Catching the Kidnapper
A wave of fear swept over me the instant I realized what might happen if Chief Han Seung-woo—better known as Mr. Bloodbath—discovered that our law firm had tracked his daughter’s location. Still, I wasn’t the kind of fool who let fear dictate decisions. Even if he did find out, it would only be after the kidnapping was over. There simply wasn’t time to worry about what came next.
“Hurry. It’d be even better if you don’t get caught.”
“Got it. I’ll have it for you right away.”
After Yeo Eun-ju left, I barely had a second to breathe before the next problem hit me. She would locate Han A-young, but how was I supposed to identify the kidnapper? It wasn’t as if the culprit would be walking around with a sign on his forehead. And I had no idea what he looked like. In the future I remembered, the man who kidnapped Han A-young was never arrested or publicly identified—Chief Han Seung-woo had erased his very existence.
The office door burst open.
Yeo Eun-ju, who had promised to be quick, really had returned in record time. I had been standing; I was just about to sit down and organize my thoughts when the door swung open again before my backside even touched the chair.
“……!”
The moment I saw her face, the method for identifying the culprit snapped into perfect focus. Of course, Yeo Eun-ju had no clue what I was really thinking. She simply delivered the results of her assignment with brisk efficiency.
“Mr. Kwon. I have it. Han A-young is currently at Yeonmok Elementary School. I can keep the location locked—if you want, I can set your phone’s messenger to receive automatic updates every ten minutes.”
Just as I had expected, the girl was still at school. The kidnapping had not yet occurred. I could stop it.
“You can do that? Perfect. Make it every five minutes.”
“Sure. Something like automatic transmission code is easy enough to write with my eyes closed and one foot.”
“Thanks. But please don’t actually use your feet.”
Pfft— Pffft—.
Even in the middle of a tense situation, the joke landed. Yeo Eun-ju and I exchanged small, simultaneous laughs.
“While you’re at it, can you pull up her daily and hourly movement patterns?”
“Yes. We have the old location logs, so analyzing them won’t take long. Shall I compile that and send it over as well?”
“Thank you. Especially focus on today and tomorrow’s expected routes. Be as detailed as possible.”
“Understood, Mr. Kwon.”
After finishing with Yeo Eun-ju at Law Firm Seungbaek, I drove out of the underground parking garage, punched Yeonmok Elementary School into the navigation, and sped off. Rush hour had technically passed, but the destination was in the city center, so I had worried about traffic. Today, however, the supercar proved its worth once again.
Vroooom— Vroooom—!
I was still driving the same flashy car the old Kwon Ho-gyun had used. The previous owner had deliberately removed the muffler, so every press of the accelerator produced a thunderous roar. The noise embarrassed me so much that I had planned to restore it to normal when I had the chance, but in an urgent situation like this, the sound was actually useful.
Whenever the supercar announced its presence with that roar, other vehicles parted like the Red Sea before Moses. After all, a single scratch from my car would cost more than most of those vehicles were worth even used. Fear made people move aside—it was only human.
Though I unintentionally created minor traffic jams everywhere I passed, I reached my destination without once touching the brake except at traffic lights. I parked in a spot with a clear view of the school gate, rolled the window down, and looked inside. For a place that would soon become the scene of a horrific crime, the atmosphere was eerily peaceful.
On the playground, one class appeared to be in the middle of physical education. Children lined up neatly, following their teacher as they jogged along the edge of the field. To me, who knew what was coming, the scene felt like the ominous calm before a storm.
I checked my phone. It looked like Yeo Eun-ju had already finished that “easy enough to write with my feet” automatic transmission code. Han A-young’s location was arriving every five minutes exactly as requested. There had been no movement; the data showed she was somewhere inside the school building I was currently watching.
Her location was now completely locked down, and I was on site. It was time to complete the second detailed objective: securing combat power.
Under normal circumstances, the correct move would be to call 112 and request police presence at a location where a violent crime might occur. Even without clear evidence of a crime, simply dropping the name of Law Firm Seungbaek’s representative attorney would get officers dispatched. But doing so could cause me to fail the final goal of this “Save Mr. Bloodbath’s Daughter” project.
What if the kidnapper saw the police and abandoned the crime? Everything I had planned would collapse.
Right now, I needed to become the hero who rescued Han A-young after the kidnapping, not the one who prevented it. I felt a pang of guilt toward the child who would be terrified, but only by letting events unfold this way could I leave a strong enough impression on Chief Han Seung-woo that I had protected his daughter.
Of course, I would make absolutely certain A-young was rescued safely. This was necessary for my own objectives as well. If the girl ended up seriously injured despite my intervention, Chief Han would never open his heart enough to support my bid for the chairman position.
Therefore, instead of flashing the credentials of Law Firm Seungbaek’s representative attorney, I decided to make quiet use of my armband as leader of the QS Group Central Management Division’s Inspection Team.
The Central Management Division maintained a separate security team whose members were far too skilled for ordinary guard duty. Their combined martial-arts ranks often exceeded tenth dan; some were former tournament champions. In pure combat ability, they could rival veteran violent-crime detectives.
Because the Inspection Team’s work frequently required force to expose internal corruption, the security team and my Inspection Team maintained a long-standing cooperative relationship. In practice, this meant that if I called, I could have one of those elite operators dispatched immediately without needing to provide a detailed explanation.
I tapped my phone screen several times, dialing the Central Management Division’s security team.
“Yes. This is the QS Group Security Team.”
“Hello. This is Kwon Ho-gyun, leader of the Inspection Team.”
“Ah, yes, Team Leader. How may we assist you?”
“I need you to dispatch one security team member immediately.”
“Understood. What will the assignment entail?”
The main tasks would likely involve beating the culprit senseless and carrying a child at a full sprint, but saying so outright felt awkward. I chose a more appropriate phrase.
“It’s a protection detail.”
That should be enough for them to send someone with real combat ability.
“Understood. Where should we send the operative?”
“Have them come to the front of Yeonmok Elementary School. When they’re nearby, call this number.”
“We’ll handle it as instructed.”
With the preliminary preparations complete, it was time to locate the kidnapper in earnest.
All I knew was that the culprit would appear along Han A-young’s route sometime within the next few hours at the earliest, or by tomorrow at the latest. I had no name, no face, not even a rough physical description. In a normal investigation, zero information on the perpetrator would have been grounds for giving up. Yet I had come to the scene with confidence, because I possessed a way to identify him using my own ability.
From this point forward, I would use my power to view future court verdicts in a slightly twisted manner.
The less information I possessed about a case, the more blurred and unreadable the future verdict became. Until now I had considered this a weakness of the ability, but when reversed, it offered an excellent application.
If less information produced greater blurring, then more information would produce greater clarity. And did that information necessarily have to come in document form?
For example, if I laid eyes on the actual culprit while the verdict was floating before me, wouldn’t far more sections of that verdict become sharply visible?
With that hypothesis in mind, I had run a quick experiment back at the law firm. First I organized everything I knew about Han A-young’s kidnapping case in my head and summoned the verdict.
Order: The defendant is sentenced to 15 years in prison.
Reason: The defendant kidnapped and murdered a child who should have received social protection, doing so for financial gain; therefore the crime is of an especially grave nature. (…) The defendant has failed to reach any settlement with the victim’s family (…) Accordingly, this court (…)
Because I had witnessed the full story of the case in the future, this verdict was considerably more detailed than most I had seen. I kept it floating in front of me while watching Yeo Eun-ju enter my office. Sorry as I was to use her this way, I temporarily assumed she was the culprit.
Immediately, far more of the verdict blurred.
Order: The defendant is sentenced to (…) years in prison.
Reason: The defendant (…) the crime is of a grave nature. (…)
The reason for the change was simple: Yeo Eun-ju was not the kidnapper. The system had interpreted the inaccurate assumption as an entirely different, nonexistent case, causing most of the verdict to vanish into fog. Only meaningless fragments remained.
Now that I was at the actual scene, I simply had to invert the test. I would look at every person who appeared, assume each one was the culprit, and watch the verdict. The individual who caused the document to grow sharply clearer was the true kidnapper of Han A-young.
Those two women walking out of the gate together looked like teachers from this school. Were they sneaking off for a break? Must be nice. Still, even when I assumed either of them was the culprit, almost the entire verdict remained blurred. Just like Yeo Eun-ju, they were innocent.
Next came a boy with slumped shoulders who appeared to be leaving early due to illness, followed by an older man with graying hair picking up trash along the sidewalk. Probably the principal. Neither of them sharpened the verdict either.
I continued testing and failing several more times.
Tap tap.
Someone knocked on my car window. Assuming it was the combat operative from the security team, I lowered the glass.
“You’re from the security team, right?”
But the young woman who stood there answered in a voice dripping with irritation, firing off words like bullets.
“What? I don’t know what team you’re from, but you can’t park here. In a little while this place will be packed with cars coming to pick up the kids. Move your car. Right now.”