Chapter 48: What I’m Best At Is Cleaning
Chapter 48: What I’m Best At Is Cleaning
Pork belly~ Pork belly~
Any kind of meat is the truth.
I watched Arin with satisfaction as she neatly set out the delivered food. Earlier, I hadn’t liked how she subtly sat next to Cheolmin and tried to wedge herself into dinner, but seeing her set the table so demurely made her seem admirable again.
Lately I’d been wondering what to do about the female cleaning team because they’d been slacking off too much, but moments like this melted my irritation.
Just then, a scream came from the second floor.
I spread my telekinetic field and checked the direction it came from.
Yuri and Hyeonyeong came running down toward the counter, their faces pale blue.
The place they had just entered was Room 208.
A man had checked in alone early this morning for an overnight stay, and he had checked out a little while ago. He hadn’t answered no matter how much we called, so I’d gone up and banged on the door until I woke him.
The man had staggered out of the motel room with a pale face, like he’d drunk too much the night before. What had happened in that room for a scream like that to come out?
Was someone dead again?
I stretched my telekinetic field into Room 208.
“Ugh.”
A dry heave rose up.
Now I understood why Yuri was like that.
The floor of 208 was a complete shit pit.
He must have defecated on the room floor and rolled around in it, because mashed feces were smeared everywhere, and with the floor heating turned on, it was wedged into the grooves of the wooden pattern.
More than anything, the smell was like a septic tank.
“What the hell happened?!”
Cheolmin looked startled and tried to go up to 208, but I stopped him.
If he saw that, it felt like he’d lose his appetite.
I saw Arin rush toward 208, turn ashen at the shit-covered room, and stagger backward.
This would be a good time to make the Isu Gang juniors handle it, but they had gone out to eat dinner. And thinking about it, even if they were strong and male, they didn’t really have an obligation to take this kind of job.
With heavy steps, I went up to the second floor, told Arin—who was sitting collapsed in front of 208—that I would handle it, and then went into 208 with grim resolve.
A motel was a place where dirty, exhausting, weird things happened, but the thing I hated most was filthy work.
I shut off my olfactory nerves, went into 208, and cleaned the room with telekinesis.
I broke down all the filth scattered everywhere at the molecular level and shoved it all into the toilet, and I even blew the odor molecules embedded throughout the room out the window.
Since I hurried, it took only a few seconds.
But among the various odor molecules soaked into the room, I found a familiar molecule I’d seen before somewhere.
A strange odor molecule—sweet yet similar to urine stink.
The molecules expelled through the pores of the man who stayed in 208 were most heavily on the bed sheet, and I found them in places across the floor too.
Ah! I remembered.
The drugs that were still neatly hanging behind the motel sign together with my stash money!
The first time I opened it, drugs were so fascinating that I examined them closely with my telekinetic field, and it was the exact same molecular structure.
So the man in 208 didn’t do that disgusting thing because of a hangover—he did it because he was high.
Well, a normal person couldn’t do something like that.
People said drugs ruined you, but this was a bit extreme.
Good thing I cleaned it—if it had been Chanhyeok’s shift, we would have deep-cleaned this room three or four times and the smell still wouldn’t come out, so we wouldn’t have been able to sell it for days.
In times like these, what was the loss of not being able to sell a room?
Drugs and whatever had nothing to do with me, but now that I’d taken damage directly, anger boiled up in me.
I shut the door to 208 and came out.
“I’ll take care of this room, so go down and eat! It stinks, so absolutely don’t open the door today!”
Seeing Arin’s tearful expression made my heart heavy.
They said Arin was a Korean-American. I felt like I’d been too harsh to these pitiful female students who came to a faraway foreign country and worked hard to earn money.
From now on, I should treat them better.
“Let’s go down and eat. Forget what you just saw.”
I grabbed Arin by the shoulder, pulled her up, and headed to the first floor.
Pork belly had to be eaten before it got cold.
A little past 10 p.m.
After the meal, Cheolmin—who had been swinging his sword on the rooftop for a long time—came down sweating.
“You worked hard!”
“Not at all, junior! Moving my body like this really makes me feel refreshed. When Master Seorin told me to repeat simple movements over and over, I wondered what it even meant, but once I actually did it, the effect is real. Making basic movement the foundation made variations easier. Only now do I realize how many sloppy motions I’d been swinging around and calling sword technique.”
As Cheolmin learned the sword and inner power, he seemed to have matured a lot.
When I first met him, he seemed like someone soaked in vanity and impatience, but now the word “steady” suited him.
Except for the habit of crying whenever he got moved, that is.
Just as I was about to speak, a woman screamed from the rooms upstairs.
Something happened again.
This time, I hoped it wasn’t something filthy.
I checked the CCTV. The door to 308 burst open and a naked woman got flung out into the hallway. As if she was fighting her companion naked, she screamed again and charged back into the room.
She wasn’t running away—she was fighting like she’d gone rabid.
With my telekinetic field, I checked. A man in only underwear and a naked woman were brawling inside the room.
Couples checking in and fighting like this happened sometimes, but this was worse than usual.
Even though she was a woman, the man was swinging punches wildly, and the woman—like she couldn’t feel pain—was getting hit while still biting, clawing, and tearing at him.
The man was bleeding more than the woman being beaten.
And inside the room, I felt a familiar molecule.
Drugs!
Again, the two guests were high and going berserk.
I knocked them both out with telekinesis and laid them quietly on the bed.
“Don’t you need to go up and check?” Cheolmin asked anxiously as he came out to the front desk and watched the CCTV with me. He had just seen the footage of the naked woman being flung into the hallway.
“It’s quiet now. We get lots of guests like that. If we interfere, it gets more complicated, so the best move is usually to wait for them to calm down.”
I shrugged.
“Oh—Cheolmin. Are there a lot of drugs in Korea? Wasn’t Korea originally a drug-free country?”
Since I happened to have a drug expert right here, I asked what I was curious about.
Cheolmin answered with a dark face.
“Korea isn’t drug-free anymore. Drugs are spread everywhere, and addicts are increasing exponentially every day. Honestly, the area I’ve been putting the most effort into lately is dealing with drug distribution groups. But they operate so covertly, in cell networks, that we can’t eradicate them. If you catch one, three pop up the next day.”
I was startled by what he said.
I’d attached my telekinetic field to Cheolmin, but that only let me sense things when he stood at the line between life and death.
Other than that, out of respect for privacy, I deliberately didn’t try to know his personal life, so I hadn’t known this.
“Why? Why are drugs suddenly increasing? What are the police doing?”
“I talk about that with Lauren every day too. We’re sure China or Japan is deliberately spreading drugs in Korea. The other side has state-level support and cooperation and they use any method, so it’s too much for a single organization like mine. At least Lauren gives me information on drug organizations, so I can fight back. If not, we’d be helpless.”
What was he talking about?
Lauren—an American artist who did installation art—gave information on drug organizations?
“Lauren? How? Isn’t she an artist?”
“Ah…”
Cheolmin looked awkward, then lowered his voice as if he’d decided something.
“Honestly, this is classified and I’m not supposed to tell you… but I’ll tell you the truth, Teacher. She’s a CIA agent dispatched by the U.S. government. An agent sent to stop forces trying to throw Korean society into chaos. ‘Artist’ is her cover identity.”
Wow.
CIA?
The CIA you only see in movies and TV shows?
Even the NIS would have shocked me, but hearing Lauren’s identity—something I’d never imagined—made my mouth fall open. It felt like seeing a celebrity.
“So if Lauren hadn’t helped, things would be worse than now. I heard the U.S. has dispatched large numbers of secret agents like Lauren to Korea, running all over the place to stop terrorism and drugs.”
Hearing that made me feel sorry about the time I’d threatened to blow up missiles over Washington.
If I’d known earlier, I would have spared the U.S.
I’d never cared much about the world, but hearing this made me interested.
“But why would China or Japan do that?”
“I heard the most dangerous country is always your neighbor. Historically, Korea’s biggest threats were China and Japan.”
“China surrendered recently, though. Even so?”
“On the surface they surrendered, but behind the scenes they’ve increased drug dispersal several times over. They bribe customs officers, smuggle by sea using small fishing boats, and after the war it increased at least tenfold. They’re probably trying to make Korea sick.”
I felt puzzled.
“Doesn’t the government do anything? The police or the NIS?”
“I don’t know for sure either. Lauren avoids talking about that part. But from what I can see, the government is flailing in this rapidly changing situation and doesn’t have the capacity. And inside the police, there are corrupt criminals bought off in many places, so they can’t function properly.”
Ah… it’s a total mess.
That’s why society was unstable and chaotic, interest rates swung, and prices surged.
They said the economy improved after the U.S. promised active support for Korea, but in this situation, the economy could become unstable again at any time.
If the economy became unstable, motel prices would go up again, right?
No.
What I want is peace and safety—cheap motel acquisition prices.
I should clean up all the trash.
Cleaning is my specialty.
After Cheolmin went into the rooms, I sat in the counter chair and expanded my telekinetic field across all of Korea. The murmuring voices of people like ant noises swirled like a giant typhoon and shook my consciousness. I focused and searched within it for anything related to drugs.
4,312 cases.
People smuggling drugs.
People taking drugs.
People dealing drugs.
Even people making weird drugs.
31,582 people tied to those 4,312 cases.
Even with Cheolmin struggling, it was an enormous number.
Should I kill them all?
Once, I’d hit China back with missiles and the world had criticized me for killing too many people, right?
Killing everyone wasn’t the answer.
I took out the drugs I’d stored earlier from the backpack hanging on the motel wall, broke it down molecule by molecule, and made all 31,582 people absorb it through their respiratory tracts.
People who absorbed more than a single dose through their mucous membranes quickly started to reel.
Some severe addicts even seemed to get energized and started bouncing around, but when I dosed them a bit more, they reeled too.
I moved their arms and legs and made them write, “I am a drug user. Please treat me,” on paper, then stuck it on their foreheads and sent them all to nearby police stations and precincts.
In their confused state, they moved exactly as I controlled them.
The unfortunate thing was that most of them were ordinary people.
They were people who took it without knowing, then became addicted unintentionally.
It would have been wrong to kill even these people without checking the circumstances first.
Among them, I cut the brain blood vessels of all 4,034 distributors and manufacturers.
And just as Cheolmin said, I also cut the brain blood vessels of every drug broker connected to foreign countries.
Those weren’t simple users—they were the ones trying to rot Korea with drugs. In an instant, they died and collapsed as corpses.
Then I expanded my telekinesis further and erased every drug substance inside the country.
Ecstasy, meth, LSD, fentanyl, ketamine, cocaine, heroin—everything turned to ash and vanished in an instant.
After that, I added a drug-detection function to the missile-defense telekinetic field that thinly wrapped the entire country.
Now Korea is a drug-free country.
And along with that, I won’t have to see things like cleaning up human waste or drugged guests going berserk like today.