Uprooting (3)
Social media, every forum, Nutube, the articles. Not one of them was talking about anything but the public investigation.
Reactions split every which way. Some people's eyes lit up at the reward. Others fell into debates over whether he was a hero or a murderer. The feeling that dominated, though, was simpler than either. It felt good.
How long had the whole country been swallowing this and choking on it? People had died, and the ones who were never properly punished — the ones who never punished anyone — were now dropping into hell together. For the public, it was the vicarious relief of a blocked chest finally clearing. If anything, support for the one they called the Unnamed Awakened was only burning hotter.
Hardly a surprise. The image of every institution tied to the government had already smashed through rock bottom and was boring straight down into the ground beneath it.
With Crime sat in a café across from the police station. Through the window the entrance looked quiet. His eyes told him otherwise. Days of camping in that same seat had paid off: men who looked like D.K guild members were constantly coming and going through the station doors.
"They're definitely tied to D.K."
Reporter Kim hadn't misheard. With Crime drank his coffee and kept watching.
"Park Jinho."
The name, and more, had come from cop friends he'd been badgering without mercy. Right before the incident, the man had been shooting himself full of Blue Dust like a lunatic.
Park Jinho. A name he had never heard. Even With Crime, who knew every executive attached to D.K inside and out, was meeting it for the first time. His gaze climbed to the ceiling. A name alone wasn't enough. He needed a face, at the very least. Days had already passed. By now the man had probably been moved to a detention center.
With Crime walked toward the station again today, on the chance there was something else.
That was when he saw her. An old woman, standing out front of the police station.
"So that's it? You just tell me he's dead and we're finished? My son, my daughter-in-law, my grandchild — I don't even know how they died.... What in the world is going on."
She was tangled up with a young officer at the entrance, and anger ran through the shake in her voice.
"How does a whole family get murdered and it doesn't even make the news.... All this station does is tell me to wait. What could you possibly be hiding that you can't even tell the family...."
The officer looked cornered. He waved his hands and offered nothing but excuses.
"Ma'am, the trial is coming soon. You'll have to hear the details then. There's nothing we can tell you right now. I'm sorry."
In the end the strength seemed to leave her. She dropped her head and turned away, small shoulders sagging as she walked toward the bus stop.
With Crime watched from a distance, then followed slowly. She stopped at the roadside and pounded her chest as if she couldn't breathe. He approached carefully and spoke low.
"Ma'am. Is something the matter?"
She turned. The red rims of her eyes hit him all at once. With Crime hurried to hold out his card.
"I'm a reporter. I thought I might be able to help."
Silence. Then the corners of her eyes began to tremble.
A small park. Children's voices rang noisily nearby. She sat without a word, and With Crime held out a canned drink.
"It's cold. Have one."
She took it in silence.
"What happened?"
Wary at first, the old woman soon poured all of it out. She was family to the victims of the latest indiscriminate killing. A case like that should have sent a shock through the whole country, and yet nothing had moved at all. Unable to stand it any longer, she had come to this station.
The moment she spoke of her family, her eyes reddened. Tears fell beneath her clenched hands. With Crime could only watch. How could words ever make sense of losing an entire family in a single instant?
"Doesn't that seem wrong to you? A whole family stabbed to death, and there's nothing in the news, nothing in the papers. Do you know anything about this case either, reporter....?"
He had no answer he could give her. That some enormous power outside was holding the press by the throat — those words would not leave his mouth even if it killed him. He couldn't bring himself to tell an ordinary citizen that she was helpless in front of a force that large. So he stayed silent. Sometimes not knowing was the kinder thing.
"My only son. My daughter-in-law, who was like my own daughter. And my grandchild. I still can't believe my innocent children are dead...."
With Crime gently took her hand. The skin was rough. A fine tremor ran through it, and he could only imagine how much grief and rage were knotted inside. Even the pleasant breeze felt desolate.
"Looking at this every day tears my chest open even worse. I brought it, just in case."
She drew a phone from her pocket. The screen was slightly cracked. Bloodstains still marked it. With Crime's mind snapped sharp.
"Ma'am, whose phone is that?"
"My daughter-in-law's."
"I'm sorry, but could I look at it for a moment?"
She held it out with a strengthless hand.
There might be evidence on it.
Fortunately the battery still had some life. A password locked the screen.
She said there was a young child.
"Ma'am, do you remember your grandchild's birthday?"
"Of course."
He entered the date she gave him, and the phone unlocked. He went straight to the gallery, to a video sitting in the most recently saved files.
Households raising a child — a first child, especially — take a lot of videos and photos.
With Crime glanced at her.
"Ma'am, just a moment."
He stepped away and checked the footage. After a brief hesitation, he pressed play.
An ordinary afternoon in a park filled the screen. A child's laughter. A father chasing after him. A peaceful moment. Then a man came staggering in from a distance, eyes bloodshot, spit trailing from his mouth, a knife in his hand.
Park Jinho.
The frame shook all at once. The father shoved the child behind him and shouted.
He yelled in a panic, but the child's mother seemed frozen solid, and the frame stayed fixed. Only the phone in her hand trembled as it captured everything.
Then Park Jinho lunged in and stabbed the father like a madman. Blood sprayed. A horrific scream burst out. With Crime's face twisted.
Crazy bastard.
At the end of the video, the man's face was caught clean.
Found him.
"Ma'am, this video could be a lead. Would it be all right if I took a copy?"
She nodded without a word. He transferred the file and held the phone back out, and her rough hands caught his.
"Reporter. Please help make sure this man is punished."
He drew a long breath, then answered.
"He will be. Exactly as much as he deserves."
I sat at the computer and watched the video With Crime had sent. The brutality of that moment came through even on a screen. My fist locked shut. My teeth ground.
I read through the rest of what he'd sent. An entire family, murdered at random, and the press quiet as the dead — because D.K had the media on a leash. The piece of shit who did it, Park Jinho, had pumped himself full of Blue Dust, fried his brain, and gone and done that.
Bit by bit, the pieces were locking together. Park Jinho. Park Jeongho. Didn't the names stink from the start?
If cooking and selling Blue Dust was the family business, they'd sew their mouths shut and bury it, no question. They'd have been the ones supplying the magic crystals, too, the most important part of the manufacture. I'd wondered where all that money kept rolling in from. Of course. They'd been doing filthy work behind the curtain the whole time.
From the Kang Moojin case up to now, there wasn't a single corner of this country's upper crust that D.K wasn't plugged into. One of the rotten organs. Which meant D.K was no longer an ordinary guild. Judges, prosecutors, politicians, criminals — garbage, nothing above it and nothing below it.
First, I'd break Park Jinho. Subhuman trash who needed to die anyway. Then I'd watch what came after. How D.K moved.
If he was their own blood, their eyes would roll white and they'd lose their minds, wouldn't they? That was how this breed of bastard usually worked. Generous as hell toward everyone else, perfectly happy to look the other way — and the second the damage was theirs, strict enough to terrify.
So I'd use that. Cut the fortress they'd built so carefully off from everything around it, isolate it completely, and smash it apart.
Park Jinho lay in the detention center, shaking. Withdrawal, by the look of it. The tip of his tongue was bone-dry, and his pupils wouldn't stop trembling.
"Shit.... What do I do.... My brother will get me out. He will, right....?"
He muttered it to himself, gasping. His heart was hammering like mad when his eyelids sank, heavy.
"Mr. Park Jinho."
An unfamiliar voice.
"Wh-what."
He opened his eyes. A corrections officer was standing there.
"You're being released."
His mind snapped awake.
"Me? I'm being released?"
Park Jinho bounced up off the bunk.
That's my brother. I knew he'd pull me out in one shot. I mean, think how much money we've shoveled into them.
He burst out of the cell like an excited child.
"I'm off~"
The other inmates all stared at him without a flicker of expression. He didn't care in the slightest. Outside the door, a guild member in a black suit was waiting.
"Hey, you bastard! You were supposed to get me out faster."
He smacked the man's cheek, playful, and snorted as he spoke. The answer came cold.
"This way."
Nothing like the usual tone. It grated, but Park Jinho forced himself to swallow it. Today was a happy day. Stepping out into the street, he grumbled at the guild member.
"Hey, where's the car? I told you to pull it up closer."
The reply was ice.
"There isn't one."
Park Jinho's face crumpled.
"What? You talking down to me? Hey, are you crazy?"
Then the world stopped dead. Everyone on the street turned their heads at once, all of them wearing the same expression. Empty eyes swung toward Park Jinho together.
"Wh-what is this.... You — does my brother know you're doing this?"
The corner of the guild member's mouth moved, slowly.
"You don't have a brother."
Rage surged up through Park Jinho, and he shouted.
"What did you just say, you crazy bastard!"
Smack—!
He slapped the guild member's cheek with everything he had. The expression didn't so much as twitch. Park Jinho froze and looked into the man's face. It was twisted into something ghastly — an empty husk that had lost its soul.
Everyone around him wore that same face. All of them expressionless, not even breathing, staring at him.
"Sh-shit!"
Certain now that something had gone wrong, Park Jinho backed away without meaning to. A strange sensation crawled over his arm. Countless injection marks, blotched red. The scars writhed at once and came alive.
Agony crashed over him. Skin tore. Flesh split. From between the marks, countless rotten arms poured out with a stench, as if some other thing that had been hiding inside his body was forcing its way free. He couldn't hold the scream any longer.
"AAAAAGH—!!"
Park Jinho reached for the guild member.
"H-help me, please! I won't say a word to my brother...."
The guild member lifted the corner of his mouth in a sneer and held out a hand. Someone's head dangled from it. Park Jeongho's face.
"Now who's going to protect you."
In an instant the arms that had poured out wound around his whole body. Bone crushed. Chunks of flesh tore away. Thrashing did nothing. In the moment his body was being ripped apart—
Park Jinho's eyes flew open.
The detention center. He gasped and wiped the sweat soaking his brow.
"....It was a dream."
Relief tried to rise into his throat. That was when the chill came back, nameless, the horrific feeling returning as if the dream had simply kept going. Shaking, he turned his head.
Everyone inside the detention center was staring at him with the same face.