The Return of the Wheelchair Butcher (2)
The association president’s office was the first place I’d set foot in there in twenty years.
It was wider than I’d expected, and more suffocating too.
Suit-wearing men sat packed tightly around a long conference table, all of them turning to stare the moment I came in.
My old manual wheelchair creaked and squeaked as it rolled through those gazes.
The president sat at the head of the table.
He was an old man with gray in his hair.
The instant he saw me, his expression stiffened ever so slightly.
The other suits were looking down on a cripple in a wheelchair, but the president was different.
He was afraid of me.
Which made sense.
He was the only one in this room who knew exactly who I was.
Twenty years ago, he’d been one of the handful of survivors who’d had a hand in the sealed records.
So to him, I was a man who should have been dead, now rolling perfectly alive right in front of him.
And not just any dead man, either. The one he’d personally erased.
“Ah, Chief Kang. You came. Please, have a seat. Make yourself comfortable.”
The president gave an awkward smile and offered me a seat.
When the president used formal speech with a mere civil affairs clerk, a ripple ran through the eyebrows of the suits around the table.
I parked my wheelchair at the end of the table and sipped the mocha gold I’d brought with me.
Docheol was already there.
As the vice-guild leader of Baekho, he was stretched out lazily in the seat beside the president, his prosthetic leg extended.
When our eyes met, the old man grinned.
Looking around, it seemed like the only two people in the room who were at ease were me and Docheol.
“A lot of busy people in one room.”
I let my gaze sweep over everyone as I spoke.
The table was lined with guild executives.
Daeseong, Cheongryong, Jecheon, Geosan.
And Gaon too.
The external affairs executives of the major guilds had all dressed to the nines and gathered in one place.
Not a single hunter among them.
Of course not.
These kinds of meetings belonged to the suits who made money off hunters, not to the hunters themselves.
They looked down on me.
A wheelchair, a shabby jumper, a box of mix coffee on my knees.
At a glance, I was an old relic who didn’t belong at a negotiating table.
Only one thing seemed to confuse them.
The fact that the association president was speaking to that old man with respect.
Even in front of executives from major guilds, the president had always held himself like he was above everyone else. But with a mere clerk from the civil desk, he was suddenly careful with every word.
The disconnect was starting to scratch at the suits’ nerves.
The first to speak was an executive from Daeseong.
“Chief Kang Taehyun. I’ll be blunt. That article. The exclusive from TruthEye.”
“I read it.”
“The association and the guild alliance have determined that the article is clearly false information. We’d like you to step forward and officially deny the allegations.”
“Why would I?”
“……Excuse me?”
“I said, why should I?”
The Daeseong executive went momentarily speechless.
“Because it isn’t true. Isn’t it the subject’s duty to correct a false report?”
“How do you know whether it’s false or not?”
“…….”
“I might actually be Baekjeong. Then it wouldn’t be fake news, would it? It’d be a scoop.”
The Daeseong executive’s face hardened.
He didn’t know whether to take what I’d said as a joke or as the truth, and he looked at a loss for how to answer.
Docheol, sipping his coffee beside me, chimed in.
“He’s got a point. Whether he denies it or not is his own business. It’s not something anyone can force.”
With the vice-guild leader of Baekho openly taking my side, the suits’ expressions turned sour.
The president hurriedly cut in.
“Ah, well, Chief Kang, the guilds are just hoping this uproar settles down quickly, and if you’d only say a few words……”
“President. The article’s been doing wonders for me lately. People at work even say hello now. After a lifetime of being invisible, I’m finally getting treated like a person.”
The president’s face went white.
What I’d meant as a joke, he clearly didn’t take as a joke.
He must have heard it as a sign that Baekjeong was displeased.
“Th-that’s true, yes. If that’s how Chief Kang feels, then we certainly don’t have to……”
“No, President.”
The Cheongryong executive cut in.
He looked like he genuinely couldn’t understand why the president was tiptoeing around that old man.
“This is a matter that affects the entire guild industry. It’s not something we can just let slide to keep one low-level employee happy.”
Low-level employee.
At those words, the president’s mouth twitched.
Docheol, still sipping coffee beside me, looked like he was enjoying himself to death.
“We’ll compensate you sufficiently,” the Cheongryong executive went on. “One denial interview, and we’ll give you a Gangnam apartment. A lifetime pension. Isn’t that more than you’d make in your entire life on a civil desk salary?”
“Don’t need it.”
“……You don’t need an apartment?”
“It’s a pain taking the elevator in a wheelchair. I like where I live now because it’s on the first floor.”
The Cheongryong executive looked stunned.
When flattery failed, he moved on to pressure.
“Let’s be frank. Chief Kang, you’re a non-regular worker at the association. If we want to, your position could disappear tomorrow.”
“Oh, great. Then I’d get off work early.”
“…….”
“Go ahead and fire me. I’ll collect unemployment.”
The table went quiet.
Threats only work if the other side has something to lose, and I had nothing to lose.
Strictly speaking, I was already dead on the records, so if they wanted to fire me, they’d first have to admit I was alive in the first place.
And the moment they did that, the seal would break on their end.
The Cheongryong executive seemed to realize that contradiction only then, and shut his mouth.
The president wiped at his cold sweat and tried to steer the conversation elsewhere.
“R-right. Everyone, calm down. How about some tea……”
“President.”
The Geosan executive, who’d remained silent until now, tapped the table with a finger.
“Why do you keep taking his side? The association should stay neutral. Or do you perhaps have some kind of connection with that old man?”
The president practically jumped out of his skin.
“W-what are you saying? I’m neutral. Neutral.”
That was what he said, but his eyes kept darting toward me, checking my reaction.
I watched it all and laughed inwardly.
The president had it rough too, come to think of it.
He was trying not to poke the guilds and not to poke Baekjeong either.
The Geosan executive cocked his chin at me.
“If you don’t trust the association, we can handle this ourselves. Old man, cooperate while I’m still being polite. If the guild alliance sets its mind to it, erasing one person from society is nothing.”
“Erase me? I was erased twenty years ago.”
The Geosan executive fell silent.
“How do you erase someone who’s already been erased once? Kill them twice?”
Docheol snickered beside me.
The Geosan executive’s ears turned red.
And in the middle of all that, I noticed something.
The Gaon executive had kept his mouth shut the entire meeting.
While the other guilds traded offers and threats back and forth, Gaon was strangely quiet.
In fact, every time I answered one of them, it almost looked like the corners of his mouth were lifting.
I could guess why.
If the article was true.
If I really was Baekjeong.
Then the time not long ago when their Im Taejun had been humiliated in the mutant gate would suddenly become a lesson learned from a legend.
Not some washed-up old man crushing him, but a first-generation legend.
From Gaon’s perspective, that saved their face.
So they didn’t especially want to deny the article.
“Gaon’s awfully quiet.”
I threw the remark out casually, and the Gaon executive flinched.
“You have a different stance?”
“……No. We’re simply observing the matter carefully.”
“Carefully. Nice word.”
I toyed with my paper cup and smiled.
“From your perspective, it wouldn’t be bad if the article were true, would it?”
The Gaon executive’s pupils wavered.
It was the face of someone who’d been hit right on the mark.
The other guilds looked toward Gaon in confusion.
They didn’t understand why I seemed to be half-defending Gaon while picking them out by name.
Docheol let out a low chuckle beside me.
“Looks like even guilds have their own little secrets.”
As the atmosphere tilted oddly, the Jecheon executive shot to his feet.
He’d been quiet until now, but his patience had finally run out.
“What the hell are you all doing? We’re really going to let ourselves get dragged around by one old man like this?”
He pointed at me.
“Whether the article is true or false doesn’t matter. What matters is that this geezer is shaking up our entire industry. Dragging around his so-called disciples and spouting nonsense about the System like some kind of con artist. Honestly, whether he’s Baekjeong or not, how does a suspicious old man like this get to ride on that legend’s name and stir up the whole business?”
The room turned chilly.
The president’s face went the color of dirt.
He hurriedly waved his hands.
“Director Jecheon, that’s a bit……”
“Why? Did I say anything wrong? If he’s Baekjeong, does that make him superior to everyone? If someone’s a legend, are the rest of us supposed to bow and scrape?”
The Jecheon executive glared at me and stepped closer.
“Be honest, old man. I’ve heard the legends of Baekjeong since I was a kid until my ears nearly wore out. But that great Baekjeong just happens to be some wheelchair-bound civil affairs clerk? You didn’t just hitch your wagon to that rumor? What proof do you have that you’re the Baekjeong who saved the city?”
He was practically spitting as he jabbed a finger at me.
Up to that point, I could still put up with it.
Flattery, threats, sarcasm.
I could let all of that slide right past me.
But then he went one step too far.
“To me, you just look like a useless cripple of an old man who couldn’t even die properly when the time came.”
Cripple.
At that word, the smile vanished from Docheol’s face too.
To people like us, who’d each given up a leg or a corner of our bodies and crawled back alive from that hell twenty years ago, that wasn’t something you could brush off as a joke.
Still, I didn’t get angry.
Anger was a waste of energy, and more importantly, raising my voice in a place like this wasn’t my style.
I slowly set the paper cup I was holding down on the table.
Tap.
A small sound.
But with that little noise, the air in the room seemed to sink all at once.
I let my Killing Intent seep out.
I didn’t sharpen it like a blade, and I didn’t spread it wide.
I just drew out a thread of it, thin as a strand of hair, toward the back of the Jecheon executive’s neck.
Less than one ten-thousandth of the force that had once stopped a tidal wave of monsters twenty years ago.
And even so, the Jecheon executive’s legs gave out.
He collapsed right back into his chair.
His face turned ghostly pale, and cold sweat streamed down his forehead.
He couldn’t seem to breathe properly, just opened and closed his mouth like a fish.
He looked like an animal with a knife at its throat, instinctively sensing death before it arrived.
“Proof?”
I asked lazily.
“You felt it just now, didn’t you? That’s your proof. Want me to show you more?”
I withdrew the Killing Intent again.
I silently reeled back the thread I’d let out.
Only then did the Jecheon executive suck in a ragged breath.
The other executives, still not understanding what had happened, stared in confusion at the sight of their colleague suddenly collapsing.
To them, nothing had happened at all.
The old man had put down his paper cup, and Director Jecheon had suddenly folded.
Only the Jecheon executive who’d been hit by the Killing Intent, and the two who recognized what it was, knew what had passed between those moments.
Only the president had gone ashen, his face showing that he’d understood everything.
“R-right! That’s enough for today’s meeting!”
The president jumped up and shouted.
His voice cracked.
“We’ll revisit the agenda later! Everyone, please head back! Chief Kang, you should, uh, take your time leaving!”
The suits scrambled to their feet, still not understanding what was going on.
Only the Jecheon executive was supported and dragged out.
On his way out, the Gaon executive gave me the slightest bow.
It was a subtle little nod, one that meant something only to us and nobody else.
That old man was sharp right to the end.
I finished off the rest of my mocha gold and gripped the wheel of my chair.
Docheol muttered beside me in a low voice.
“Could you maybe go a little easy? The president looks like he’s about to collapse.”
“What did I do? I didn’t even lay a finger on him.”
“That’s what makes it scarier, you bastard. Honestly, it’d be better if you just punched someone.”
“If I hit somebody, then a man who’s not even on the records would get arrested for assault. Killing Intent doesn’t leave evidence.”
Docheol gave a disbelieving laugh.
“Your lazy brain sure does work fast when it wants to.”
I rolled my wheelchair out of the conference room with a creak and a squeak.
Pressure or persuasion, in the end none of it had been able to do a thing to me.
Threats didn’t work on someone with nothing to lose, force didn’t work on someone with Baekho behind him, and brute strength didn’t work on Baekjeong.
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