Thirty-Three Years
But the private investigator still hadn't shown him everything. He had been holding the last photographs back, certain the shock would only deepen with time. Now he slid them forward and opened his mouth once more.
"Sir... I'm afraid that's not the end of it. Please... take a look at these as well..."
Ma Kyeong-il stared at the photograph the investigator produced—a completely different setting this time—and his face went ashen all over again. This time, the man was different. It was not his old friend, his pharmacy-school classmate Ko Ki-yoon. It was another man entirely, locked in a passionate embrace with Ma's wife, Yang Mi-sook, in the throes of sex.
And once again there were photographs of her with some unknown man's cock in her mouth, sucking at it greedily—shot so explicitly, so vividly, that the investigators' skill behind the camera only made the blow land harder.
Then he flipped to the next picture. Beneath the bed where Yang Mi-sook was having sex with yet another unidentified man, a figure crouched with a phone in his hand, filming everything happening above. That man was his friend—the pharmacist, Ko Ki-yoon.
"Wh-what is this?"
Ma Kyeong-il asked the investigator, his voice trembling.
"Your friend Mr. Ko Ki-yoon has been posing as your wife's husband and calling in guest males. You know what a guest male is, I assume?"
The investigator explained, watching Ma's face. The truth was, Ma Kyeong-il knew the concept all too well. The man who had explained it to him in the first place had been his friend Ko Ki-yoon. While Ma had been drowning in the body of Ji Hye-in—another man's wife, the cafe's public sub—his friend Ko had been passing Ma's own wife, Yang Mi-sook, around to other men.
"Hey... something wrong? What brings you all the way out here this early in the morning?"
Ko Ki-yoon had come in early to the large pharmacy he ran and was getting ready for the day's work when his friend Ma Kyeong-il appeared without warning. He looked mildly startled.
"Uh... n-no... are you free this morning? I was hoping you'd come somewhere with me..."
"Where? I've... I've got something urgent this morning..."
Ko glanced at his watch as he answered.
Several days had passed. Several days since the private investigator had told Ma everything, since the shock had first landed. For those days Ma had paid no attention whatsoever to the pharmacy, lost in thought, until at last he had come to a decision. He had prepared something in a hurry. And now, at last, it was D-Day.
And so Ma Kyeong-il had come looking for his friend. He already knew that Ko Ki-yoon and his wife Yang Mi-sook had an appointment this morning. Through the detective agency he had obtained a cloned phone linked to Yang Mi-sook's, and he had been reading every text and chat message the two of them exchanged.
He answered Ko's question in the calmest voice he could manage.
"No... it's something important. I think I need to close one of the pharmacies. I wanted to talk it over with you..."
"All of a sudden? But Kyeong-il... couldn't I make time this afternoon instead? This morning really is... something I can't put off..."
"Is that so? Then call me this afternoon. I'll be waiting."
Ma got back in his car and drove away. Ko watched him disappear, then checked his watch and began preparing to leave.
About an hour later, Ko pulled into the parking lot of a self-check-in motel in the entertainment district and killed the engine. Not long after he parked, a sleek foreign car rolled into the lot. Yang Mi-sook was behind the wheel.
The two of them stepped out of their cars, smiling brightly, and waved to each other.
That was when another car came tearing into the motel parking lot and slammed to a halt. And there, standing in front of them, was Ma Kyeong-il.
The color drained from Ko Ki-yoon's and Yang Mi-sook's faces. The three of them stood facing one another in a tableau of unbearable awkwardness.
Ma stared at his wife—her lips painted a vivid scarlet, a short skirt clinging to her hips, a woman so unfamiliar he could scarcely believe she was his—and the look on his face said he could not accept what he was seeing. He spoke first, his eyes on his friend.
Ko's face had gone white. He tried to answer.
"K-Kyeong-il... l-let me explain how this happened... this is all... related to that inclination of ours..."
He was grasping for any excuse he could find, but the words would not come out right.
"Is this why you dragged me into that cafe? So you could pull me down into the gutter with you?"
Ma's voice was close to a scream.
"D-darling... i-it's a misunderstanding..."
Yang Mi-sook's face was ashen as she spoke to her husband.
"Have you no shame in front of the children? Guest males? Have you lost your mind? I gave you a life of ease, where you never had to lift a finger—and you sleep with my best friend? Are you even human?"
Ma was shouting at his wife now. Then he reached into the driver's seat and pulled something out in a rush.
An illegal homemade shotgun.
He had originally meant only to frighten them. But Ma Kyeong-il was in a state of extreme agitation.
The back-alley craftsman who had sold him the unlicensed firearm had been very clear: if you ever had to use this on a person, never aim at the upper body. It was a shotgun—the pellets scattered in every direction. Aim low, at the legs, and they might survive. Aim at the torso and pull the trigger, and the spread would be so wide that death was a certainty. The man had even frightened him with that warning when he sold the gun. Aim at the chest, he'd said, and honestly you couldn't predict where the pellets would lodge. He'd been insistent about it.
But the craftsman who sold illegal guns had not, in truth, particularly cared whether his customer went on to commit murder. As long as the weapon could not be traced back to him. The two men had conducted the entire transaction in cash, in person rather than online, precisely so the gun deal could never be tracked later.
Ma Kyeong-il wanted nothing more than to end this world. He had studied hard, gotten into pharmacy school, lived a prosperous life without a single money worry. Tears streamed from both of his eyes. It had all been a mirage.
And then, unbidden, the face of Ji Hye-in—the cafe's public sub—floated before him. He did not know why, but in that instant he saw her: that demure, almost chaste face, swallowing the semen of one man after another.
For a moment, Ma forgot what he was doing.
Without realizing it, he pulled the trigger.
The blast was deafening.
He kept squeezing the trigger of the six-shot homemade shotgun, firing again and again at Ko Ki-yoon and Yang Mi-sook standing together across from him. Blood sprayed from their bodies. Both of them crumpled to the pavement.
When every round in the six-shot homemade shotgun had been spent, pulling the trigger produced no more explosions. Only the dry, mechanical click of an empty chamber.
Ma sank to the ground where he stood. Then he simply lay down on the parking lot asphalt and closed his eyes. The tears came without end.
An emergency meeting of the cafe's operators was convened.
"You've seen the news, I assume? It's absolutely staggering. Two of our members—Ko Ki-yoon and Ma Kyeong-il. How could something like this happen... I'm worried the fallout might reach our cafe."
"We've already processed both of them as withdrawn from membership, and we've deleted every post and comment they ever wrote. We've done everything we can with administrator privileges. All that's left is to be careful the police investigation doesn't swing in this direction."
Several lawyer members—including one who had come out of the prosecutor's office—were sharing their views at the strategy meeting. Three of the members present were attorneys.
"I don't think it will affect our cafe. I made some discreet inquiries with the police... it's a crime of passion between the two of them."