Chapter 74
Chapter 74
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Translator : M.N 1391
Chapter: 74
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“I saw it with my own eyes. Six-Nine-Eight-Eight was brutal as hell. You could tell at a glance he was going all out to completely fuck him up. Three-Five-Three-Zero barely avoided ending up a cripple.”
“Really?”
Warden Hong looked surprised and turned his gaze to the CCTV screen. The head of security also leaned back in to look at the screen again and clicked his tongue.
“Wow… this totally feels like a Suicide Squad kind of vibe, doesn’t it?”
At the security chief’s words, Warden Hong’s expression hardened.
“Watch your mouth.”
“Huh?”
“If things are bad enough that we have to make something like that, what kind of state do you think the world is in?”
“Ah!”
Obviously, it would be a complete mess.
The security chief blamed his own mouth. Since words have a way of coming true, being careful with what you say was a virtue everyone should keep in mind.
Anyway, whether it was thanks to Kyung-wan recruiting Three-Five-Three-Zero and keeping an eye on him, or because the ability-holding inmates themselves had no particular ill intent, the registration process went smoothly without any trouble.
But Kyung-wan, bored of just sitting still, spoke to Three-Five-Three-Zero.
“Three-Five. Try bulking up once.”
“…Why?”
Kyung-wan continued speaking to Three-Five-Three-Zero, who looked at him with tense eyes.
“I’m not trying to hit you. You’ve got a time limit on your bulk-up, right? I’ll teach you how to compensate for that weakness to some extent.”
“…You’re not lying, right?”
“I don’t bullshit over something this trivial.”
At Kyung-wan’s words, Three-Five-Three-Zero’s face lit up as he showed off his bulk-up. And that sight naturally became a threat to the other ability-holding inmates sitting in front of the guards and being questioned.
It was a kind of show of force. Did Kyung-wan really coax him into bulking up for no reason?
But that show of force didn’t just put the fear of god into the inmates going through ability registration.
“Six-Nine-Eight-Eight. Just a moment…”
The guard in charge of Kyung-wan pulled him aside into a corner and scolded him in a low voice.
‘Hey, what the hell are you thinking?’
‘What? Oh, you mean telling Three-Five-Three-Zero how to cover his weakness?’
‘Yeah!’
If Three-Five-Three-Zero, who was already acting up just because he got powers, learned how to control that strength properly, would he stay as docile as he was now?
‘Don’t worry so much. That’s why we have guns, right? He’s just a brute-force type, not bulletproof. If he causes trouble, just shoot him.’
‘…’
The guard was taken aback by Kyung-wan’s coldness, which made a psychopath look mild by comparison, but Kyung-wan wasn’t done yet.
‘And you have to look at this as an investment. That bastard ended up going down a bad path because he couldn’t make a living outside, right? There’s room to reform him. We don’t even have a single ability user among the guards as it is, securing one more cooperative asset would help everyone’s safety tremendously, wouldn’t it?’
Right, right. The guard found himself nodding along.
From the higher-ups’ perspective, there might be complaints like, ‘How does it look for guards to rely on an inmate’s cooperation?’ but reality was reality.
What reality, you ask? The reality that guards were handling the dangerous factor known as awakened inmates with a flimsy safety net.
They were already scouting civil servants who had awakened abilities and transferring them to a newly established ability department, but as for this place, which had effectively become a prison exclusively for ability-holding inmates, there still wasn’t a single word about assigning ability-using guards.
So anyone who blamed the guards on the ground for taking care of their own safety was nothing more than a desk-bound idiot.
Kyung-wan continued.
‘And look at that kid’s eyes. Don’t you feel the determination to become a model inmate and get his sentence reduced?’
Halfway convinced, the guard looked into Three-Five-Three-Zero’s eyes after hearing that, and it did seem that way, so he nodded.
‘How about we just wait and see?’
In the end, persuaded by Kyung-wan, the guard didn’t stop him from giving advice to Three-Five-Three-Zero.
“In boxing, you relax and then tense your fist right at the moment of impact. If you keep flexing all the time, that’s just wasted stamina. Got it, Three-Five-Three-Zero?”
“Uh… I get it, but… I told you my name…”
Even though they’d already introduced themselves while talking, Three-Five-Three-Zero still felt wronged about being called by his inmate number. Kyung-wan looked at him like he couldn’t believe it and shot back.
“With that face, do you want to be called Jang Dong-gun? If people call you Dong-gun with that face, they’ll say you don’t live up to the name.”
“No… not Jang Dong-gun. It’s Nam Dong-gun…”
And what’s wrong with my face, anyway?
Nam Dong-gun felt endlessly wronged.
= = = = =
The identity registration process for the ability-holding inmates was completed without incident. The official number of ability-holding inmates housed at ○○ Prison totaled one hundred fifty-four.
Since almost nothing about abilities had been clarified yet and there weren’t even proper statistics, it was impossible to say whether that was many or few.
But from the nation’s perspective, wasn’t it a good thing to have as many as one hundred fifty-four resources to potentially make use of?
Human rights groups protest, calling forced labor anti-human-rights, but honestly, the reason prisons don’t impose forced labor isn’t because of human rights, it’s because it’s inefficient.
Why would inmates, who aren’t exactly model citizens, work diligently at something they’re forced to do? Naturally, defect rates skyrocket, and the cost of raw materials and labor to sort out defective products ends up being even higher.
That’s not all. Goods produced through forced labor also have terrible image issues. Even setting aside the anti-human-rights whatever-it-is problems with Xinjiang cotton, who would want to eat Chinese garlic that’s been peeled by mouth? What if one of the inmates has some kind of pathogen?
Likewise, thinking that slavery was abolished purely because of human rights concerns is naive. If capitalists hadn’t concluded that slavery was economically unprofitable, it never would have been abolished.
Applied to prisons, it goes like this.
Business owners don’t outsource work to prisons because, for the reasons above, it isn’t profitable, so how could forced labor even exist?
Instead, things like vocational training incentives were created to boost productivity and profits. Because that’s more productive. Since it’s not forced labor but part of social rehabilitation, it also avoids negative imagery like Xinjiang slave cotton.
The principle that you can never achieve high profits with just the whip. The higher-ups who understood this lesson felt the need to present various carrots in order to make use of these ability-holding inmates.
And fortunately, there were plenty of cards to play here: incentives, sentence reductions, model inmate status, temporary leave. Many inmates were ready to faithfully meet the government’s conditions in order to escape the stifling confines of prison.
And what they ultimately desired most was a pardon!
Of course, it wasn’t free. Corporate chairmen who went to prison for massive tax evasion or embezzlement deserved pardons because of their great contributions to the national economy, but inmates without connections or money needed to contribute to the national interest in a real, tangible way to qualify for a pardon.
In that sense, ability-holding inmates who could volunteer for the ability research institute built near ○○ Prison could consider themselves lucky. Inmates who hadn’t awakened didn’t even get that chance. In the end, life was just a fucked-up luck-based game.
However, one point of controversy arose during this process, Kyung-wan himself.
The controversy boiled down to this.
‘Is Lee Kyung-wan an ability user?’
He had subdued two brute-force ability users, so he should be considered one; no, there wasn’t anything that clearly qualified as an ability, so it was hard to label him an ability user, those opinions clashed.
To be honest, it was a matter of intense interest for the researchers who had entered the ability research facility. They wanted to verify whether things like surpassing the limits of conventional mind-reading, the almost machine-defying game of truth twenty questions, or the artistic movements used to subdue brute-force ability users really had nothing to do with abilities.
But in the end, the baton was passed to Kyung-wan. A proposal came in saying that if he wanted to participate in the ability research institute as a control subject, they would allow it.
Kyung-wan was indifferent.
“You should be begging me on your knees to participate, and instead you’ll ‘allow’ me? Just looking at this, it feels like even if I did it as a favor, you’d later treat it like a right.”
At those words, Warden Hong shut his mouth and rolled his eyes side to side, while a man introduced as a section chief from the ability research institute opened his mouth to persuade Kyung-wan.
“In Mr. Kyung-wan’s case, there will be various benefits.”
“For example?”
At Kyung-wan’s question, the man named Section Chief Kim started rattling off.
“First of all, there will be regular temporary leave,”
“Once every ten years?”
“…And various incentives each time you participate in an experiment,”
“So you’ll at least pay minimum wage?”
“Oh! Of course!”
“So exactly minimum wage, then.”
“Ah! It’s not like that.”
“If the benefits are confirmed, then bring official documents that confirm them.”
“…”
Watching Section Chief Kim suddenly turn mute like he’d swallowed honey, Kyung-wan clicked his tongue.
“Figures. No wonder you said the benefits were ‘planned.’”
“No, it’s not that, if you’d just listen to me, ”
Section Chief Kim was quite the smooth talker, but Kyung-wan treated him like some dog barking in the distance, yawning away. By the time Kim ran out of steam, he finally realized that persuading Kyung-wan had failed.
“What an arrogant bastard, seriously!”
As he left the room, his shouting was loud enough that it seemed meant to be heard, and it reached Warden Hong’s ears as well.
“Ahem!”
Warden Hong cleared his throat to break the awkward atmosphere. Kim’s words did sting a bit. Honestly, wasn’t Kyung-wan receiving treatment different from that of ordinary inmates, even though he wasn’t some corporate chairman?
As the person responsible for the prison, Warden Hong tried to ignore the embarrassment he felt over that skewed sense of fairness and asked Kyung-wan a question.
“But wouldn’t it be good for you as well if you accepted the proposal?”
“If I’ve got time for that, I think it’d be more profitable to go to the US instead.”
“Are the conditions in the US better?”
“The US has an attitude of actually giving what they promise to give. But what this country does is more like, ‘Do it first. We’ll think about compensation later.’ With that kind of approach, how could there be any trust?”
If it were simply a matter of compensation, there was room for comparison. But once trust got involved, the expected value plummeted.
People tend to consider only the size of the reward, not the expected value.
For example, they prefer a 10% chance at 1 billion over a 5% chance at 2 billion, and prefer a 0.1% chance at 10 billion over a 5% chance at 2 billion.
Even though the expected value drops from 100 million to 10 million.
Of course, the phrase “10 billion” sounds more hopeful than “1 billion” or “2 billion,” but failing to judge calmly like that is no different from a gambling addict chasing a lucky break.
That’s right. What kills gambling addicts isn’t anything else, it’s the hope that maybe, just maybe, they’ll win.
So Kyung-wan didn’t bother holding onto hope. Rather than having vague expectations of this country, this society, this government, it was far better for everyone if he thought skeptically.
Getting betrayed after believing hurts, you know? And the more it hurts, the angrier you get. And once you’re angry, you can’t just leave it alone.
Warden Hong asked,
“So when are you heading to the US, then?”
“I’ll be going soon. Some really scary guys showed up.”
“What? Scary guys?”