5. Gimcheon Juvenile Prison (4)
Movies and TV dramas are full of scenes where people die in prison without a soul knowing — a shiv in the dark, a "suicide" nobody questions.
Reality was a little different. This was a place where the very concept of privacy simply did not exist.
The guards' razor-sharp gazes monitoring every direction from the moment you opened your eyes until you closed them again. CCTV cameras sweeping each corridor on a fixed cycle, their red lights glinting. And on top of all that, the unpleasant breathing of nine inmates crammed into a cell of barely sixteen square meters.
In a place like this — where, twenty-four hours a day, other people's eyes shredded every inch of your body — executing someone in secret seemed less like a challenge and more like the territory of the impossible.
"Hey, back the fuck off. Unless you want to die."
Like most correctional facilities in South Korea, Gimcheon Juvenile Prison had long since blown past full capacity. Cell 7 had been built for five; it currently held nine. In the summer heat the space was so tight that the smallest movement pressed your flesh against someone else's.
In other words, an environment that made anything covert all but impossible.
'But the opportunity will come. It has to.'
Touching the collar of my blue uniform, I stared quietly up at the ceiling.
I already knew that even inside this prison, the bastard hadn't shed his old habits — that he was still picking out the weak ones somewhere and forcing them into degrading sexual servitude. And that kind of filthy business was not something a man could do out in the open, where the guards' eyes could reach.
No matter how thorough the surveillance or how dense the rules, any net of human control is bound to have holes in it. The moment Bae Do-hyeon moved to sate his filthy appetites and flaunt his rank — the very instant that devilish nature of his surfaced — a gap was bound to open.
And that opportunity arrived far sooner than I had expected.
Afternoon maintenance period. The whole wing was in disarray ahead of the mass movement to the yard and the auditorium. Bae Do-hyeon, who had at some point sidled up beside me, casually draped a thick arm across my shoulder.
"Hey, Sniper. You ready or what?"
"R-ready? Ready for what?"
"I warned you, remember? Said I'd help you kill yourself. Oh — what's this? Don't tell me you got so comfortable in here you forgot all about it."
Feigning fear, I kept silent, and he bore down hard on the hand resting on my shoulder as he went on.
"Whoa, whoa — no need to go spooking out on me again. Even if the sky falls, there's a hole to crawl out through, like they say. You want to live? Then there's a way. There's always a way."
"Th-thank you!!"
"Yeah, that's a good posture. Should've done this from the start, kid — we could've skipped this whole red-faced little chat. And it's nothing big, honestly. You just do what hyung tells you. Then you'll live like you do now. No — better than now. Way better. Kid, you can't seriously plan to spend the rest of your days camped out next to the latrine pit, breathing in everyone else's shit and piss. Am I right?"
"...Yes. Understood."
Perhaps because he believed he had finally bent me to his will, a triumphant smile spread across his face.
"Good. You're adorable when you behave, you know that? When the maintenance period starts, you follow me quietly. Do anything stupid, and you already know how the rest of your life goes — no need for me to spell it out, right?"
"Yes."
At my docile answer, Bae Do-hyeon gave my shoulder a couple of hearty pats. And at that very moment, a howl like tearing metal ripped from the speaker bolted to the wing wall, and a guard's voice thundered through the prison.
Kzzt — Attention. Daytime wing maintenance and movement to the auditorium will now commence. All inmates are to thoroughly tidy their belongings and stand by in the living quarters. Idle chatter or leaving the column during movement will result in immediate disciplinary action. Dress properly. That is all.
KA-CHUNK!! Clack!!
With that dull mechanical roar, the iron doors of Cell 7 and dozens of other wings slid open all at once, and the juvenile convicts penned behind them began to pour out.
Guards' shouts and inmates' footsteps flooded the space in an instant. At the tail end of the long column filing toward the auditorium, Bae Do-hyeon jabbed me in the ribs and tipped his chin toward a tightly shut equipment storeroom door behind the auditorium stage.
The iron door creaked. The smell of stale dust and of an old mattress rotting where it lay, unused, stung my nose.
BANG!!
The door boomed shut, and the two lackeys who had followed Bae Do-hyeon in remained on the other side of it.
Which meant that from here on, inside this equipment storeroom, only two people remained: Bae Do-hyeon and me.
"Alright then. First things first — let's see just how well you can perform, shall we?"
The pitch-black storeroom. Bae Do-hyeon grinned, baring his teeth.
He slipped a hand down to his waist and began undoing his trouser buckle. The clatter of metal rang grotesquely through the dust-caked room.
"Not that I've got a taste for that side of things, y'know? But what can you do. You gotta sample the goods firsthand if you're gonna manage them. That's the burden of being a manager — that's what I keep telling you."
Bae Do-hyeon reached his hand out toward my chin.
Grab.
"That's as far as you go."
My hand had closed around Bae Do-hyeon's wrist.
He stared at me with the eyes of a man who had never once dreamed that the prey he'd cornered would lunge back at exactly this moment.
"The hell is wrong with you?"
Wearing an expression of pure incredulity, he began driving strength into his arm.
It did not move. Of course it didn't.
I had already confirmed the power of Strength 50 in that courtroom. This was a force that two well-trained, full-grown men hadn't been able to budge an inch even gritting their teeth against it. Sure, he'd built himself up — but at the end of the day he was one street thug, and this was not a strength a body like his could do anything about.
"You shit-eating little—! Hey. Let go. Now."
In the end his face flushed crimson as he screamed at me, raised his other fist, and swung it at my face.
A hopeless attempt, naturally.
CRUNCH!!!
"AAAAAAGH!!!"
The moment I put a sliver more force into my grip, he shrieked and dropped to his knees.
"You — Sniper, you dog-fucking bastard. I'll kill you. I swear, I will absolutely kill you. Bawl all you want, beg all you want — nothing's going to save you."
"Do-hyeon. You still haven't figured out where you're standing, have you?"
"What? 'Do-hyeon'? You're really dead, you little—AAH!! AAH!!"
Just the two of us in the room. An opponent holding overwhelming power. And still, Bae Do-hyeon did not shrink back so much as an inch.
Just how stupid did a person have to be to act like this? No — perhaps it wasn't a matter of intelligence at all, but of experience and learning. I seized him by the collar and lifted him straight off the floor.
An unreal sight: me, at 172 centimeters and barely 64 kilograms, hoisting a frame that had to be 185 and a solid 100.
"Do-hyeon. Have you ever actually killed someone? No — have you ever even watched somebody die?"
"Wh-what the hell are you saying, you freak?"
"When a person dies, it happens in one single moment, you know? People who were laughing and joking a minute earlier just go slack. Villains who'd been shamelessly demanding leniency drop like puppets with their strings cut. What makes you think you'd be any different?"
At last, the emotion called fear surfaced on his face.
"Y-you bastard. You think you can kill someone in here and walk away clean? You think the guards are just going to sit on their hands if I die?! Go pull the CCTV footage right this second!! Huh?!"
Cornered by terror, Bae Do-hyeon gnashed his teeth together and raged on.
"That's the trouble with bad people, every single time. Not a shred of fear for the law while they're committing their crimes — but the moment it looks like they'll be the ones on the receiving end, they come scrambling to hide behind it."
I tightened my grip on his collar, just a touch.
"Khh—... fuck. Let's negotiate. Let's negotiate, okay? I'm due for release soon. The boss spot. I'll hand over the boss spot. Every bit of groundwork I've laid in here — it's all yours. I promise."
Krrk.
"...Y-you too. Nothing good comes of making trouble. Not for you."
I loosened my grip ever so slightly. Did he actually believe his threat had landed? Plain, unmistakable hope crept into Bae Do-hyeon's face.
"Do-hyeon. I'm going to return those words you gave Eun-ji. Exactly the way you said them."
"...What?"
"Too late."
From the floor I picked up an old length of nylon rope, the kind used for tying down supply crates, and looped it around Bae Do-hyeon's neck. He flailed his arms to resist, but by then the strength had drained out of them so completely that his struggling was helpless beyond words.
"And don't get the wrong idea. Korea's judiciary cares about a bastard like you exactly as much as it cared about the victims you fed on. Whether you hang yourself in here or bite through your tongue and die — to those fine gentlemen, it's just one more bothersome sheet of paperwork. 'A juvenile offender of poor character, unable to bear the mental strain, made an extreme choice.' Got it?"
With the rope around his neck hauled taut, I stepped up onto a sturdy crate. And when I hung the rope over the iron pipe running along the storeroom ceiling, the tips of his toes drifted off the floor.
"Khh—ghk... khhrrk—...!!"
A pitiful thrashing. Bae Do-hyeon's face blackened as he died, his eyes beginning to roll back.
"You said it yourself, remember? When you want someone dead, there's no need to lay a hand on them — driving them to suicide is the best there is."
Froth began to seep from the mouth of the struggling man.
"No Right to Indict. Yeah — just like you said. The best cost-performance ratio there is."
Slack.
At last every ounce of strength ran out of his body, and a filthy stench stabbed at my nose.
It was a complete end.
And at that instant, lines of text burst into bloom across my retinas like an explosion.
Judgment complete. Settling Karma.
Weight of sins judged (murder, habitual extortion, assault): +1,000 Karma
Resonance of Sin bonus (×1.1) applied → 1,100 Karma
"Returned the evildoer's own deeds upon him in full" weight (×1.5) applied → 1,650 Karma
Final Settlement: 1,650 Karma acquired
The first word that surfaced in my head was: 'That's it?'
One thousand Karma — for all the evil of a man who tormented someone so cruelly and in the end drove her to take her own life. In stat terms, a mere ten points. Yes. A 'mere' ten points.
Even a villain who had stirred such fury in me was nothing more than a ten-point trash mob before this system.
'So then this world must be overflowing with evil for me to judge.'
And when my thoughts reached that point, I realized I was smiling.
With a light kick of my foot, I knocked over the crate I had stood on to hang Bae Do-hyeon. The box lay toppled in front of his dangling feet. The suicide of the man hanging from the ceiling was now staged to perfection.
I moved slowly toward the iron door. And once more, I whispered to myself.
'I will become the hammer that judges the evil the law of Korea has forgiven.'
A thread of excitement ran through the hand that closed around the iron handle.
Click.
The door opened.
It was time to grow.
— End of "Gimcheon Juvenile Prison (4)" —
A couple of chapters back, one reader left a comment saying they weren't quite sure what kind of story this was. As you can probably guess from the revised title, this is roughly the shape the story will take from here on. I'd be grateful for all your support. Thank you!!