The Blade of Suspicion
I turned on my phone and checked the time. There was a lot to do. For the safety of Villa Street, I had to kill the man who wanted to buy lettuce, and I also needed to deal with the rotten human who dared to leak it.
“Weeds…? You’re going to pull me out?”
The utterly wicked human who had tried to leak the lettuce solely for his own benefit muttered blankly. He looked around, but the atmosphere was far from favorable. The middle-aged man standing there like a statue, lost in thought. Me, gripping my hammer tighter. The rice seller tapping his iron bat against the asphalt with sharp clinks. No matter how you looked at it, this wasn’t a situation that would end peacefully. And if they tried to let it slide, I wouldn’t allow it.
I thought slowly.
Should I kill him here? Should I have the middle-aged man execute him? Or turn him into a cross?
Killing him was certain. The question was how.
Perhaps because he was numb to group crises but sensitive to personal ones, the lettuce leaker forced a smile and waved his hands.
“I was wrong. It won’t happen again. And it wasn’t even that big of a mistake, right? Trading a few lettuce leaves for cigarettes and booze is a net gain.”
He rattled off his excuses. He approached the middle-aged man and spoke desperately, even reaching out toward the person holding the rice bag. Under the faint moonlight, I caught a glimpse of his trembling hand. A similarly shaking voice followed.
“I know it’s dangerous too. That’s why I was going to say I got it from the Hope Community. They farm too, don’t they? If you think about where the lettuce came from, that place would be the first thing that comes to mind. This isn’t serious enough to kick me out over, is it?”
No one answered. Only the wicked lettuce leaker’s words continued.
“I was just… struggling to survive. The world’s like this, so I relied on booze and cigarettes. That’s all.”
The atmosphere grew heavy with the fear of being expelled from the relatively decent group known as Villa Street and having to survive with no resources in such extreme conditions.
A few seconds later, the man holding the rice bag spoke cautiously.
“He… seems to have reflected a lot. Shouldn’t we end it here? We stopped it beforehand anyway, and he says he won’t do it again.”
“That’s right. I swear I’ll never think about selling lettuce again.”
The lettuce leaker spoke happily now that he had someone on his side. But the middle-aged man and I remained silent. We knew better than anyone that this couldn’t end like this. If we let it slide without punishment, someone else would make a similar mistake. A vague punishment was also impossible. It would only breed resentment and create potential traitors. The only viable punishment was death.
I asked the middle-aged man calmly.
“What should we do?”
“Hah…”
Was he unable to take that final step to shake off his obsession? It was a sigh heavy with torment. He pressed hard on his head with one hand as if it hurt. To ease his pain, I threw out whatever came to mind.
“If this had gone wrong, we would all be dead. The farm would have become known, and hundreds would have come to plunder it. The police or the archery club would have coveted it too. Every resource we’ve stockpiled would have been stripped clean.”
This man wasn’t just a simple lettuce leaker. He was an internal enemy trying to destroy the Villa Street group. A mass murderer willing to kill fellow survivors whose faces he knew. A weed who would kill others to survive alone. If left alone, he would grow like a poisonous mushroom and kill us all.
It was too terrifying. He had to be removed.
When I framed it that way, the rice seller scraped his bat across the ground with a grating sound.
“Isn’t that a bit of an extreme assumption?”
“But it’s entirely possible. And if it actually happens, we won’t be able to stop it.”
The rice seller and I conversed with the middle-aged man standing between us. He listened quietly to our exchange, then suddenly took a step toward me, pulling his steel pipe far back over his shoulder.
“…It’s a simple matter.”
Dark clouds rolled in, covering the moonlight in the sky. Thick darkness hid everyone’s faces. Immediately after, the sound of a blunt weapon slicing harshly through the air followed, then a dull impact.
Crack. The sound of bone breaking. A long, drawn-out scream.
“Aaaagh! My leg!”
Did he hit the leg? Not killing him right away?
The sound of the lettuce leaker rolling across the ground reached us. Then the clouds passed, and moonlight poured down again. A glint of realization shone in the middle-aged man’s eyes. He rested the steel pipe on his shoulder and spoke to the rice seller.
“Lock this guy in an empty house. I have some toilet paper left. I’ll give you that, so let’s put off today’s trade.”
“If you’re giving me toilet paper… Well, still, this is a bit…”
The rice seller looked down blankly at the screaming lettuce leaker. He seemed to think it was excessive punishment. In a world where proper treatment was impossible, the chances of him dying slowly were high.
“There’s an empty unit on the second floor of Peace Villa. You can use that.”
After telling him about the corpse storage house, I recalled the middle-aged man’s highly suspicious nature.
What’s his intention? What is he thinking?
I had guided him, but I couldn’t predict the outcome. Because he was so paranoid, it was hard to trace the flow of his thoughts.
At that moment, the middle-aged man brushed past me and said flatly.
“I’m going to kill the guy who wanted to buy the lettuce. We have to remove any elements threatening the street, right?”
“…Yes.”
I checked the time again, then followed him toward the meeting place.
We walked in silence. Under the moonlight, the road stretched out like ruins. The occasional passing showers had left it even more of a mess. There were many torn garbage bags—probably from dogs or cats—and feces and bloodstains littered the ground.
The middle-aged man, who had been walking silently while staying alert for robbers, muttered as if to himself.
“Maybe my dream was too big. Surviving by cooperating with people whose faces I barely even knew… It’s impossible. It was beyond my abilities.”
“Haven’t you been doing well so far?”
Crunch. Trash was stepped on.
The middle-aged man shook his head faintly.
“No. Everything I’ve done so far is something anyone could have done. In fact, it only became possible because you and Jeon Dohyeong gave me the indoor farm idea.”
Well. Still, I thought he could have organized a small group somehow. But the middle-aged man didn’t seem to think so. He swung his steel pipe through the air and continued.
“From now on, I’ll do things within my capabilities.”
“In what way?”
I asked out of curiosity. How exactly had this man changed? Had he changed in a way that would help me? By killing people on the street in my place?
The middle-aged man stomped hard on some trash scattered on the ground and spoke lightly.
“I learned from dealing with those apartment bastards. I realized I have to be willing to kill. It’s the same with people on the same street. If I kill everyone I suspect, everyone who poses a risk to the group, only those I can trust will remain.”
“Ah.”
Perfect. I looked at the back of the middle-aged man walking ahead and smirked. There was a blade here that would kill the people of Villa Street for me. Suspicion? Danger? I could create those. Once I thought that way, the reason he had only broken the man’s leg instead of killing him came to me naturally.
“Then was the imprisonment also a trap? To find people who would help him or try to free him.”
“That’s right.”
As expected. Not bad. If he had killed him on the spot, only one person would die. But by using him as bait, he could kill even more. I quickly turned the gears in my head. If things went well, I could find excuses to kill a few more.
We walked for a while, each lost in our own thoughts. Eventually, we arrived at the meeting place. A large bus and several delivery vans were scattered haphazardly across the road. It was a place where, even if a fight broke out, we could hide and maneuver to escape. I double-checked my reliable hammer and the pistol with a loaded round, then scanned the surroundings.
“Not here yet? Lettuce!”
“Lettuce? Lettuce!”
A voice came from beyond the distant bus. One person? Multiple? Was there an ambush somewhere else? Maybe they had heard about selling lettuce and decided to capture us instead. The pistol gave me courage. I spoke at an appropriate volume.
“The goods?”
“You have to show yours first. You really have lettuce?”
“Oh, of course.”
I rustled a suitably black plastic bag. There was nothing inside, but I treated it as if it really contained lettuce. In the end, it was all about mindset. If I believed it was lettuce, even an empty plastic bag became lettuce. The other side didn’t seem to notice anything strange in my movements either.
“I can’t see it…”
“Let’s get closer and check each other. We’re trading anyway.”
“…There’s a delivery van on the right, right? Put it on the driver’s seat.”
“What about the cigarettes and booze?”
“In the passenger seat of the car across the left road.”
They wanted to do it this way without checking directly? If the goods were fake… Ah. There might be someone hiding near the car where the goods were placed.
I inflated the bag and placed it on the driver’s seat of the delivery van, then whispered to the middle-aged man.
“Let’s grab it and run right away.”
“Got it.”
There was no need to kill them. It would be enough if the lettuce trade was simply seen as a scam. While we headed toward the car that supposedly held the cigarettes and booze, a person darted out from their side and crept stealthily toward the delivery van.
I hurried my steps and checked the goods first. A heavy paper bag. Inside were bricks. They were scamming us too.
“There’s nothing. Let’s run.”
Around that time, they must have seen our plastic bag. A shout erupted.
“It’s empty! Damn it, I thought you were rich since you were selling lettuce. So you were a scammer too?”
“Same here. I thought you were well-off since you were buying lettuce.”
We faced each other across the road for a moment. Tension flickered briefly, then the other side waved their hands first.
“Fellow scammers shouldn’t fight. Let’s just go our separate ways.”
“Getting hurt would be a loss.”
There was nothing to gain, and fighting would only get us killed. We carefully backed away, and people suddenly popped out from various places. They were the scammer gang who had been hiding behind cars and inside buildings. There seemed to be more than five of them. They were somewhat organized looters. They lured people who looked well-off, captured them, and raided their bases. They watched us and slowly retreated as well.
The middle-aged man and I returned the way we came without saying a word. I walked ahead and sighed.
“It seems like we’ve cleaned things up for now… The problem is what comes next. What will happen when our stockpiles run out and the rainy season arrives?”
“The future is the problem. People are the problem. Kwon Dain.”
My steps halted at the short name called from behind. Kwon Dain was the name I had used at the church. It wasn’t the Kim Dain I had told this middle-aged man.
When I slowly turned around, I saw the middle-aged man gripping his steel pipe as if ready to swing it at any moment. Strong suspicion filled the eyes glinting with faint moonlight. A madman who had fallen below some psychological line smiled at me.
“Anyone suspicious has to die. And you’re the most suspicious of all.”
Only then did the joy I had felt turn ice-cold as I grasped the reality. An executioner who killed people based on suspicion alone, and intended to keep killing. That blade of suspicion could not spare even me. It was incredibly unfair, but there were certainly reasons for me to look suspicious.