The Death of Oh Sang-man
Kang Tae-sung left the school grounds and sprinted down the darkening road.
Before long the sun had set. He pulled one of the spare shirts from his pocket, tore it into strips, then tied one piece around his head like a hood and another across the lower half of his face like a mask.
The place he headed for was not City Hall.
It was the office the deposed Director had set up elsewhere. He had heard that it now hung a sign reading something-or-other Guild.
The building had once been a community center, so it was fairly large. A considerable number of people were stationed there, and the patrols and sentries around the perimeter were so excessive that there were almost no gaps to slip through.
Almost none still meant there was one.
Kang Tae-sung squeezed through that needle-thin opening, scaled the wall, climbed the outer face of the building, and slipped onto the roof.
Whether the interior had been renovated or not, there were several rooms fitted out as sleeping quarters in addition to the office spaces.
He moved toward the room that sounded the noisiest. Inside he saw the man who had been reading an electronic newspaper when he first visited the old headquarters—the one now calling himself Guild Master.
Several others sat around him, discussing something. The table was covered with various documents and files.
“So what I’m saying is, even if they give us supplies, we’ll be in trouble if we don’t use them sparingly… Why are you all acting like that?”
While they were talking about current issues, the Guild Master—who had been reading from a binder and speaking his mind—suddenly noticed that the once-noisy office had fallen completely silent. He lowered the documents in his hand.
“……?”
For some reason everyone’s eyes had gone glassy. All five of them sat there with their mouths hanging open, then collapsed in unison as if on cue.
“They’re not dead.”
A voice came from behind him.
The deliberately hoarse tone sounded like a voice modulator meant to disguise the speaker’s identity.
The Guild Master turned with a perfectly calm expression.
“I can tell they’re not dead. …Asking who you are would be a waste of time. What do you want?”
“Oh Sang-man.”
“Hm? Why are you looking for that name here?”
“Wasn’t he one of your subordinates?”
At the follow-up question, the Guild Master looked genuinely baffled.
“Subordinate? I don’t keep those. People just latch on and fall off depending on where the interests lie. Same with the ones you just put to sleep.”
“…….”
“But why Oh Sang-man?”
“It seems he’s taken charge of the welfare center.”
“Are you after that too? Don’t. Seriously, don’t. You’ll choke on it. That bastard only charged in because he’s greedy as hell.”
“You seem to know something.”
“What’s there to know? Donations and sponsorships don’t come in like they used to, and there’s no such thing as government subsidies anymore.”
He explained that running something like a welfare center at a time like this would yield nothing. If the government were sending plenty of relief goods it might be different, but that wasn’t the case, so the place would probably just wither and die.
“Well, if it’s him, he’d probably find a way to turn even that situation into profit.”
Having said that, the Guild Master sank deeper into the sofa. With no apparent intention of turning to look behind him, he continued speaking casually.
“Is that all you were curious about?”
“I want to know how Oh Sang-man got that position.”
“Didn’t you go to City Hall? They put out a call for volunteers. Said they were making a welfare center and asked if anyone would do unpaid work. No one showed up, so he went alone and greased a few palms, apparently.”
“…….”
“As for the civil servants, it reduces their workload, so they just handed it over. A quick background check wouldn’t turn up any major disqualifications anyway.”
Still, he added, no matter how he thought about it, the man wouldn’t last long. Just as he had said earlier, without a steady stream of relief goods from the government, how could anyone run the place?
“He’ll use the kids to make money.”
“Hmm. Sounds like you know Oh Sang-man pretty well.”
The man let out a sigh whose meaning was hard to read and gave a small shrug.
“I know it’s wrong. You can curse me for looking the other way. It’s true.”
“Were you planning to go into business with him?”
“No. I just ignored it because it wasn’t my problem.”
“…Where can I find Oh Sang-man?”
At Kang Tae-sung’s question, the man thought for a moment before answering.
“Since he was appointed director, he’s been staying in that building. I don’t know what there is to prepare, but he’s been there the whole time. By the way, why are you really looking for—huh? He’s gone?”
A strange emptiness washed over him, as if a breeze had slipped past. Only then did the Guild Master finally turn around. Even though it was a dead-end wall, there was no one there.
“…….”
A chill ran down his spine. He raised one hand and slowly rubbed the back of his neck.
“He asked a lot of questions, but I didn’t sense any real malice.”
The intruder’s voice had been almost completely flat. He had asked about Oh Sang-man, yet somehow it also sounded as if he had almost no interest in the man at all.
Still, the Guild Master glanced down at the watch on his wrist, then looked at the tablet PC lying on the table.
“Should I tell him?”
He had never really been at odds with Oh Sang-man. The man had never betrayed him.
His hand, which had been reaching toward the tablet, stopped. He stared at the back of it for a moment, then shook his head and pulled it back.
The sound of him flipping through the binder still held in his left hand echoed through the now-silent office.
“Just because I didn’t feel any emotion doesn’t mean there wasn’t any.”
He had asked about Oh Sang-man.
How the man had gotten the job. Where he could be found.
The only time even a trace of emotion had seemed to leak into that voice was when the intruder speculated about how Oh Sang-man would make money.
“He might die. Oh Sang-man.”
His gaze drifted back toward the tablet, but once again he shook his head.
“There are people in this world who are better off gone. …Hmm. I should watch myself from now on too.”
Most of the troops guarding the current guild office were Awakeners.
Thinking about how someone had slipped through their defenses and done all this, the Guild Master decided that rather than wondering who the intruder was, he should focus on behaving more carefully in the future.
News of Oh Sang-man’s death reached City Hall the next morning.
A city employee who had gone to discuss work and future plans discovered Oh Sang-man and his five closest aides dead in the welfare center office and immediately reported it.
There were signs of a brief fight, but they looked less like combat and more like desperate attempts to block something.
Strangely, there was very little blood. Every one of the dead had had their necks broken. The wounds suggested they had been struck with something thick and blunt—perhaps an iron pipe or a baseball bat.
Oh Sang-man’s neck was also broken. The difference was that his head had been twisted a full circle. At a glance his appearance looked almost neat.
In a world where functioning CCTV was hard to find, they tried to locate witnesses, but no reports came in.
Even when they posted notices online asking for tips, the result was the same.
Instead, the message boards were instantly flooded with posts condemning Oh Sang-man’s past misdeeds, saying he deserved it, and praising whoever had done it.
Only then did City Hall look more closely into the man named Oh Sang-man and admit they had made a mistake.
They decided that until a proper person could be found, the city would run the welfare center itself.
“Where have you been?”
It was Kang Han-sung who asked when his older brother returned just as dawn was breaking. The rest of the family was still asleep; he alone had been pacing restlessly in front of the gym with bloodshot eyes.
“You didn’t sleep?”
“The eldest son has to come home before anyone can sleep.”
Kang Han-sung spoke half-heartedly, then asked again what he had been doing. Kang Tae-sung answered as if it were nothing.
“I went and killed Oh Sang-man.”
“You say that like you went out for a meal.”
Yet Kang Han-sung also replied as if it were nothing. He smoothly changed the subject and showed his brother something. It seemed he had finally chosen his main weapon after much deliberation.
“A spear?”
When asked if that was his final decision, Kang Han-sung shook his head.
“I couldn’t decide.”
“Hmm?”
“I thought about it for a really long time, you know? But nothing felt right. If I use a sword I have to get close, and that’s dangerous. Same with any blunt weapon. And if I carry a shield, who knows if I can even block properly?”
He couldn’t use a bow, and throwing weapons risked cracking the wrong person’s skull, so in the end Kang Han-sung had chosen the safest option—the spear.
“For now, this.”
“I think raising your skill level matters more than what you choose to wield.”
“Exactly. So until I raise my skill, this is it.”
Shaking the roughly three-meter-long collapsible spear again, Kang Han-sung nodded with an utterly shameless expression.
“A spear! It’s safe, right? I have absolutely no intention of charging in and rampaging around.”
His goal had been Awakening, not raising his level or anything more ambitious, Kang Han-sung said. But he had already reached Level 2, so his original goal had been exceeded.
“If there’s a hunt, I’ll just tag along and poke from a distance. That should be enough to feed the family.”
“Sounds like a good plan.”
“You’re not going to call me a coward?”
“If you were a coward you’d have picked something that lets you attack from even farther away. Like a bow.”
Rustle.
“Big brother, you’re ba….”
“I wasn’t calling you a coward.”
Kang Yeon-sung, who had approached with a sleepy face at just the wrong moment, gave an awkward smile at his oldest brother’s defensive addition.
“I know. I know.”
As morning slowly brightened, everyone gathered in the gym and the topic turned to the welfare center.
Following the news that Oh Sang-man had died during the night, they learned that the city would run the center itself. The worried residents let out a collective sigh of relief.
Kang In-hye then contacted the city employee she had added as a friend on the messenger yesterday and told him she wanted to join the welfare center.
The other side replied that it was a good decision and that she needn’t worry, but some people still looked uneasy, as if a little concern remained.
Still, having already been abandoned by one group, these people seemed unwilling to stray from the direction their current group was moving. They swallowed their personal feelings and began to move together.
When office hours began, vehicles sent by City Hall arrived one after another and lined up across the schoolyard.
Along with the people, they loaded up all the various equipment and large commercial refrigerators that had been used here.
Those items would continue to be used at the welfare center, but ownership would be transferred to the government in exchange for a small amount of money.
Some civil servants and day laborers dismantled the solar panels and equipment installed on the school roof. They even planned to rip out the bidets from the restrooms, apparently.
With so many people moving at once, the work progressed fairly smoothly.
For lunch they did not eat the usual thin porridge that barely filled their stomachs. Instead they built a simple outdoor stove and, for the first time in a while, grilled meat without holding back.
The younger children were excited by the meat. The slightly older ones, perhaps reluctant to leave the place they had grown used to, kept glancing around nervously.
And the older teenagers, who had already passed the peak of puberty, offered words of gratitude to Kang In-hye and the other adults.
“Oppa… ah.”
“Yeah. I have a family.”
Kang In-hye nodded at Kang Tae-sung’s statement that he would not be entering the welfare center.
Of course they would prefer to live by themselves, but even if they wanted to enter the center, people with family or dependents were ineligible.
And now that even Kang Han-sung had become an Awakener, they had enough ability to find a suitable house and support the whole family.
Thank you.
See you next time…