The True Price of Sin
Bone-Dislocating Muscle-Tearing Technique.
Just as the name implied, it was a method that threw the body’s structure into chaos, upset the flow of the tendons and meridians, and made the flesh collapse under its own ruin.
By description alone, it sounded like an unspeakably vile technique. And yet, for a torturer, its value was surprisingly low.
The reason was simple. First, the pain was more monotonous than one would expect.
There were no variations in it—no swelling fear, no shift in sensation—so some people could simply endure it by brute force.
Second, it was vulnerable to outside interference.
No matter how intricate the principle, at its core it merely disrupted the flow of qi and blood.
If you straightened the meridians, the hugi dissipated at once, and the victim could be freed from the pain.
Lastly, its aftereffects were weaker than expected.
Surprisingly, treatment could be carried out quickly, and in many cases the body recovered completely.
For those reasons, even among interrogators, people who used Bone-Dislocating Muscle-Tearing Technique were rarer than one might think.
But the Blood Questioner, who had once been called the worst torturer alive, introduced to the world an improved version of it: the Nirvana Bone-Dislocating Muscle-Tearing Technique.
The true horror of the Nirvana Bone-Dislocating Muscle-Tearing Technique was that the hugi did not disperse. Instead, it fed on the meridian flow and multiplied.
At first, the victim felt the sensation of a joint dislocating. Then came the unmistakable feeling of tendons peeling away from the bones. In the end, it deepened into the agony of bones grinding to powder and nerves being torn to shreds.
And yet no change occurred in the flesh.
In other words, even breathing was pain, and being alive itself became a punishment.
Worse still, release of the acupoints was almost impossible.
It was no longer merely a matter of qi flow; the very grain of the meridians had been altered. If internal energy was forced in from outside, the meridians would reverse and the pain only doubled.
No wonder the jianghu had a saying that if Blood Questioner laid Bone-Dislocating Muscle-Tearing Technique on you, it would be better to bite through your tongue and die on the spot.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
The interrogation room was horribly still.
Only the faint mechanical hum of the recorder moved softly through the air.
Song Tan opened his mouth in a level voice.
“From this point forward, I will restart the suspect interrogation regarding violation of the Act on the Protection of Children and Juveniles from Sexual Abuse, beginning from the very start and proceeding step by step.”
Turning a page in the file, Song Tan went on.
“Did you deliberately approach the child victim, put them in your car, and lure them to the abandoned shopping building in Wonyang-dong?”
Silence.
“I’ll record that as a refusal to testify.”
He picked up his pen and made a note.
“Then how about this?”
Song Tan showed him the scene CCTV footage on his laptop.
“Today, at 3:58 p.m. The person who spoke to the child victim inside the stationery store. That was you, correct?”
“...............”
“Hmm. Refusing to testify again, I see.”
Without a care, Song Tan lifted his pen again.
“According to the child victim, Choi Doo-gil said he knew the director of an orphanage called Raphael’s House. Is that true? The director over there says she doesn’t know you at all.”
“................”
The silence went on, as stubborn as ever.
The senior detectives watching from outside shook their heads.
“That bastard Choi Doo-gil. He’s made up his mind.”
“Yeah. Doesn’t look like he has any intention of opening his mouth.”
“He’s been in and out of prison like it was his own house since he was a kid. He knows he’ll only hurt himself if he talks.”
“Think the rookie’ll be all right? If you go through the hell of watching criminals keep their mouths shut and make a fool of the police, you get so pissed you can’t sleep for days.”
The detectives’ eyes turned to Lee Joo-seok, who was leading the interrogation.
Lee Joo-seok narrowed his eyes and watched Song Tan and Choi Doo-gil closely.
“Shouldn’t you go back in there now?”
At the senior detective’s words, Lee Joo-seok shook his head.
“No. He’ll be fine.”
“That punk Choi hurt someone the rookie knows, didn’t he? You think that kid’s got his head on straight right now?”
“He’s probably lost his damn mind.”
“I’m just worried he’s going to do something stupid.”
“Let’s trust him and wait for now.”
He wanted nothing more than to storm in there, throw Choi Doo-gil to the floor, and smash his jaw to pieces, but he held himself back.
It was the first time he’d ever seen it.
The always-bored eyes of his junior partner flashing with such ferocity.
Even he, proud of his own nerve, had flinched for a moment.
He still didn’t know everything about Song Tan, but one thing was clear.
His junior would never move without thinking.
This meaningless dead-end routine must have its own reason.
As the senior and partner, all he had to do was trust him and wait.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
Choi Doo-gil was, quite simply, losing his mind.
Why is my voice like this?!
His tongue was clearly still in his mouth, and yet it felt alien, as if it no longer belonged to him.
Whenever he tried to move, it felt like his breath was being stopped at the throat.
“Still, I’d like to believe that Mr. Choi Doo-gil is sincerely remorseful.”
The rookie detective in front of him kept spouting bullshit and lightly tapping his arm.
Then, all at once, he heard the sound of his own heartbeat clearly ringing in his ears.
With that pulse, both shoulders suddenly gave way.
No—he only felt as if they had.
As though both arms were hanging from empty air, useless and dangling.
At that blunt, naked pain, Choi Doo-gil inhaled without thinking.
In the same instant, his ribs seemed to cave in and crush his lungs.
His eyelids trembled from the feeling that he could no longer breathe.
But in reality, he was breathing just fine.
That contradiction created a terror beyond reason.
Scritch—scritch—
Then, out of nowhere, he heard the sound of grinding sand inside his ears.
The pain was like tens of thousands of heated needles digging deep into the marrow, slowly and exquisitely sanding down each and every joint in his body. For a moment, his mind went dark.
Every time the bone dust scraped along his nerves, Choi Doo-gil felt as if he were being taken apart alive and poured into an hourglass.
Then it spread from the spine to the neck vertebrae.
One joint after another seemed to snap in sequence.
It felt as though an invisible hand had seized his backbone and twisted it like a wrung-out cloth.
“Mr. Choi Doo-gil, you weren’t subjected to chemical castration, were you? Because the crime was committed before the law was enacted, so retroactive application isn’t possible.”
Song Tan muttered as though to himself.
“I hear the medication stops working if the injections are discontinued... You’re awfully lucky and terribly unlucky at the same time, Mr. Choi Doo-gil.”
After uttering those incomprehensible words, Song Tan stood and walked over to him.
“I’m just going to check your handcuffs for a second. They seem to be in poor condition.”
Pretending to inspect the cuffs, Song Tan’s fingertips brushed against Choi Doo-gil’s lower abdomen and spine.
“Nothing wrong with them.”
Sitting back down, Song Tan studied Choi Doo-gil’s condition.
Point-striking Martial Scripture had a technique called Jellyangsoemaek, or Absolute Yang Meridian Lock.
In the male lower body, there were yang meridians that circulated vital essence, and Absolute Yang Meridian Lock applied the principle of forcibly reversing those meridians.
Gwanwon acupoint, Gwigol acupoint, Myeongmun acupoint.
When those three points were sealed in sequence, the yang energy gathered in the lower body could not escape and burned itself out from within.
At first, it felt like the genitals were being seared with hot coals, a blazing heat that erupted and spread beneath the abdomen.
Before long, the blood vessels hardened, and eventually all sensation was lost, leaving behind the grotesque, unbearable feeling of dragging around a stone.
A little later, even the act of carrying it became agony, and most people chose to cut it off themselves.
But Choi Doo-gil had no time to notice what was happening below.
More horrendous pain was already raging through him like a typhoon.
Crack—
The muscles lost their place, twisting together like snakes and beginning to crush one another.
The pain felt like flesh being pinned down with hooks and violently dragged out in the opposite direction.
At the unfamiliar sensation of every individual muscle fiber being forcibly knotted, his mind died and was reborn tens of thousands of times over.
In that horribly lucid consciousness, denied even the mercy of fainting, Choi Doo-gil could only feel, every five seconds, as if his body were being slowly sucked into a giant grinding machine.
Choi Doo-gil sat upright in the chair, his bloodshot eyes trembling wildly.
The hellish pain, the first of its kind in his life, began to smash apart his thoughts.
Pulse. Heartbeat.
That tiny vibration kept pounding at every bone and joint in his body.
Breathing itself had become an act of bodily destruction.
He had to scream.
If he didn’t, he felt like he’d go insane.
But his mouth wouldn’t open.
His tongue had stiffened like a stone.
The pain kept swelling, like a snowball rolling downhill.
The sensation of bones misaligning and scraping the flesh from the inside tore all the way down to his armpits.
Blue veins stood out on Choi Doo-gil’s neck.
The detective kept muttering to himself, while Choi Doo-gil screamed inwardly in utter despair.
Please! Just kill me... Please.
If he had a knife, he would have slit his own throat without hesitation.
And so, in that silent interrogation room, one human being was being completely broken apart.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
Drip-drip.
Lee Joo-seok poured soju into Song Tan’s empty glass.
“You’ve gotta feel like shit. Have a drink.”
Wordlessly, Song Tan tipped the glass back and drained it.
Watching his partner’s face, Lee Joo-seok spoke in a casual, drifting tone.
“That bastard didn’t say a damn thing even after he came out of the interrogation room. Hell, he even kept up that idiot act. Pretended he couldn’t even walk properly. Probably trying to claim diminished responsibility or some bullshit... Haa.”
Showing his frustration, Lee Joo-seok ran a hand over his face.
“There’s a good chance the court won’t even recognize that he had sexual intent. They’ll probably only reflect the cutting off of the electronic ankle monitor and the part where he hit the kid’s face. Worst case, he’ll do three years, maybe five, and get out.”
Lee Joo-seok filled his glass to the brim and gulped it down.
“Christ... This country’s laws are fucking rotten.”
He glanced at Song Tan and asked quietly, “You okay?”
Song Tan, who had been lost in thought, nodded slowly.
“If that’s how the law is, there’s nothing to be done.”
“Haa... Every time this happens, I get that empty feeling. What’s the point of busting your ass to catch the bastard if a judge is just going to let him go?”
“You look less okay than I do, Senior.”
“I’m not okay! If it were up to me, I’d start with Choi Doo-gil’s balls, then drag his ass to some deserted island and chain him there so he could never walk again. Damn bastard deserves heaven’s wrath.”
After grumbling for a while, Lee Joo-seok drank again and again.
Watching him quietly, Song Tan poured more soju into the empty glass and said, “He will receive heaven’s wrath.”
“What?”
“That’s how it should be for a man like that, isn’t it? That’s what I believe.”
Seeing his junior partner speak with those gently curved eyes, Lee Joo-seok let out a snort of laughter.
“A soft-hearted bastard like you really thought about becoming a detective? That’s still a mystery to me. A mystery.”
Still, since Song Tan didn’t seem nearly as shaken as he had expected, Lee Joo-seok’s expression gradually loosened.
“Just let it go. You’ll see a lot worse things in the future. Whenever that happens, keep telling yourself the same thing: our job is just to catch the bad guys, and after that, what happens is out of our hands.”
“Yes. Thank you for the advice, Senior.”
Song Tan’s calm expression only made Lee Joo-seok more suspicious, so he lifted his glass a little.
“In that spirit, let’s have a toast.”
“A toast?”
“To that son of a bitch Choi Doo-gil. May he get struck by lightning and fucking die! Cheers!”
Seeing how hard Lee Joo-seok was trying to lift his junior’s spirits, Song Tan smiled and clinked his glass against his.
And so a month passed.
When he went to work as usual one day, Lee Joo-seok suddenly dragged Song Tan to the smoking area, unable to hide the shock on his face.
“Did you hear? That bastard Choi Doo-gil hanged himself in the detention center and died.”
Tilting his head, Song Tan asked, “Why?”
“Hell if I know. He was making a whole damn spectacle, saying his body was turning to dust and his junk was melting, then he suddenly hung himself and died out of nowhere.”
“How unexpected. If he only had to serve five years as sentenced, he’d have been free again.”
Fssst—
Lee Joo-seok lit a cigarette and exhaled a white stream of smoke.
“Exactly. So was this really heaven’s wrath, like you said...?”
“I don’t know whether it was heaven’s wrath, but I’d say he got his true punishment.”
“Tch. Even knowing he’s dead, it still leaves a bad taste in my mouth. He’s not the kind of bastard who should get off that easy.”
It was the sort of thing one could only say without knowing what kind of absurd agony Choi Doo-gil had endured for a whole month.
“Hoo... Let’s smoke this one and get back to work.”
“Sure.”
Frowning, Lee Joo-seok blew out another plume of smoke.
Just as the smoke drifted apart and vanished into the air, Choi Doo-gil’s suicide, which had stirred up so much noise for a while, received only sneering curiosity before fading from people’s memories without a trace.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
A year passed in the blink of an eye.
In that time, the two men had solved violent crimes with manic intensity, earning first place nationwide in criminal activity evaluations, first place among detectives in Gyeonggi Province, and, not only that, first place in the special anti-burglary and robbery crackdown out of 1,400 violent crime teams across the country.
But as is the way of nature, once light grew too bright, the darkness pushed into a corner began to bare its teeth.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
“Damn it, it’s those detectives again?”
Baek Ok-chul, boss of the Annam Sikgu Family, chewed on a cigarette and cursed through clenched teeth.
“Because of those two bastards, our organization’s taken hit after hit. The pill dealers got cut off, the gambling den got raided, and the kids are getting hauled in one after another. We’re in a real mess lately.”
One of his enforcers spoke up carefully, watching his expression.
“If this keeps up, our people are going to starve to death. We need to do something.”
“Do something? You suggesting we grab knives and go to work? You wanna be the one to do it?”
“N-no, that’s not what I meant...”
Leaning back on the sofa, Baek Ok-chul muttered, “Waving knives around is what amateurs do... If only we could get our hands on those bastards’ leashes.”
Then one of the executives offered an idea.
“What about bribing them?”
“You don’t know that psycho Lee Joo-seok. There’s nothing you can do with money to that bastard.”
“Not him—there’s that rookie who just came in under him, isn’t there? Song Tan, was it... Something like that.”
“Hmm?”
Baek Ok-chul’s ears perked up, and he leaned forward.
“They say he’s only twenty-five. What kind of savings could a kid like that have? He probably bought his studio apartment on a loan. And police salaries are what they are.”
Baek Ok-chul brushed ash from his cigarette and said, “Jung-pal, why don’t you try setting something up? Think you can handle it?”
Sensing a chance to prove himself, Moon Jung-pal bowed deeply at the waist.
“Leave it to me, boss. Charming a broke little punk like that is my specialty.”
Baek Ok-chul gave a satisfied laugh at the eager answer.
“A university boy really is different. I’ll make sure the support is there, so do it right.”
“Thank you, boss!”
Confidence practically spilled off Moon Jung-pal’s face.
As though failure had never even crossed his mind.