6. Gimcheon Juvenile Prison (5)
"What the hell? Why are you coming out by yourself?"
One of the goons guarding the door of the equipment warehouse frowned at me.
"Boss, what are you doing in there? Maintenance period's just about up."
No answer came from inside the warehouse.
"Hey, what gives. Move."
The goon shoved me aside and plunged inside — and a scream tore out of him.
"AAAAAAGH!!! FUCK!!! Boss Do-hyeon!!!"
Bae Do-hyeon hung slack from a ceiling pipe, a noose cinched around his neck. And beneath him lay a wooden crate, toppled over.
"Boss Do-hyeon!! FUCK!! Somebody's hanged in here!! Somebody!! Somebody help me!!!"
"Boss!!!"
The other goon, who had been waiting out by the door, came sprinting into the warehouse as well. Their movements bordered on outright panic. Yes — that was what an ordinary man's reaction to witnessing a death looked like.
One of them somehow managed to hoist up Bae Do-hyeon's already-dead body. In the meantime, the other scrambled up onto something and strained to undo the knot binding Do-hyeon's neck.
"FUCK!! This knot won't give!! A knife!! Somebody get a knife!!"
"A knife, my ass!! Just rip it loose, damn it!!"
While the half-hysterical goons ran amok, other inmates caught wind of the uproar and came flooding toward the warehouse.
— CRASH!!!
After a desperate struggle the rope finally worked free of the pipe, and Bae Do-hyeon's massive bulk slammed mercilessly into the cement floor.
One of the goons threw himself onto the corpse, which had crumpled in a grotesque pose.
"Boss!! Boss Do-hyeon!!"
Where on earth had he even learned it? The kid ran through CPR in a surprisingly passable form. The other one did nothing but rain slaps across Do-hyeon's cheek, screaming at him to wake up.
And at exactly that moment—
From outside the warehouse, a sharp whistle ripped through the chaotic air of the assembly hall.
— FWEEEEET!! FWEEET!!
"What's going on in the equipment room!! Everybody freeze!!"
Three correctional officers of the Mobile Patrol Unit, who had been supervising the daytime maintenance detail, stormed into the warehouse with their batons clutched tight.
And the moment one of them took in the scene and realized nothing about it was ordinary, he bellowed. Within seconds an emergency siren was wailing through the entire cellblock, and the frantic voice of the Security Department crackled over the radios, filling the warehouse.
"Hey!! Hands off, now!! Everybody face-down on the floor!! NOW!!!"
"Sir, he's not breathing!! Boss Do-hyeon isn't breathing!! Fuck!! Somebody's got to save him first!!"
The agitated goons pushed back against the officers' bellowing, if only a little.
"Inmate 147! Inmate 192! Back off and get down! NOW!"
Of course, I saw no reason to resist, and I fell back as instructed. I was about to return to the cellblock mixed in with the other inmates, the bedlam of the assembly hall at my back, when a heavy voice sounded from behind, singling me out.
"You there, Inmate 413. Stop."
It was the commanding officer of the Mobile Patrol Unit, the one managing the scene. With his thumb pressed on the radio's transmit button, he fixed me with a razor-sharp stare.
"Inmate 413, Jeong Ba-reum. Eyewitness found directly after the incident, and a prime suspect. Do not return him to general population — hand him straight over to the Security Department interrogation room."
At that order, another officer who had been standing by closed in at my side. Led by his hand, I peeled away from the line of ordinary inmates.
A textbook interrogation room — the kind you'd only ever see in a movie or a drama.
How much time had slipped by?
The door opened, and a correctional officer with graying hair stepped inside. His face brimmed with annoyance. He flopped down into the chair across from me.
"Inmate 413, Jeong Ba-reum?"
"Yes, sir."
"Quite the résumé. Prestigious foreign-language high school, top marks. A model student who fired a gun in open court."
"So. An elite from a fancy school — a kid whose success in life looked guaranteed — comes to live in a cesspit like this. How was it? The sight of that trash running their mouths at you, the kind that out there wouldn't even be treated as human — wasn't it just pathetic?"
"Be honest with me. That bastard Bae Do-hyeon, posturing beside you and needling you nice and slow — didn't it make your blood boil? You've got the guts to pull a trigger in a courtroom. What would be so hard about drowning one lousy piece of trash? Right?"
The words he spat out were less a proper leading interrogation than a sneer — a light jab at the inmate sitting in front of him.
"...I did not do it." The answer came out low and dry.
"I know, kid. Anyone can see a scrawny thing like you couldn't take down that bulk. But here's what's strange. Your goons said they heard some kind of commotion from inside. And the one who ends up dead is that mountain of meat. Meanwhile you, 413, don't have a single injury on you. Doesn't that strike you as odd? Hm — or is it just me?"
"It does seem a bit strange to me as well."
"See? You think so too?"
"I do. If I were investigating, I believe the first thing I'd ask is just why on earth two people went into that place at all. I take it that question doesn't much interest you, Investigator?"
The investigator's brows contorted for an instant. The true face hidden behind the languid act had briefly lifted its head. Sinking deep into the backrest of his chair, he muttered under his breath.
"Insolent little shit."
A flicker of displeasure surfaced on that annoyance-laden face.
"This is exactly why I can't stand you elite types. Even in a mess like this, you have to strut around like you're somebody. Inmate 413. Fine — with that brilliant top-of-the-class head of yours, tell me what exactly I'm missing that makes you so eager to lecture me. Go on, out with it. Why did those two crawl into that warehouse?"
"He was forcing me into prostitution. And before that, he said he was going to break me first."
— SLAM!!!
He smashed his palm down on the desk and shot to his feet.
"What kind of ridiculous lie is that!!"
"It is not a lie. Look into it even a little, and it will all come out."
"......Fine. Fine, let's say that's how it was. Then why on earth would the man who was forcing the prostitution go and kill himself right there?"
"We talked. I persuaded him of just how horrifying the things he did really were. Then he suddenly started saying that trash like him deserved to die and tried to kill himself — and a bit of a scuffle broke out while I was trying to stop him. That is probably what the people outside heard."
"Ha. So Bae Do-hyeon — trash like that — hears your little speech, repents on the spot, and decides to kill himself? And the commotion came from you trying to stop him? You're actually telling me to believe that?"
"Who can say. I've merely recounted the events exactly as they happened."
The investigator gave a hollow laugh of sheer disbelief.
"And you're claiming it's the actual truth?"
"There is nothing I can do if you refuse to believe me, Investigator. From what I hear, this wasn't his first time, either — a victim of his forced sexual exploitation killed herself before, and he got in on the cheap with two years. He also told me he deeply repents of such conduct."
"Every last word of this had better be true. A suicide inside a prison goes to the National Forensic Service regardless. Once they examine the body, it all comes out anyway — whether it was a suicide, or a homicide dressed up as one."
"Investigator. Do you truly believe that I could have overpowered and killed a man that size in a space where the two of us were alone?"
I raised both arms slightly for him to see. Feeble forearms that looked as if they had never lifted anything heavier than a pencil in their lives. The investigator answered without a trace of discomposure.
"Well, if you'd used some kind of drug—"
"Then, as you said, the Forensic Service will surface everything, won't it."
A heavy silence settled over the interrogation room. Deep suspicion. The irritation of a prison about to grow loud. The administrative dread that this might all connect into something far larger.
The investigator shut the file and rose from his seat.
"......Go on back. For now."
"Yes, sir."
"So. Is it true?"
"Those lunatics. No — I mean, seriously, they had inmates running male prostitution inside a prison? Fuck. And the guards are claiming they genuinely had no idea it was happening? You're certain? Because it had better not be that certain bastards were taking kickbacks and conveniently burying the whole thing."
At the warden's roar, the security chief swallowed drily.
"Never. Absolutely never, sir."
"Ha, I'm losing my mind. Chief Lim — you understand this is no ordinary screwup, right? This isn't just me getting fucked over. You're going down right along with me. And I don't mean a mere dismissal. This is outright discharge. Retirement pay and all of it — gone."
"Warden, please calm yourself. I will manage the situation carefully so that never comes to pass."
"Manage it? You think this is something you can just 'manage'?"
"It's a simple suicide case regardless. We are currently closing it as an impulsive suicide driven by anxiety over social readjustment, with his release date just ahead."
"The autopsy results?"
"There are some bruises on the body, but they're entangled with the injuries from hauling him down and the CPR afterward — apparently too muddled to distinguish clearly. Above all, the deciding factor is that toxicology came back clean. As you know, Inmate 413 Jeong Ba-reum is a scrawny high schooler who has done nothing but study his whole life. The very idea of him subduing a man of over a hundred kilos bare-handed, without any drugs, simply does not hold up physically."
The warden took a long drag on his cigarette and looked the security chief dead in the eye.
"The day even one line of that bastard Jeong Ba-reum's story — some sexual exploitation ring inside the prison, whatever he called it — leaks to the press... You know exactly what I mean."
"Don't worry, sir. I've cracked down hard enough that it never will."
The warden slammed his red approval stamp down on the paperwork.
"......You had better clean this up. Really well."
"Yes, Warden."
Bae Do-hyeon's death blew over with truly astonishing smoothness, as if nothing at all had happened.
In truth, it wasn't all that strange. In South Korea's prisons, roughly sixty inmates die every year. Of those, upwards of ten are suicides. A minor's case was a touch more unusual, but an inmate taking his own life is simply the kind of thing that happens.
And yet at the same time, someone's death was also a singular event.
This incident taught me something with absolute certainty: reality is not a novel or a comic, and no matter how rotten a prison may be, people dying is no ordinary matter.
Which meant that a string of suicides within the same prison would be more than enough to draw every watching eye.
So I changed methods.
It was simple.
Strength that had surpassed the human limit of 50 made an extraordinary range of things possible.
With everyone out at play during recreation, a light tap to the abdomen was enough to rupture a pancreas and leave a man a vegetable through some untraceable 'acute illness'; in the confusion of a scuffle, a flick of my toe against the tailbone could likewise give rise to 'myelitis of unknown cause'.
And along the way, a few more things became clear.
The System judged brain death as death.
And a permanent disability — half the body paralyzed, for instance — was not quite murder, but it still paid out a small measure of Karma.
Time passed with remarkable speed.
"Inmate 413. Visitation."
"I'm not going."
"You're a stubborn one, you know that? Truly stubborn. Honestly — how does a man not take a single visit?"
"Aw, stubborn, he says. Our cell boss hasn't gone out even once — and neither has that lawyer gentleman, who comes trundling down here without fail at least once every six months."
And just like that, four years.
When every moment of the time granted to me had run out, the letters inscribed across my retina read as follows:
— CLANK.
The thick iron gates of Gimcheon Prison swung open.
— End of Gimcheon Juvenile Prison (5) —
Author's Note
From here on, I'm going to start really driving this story forward. Please give it plenty of your support.
Thank you!!