The Wicked Are Not Forgotten (1)

The conference room of the Korean Hunter Association.

Every face wore the same expression—irritation, fatigue, rage. The victims did not exist in their heads. All that remained was the absurd fact that an A-rank Awakened had died.

Money and power. That was the whole of it. Be profitable, be strong, and there was no wrong these men could not absolve.

The Association President spoke.

"...An A-rank hunter. Kang Moojin. Dead like this."

The tail of the sentence feigned grief, but his eyes held none. Only inconvenience.

Newspapers and tablets lay in a tangle across the broad table, and not one person was actually reading them. Only the headlines made any noise.

A guild master's face flushed crimson.

"Mr. President! Do you know who he was? An A-rank hunter. Not a man—an asset. And he died for nothing?"

The Association President waved both hands.

"Calm yourself. This is not the time for us to tear into each other."

The air in the room grew heavier.

Park Jeongho, Guild Master of D.K, slammed a fist down on the table, fury breaking loose.

"Calm myself?!"

A low, incredulous scoff scraped out of him.

"Mr. President. A card one guild spent years raising is gone. Public outrage over the victims? Fine. I know. But that blows over. Revenue is the problem. Lose Kang Moojin and we're looking at tens of millions of dollars a year—several times that, if it runs high. You know that as well as I do."

The conference room sank into a cold silence.

"Guild Master, I give you my word. I'll keep the damage to your revenue as small as it can be. And the next time someone newly awakens at A-rank, D.K Guild will have first right to sign them."

At that seasoned offer, Park Jeongho clamped his mouth shut. He didn't let it show, but satisfaction sat plainly enough on his face.

They were always like this. Bonds struck in money and power. There was nothing those two things could not settle.

The Association President smoothed his tone.

"Well then. This matter seems settled. There is something else we should discuss."

Park Jeongho turned his gaze aside.

At one side of the room, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a strategy-team executive of D.K rose with a tablet in his hands. He hesitated, then spoke.

"An A-rank hunter with power on Kang Moojin's level, dying like that—and inside a detention center, no less—is hard to accept. To call it a simple suicide... something doesn't fit."

Every eye in the room swung onto him at once. The executive connected the tablet, and a screen came up.

"So I gathered every suicide the press has reported recently."

For a moment the room ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠went dead quiet.

The Association President tapped a finger softly against the table.

"...Go on."

"The common thread is simple. Every one of them drew fierce public outrage. Legally, they were never properly punished, or the sentence was a pat on the wrist. And yet all of them, to the last... suddenly killed themselves."

Park Jeongho, arms folded, tossed the words out flat.

"...And the conclusion?"

"I can't say for certain yet. But for it to be coincidence, the frequency lately is far too high."

The Association President frowned.

"Meaning someone is moving on purpose."

The executive lowered his head.

"Nothing is certain. Only that the pattern showed itself, starting with the Kang Moojin case. If this is someone's doing."

The air froze over.

Park Jeongho ground his teeth and let it out low.

"If some bastard laid a hand on our guild... I will find him, and I will grind him to nothing."

The feeling that this was no simple suicide had grown thick and hard.

The Association President was silent for a while, eyes fixed on the table. His fingertips still tapped the surface, keeping time.

He let out a long breath, then spoke.

"...It's not without credibility. If this is true, then what sits in front of us is no simple suicide."

His gaze traveled slowly around the room.

"Who is Kang Moojin? An A-rank hunter. A grade that ordinary mental attacks can't so much as scratch. And a man like that broke his own neck and died."

The conference room held still.

The Association President went on, quiet and unmistakable.

"Investigate. Immediately."

Park Jeongho's eyes flashed. The President did not meet them. He simply continued.

"If someone is moving with intent, we have to bring them into the light. This is a rather dangerous individual."

A detective-executive from the Awakened Crimes Division bowed his head and took the order.

"All right, all right. We'll leave it there. You must all be hungry—shall we go eat?"

At his lead they rose and filed out of the conference room.

A narrow living room. An old television.

The moment the caption appeared, the girl twisted her fingers together on her knees.

Fourteen. The backs of her hands were a map of calluses and scars no child that age should have carried. She clutched her knees tight. Beside her, her mother laid a hand over hers, but that hand was shaking too.

"He's... dead?"

Her voice was thin. The words came out, but there was no joy in them, and no relief. It was closer to emptiness.

She had not been able to step outside since that day. The sight of an unlit alley stopped her breath, and the sound of unfamiliar footsteps made her curl in on herself and sob. People had said time would make it better. Nothing had gotten better. When the arrested Kang Moojin walked free for lack of evidence, she had even sunk as far as thoughts of ending it. She believed the world had thrown her away.

And yet the name she had feared so much vanished from the world overnight.

"Mom..."

Her mother didn't answer. She pulled the child into her arms, and the small shoulders trembled against her.

"It's all right. It's all right... From now on, it really will be all right."

Her mother's voice shook too.

At last the girl broke. She buried her face in her mother's shoulder, and the two of them spilled every tear they had been forcing down—the rage and the fear they had never been able to let out, bursting free only now.

On the television, the anchor went on delivering the case in that same cold voice. Neither of them heard a word of it. For the first time, it felt as if she could breathe.

Hah.

That hits the spot. Sweet, and cold straight through.

Would chugging an entire 1.5-liter bottle of lemon-lime soda in one go even come close to this?

Sure enough, once the cap on targets rose to three, the pace itself changed.

Every morning the news brought the same glad tidings: another piece of trash had taken itself out. My Status Window had a bumper crop every single day.

And still the crimes kept coming, and the slap-on-the-wrist sentences with them. I had a long way to go.

Too many bastards left to deal with.

I kept the news on and watched the fresh vermin crawl out of it. The end goal was to wreck every last one of them, but I couldn't pulp this many criminals overnight. First I had to find the one who needed to die before the rest.

I shut off the TV and opened NewTube. The news was the same thing every time.

One look at the thumbnail and my mood curdled.

The moment I hit play, rubble poured across the whole screen. Snapped pillars. Crushed cars. People caked in dust. It laid itself over the old news footage burned into my head.

Something boiled up in my gut. No one in this country could claim not to know it. Safety tossed aside, the whole thing forced through with eyes wide open, all for the money—an act of stupidity for the ages.

The video would not look away from the fallen concrete. Excavators sat useless on site; survivors might still have been under the debris, so no one dared start them. In the end it was human hands alone, hauling those heavy stones aside one by one. Then the rescue workers came on, dragging out a person soaked in blood. The terror of that day reached straight through the screen.

The voice of With Crime came through, cold.

I ground my teeth.

"Fuck. That's the one."

The footage cut to a courtroom. Some old man in a tailored suit was glaring around as if he were the one who had been wronged. A caption chased after him.

Five hundred people buried in the ground, and all he got was seven years?

My hand shook. With Crime pressed on, sharper than before.

The scene changed.

A golf course full of sunlight. Out on the green, an old man in a white cap was laughing with his whole face. A thick designer belt cinched his gut, and a gleaming driver shone in his hand. A young woman hung on his arm, cackling.

Look at that. The old bastard still had plenty of life in him.

For a second I wasn't even sure what I was looking at.

The man who had crushed hundreds of people flat was living in a luxury villa now—laughing, playing golf, guzzling drink.

The captions from With Crime climbed the screen like oil poured on a fire.

Christ. I was burning up. You call that a human being?

The world had forgotten the victims' pain a long time ago. The verdict had ended lightly, and the bastard had walked back into society to live like a king. The video closed on one last shot of him in a high-end restaurant, wineglass raised ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠in a toast.

I clenched my fist. Veins stood out across the back of my hand. My breath came rough.

Now I knew. I knew exactly who I had to wreck first.

Oh Jinseok.

Chairman of Luxury Group. The brass-faced bastard who buried hundreds under concrete and now raises a glass of wine.

You think once you've served the sentence and the years roll by, it's finished? Not a chance. Commit the crime, and you swallow the punishment that matches it.

I don't expect a thing like you to survive a curse. But if you grit your teeth and somehow last all seventy-two hours, then as a reward I'll hang one on you that never ends.

How long? Until those dead-fish eyes finally close.

I drew a breath. The world clicked into place inside me. A golf-course fairway. A clubhouse. A wineglass. And over all of it, vivid enough to touch, rebar scissoring down.

"Wreck him."

The ceiling that swallowed hundreds comes down again. This time it aims at nothing but your skull.

Seventy-two hours? I won't need them.

From the first day your eyes roll back, your heart is torn open, and the ghosts of the hundreds you trampled sink their teeth into the nape of your neck.

If the world forgot you, I'll make it remember.