One Lead After Another (2)

The name Kim Euiri was fairly well known on Nutube by now.

On the screen he sat as he always did, his upper body bare. The tattoos crawling over his whole frame looked less like a convict's leftovers than medals stamped into his skin, and beside him men of the same breed had settled in, drinks and cigarettes trading places in their hands.

The laughter was loud enough to split the ceiling. A pack of faces that called to mind a herd of wild boars.

The topic of the broadcast never changed.

"I went to prison, and I learned life is one moment. Don't you live like I did."

The words wore repentance like a mask, but the insides were obvious. He was nothing but a huckster, spinning his crimes out as war stories to drag the views in.

The chat raced upward. One question leapt out of it.

For an instant, Kim Euiri's face locked up.

The cigarette clamped in his mouth was chewed nearly in half. Then he blew smoke and leaned his body toward the camera.

"Hey, don't talk that shit. Who the hell is he to kill criminals? Fuck — is he a judge? A prosecutor? Or is he God?"

His voice came out cracked. His eyes shook, and he didn't bother hiding it.

"Any of you never jaywalked once? Never grabbed a wheel after you drank? Everybody screws up just living. You do wrong, you go to prison, you take your punishment, you come out. That's it."

At the end of every sentence he hammered the table with his fist.

"That's right, hyung's talking sense!"

The tattooed parasites beside him piled on, lifting their glasses and snickering, and the camera caught every bit of the sight.

Kim Euiri went on, smiling as he talked.

"Look at me. I did my time, and now I'm streaming and living clean. I say good things to the kids. I tell them not to commit crimes again. That's real repentance. And somebody steps up and takes criminals' lives? What kind of justice is that? Fuck, he's the same kind of bastard."

In the end the speech was nothing but self-justification. A past smeared with murder, narcotics, and pimping flipped, in a breath, into something like a mistake. The repentance was no more than content he ran his mouth about on a broadcast.

The chat seethed. Pushback — what the hell kind of bullshit is that — and brain-dead support — hyung's still right, though — poured in at the same time. The sight only swelled the anger bigger.

In front of the camera, Kim Euiri was still grinning, still running his mouth. He spilled his grievances through a face of sagging flesh, as if he truly believed he had earned the right to stand tall in society now. Every turn of phrase dug a little deeper into the viewers' guts.

The way criminals always did.

Kim Euiri's eyes snapped open.

It was a glaringly bright morning, nothing like the usual.

Still half asleep, his hand trembled as he dragged it across his forehead.

"Fuck...... my eyes are wide open in the morning. Those goddamn chat bastards from yesterday are gonna drive me insane."

The tip of his tongue felt split, his mouth foul. His gut ached all on its own. Too much liquor poured down him, most likely — and yet in one corner of his mind an anxiety had lodged that strangely would not come undone. He had shot his mouth off like a bluff on yesterday's stream, but the chain suicides from the news kept circling in his ears.

Kim Euiri spat a curse and stepped outside. Sunlight off the street stabbed his eyes, and his scowl dug in deeper.

"Ah, fuck...... did I really drink too much yesterday. My guts are flipping."

A rundown gukbap joint stood nearby — one of those pork-and-rice-soup houses — with a faded sign and damp steam leaking through the crack of the door. He walked in as if it were nothing and dropped into a seat.

"Hey. Soju, and one pork gukbap."

It was a tone that had chewed manners up and swallowed them, but the employee didn't so much as blink, as if it were a familiar rudeness he had heard a few hundred times. He only nodded and headed quietly for the kitchen.

Kim Euiri swallowed a dry heave and looked up at the television.

......No way it comes all the way to me. I've been living right these days. I stream. I tell people to stay straight. Fuck, I'll be fine.

He muttered it to himself and pressed a hand down over his anxious heart.

A moment later the gukbap came. The instant he spooned the boiling broth into his mouth, his throat went up in flames. He knocked the soju back at once.

"......Guhk!"

The liquid sliding down his throat surged back up tasting of rotten filth. He spat it straight onto the table. Slime crawled for the floor.

"What the fuck is this!"

Startled, Kim Euiri peered into the soju bottle. In place of clear liquor, a liquid like rotten mud heaved, thick and sticky.

"Boss! You out of your fucking mind? This is soju?"

The moment he jerked his head up, the owner who had walked out of the kitchen let a strange smile slip.

"It is."

The answer was short, but the voice was cracked and tangled together — a grotesque sound you could not even sort into a man's or a woman's.

Kim Euiri's face went white.

"Wh-what did you......?"

He looked around. Only then did he see that everyone in the restaurant was looking at him. Chopsticks stopped, they split their lips open and burst into laughter.

From every face — men and women, old and young — the same laughter burst out. The pitch rose and fell, and the chill dug in deeper.

Kim Euiri looked down at the gukbap in a hurry. What had surfaced was not red broth. Human eyes. Rotten fingers. Severed toes, floating.

"What the fuck is this, you crazy bastards!"

He shot up from his seat and ran for the door. There was no door. The entrance that had been there a moment ago was gone, and nothing but wall ran on without end.

"Hey!! Open it! Open it, fuck!!"

Kim Euiri screamed like a man coming apart. The people's unpleasant laughter only grew louder.

Everyone in the restaurant stood up at the same time. All of them wore the same expression — hollow faces with no pupils, nothing but mouths torn open. They rushed Kim Euiri as one.

"Get the fuck off! You sons of bitches!"

He swung his arms and shoved them back. He had the strength of a man who had fought his way up as a gangster, but there were far too many of them. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Worse, they were the ordinary faces he usually sneered at and ignored — not brawny organization men, but ordinary office workers and middle-aged women, even kids in school clothes. He felt the chill seep all the way into his bones.

They lifted his thrashing body as if it weighed nothing and headed straight for the kitchen.

"Hey!! What are you doing! Put me down! Put me down, you fuckers!"

In the middle of the kitchen sat an enormous cauldron. When the lid came off, red water boiled like lava. Kim Euiri thrashed and screamed.

"Sh-shit!! I was wrong! Let me live! Just this once, let it go! I was really gonna live clean!!"

The people did not so much as answer.

They only laughed, and threw Kim Euiri into the cauldron.

The instant the white-hot iron lid slammed shut with a bang, there was the sound of flesh cooking, and a horrific reek of blood and fat bursting and mingling. Every time the lid rattled, Kim Euiri's scream leaked out in a short burst.

Then his eyes flew open.

......What. Was that a dream?

The gukbap was still sitting where it had been. Sweat gone cold on him, he stared blankly down at the bowl. At that moment an employee came over.

"Your gukbap is ready. Please enjoy."

Kim Euiri's hands shook as he looked into the bowl. A single strand of hair floated on the broth.

"Hey! Look at this! You know who I am? You screwing with me?!"

He called the employee to a stop, and she answered with a simple, innocent smile.

"Ah, I'm sorry."

Then she tore at her own hair like a madwoman. Black hair came out in clumps and fell onto the gukbap. The red broth mixed together into a pulp. The ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠instant Kim Euiri dragged in a breath—

Kah-kah-kah-kah-kah.

Laughter shook the ceiling. Kim Euiri's heart hammered as if it had lost its mind.

That evening, Kim Euiri's channel had its live stream up as usual. On one side of the screen was a piglike pack plastered in tattoos. Glasses tipping, snickering, running their mouths — the same scene as always. Kim Euiri himself was nowhere in it.

The chat flew.

Just as the jokes, laced with mockery, were going around, Kim Euiri appeared on the screen.

"Huh? Hyung, you're late."

He looked rumpled, as if he had just rolled out of sleep. His eyes were bloodshot, and his face had flushed an ugly red. The chat that had been about to curse him for ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠showing up late froze in an instant.

Kim Euiri did not say a word. He only stared at the screen with pupils swollen as if they might burst with blood. The silence dragged on, heavy. Even the tattooed pigs beside him stopped their jokes. As if they had caught the smell of something wrong, they froze.

Suddenly Kim Euiri clutched at his own body and screamed.

The air in the room shook with the wail. He stopped short, and muttered, small.

"......No. I don't get to live."

His hand went under the table. Something flashed into the frame. A sashimi knife. Then he drove the point of the blade into his own abdomen.

Thuk.

Blood sprayed.

Thuk. Thuk. Thuk.

Again. And again.

Thuk—thuk—thuk—thuk—thuk—thuk—thuk—thuk.

Dozens of times, he stabbed like a man who had lost his mind. His body twisted, and blood and foam spilled from his mouth together, his face caught somewhere between a grotesque laugh and a wail.

The broadcast did not cut. Every bit of it was going out as it happened, and the chat became a slaughterhouse in a heartbeat.

Dumbass. No wonder he was popping off on stream.

Couldn't even last a day — that pork-gukbap, tattoo-roach piece of shit.

Now that I think about it, he really did turn into gukbap, didn't he?

I looked the site up, the way the message on the With Crime video had told me to. Hell of a guy. He even built a site just to talk to me. Thinking it over, this way might actually be the better one. We had stacked up a certain amount of trust by now, and if the people uploaded in the videos and the dead kept lining up like this, With Crime was going to fall under suspicion.

Finding the site was a chore. Security, most likely. The thing was buried almost at deep-web depth. I bounced my IP dozens of times, and even that was torn down and rebuilt entirely by the next day. The logs were wiped every hour. A method bordering on obsession. Not bad.

On the screen, nothing but a black field. A single typing window, sitting ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠alone in the middle. A pretty simple site. Did I need a long speech?

A brief silence. One short line of an answer surfaced.

Not long after, the posts poured in. The scroll shoved itself downward without end — the boss's name, photographs, criminal records, distribution routes, all the way down to the lowest members. A list of easily more than a hundred names, already organized.

With Crime's explanation went like this. The police already knew these people existed. They had tried to lock them up over trafficking Blue Dust, and failed every time for that same wretched lack of evidence. There was even talk that pressure had come down from above to wrap the case up quickly.

In the end, the most they ever did was toss a few low-level members in a cell now and then to soothe the public. A man like Kim Euiri would have been the textbook specimen. It smelled like someone with backing.

I looked down at the list and muttered.

"......When the hell am I supposed to wipe all these bastards out."

A hundred, easy. Even if I bundled them in threes and took them apart that way, it was too much. I opened the Status Window.

The terror points, filled to the brim, shed a red light. I narrowed my eyes.

"Upgrade? Or try for something new."

Right. Even if I strengthened Yangbap, it would only be five people, maybe six. It wouldn't make for any dramatic change. Since it had come to this, I might as well crack open a new curse.

"Okay."

In an instant, the world in front of my eyes flashed.

Huh?

With this...?