that wasn’t equal for everyone even have the value of toilet paper used to wipe shit?
Ah! It did have that much value. When someone takes a dump and the stench spreads everywhere, at least it has to be cleaned up.
For example, when a high-ranking figure shits wherever they please, it gets wrapped up and wiped away as a grand political act, a policy judgment, an unavoidable compromise or sacrifice, or at worst, some incomprehensible artistic expression. But if ordinary citizens do the same, they’re immediately hauled off for a minor offense.
In the end, once it became clear that securing Kyung-wan’s cooperation would be difficult, the alternative that emerged was to aggressively push forward an existing plan.
That was the Superpower Crime Investigation Division.
After all, many advanced countries, including the United States, were already moving toward forming investigative units made up of superpowered individuals to deal with superpower-related crimes, so it was an organization Korea would have needed eventually anyway.
The reason it had been dragged out until now was due to the various vested interests tied to superpowered individuals as a resource.
Naturally, corporations that had seen through the fact that superpowers, alongside semiconductors, biotech, artificial intelligence, and the like, would become an enormous growth engine for the next generation needed time to secure usable superpowered individuals before the state monopolized them. And among politicians, there were many who desperately needed corporate sponsorship.
The justification wasn’t entirely baseless. If corporations do well, the country does well, after all.
Of course, there was also the opposing view that only when the state took the lead could the discovery and nurturing of superpowered talent proceed rapidly. But in a country that was practically a conglomerate republic, the influence of corporations that held the media by the leash was often stronger.
Everyone had their own justifications, but reaching a conclusion about what was right required sufficient time for deliberation. This involved a highly promising industry, after all.
What? What if you miss the timing while doing that?
Grinding down the people below day and night to speed things up had been this country’s proud tradition since the days of the Miracle on the Han River. Or, to put it another way, “meeting deadlines.”
But before negotiations could even begin in earnest, the so-called upper-class castration incident involving a politician from the legal world and the scion of a media conglomerate erupted.
In the eyes of the high-ranking figures, the drug-fueled sex party and aggravated rape committed by the victims were invisible. Instead, a sense of crisis took hold. A consensus formed among the so-called elites that they needed to clamp a leash around the necks of suddenly awakened, uppity commoners.
And so the Special Act on Superpower Management was passed. In short, if you had superpowers, you were required to register them as quickly as possible, and using superpowers without registration was defined as a crime.
Of course, they showed some flexibility. Since there were cases where people didn’t even know what their powers or activation conditions were and used them accidentally, the first instance would be overlooked.
Naturally, such provisos were a classic case of “it depends on how you use it.”
Who could prove when and how someone used their superpowers for the first time? Once an investigator or prosecutor started nitpicking, ordinary citizens without legal knowledge had no choice but to hand money over to lawyers.
Anyway, since this Special Act on Superpower Management also applied to incarcerated superpowered individuals, an order naturally came down to register superpowered inmates at the prison overseen by Warden Hong.
Warden Hong blew his top.
‘Why the hell are you making correctional officers do this?!’
He had every right to. Correctional officers weren’t exactly specialists in conducting investigations, were they? What were the police, the prosecution, the intelligence service, and the military counterintelligence unit doing, that this was being dumped on them?
But what is a civil servant, really? In Joseon-era terms, they were basically state-owned slaves. If you’re told to do something, you do it, that’s what being a civil servant means.
Sure, there were those who went golfing during work hours, but only the so-called capable ones with the right clout could get away with that. Blood ties, school ties, regional ties, those who had it all, and had secured solid backing within the bureaucracy, were the real “capable ones.”
What about individual job performance?
Doing your job well doesn’t necessarily lead to promotion. Just as studying well doesn’t reduce the amount of studying you have to do, working well doesn’t reduce your workload. In fact, if you work well, you often get more work. Because you’re good, they keep piling it on.
The principle by which job performance leads to promotion works like this.
Boss: You work well. I’ve got my eye on you.
Employee: Thank you, sir!
Only after you do enough to please your superiors and catch their attention does the path to promotion finally open. Before that, you’re just Slave A who works well.
But there are people who skip that entire process of proving themselves through competence, those who use school ties, regional ties, blood ties, and other so-called connections. They’re already in favor before they even demonstrate any job performance. If they’re not “capable ones,” then who is?
Honestly, riding a line was far faster and easier for opening the path to promotion than breaking your back with hard work. After all, the essence of promotion is being pulled up by those above.
There are some capable people who believe they can succeed without any of that, clawing their way up through sheer suffering, but when they finally reach that position, do you think the people already there welcome them?
No. Far from welcoming them, they just give them territorial harassment.
Why?
Because they dared to stand at the same level without permission.
It was an entirely natural reaction. Even choosing who to share your rice bowl with requires careful thought, so who would like someone forcing their way up and trying to split their rice bowl in half just because they had ability?
The only ones who welcome a hard-climbing newcomer are fellow climbers already at the summit.
There was a reason Warden Hong took calls from the Minister of Justice at attention, like a private. He had seen countless seniors who had acted cocky over their supposed ability, only to be shunted from one backwater post to another before retiring. He was someone who had survived all that and risen to the position of warden.
Because of that, even while grumbling and jumping at the orders from above, he searched for some way to get it done.
Fortunately, or unfortunately, the prison he managed had a cheat code.
“Me again?”
“I’m not telling you to do anything in particular. Just sit there.”
There wasn’t a single superpowered inmate who didn’t know that Kyung-wan, who didn’t even seem to have any obvious superpower, had subdued a super-strength type. When correctional officers’ workplace suddenly turned into a prison exclusively for superpowered inmates, they quietly warned the newly transferred awakened inmates about Kyung-wan’s existence, hoping they wouldn’t cause trouble.
The wording was that if they cooperated, they’d be given various conveniences, but the substance was a subtle warning: if you act like shit, we’ll have no choice but to unleash this mad dog on you.