Forced to move another block by the honking bus, the man parked his car at the entrance to a small office building’s parking lot. But he couldn’t stay there long either. If a car needed to enter the building, he’d have to move immediately. It wasn’t a place where he could park for long, but he had no other choice at the moment. He engaged the parking brake and checked the side mirror. He looked toward the convenience store where the vehicle that had been following him since the highway entrance was parked. But then.
“Huh?”
The car was there, but the driver was gone. The man who had gotten out of the car had bought cigarettes from the convenience store and had been smoking while leaning against his car. But now he had vanished without a trace. He wasn’t in the driver’s seat. He wasn’t anywhere nearby.
Confused, the man got out of his car. Craning his neck, he looked around widely near the parked vehicle. But the driver who had been smoking was nowhere to be found.
“Ah… shit… where did he go…?”
The man with severe rhinitis made a snorting sound, gathered mucus in his mouth, and spat it out with his saliva. After dirtying the road with his yellowish phlegm-mixed spit, he got back in his car. Since he needed to move to a place where he could wait longer, he shifted into drive and gripped the steering wheel. And just as he lifted his foot off the brake pedal to press the accelerator, “Stop.”
More than the low voice that suddenly sounded, it was the cool sensation against his temple that made the man jump in shock and slam on the brakes. The car nodded sharply, and as his body lurched forward and back with it, the metal object stayed against his temple.
“G-g-gu-“
“Gun.”
It was a gun. Instinctively, he looked up at the rearview mirror, and the man with piercing eyes who answered instead of the stammering man said:
“If you knew it was a gun, you should raise your hands.”
Rolling his eyeballs to the point of pain to keep an eye on the gun barrel, the man slowly raised his hands.
Soon after, the sound of handcuffs clicking against his right wrist came. Before he could even groan from the sharp pain in his wrist bone, his arm was roughly pulled and somehow connected to the handle above the passenger seat. His left hand was connected to the handle above the driver’s seat. Literally forced to raise both arms in surrender in the blink of an eye, the man could only roll his eyes around while the gun that had been pressed against his temple was lowered.
After putting the gun away, the hand reached out again and shifted the gear from drive to park. And now it began to search the man’s body. The lips that came close to his ear whispered:
“Do you like back hugs?”
Given the situation, it was an impossible question to answer, so as the man continued to just roll his eyes, the man who blew a ticklish breath into his ear said:
“Don’t get excited.”
The hand that had been feeling his chest went inside his clothes and pulled out a phone. Then, feeling down his side, it reached into his pants pocket and pulled out another phone.
“Let’s see…”
Mumbling with a sigh at the end, Kyung Jiho leaned back comfortably against the seat and opened one of the two phones.
“Well, well.”
As soon as he opened it, the name and 13-digit resident registration number were displayed on the home screen. People who use multiple burner phones often save the name and resident registration number in a notepad to distinguish the registered owner of each phone. But this guy had boldly set it right on the home screen.
“Yang Hwa-ja?”
“Yes?”
“Your name is Yang Hwa-ja?”
Though it obviously wasn’t, the man who suddenly needed to be Yang Hwa-ja nodded. If he said no, it would be a confession to using a burner phone, which could result in up to three years in prison or a fine of up to 100 million won. After telling this lie, the man started to rack his brain for an escape route. Meanwhile, the very relaxed man opened the other phone.
“Then. Park Man-sik. This is. Your son?”
Though it obviously wasn’t, the man who suddenly needed to have a son named Park Man-sik had no choice but to nod.
“Right. Yang Hwa-ja, transgender person born in 1938. This phone is yours, and this one is your son’s, is that it?”
He regretted not saying earlier that Yang Hwa-ja was his mother, but it was too late. He couldn’t take it back. The man who had unwillingly become an 80-year-old transgender senior nodded.
“Okay. Okay. Since you say they’re not burner phones, I’ll believe you. I don’t usually suspect people like that. But, let’s see, parking in a no-parking zone, illegal window tinting, and you spat earlier too, right? One, two, wow, three violations? You have so much money that you just want to shower the country with fines sometimes? Is that it, our Yang Hwa-ja?”
Since he seemed to be talking about fines for minor offenses, the man felt a slight sense of injustice and muttered inaudibly.
“Sp-spitting isn’t…”
Not illegal, he meant to say.
“I’ll write it up as public urination.”
At the cold smile directed at the eyes reflected in the rearview mirror that seemed to ask what kind of law that was, the man said:
“It’s my call. Keep arguing and I’ll add obstruction of official duties. Actually, let’s just add it. How much could it be? Put a little more money in the national treasury. Police officers are having such a hard time these days. Things must be bad if they’re carrying fake guns to save 300-won bullets. Right?”
Fake gun.
The man’s face grew cold as he realized he had been duped by a fake gun into raising his hands in surrender. Just as he was about to feel wronged and angry, the man who had been looking at the phones while rambling asked:
“Which one is it?”
“What?”
The anger about being fooled by a fake gun was still forming, and honestly, the eyes in the rearview mirror were scarier than the gun, so Yang Hwa-ja still had to be respectful.
“Don’t pretend you don’t understand. It’s not cute. Who hired you? Which one of these?”
“I-I don’t know what you’re…”
“I said it’s not cute.”
By the time he spoke those last words, the eyes in the mirror had turned ice-cold. The faint smile that had been there was completely gone.
Yang Hwa-ja, terrified as if he’d seen a ghost in the rearview mirror, tightened his urethral sphincter and shouted the phone number in the first row. Then he began to spill facts that hadn’t even been asked.
“I was paid in advance to look up the vehicle registration. When I couldn’t find it, I was told I’d get three times the fee if I followed the car and found out where they lived! Please forgive me just this once! I-I really didn’t know you were police! I’ll live a good life!”
“Shut up. Don’t shout.”
“Yes!”
Still holding his hands up, Yang Hwa-ja shouted energetically one last time before clamping his mouth shut. When it was reasonably quiet, Kyung Jiho took out his own phone and made a call. The person who answered immediately said:
[What do you need now?]
This was the greeting from a colleague in the investigation support team.
“Phone owner lookup.”
Kyung Jiho also conveyed his gratitude by stating only the essential business.
[Fuck. If I get caught and fired, you’re raising all my kids.]
This was an affectionate reply indicating that he would help. Kyung Jiho immediately recited the number.
Looking up the registered owner without proper investigative authority was absolutely not the right thing to do, but it was commonplace to check registrations during preliminary investigations of suspicious individuals and cases. Even if caught, the worst that would happen would be getting called in by the team leader for a lecture.
While listening to the sound of typing on the other end of the line, Kyung Jiho searched through Yang Hwa-ja’s phone, checking the messenger app, call history, and stored contacts.
[The registered owner is Ji Seokhun.]
Kyung Jiho, who had been examining the phone, looked up at the sudden mention of this name, his right eye and the space between his brows noticeably creasing.
“Ji Seokhun?”
[Yeah. Ji Seokhun. Green Village in Cheongdam-dong, Building A, Unit 7. Is that enough? Or what? Should I recite his resident registration number too?]
“Yeah.”
Even with just the address matching the uncommon surname, he already had a good idea, but he needed to be certain. The kid claiming to be an orphan could be a half-sibling with a different father.
[Shit. I’m going to say it, so listen carefully.]
The classmate who started with a curse proceeded to recite all 13 digits of the resident registration number, though in truth, the first two digits would have been sufficient. It was the perfect age for a father who ties up and beats his adopted son. And then.
[Wow. This guy’s a celebrity? He comes up in portal searches. With photos. Ah- I know this guy. I’ve seen him on TV. He was a star doctor?]
A career perfectly suited for a madman who hires a private investigator instead of filing a missing persons report to find his runaway son.
It’s a world full of people who present a glossy exterior while being rotten to the core inside. Compared to such people, the guy who has to pretend to be a grandmother born in 1938 and stake out in the middle of the road for 24 hours to earn money might actually be more pure. Kyung Jiho was filled with disgust and had to sneer at this filthy world where such people lived well.
[Damn. Investigating a celebrity is just asking to get caught. Ah, shit. I got played by that Kyung bastard again.]
“I’ll buy you a drink,”Â
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
