The Orphanage Called Hell - 4
Silence swallowed the room.
The elementary school kids who understood that what I'd just spat out was a curse went wide-eyed, and even the ones who didn't know it was a swear word trembled in shock.
In the little kingdom the director and his wife had built, open defiance was something that had never happened before.
"W-what did you just say…?"
"I said me, you fucking bastard. You piece-of-shit bitch."
"Ha… haha… hahahahahaha~"
Sometimes a person laughs when something is simply too absurd to process.
I'd laughed like that myself once, sitting alone at home after hearing that my girlfriend was pregnant with another man's child.
But the moment you realize the absurdity is real, everything changes.
"Has this bitch lost her mind? Why the hell are you laughing?"
"……"
The smile vanished from the deputy director's face. Her cheeks flushed a deep, furious red.
Pure rage.
I knew it, and I poked her again anyway.
"What? Thinking about sucking money out of good people got your nostrils flaring?"
"You little—!!!"
By any normal standard, those weren't words a seven-year-old should be saying.
But right now, standards meant nothing to the deputy director.
The insult she'd just taken mattered far more.
SMACK!!!!
Ow—that hurt…!
Maybe I should've dialed it back a little…?
No. If I was going to do this, I had to do it properly.
"Getting old, huh? No strength left. That all you got?"
"Cha Sunwoo!!!"
SMACK!! SMACK!! SMACK-SMACK!! SMAAACK!!!!
Palms and the backs of her hands whipped left and right, slamming into my cheeks without mercy.
It hurt so much I wanted to beg her to stop.
But I had to take more.
All of this was being filmed.
"W-wait!!"
"Ha! Too late to beg for forgiveness now!!"
That wasn't it—I'd slipped out of the camera angle!
Blood drooled from my mouth as I crawled across the floor.
Once I was back inside the frame of the hidden camcorder, I lifted my head and twisted a bloody smile onto my face.
"Ugly old hag."
"YAAAAAA!!!!!!!"
"Guh—!!!"
Now she was stomping on my back with everything she had.
How much longer until they get here…!
At this rate I'm going to die!!
"D-dear, what are you doing?!!"
"Let go of me! Don't you dare stop me!! Today I'm killing this little shit and collecting the insurance!!"
"Has my wife gone insane…! Stop it!! I just got word—they're almost here!!"
"Tch…!!!"
The deputy director's kicks finally stopped.
But it was too soon.
If this ended this quickly, I might still end up locked in the Room of Atonement.
I had to avoid that at all costs.
With a padlock on the door handle, once you were sealed inside that place, you didn't come out until someone opened it from the outside.
"Hey, old man… help me up…!"
"What…?"
"Ears clogged? I said help me up, you old fart!!"
"This little bastard's lost his mind…!"
"Guh!! Gah—!!!"
This time it was the director's kicks that followed.
I endured them in silence.
And at last, my savior arrived.
"H-honey! They're here!"
"Shit…! You—get inside and don't make a sound! You wipe up the blood on the floor!!"
"Yes! What are you standing around for?! Give me that rag!!"
Dragging me all the way to the storage shed in the back courtyard wasn't realistic with the time they had left.
Locking me in the Room of Atonement out there wasn't realistic either.
In the end, the director shoved me into a bathroom and locked the door from the outside.
"Ah… I really almost died…"
I'd been stomped harder than expected. My body felt like it was coming apart.
If only they'd gotten here a little sooner…
"Is everything ready?"
"Of course~ But you even chartered a bus for us—I don't know how to thank you enough."
"Oh, it's nothing~ My parents and their friends were so happy to help, they jumped right in. But where's the director?"
"There he is now."
"Aigoo~ Miss Suyeon, you're here! You could've just invited the kids, but to bring all of us along as well—we're truly grateful, hahaha~"
"Huh…?"
"Is something wrong?"
"Deputy Director, that on your hand… isn't that blood?"
"Th-that… ah! Must be from prepping the meat for tomorrow, hohoho~"
From outside the door, Jeong Suyeon's voice mixed with the director couple's strained, desperate performance.
I listened to that unfunny little play for a long while. Excited children's voices and laughter drifted past for a moment, then everything went quiet.
A grin spread across my face.
The hollow, exhausted eyes that had been staring at nothing all morning lit up, bright and sharp.
The corners of my mouth, which had been hanging low, climbed without limit.
"Hehehe…! Shall we get started, then?"
The bathroom door was locked, so I didn't bother with it.
I stacked the cleaning-supply bucket and the mop bucket carefully, then climbed out through the window.
"Ugh…!!"
Something in me was broken. Just dropping down from the windowsill sent a wave of searing pain through my body.
Even so, a smile found its way back onto my lips.
Tap-tap-tap—
Just like a few days ago, I stacked milk crates into a makeshift staircase, climbed in through the kitchen window, and headed straight for the director's office.
"Aigoo, my baby. Have you been well while I was gone?"
I greeted the silent safe, sat down in front of it, and punched in the combination I'd already memorized.
Beep-beep-beep-beep—
Click—
Ahh, that rush!
The password was still the same. And inside the safe that opened under my hands…
"No matter how many times I look at it, it still doesn't feel real…"
I'd seen it before, but the sight still defied belief.
A landscape so sweet it was intoxicating, so beautiful it could make you forget every pain in the world, was spread out inside that safe.
Fifty-thousand-won notes hadn't been issued yet, so the safe was packed with those blue-green cabbage leaves of cash.
But it wasn't the stacks of bills that stole my eyes.
Lined up in neat rows of five, stacked high—the gold bars.
Those were what seized every scrap of my attention.
"Whoa…"
Heavy. Heavy enough that my child-sized hands needed both arms to lift one.
Or was it heavier because I knew exactly what they were worth?
Gleaming gold bars.
One-kilogram bars of 99.99% pure gold.
And there were ten of them.
"How much is all this…?"
Ten kilograms of pure gold, plus a mountain of cash.
No wonder the director couple had gone money-mad.
Well—thanks to them, I'd hit the jackpot.
"I'll put these to good use somewhere nice, then~"
I found a decent bag in the director's office and packed the cash and gold bars into it.
Only as much as I could carry in one trip, of course.
Then I climbed the wooded hill behind the orphanage.
"Whew… all that digging was worth it."
In the freezing cold, night after night, I'd sweated through the rock-hard frozen ground, digging a little at a time.
I didn't need to bury it deep, so I'd managed it alone.
Thud-thud-thud—
Bundles of cash poured into the hole.
I'd lined it with plastic so nothing would get dirty—cleanliness preserved.
How many round trips did I make?
By the time my body was soaked in sweat despite the cold, the work was done.
"Haha… haha~ HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!"
I laughed like a maniac.
Was it the joy of a seven-year-old suddenly owning ten kilos of gold and a fortune in cash?
No.
I was laughing because I could already picture the director couple's faces when they opened that empty safe.
I could roughly guess, but I was dying to see the actual expressions.
"Better go check, then."
I returned to the orphanage and thoroughly washed the dirt from my hands, clothes, and shoes.
Just in case anyone might connect me to the hidden gold and cash.
Then I sat down in the desk chair the director occupied every single day and picked up the receiver.
"Yes, is this the police station?"
While waiting for the police to arrive, I laid everything out across the floor—the camcorder tapes packed with footage I'd been collecting as evidence, the audio recordings, the insurance policies listing the director couple as beneficiaries, and the fake disability diagnoses from their partner hospital.
Aside from the tapes and the recorder, the director was such a meticulous organizer that all I had to do was pull the rest out.
"Is the tipster…"
"Yes. That's me."
"Are you all right, kid…?"
"Rookie! Call an ambulance!! Now!!"
The officers who arrived at the orphanage took one look at the state of me and immediately called for an ambulance.
But I had no intention of climbing into that ambulance just yet.
First I stripped so the police could photograph every bruise, every mark of assault and abuse covering my body. Then I borrowed a phone and called Jeong Suyeon.
"Sunwoo, are you okay?? That blood earlier… that was yours, wasn't it…?"
She was still with the director couple, whispering into the phone. I gave her a rough rundown of the situation, then handed the phone to the police.
About thirty minutes later, the director couple were marched back into the orphanage with silver bracelets on their wrists.
Just as I'd expected, Jeong Suyeon and her father were with them.
"Sunwoo!! Are you okay?? Oh no… look at your face…"
"I'm fine."
Jeong Suyeon crouched in front of me, checking me over from every angle. Behind her, our eyes met.
Jeong Seokmun—not a police officer, yet freely examining the evidence one piece at a time and walking the secured crime scene as if he owned it.
"You're Cha Sunwoo?"
"Yes."
"You gathered all this evidence yourself?"
"Just the tapes and the recorder. The rest I only pulled out and laid down."
"How old are you this year?"
"Seven."
"Haha~ Well now… looks like both you lot and I need to work a little harder."
"Tell me about it, sir. This is almost embarrassing."
Sir.
Slang for a prosecutor.
Chief Prosecutor Jeong Seokmun—the heavyweight who would one day become Prosecutor General of the Republic of Korea.
That heavyweight was Jeong Suyeon's father, and that was exactly why I had singled her out for help.
"You made the report…?"
The director, being hauled toward his office, stopped and stared at me.
"Yes. I reported you."
"After everything I—after everything I did to raise you!!!!!"
"You little shit!!!! You dare report your own parents to the police?!! We took in a parentless orphan brat and raised you all this time, and this is how you repay us—you ungrateful little—!!!"
Still holding it together, huh.
Figured they still had a way out?
"Neither of them shows a scrap of remorse or reflection. No wonder they did things like this."
"And who the hell are you?!"
"Me? The prosecutor who's taking this case."
"Prosecutor…"
"P-Prosecutor, sir! This is all a setup! That kid staged the whole thing!!"
"Excuses, alibis, lies. Keep them coming. I'll dig up every single thing you did and make sure you rot in prison for the rest of your lives."
"…Lawyer… c-call a lawyer!!!"
"Y-yes! Call our lawyer! Get the most expensive ones!!! We'll pay whatever it takes!!!!"
The director couple, desperately screaming for lawyers and swearing they'd pay any amount, collapsed in front of the safe.
Their faces looked more hollow now than when they'd been arrested—more hollow even than when they'd heard the prosecutor's chilling warning.
Yes. That was the expression I'd wanted to see.
The face of people who had lost everything in the world.
"Why… why… why…."
"H-honey… what is this…? Where did the money and the gold bars go…?"
"……"
"Where did they go!!!!"
"How the hell should I know, woman!!!"
"Don't tell me… you snuck them out behind my back?! Is that it?! Give me my money!! Give me my gold bars! You son of a bitch!!!!"
"Has this woman completely lost her mind!!"
What a spectacle.
Even better than looking into a safe stuffed with cash and gold bars—this magnificent scene.
"Kh… khkh…"
I tried to hold it in, but the laughter leaked out.
And once everything was over, all the pain I'd been suppressing came flooding in at once.
"Aaaah…!!"
"Sunwoo, are you okay??"
"H-hospital… hospital…!!"
"Sunwoo!!!!"
I collapsed without warning. Two ribs on the left side broken, three on the right cracked—I was carried off to the hospital.
Even now, the whole country was still buzzing over the director couple's story.
That famous Korean flash-in-the-pan temperament—hot one second, cold the next—was lasting unusually long with this case.
"Damn them! Those hell-bound bastards!!"
"And those things call themselves human…!"
"Prison food's too good for trash like that, you know?! They should just get the death penalty! The death penalty!!"
"Don't they have kids of their own?!"
"People like that should have their faces plastered everywhere so they can't even lift their heads in public! Ugh… what kind of law only protects the scum, huh… tsk tsk…"
Which is why I already took care of it.
It wasn't yet the era of active netizen investigation squads, so I used a hospital computer to post the director couple's personal information in thorough, meticulous detail.
So that even after they got out, they wouldn't be able to live a normal life.
"Hehehe… now that's justice served. All right—time to go dig up my money."