The Play "Mirror" (2)
"You're the sailor I met on the deck yesterday at sunset. Your name?"
When Yeon-woo asked, Kim Se-yeong, who had been fidgeting nervously at the entrance of the room, answered.
"Ah, I'm Kim Se-yeong."
"And the man who came to fetch me?"
"Yes! Kim Jun-su!"
Yeon-woo looked each of them over once before speaking again.
"I'm Detective Ryu Yeon-woo of the Violent Crimes Unit 1 at Seoul Gangdong Police Station. Kim Se-yeong, you were the first to discover the body, correct?"
"Y-yes! But I swear I didn't do anything! I saw the floor soaked in blood and didn't even set foot inside!"
Yeon-woo gave Kim Se-yeong a reassuring pat on the shoulder.
"I'm only asking to confirm. Then, Kim Jun-su, where were you and what were you doing?"
"I was cleaning the passenger corridor!"
Yeon-woo shook his head.
"I left out the time. What were you doing around six this morning?"
"Six o'clock? I was sleeping."
"Judging by the rigor mortis already setting into the upper joints—the jaw and the nape of the neck—the victim has been dead for well over three hours. It's nine in the morning now, so the murder appears to have taken place at dawn. And who is this man?"
Yeon-woo pointed at the corpse, and Kim Se-yeong answered.
"…It's the captain."
"Hmm."
Swallowing a low hum, Yeon-woo began examining the body more carefully.
"Fortunately, there are a few distinctive points that should help us narrow down the culprit. First, Kim Jun-su, please use the PA system to gather every passenger in the lobby."
"Yes, sir. Understood!"
Yeon-woo turned to Kim Se-yeong.
"And Kim Se-yeong, contact the Coast Guard and inform them of the current situation. Here's my card. Give them the title written on it, tell them I'm already in control of the scene, and if headquarters issues any instructions, write them down and report back to me."
"Yes!"
She took the card and hurried offstage.
Yeon-woo closed the door of the room where Woo Seong-sik's "corpse" lay and walked toward the lobby—the center of the stage.
Click—.
Meanwhile, the moment the door shut, Woo Seong-sik—who had been lying still—swiftly stripped off the clothes stained with red ink and changed into a tight, flamboyantly patterned Hawaiian shirt. When he wasn't playing the captain, he had to appear as a passenger. He quickly wet his hair with water prepared backstage, slicked it back, and slipped into Room 6, ready for his re-entrance.
— All passengers and crew, please come to the lobby immediately.
At the announcement, Woo Seong-sik opened the door of Room 6 and stepped forward. The first thing that met him was the fierce stage lighting pouring from the ceiling; beyond it, the audience in the red-backed seats watched with glittering eyes, their gazes so intense they seemed to scorch his skin.
Whoa. Everyone in the house is staring right at me. My heart's about to explode.
He was trembling, yet at the same time an unnameable exhilaration began to rise inside him.
Whoa, so this is what it feels like to act on stage.
Watching Woo Seong-sik walk out, Yeon-woo smiled faintly—careful that the audience couldn't see it.
I can pretty much guess what Seong-sik is thinking right now.
Something about being a king of Joseon, or his handle being "Gwanjong," no doubt… In a way, the person temperamentally best suited to be an entertainer might actually be Woo Seong-sik.
One by one the cabin doors opened and the cast appeared.
"Hey, if we're gonna night-fish once we get there I need to sleep now—why the hell are you calling us first thing in the morning?"
"What's this about? We're already stuck here, can't even get into Chudo, and now this?"
Kim Ju-hyeong, dressed as a fisherman, and Woo Seong-sik—already fully changed into his gangster-passenger role—walked out. From the far right, Ha Jae-hun came running and spoke to Kim Jun-su.
"What the hell? Why the sudden announcement? Did you do that, Jun-su?"
"Hyung Jae-hun. We've got a huge problem right now."
"Why? What is it?"
That was when Yeon-woo appeared.
"Is everyone here? I'm Detective Ryu Yeon-woo of the Violent Crimes Unit."
He held out his police badge, and every gaze on stage locked onto him.
"A detective?"
"Yes. I'll be direct. A murder has occurred aboard this vessel."
"A-a murder?"
Yeon-woo swept his eyes across the actors on stage, then slowly turned his back to them. He looked out at the audience seated in the house, one by one. The presence he had been carefully restraining for the other roles now poured out in full force; he met every pair of eyes, sweeping the entire small theater.
In drama and film it is taboo for a performer to look straight into the camera. Unless the scene has a clear reason, the moment an actor stares into the lens the viewer shifts from observer to participant and feels a psychological discomfort. Even in theater and musicals, locking eyes with the audience is uncommon.
But right now I have to seize the audience and make them parties to this space.
Exactly as Yeon-woo intended, the moment their eyes met his, the spectators tensed. Im Yu-jin, watching from the house, felt it too.
Ugh… Looking him in the eye makes me feel like I'm the killer.
Until now the audience had been observers watching a stage dressed as a ship where a murder had taken place. In this instant they felt as if they themselves were aboard that ship.
Receiving every one of those gazes, Yeon-woo turned back to the actors.
"Which means every person here is a suspect. Kim Jun-su, was it? Are you certain every passenger is present?"
"Uh, one, two, three… Yes. Looks right."
Kim Jun-su nodded. Ha Jae-hun fretted with the cash in his back pocket, eyes darting anxiously somewhere. The audience looked the same way.
Right. Jin Yu-han still hasn't come out!
As if reading their minds, a hard spotlight dropped onto Jin Yu-han's door. He stood with one hand on the knob, ear pressed to the door as though eavesdropping on the conversation outside. After a moment of hesitation, Ha Jae-hun spoke.
"Ah, well, the thing is…"
"What is it?"
"…There's one more guest in Room 5."
Kim Jun-su tilted his head at Ha Jae-hun's words.
"Hyung. The passenger count for today is already complete."
"He begged us right before departure to take him no matter what…"
"Hyung! That's illegal!"
Ha Jae-hun glared and stepped close, lowering his voice.
"I know that, you idiot! Keep it down."
Ignoring the two of them, Yeon-woo walked to Jin Yu-han's door and stopped.
Bang bang bang—.
Matching the sound effect cued by Lighting Director Im Seong-su from the control room, Yeon-woo mimed knocking on empty air.
"Whoever's inside, come out."
Jin Yu-han, who had been pressed against the door listening, stepped out as if he had just woken up.
"Yaaawn. What's going on this early?"
"Detective Ryu Yeon-woo. Come this way for now."
Jin Yu-han walked out obediently and took his place among the others. At last, for the first time since the play began, Ryu Yeon-woo and Jin Yu-han stood face to face. Seeing the two-shot in the flesh, the audience registered the situation all over again.
This is insane. I walked into some tiny alley theater and Ryu Yeon-woo and Jin Yu-han are both here…?
Why did I suddenly decide to see this play like I was under a spell? Ahh, maybe Ryu Yeon-woo and I really are fated to meet.
This is the scoop of all scoops…
While the audience each thought their own thoughts, Yeon-woo spoke again.
"First, who is staying in Room 2?"
The captain's cabin where the murdered captain had slept was Room 1. At Yeon-woo's question, Kim Jun-su raised his hand.
"Yes. Me, sir!"
"Kim Jun-su? Did you notice anything unusual from the captain's cabin at dawn—any disturbance?"
"Hmm, I don't think so…"
Yeon-woo nodded and was about to look at someone else when Kim Jun-su raised his hand again.
"Ah! The weather outside was so awful I figured it was just the waves slamming the hull, but thinking about it now, it might've been a fight next door. Especially a lot of sounds like someone kicking the wall."
Yeon-woo looked at Ha Jae-hun's shoes.
"You there, the sailor in sneakers—stamp your foot on the floor for me."
"Huh? Like this?"
Thud thud—.
The audience immediately began focusing on what kind of footwear each actor on stage was wearing. Sailors Ha Jae-hun and Kim Jun-su wore sneakers; fisherman Kim Ju-hyeong wore fishing boots; everyone else wore dress shoes.
Yeon-woo stepped close to Kim Jun-su, turned his body toward the house, and spoke. With his back to the other actors, the simple physical choice made the audience intuitively understand that a private conversation only the two of them could hear was taking place.
"Was it a sound like that?"
"Uh… I'm not sure. Doesn't seem quite right."
Yeon-woo then stamped hard himself.
Bang bang—.
"Then was it this sound?"
"Huh…? Yes! That was exactly it."
Nodding, Yeon-woo took two steps toward the audience. The other actors froze in place as if time had stopped. The main lights dimmed, and individual spots fell on each passenger's head. After sweeping that tableau once, Yeon-woo monologued toward the house.
"There were quite a few black scuff marks on the walls of the captain's cabin that looked like they came from shoe soles. The dead captain was wearing slippers, so they must belong to the killer. Meaning there was a fairly serious struggle during the murder."
He looked at the frozen Kim Jun-su and continued.
"He volunteered information he didn't have to give, so 'Sailor Kim Jun-su' is unlikely to be the culprit. And he's wearing white sneakers, too."
The moment Yeon-woo finished, the light on Kim Jun-su snapped off.
"By the same logic of footwear, Ha Jae-hun, who's also in sneakers, is probably not it either."
Ha Jae-hun's light didn't go completely dark, but it gradually dimmed.
"The stab wound in the captain's chest looks like it was made by a knife—about the thickness of a kitchen knife, driven from above downward. Kim Se-yeong, who's shorter than the captain, is also low probability. And her build is far too slight to have put up a real fight."
Kim Se-yeong's light went out.
The audience easily grasped that the brightness of the lights on the actors now equaled the degree of suspicion Detective Ryu Yeon-woo held. The ones still brightly lit—aside from Yeon-woo himself—were the thuggish-looking passenger Woo Seong-sik, the fisherman Kim Ju-hyeong, and Jin Yu-han.
When Yeon-woo turned back, the frozen actors began moving again and all started talking at once. The gangster-like Woo Seong-sik spoke first.
"Hey, old man Kim! Every time you drink with the captain you start brawling down at the pier and raising hell! Always going on about fishing rods and whatnot!"
"What? You're the one who got an earful from the captain about playing gangster on land and making your mother cry at home, and then you glared at him like you wanted to kill him! You go around beating people up, you organized-crime punk."
"What did you just say?!"
As the argument threatened to explode, Yeon-woo stepped in.
"Enough! Both of you, stop. Then does this guest in Room 5 have no connection to Chudo at all?"
Crew and passengers alike shook their heads as if seeing him for the first time. Yeon-woo turned to Jin Yu-han.
"For what purpose did you board this ship?"
Jin Yu-han's behavior so far had been suspicious enough that every spectator already had him under doubt. And then Ryu Yeon-woo's gaze collided with Jin Yu-han's.