Chatterbox
Nam Do-yun was awake.
A concrete room. An incandescent bulb in the ceiling. Cable ties biting into his wrists. The one thing that made it different from a kidnapping scene in a movie was this: movie hostages trembled in silence. The moment the tape over Nam Do-yun’s mouth came off, he started talking and never stopped.
"Hey, sir. Could I get some water? No, wait, one question first. Is there Wi-Fi in here? Not that I’m planning to go live or anything. Purely academic curiosity..."
"Shut up."
There were two guards. They came in on shifts. One was like a wall; nothing you said got a reaction out of him. The other one, a man in his thirties whom Nam Do-yun privately dubbed the “youngest,” was different. He kept telling him to shut up, but he kept answering. That was where it began.
"Are you getting paid a salary, or do you have equity?"
"I said shut up."
"No, I’m asking because I’m curious. You said this organization’s been around for fifty years, right? So does that make you third generation? Been in it since your grandfather’s time? Wow, family business. By the way, do you know what’s happening to that family business right now?"
The young man’s jaw tightened almost imperceptibly. A pair of eyes that had made a living out of interviews for four years didn’t miss a millimeter like that.
"You want me to tell you? The company’s been dissolved, the head boss got twenty-two years, and all seven accounts are frozen. Everyone except you guys has been caught. But you’re in here right now doing cable-tie twenty questions with me."
"..."
"What did they say upstairs? That you’d all leave together once the wall opened? Sir. Did you count how many seats are on the boat? And how many working men like you there are for five chairs?"
"Shut up!"
The door slammed shut. Nam Do-yun leaned against the wall and caught his breath. He knew there were three staffers in the next room from the sound of the ventilation. He also knew they were unharmed. He looked up at the ceiling and muttered,
"...Boss. You’re watching, right? I’m doing okay here, right?"
Instead of an answer, the incandescent bulb flickered twice, very briefly.
Nam Do-yun bit his lip. He was watching. The man had been watching from the start.
That night, during the shift change, the young guard came in carrying cup ramen. It was for the hostage. He did not loosen the cable ties. Instead, he began the most awkward meal in the world, feeding him one bite at a time with chopsticks.
"Your hands are shaking, sir."
"...Eat."
"The lighter still won’t spark, right? I heard you cursing through the vent earlier. You said it’s been dead for three days. Sir, do you know what that means?"
"What does it mean?"
"It means he’s watching." Nam Do-yun swallowed the noodles and went on. "I’ve covered this underworld for four years, and I’ve seen eight petrification scenes. There’s a pattern. The small things fail first. The lighter won’t light, the car won’t start. That’s a warning. It means it’s your last chance. After that... you’ve seen the footage, haven’t you? Upside down in midair."
The young guard’s chopsticks stopped.
"Sir. You’re not petrification material yet. You did carry out the kidnapping, sure, but you didn’t let anyone get hurt. If something happens to us tomorrow, then the story changes. You said you have a kid, right? I heard you talking about academy fees on the phone earlier."
"...You were eavesdropping?"
"The vent’s great for that." Nam Do-yun grinned. "Sir. Turn yourself in, and there’s a way to live. Keep resisting, and it’s petrification. That’s not a threat. That’s four years of data."
The young man did not answer. But when he left, he didn’t tape Nam Do-yun’s mouth shut again.
Left alone, Nam Do-yun twisted his wrists and tested the cable ties. Then he stopped.
They were loose.
What had been digging into his skin until just before was now hanging slack around his wrists. When he touched it, the material itself had turned warm, like syrupy taffy. If he wanted, he could snap it right then and get up.
He didn’t. Instead, he looked at the ceiling and whispered,
"...Got it. This isn’t the time yet, huh? I’ll cut them when you give me the signal. But, boss, could the signal be a little easier to understand? You know I’m terrible at taking hints."
The bulb flickered once, long and deliberate. Nam Do-yun chose to read it as yes.
***
Task force headquarters. Sixteen hours remaining.
"We recovered all three underwater drones. They followed all three branches to the end, but... two hit dead walls, and one leads to a dock before a bulkhead. A small submersible. Capacity for five people."
"Five." Seo Hajin spoke. "Exactly five. No room for the working men."
Ko Jinsu pinned up the photos. Thermal analysis of the dock area.
"The problem is the hostage location. There’s no heat source around the dock. The hostage isn’t in the passageway. He’s somewhere else. On land. We analyzed the concrete surface in the broadcast footage, and it doesn’t match the aggregate in the G-do facility walls."
"Where on land?"
"I don’t know. How many hideouts can a fifty-year-old organization have?"
Seo Hajin stood in front of the whiteboard. Written there, exactly as the old man had said it: The moment our five leave, the children will be released.
"That line is the weakness in the script. They’ve given away that the hostages and they themselves are in different places. 'Released the moment we leave' means there’s someone else who can release them. It means the order comes by communication. If we catch that communication..."
"The hostages come out."
The bait for drawing out the communication was made by Cha Pil-gu.
A special report went out on the evening news: "Investigators pinpoint shadow submersible location... dawn dock raid under review." Half of it was true and half was staged. The dock location was real; the raid plan was fake. Seventeen minutes after the report aired, a sealed frequency stirred to life. Encrypted radio. Four seconds of transmission.
"Did we get it?"
"Direction’s in. Southwest of the capital region. Radius of twelve kilometers." Ko Jinsu drew a circle on the map. "One more ping and we get the intersection."
"Then make it ping again." Seo Hajin called Cha Pil-gu. "Journalist. I need one more follow-up. This time... say we’ve identified the hostage location."
"That would be a lie."
"Yes. That’s why they’ll call to confirm. To compare it with the real location only they know."
On the other end of the line, the old reporter laughed.
"Using public opinion to hook fifty-year opinion designers. Judge, if you quit that line of work, come to our paper."
In the National Assembly, Han Ga-ram stepped up to the emergency podium.
"I ask the government not to negotiate with them under any circumstances. And to the one up in the sky, I say this as a single citizen."
The chamber fell silent. It was the first time a lawmaker had addressed the heavens from an official podium. The stenographer hesitated, then started writing again. In the chamber of the Domain of Truth, everything she said was, by definition, sincere.
"Do not open the door. Even if that looks like a defeat of your principles, do not open it. I know the young man who’s been taken hostage. Rude, loud, and always shoving a camera in everyone’s face. But if he were in my place, he’d say the same thing. Don’t let a fifty-year-old evil walk free on the price of one life."
She paused for a breath.
"...And Do-yun. I’m sorry. Come back alive, and yell at me."
That speech became the standard by which the hostage crisis was measured. No negotiation. Only rescue. The government and public opinion both lined up under those two words.
"And one more thing." She wrote it on the board. "They gave us twenty-four hours. Why twenty-four and not forty-eight? Because they’re in a hurry. The ship waiting beyond the Barrier can’t wait forever. The deadline isn’t only ours."
***
At the same time, on a gray ship out in international waters:
"We’re being rushed from home. They’re saying we’ve been drifting in this sector too long. Foreign satellites picked us up three times."
The woman set down her coffee.
"Then we give them a deadline too. Tell them this: if they can’t get to the bulkhead within twenty-four hours, the deal’s off. Oh, and..."
She looked out at the Barrier.
"Tell them to send the raw data first. Morse code would take a lifetime, so they can bring it here themselves, to the bulkhead. Data comes before people. People... honestly, we can do without them."
The man at the bridge laughed. Inside and outside alike, the shadows still didn’t know they’d become cargo.
***
At the convenience store, Kim Jeongsang was checking the expiration date on some discarded bread.
He had already seen everything. The address of the hideout where the hostage was held. The names of the two guards. The scheduled departure time of the submersible. If he spoke now, it would all be over within an hour.
He did not speak.
Instead, since last night he had only been doing small things. Making the hideout’s incandescent bulb flicker twice. Making the guards’ lighters fail forever. Every time they went out to smoke, they found themselves going farther and farther, more often and over longer stretches of time. Letting the airflow from the hostage room reach the next room through the vent. And making the molecular structure of the cable ties just a little tired.
The board belonged to human hands; the lights and props on it were the only things under his care.
The door opened and a customer came in. Seo Hajin.
"Welcome."
She picked out two canned coffees and set them on the counter. The same spot, the same items, as that first night. As she paid, she said, almost to herself,
"The board is still the same..."
"Pardon?"
"No, it’s nothing. I keep thinking about that line these days." She inserted her card. "I don’t know who sent it, but strangely enough, that one sentence has helped more than any investigation manual. If the board stays the same, then the thing that’s shaking is the other side."
"...That’s a good way to read it."
Seo Hajin cracked open one can and put the other in her bag. Just as she was about to leave, she stopped by the door.
"Boss. Or were you the part-timer? You were on night shift here the night the wall stood, too. That... first night."
Kim Jeongsang set down the barcode scanner.
"You remember that night’s work, customer."
"I do. I bought two cans of coffee that day." She pushed open the door. "The taste was the same. This place never changes."
The bell over the door rang, and she vanished into the dark. Kim Jeongsang watched the door for a long while. Omniscience sees facts. It cannot see the heart. He couldn’t tell how much she had known when she said that.
For the first time in thousands of years, he had found one thing he did not know.
"...Interesting."
***
Two hours remaining.
The sky was still empty. The whole nation waited with their heads turned upward into the night, on rooftops, in plazas, on the Han River embankment, in exactly the same posture they had used when they waited for the first light that day.
No one ever proved who started it. Someone in a square turned on their phone flashlight and pointed it at the sky. The person next to them followed. Ten minutes later, satellite photos captured the Korean Peninsula’s night brighter than usual. Millions of tiny lights were aimed at the heavens all at once.
No slogans, no songs. Just light. You watched over us all this time, so tonight we are watching you. Whatever answer you write, we stand behind it.
One light also came on in front of the convenience store. It was Jeong Minho. Holding up his phone toward the sky, he glanced once through the glass door at Kim Jeongsang, and Kim Jeongsang, pretending not to notice, straightened the goods on the shelf. Only that night, Jeong Minho’s phone battery did not drop a single percent until morning.
In the underground hideout, the old man was also watching the sky on a monitor.
"No answer. I suppose that’s understandable. Open the door, and God loses to a thief. Don’t open it, and the children... either way, the tower you’ve built starts to crack."
He lifted his teacup.
"A gentleman would move ten minutes early. Prepare to depart."
That was when it happened.
The sky lit up.
All across the country, heads lifted in unison. On every monitor at task force headquarters, on every square’s electronic billboard, the same line appeared. The shortest answer in the country’s history.
The old man began to smile slowly. And before that smile had finished, the next line appeared.