The Fever Spreads

The voice trembled. Heavy tears dropped one by one down a face still bright with youth. The interview with Park Ji-hyun, the twenty-year-old college student who had fled Club Janus, filled the television screen.

Yoon So-young, who had been with her, picked up the thread in a voice wound tight with nerves. The two young women's parents could only stroke their daughters' hands, the rims of their eyes red.

The two women's testimony rolled on, one line after another. It was their parents who brought it to a close.

But Channel N's emergency broadcast did not end there. One interview after another unfolded, each featuring someone the Shadow had helped.

Park Seo-jin — the sole survivor of the Changnyeong County apartment murders of a mother and her child. Her eyes, a tangle of grief and fury, stared straight into the camera.

And for a long while after that, the broadcast ran a relay of people the Shadow had rescued, or whose grievances he had avenged. Every one of them expressed deep gratitude for his crusade — and every time they did, the Channel N control room erupted in cheers.

"PD, the reactions are pouring in! Every single portal front-page headline is about our broadcast!"

The emergency special Shadow Syndrome had been worth every ounce of effort. The staff's excited reports came in a flood.

"Twitter's real-time trends, Namuwiki's trending searches — Shadow Syndrome is number one across the board!"

"YouTube's top three trending entertainment videos? All ours. They're the advance clips from the show!"

And yet PD Song Nak-ho of Channel N, monitoring the broadcast, remained perfectly composed.

"You all expected this much of a reaction anyway, didn't you?"

The Shadow was no mere topic of conversation. As the program's title declared, he was a syndrome — or something even greater. They had anticipated the buzz.

But here was the crucial point.

The ratings numbers are what matter.

No matter how distant television had become from people's lives these days, viewership remained the single most important metric in the jungle known as a broadcasting station. Only if those numbers came in strong could anyone sketch out the road ahead.

"P-PD-nim!"

At that very moment, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠one of the staff shouted at Song Nak-ho.

"Twenty-nine... twenty-nine percent! The premiere pulled a 29 percent rating! PD, a twenty-nine!"

In an instant, the control room filled with thunderous cheers. Twenty-nine percent from the very first broadcast — and Channel N was only a general-programming cable network, at that. Not nine percent, not nineteen — a full twenty-nine. Given the era, it meant the show had seized essentially every generation at once.

This is the chance.

Yet Song Nak-ho's elation was short-lived. What settled over his face instead was the look of a man hardening a decision.

"P-PD-nim...?"

"Where are you going...?"

"To the Bureau Chief's office."

"The B-Bureau Chief's office?"

"When the tide comes in, you row."

And who rows with a mere oar? You strap on a motor. Not a two- or three-episode emergency run — an unconditional long-term slot. Not a single team, but several divisions' worth of manpower and budget.

And it made sense, because no matter how you looked at this story, its scale was far too big to stay domestic.

It's only a matter of time before this attention spreads overseas.

Whether that attention took the form of fervor or condemnation didn't matter. What mattered was international scale. Which made this the opportunity of a lifetime for a PD — a chance to secure achievements and glory that would last him his whole career.

By any means necessary, I have to win over the Bureau Chief. No — the president himself...!

Song Nak-ho, a veteran producer in his fourteenth year in the industry, marched out of the control room with a warrior's stride. His destination: the Bureau Chief's office — or somewhere above it.

Late in the evening, Lee Seo-hyun ended the call with Song Nak-ho, her university senior, after a light stroll. On her phone, a replay of the day's Channel N broadcast, Shadow Syndrome, was still running.

I knew it would come to this, but it's moving faster than I expected.

A premiere rating of twenty-nine percent on a general-programming channel. In the broadcasting world, that was practically the stuff of legend.

Well — the impact was never going to be small.

Starting with the vicious child sex offender Cho Geun-shik, the Shadow had executed eleven sex criminals in total. He had then judged eight murderers, including the two perpetrators of the Changnyeong apartment killings. And now he was tearing through MZ gang syndicates, beginning with the 21st Century Gwanak Gang.

Her brother-in-law's — no, the Shadow's — crusade was the hottest story since the founding of the nation.

No need for me to write the articles anymore, then.

Which suited her fine. Public opinion would roll along on its own now, leaving her free to focus on hunting for prey — the festering trash lurking in every corner and stratum of this country, the kind she could feed to her brother-in-law.

And for that, rather than direct articles, what I need is something only I can do—

She was just carrying that thought forward when it happened.

"...Brother-in-law?"

A man stood quietly blocking her path. Ki Tae-jun.

Thud!

In place of a greeting, he tossed two backpacks down in front of her. Whatever was inside gave off a considerable weight.

"What... is this?"

Seo-hyun's eyes widened slightly.

"Call it an operating budget."

"An operating budget?"

She opened the first backpack carefully. Inside were brick after brick of crisp fifty-thousand-won bills. The second was packed solid with heavy gold bars.

"Where on earth did you get all this...?"

"Use half as you see fit."

Smashing apart the MZ gangs had yielded more than the ledgers linking them to their high-placed patrons. He had also recovered a portion of the black money — the assets — they had so reverently hoarded.

"Half of it..."

In that instant, a flicker passed through Lee Seo-hyun's eyes. Faces of victims she had met while covering crimes in the past swept through her mind. Perhaps, just perhaps, there was a way to quietly help people like them.

"...All right. Half for operating expenses, as you say, and I'll handle the rest my own way, brother-in-law."

With that reply, she hurriedly pulled something out — the by-now-familiar, rather thick bundle of documents.

"You showing up out of nowhere like this means you need new prey, doesn't it?"

Tae-jun nodded. He had hunted down every last one of the formidable MZ gangs. The time for fresh game was drawing near.

"The eyes of the police and the public are fixed on one place. So what do you do at a time like this? You change the theme."

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

The world was thick with prey. What mattered was how high-quality it was.

"..."

Tae-jun examined the documents in silence. Then he spoke, sounding mildly surprised.

"I expected you to pick from the ledger."

Lee Seo-hyun had been digging into the MZ gangs' connections with the powerful, so he had assumed the prey would come from that list.

"The police aren't fools. They'll have noticed the ledgers vanished from the scene, and they know who was written in them."

In a way, it was obvious. Why else would anyone bribe the powerful in the first place? To use their influence to slip the grip of law enforcement, of course. Which meant they couldn't help but know — they had merely kept quiet, crushed under the weight of that same power.

"So naturally, they'll be expecting it. The Shadow's next target."

And they wouldn't stop at expecting. They would have preparations in place — to block the Shadow's vigilante crusade, or to shield the powerful figures named in the ledger.

"There's no need for us to step on their trap, is there?"

She had a point. Once every preparation was complete, perhaps — but for now, caution served Tae-jun well.

"And above all, the time spent trembling in fear is itself a punishment, isn't it?"

The Shadow hunted criminals even at this very moment. And now such a being had unmistakably acknowledged their existence. The fear that knowledge carried would be a monstrous punishment in its own right.

"Not a bad idea."

Tae-jun agreed with her reasoning. This would be no hunt finished in a day or two.

"But."

One thing, however. Tae-jun understood the essence of fear — which meant a small correction ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠was in order.

"Fear grows stronger the closer it gets."

"What do you... mean by that?"

"When fraudsters start dying, fraudsters live in terror. When the powerful start dying, the powerful do."

If nothing happened — if he simply passed them by? Then rather than trembling in fear, they would let themselves relax.

"Pick one. A single example to make of."

"..."

"No need to worry about traps."

And so Tae-jun chose to follow Lee Seo-hyun's lead — but demanded a cautionary example in return. Only then would the punishment called fear carry extraordinary intensity, and extraordinary staying power.

He's right...

Lee Seo-hyun found herself convinced by his argument. Her resolve hardened in short order.

"...Fine. We'll do it your way, brother-in-law."

She then drew another sheet from her briefcase. She had merely set it aside for later; the name had never left her list of prey.