Jung Yoon replied nonchalantly, then continued even more indifferently.
“Where are you headed? I heard the drivers’ cafeteria has bulgogi today. Want to go there?”
Jeong Rok, resting his elbow on the window and propping his chin up, stared at Jung Yoon without answering.
Jung Yoon, without even waiting for a reply, nodded to himself and turned the steering wheel to the right, heading towards the drivers’ cafeteria.
“I guess I am a bit like that.”
“Hmm… I don’t think so.”
Jung Yoon, who had stopped the car at a red light and was watching people cross the crosswalk, turned his head at the ambiguous answer.
“What does that mean?”
“Should I have said ‘it wasn’t’?”
“…What wasn’t?”
“I don’t know.”
Jung Yoon stared at Jeong Rok with a dumbfounded expression as he answered brazenly.
“I really don’t know, but I think this is better, Detective Woo. Look ahead.”
The ensuing answer was even more absurd.
Jung Yoon cursed at him with his eyes.
Yet, Jeong Rok was winking as if nothing was wrong. Jung Yoon, disgusted, turned his head straight forward.
“Jung Yoon, let’s just go like this. Just like this, okay?”
This crazy bastard…
Jung Yoon, who had turned sharply, let out an exasperated sigh.
“If we only go like this, how will we catch the culprits we haven’t caught yet? We have to try going a different way to catch them.”
Jung Yoon’s expression became serious, cutting off Jeong Rok’s words.
Jeong Rok, who had been about to say more, curled his lips, bit them, and let out a grunt of frustration.
“…I really didn’t want to say this.”
“Then don’t say it.”
“You’re really no fun.”
Silence filled the car.
What did I just hear?
Jeong Rok, who had been staring intently at Jung Yoon, whose expression was more bewildered than ever, let out a sigh and murmured in a serious voice.
“You should really thank your parents for giving birth to you like this. You really… thank them a lot.”
“That’s why I live this way.”
At Jung Yoon’s rather serious reply, Jeong Rok pressed his forehead, calling him “no fun” again.
Jung Yoon, who glanced at Jeong Rok, thinking he was joking, stopped responding and focused on driving.
He didn’t want to bother adding that he wouldn’t have lived otherwise.
***
August 2007
It was an extremely hot day.
No matter how much he fanned himself, the heat wouldn’t subside.
A man sitting in a Porter truck, looking down at the laborers, suddenly opened a cooler.
Inside the ice-filled box were soju, makgeolli, and frozen water.
The man, still fanning himself, took out a bottle of soju.
“Kiya—! Hey, you there! You, sir! Aren’t you going to work properly, huh?”
The man, taking a large gulp of soju straight from the bottle, pointed a finger at one particularly slow worker.
With fiercely glaring eyes, he attacked the man with his gaze, spewing curses like “you son of a bitch, that son of a bitch,” and grumbled, “Ugh, ugh,” in frustration.
Half the day passed like that.
The promised time ended, and the laborers, having finished their work, approached the Porter truck, wiping sweat from their necks and foreheads with their clothes and the backs of their hands.
The man, who had gulped down an entire bottle of soju and was now snoring loudly, finally stirred.
“One, two, three, four—.”
The man immediately paid the wages in cash to the line of people.
He gave the first and second men 40,000 won each, without a word of complaint, saying they had worked hard.
To the third and fourth men, he clicked his tongue, grumbled that there would be no next time if they continued like this, and nagged them.
In front of the two flustered men, he lifted his chin, swaggering, and counted out bills in a louder voice: “One, two, three. Four.”
The last man, standing alone, hesitated and approached the man sitting in the back of the Porter.
He was a shabbily dressed man.
He wasn’t very short, but he was thin with pale skin, completely devoid of energy.
“I can’t give you four bills.”
“You know, right? That you didn’t work as well as the others. You honestly know that, don’t you, sir?”
The man didn’t reply.
He bowed his head deeply and said nothing.
“Honestly,” the other man snorted, then spat ptoo, ptoo in a feigned manner, and handed over the bills.
Three bills.
“…30,000 won.”
“Yeah, yeah, that’s even being generous. You should know that!”
The man fiddled with the 30,000 won he had received for a long time. He also mumbled something quietly.
The man sitting in the Porter braced himself on the edge and sat upright.
“Got a complaint?”
The man, his face savagely contorted, aggressively thrust his face at the bowed man and threatened him in a low voice.
The man, who hadn’t said anything, subtly raised his eyes.
As their gazes met, the man sitting in the back of the Porter again snickered, then jumped over the aluminum plate he had placed there.
“Ah, get out of the way! Where did this puny guy even come from…”
The man who got out of the Porter pushed the other man’s chest with considerable force, and the 30,000 won he was holding dropped to the ground.
The man stepped on the 30,000 won and headed to the driver’s seat.
Soon, vroom, vroom, a loud roar echoed from the Porter.
The shaking Porter eventually drove off with a loud noise.
The men who had received 40,000 won then approached and consoled the man who had only received 30,000 won.
The man didn’t say anything until then.
He just quietly followed the path of the Porter with his eyes.
He imprinted the Porter’s license plate number in his mind and continued to stand in place, watching the departing vehicle’s rear for a long time.
“Ugh… Ugh! J-Just… gasp!”
***
That evening.
The sun had completely set, and it was a pitch-black night, so dark that even the nearby road was barely visible.
From inside the alley where the Porter truck was parked, a heavy thudding sound echoed repeatedly without stopping.
Thwack, thud!
The ceaseless thudding, which had continued even after the desperate screams ceased, finally stopped after a long while.
“So why…”
As the man moved, a sticky, wet sound was heard.
The man glanced down at his black sneakers and ground his teeth in annoyance.
The man, gripping the hammer he was holding, thwacked! the already horribly crushed head one more time, without hesitation.
Splatter!
Blood flew up, piercing the man’s eyes and splashing onto his chin.
“Did you steal my money?”
The man breathed heavily, wiping the blood from his chin with the back of his hand.
As he did so, he nudged the limp body weakly with his foot.
“Son of a bitch.”
The man gnashed his teeth.
His eyes, looking down at the dead body, shone strangely.
The man in the dark green raincoat knelt down and rummaged through the pockets of the corpse’s pants.
But all that came out was a car key with a black plastic handle.
There were no bills.
His ten thousand won was nowhere to be seen, perhaps shoved down its throat.
The man screamed, “Aaaargh!”
He had to find his money.
The man, leaving the bleeding corpse, stood up and shuffled towards the parked Porter truck.
The car door was open.
Even if it were closed, it wouldn’t matter.
The car key was in his hand.
The man got into the car and rummaged through the interior.
However, no matter how thoroughly he searched, all he found were a few coins.
Even all together, they didn’t amount to his ten thousand won.
The man slammed his fists on the steering wheel as if to break it.
His anger simply wouldn’t subside.
All he could think about was his rightful money.
How could he find the money?
The man sat in the car, thinking only of that.
Then, the man’s pupils came alive as he discovered his reflection in the rearview mirror.
The man adjusted the rearview mirror to his line of sight and put on an innocent expression.
He gently gripped and touched the steering wheel, which he had been angrily pounding just moments before, and hummed.
The man got out of the car.
Looking at it this way, it was a car that perfectly suited him.
The man put the car key he had taken from the dead man’s pants earlier into his pocket and fiddled with it.
As he did so, he hummed again.
It was still a pitch-black night.
The man, who had pulled back his raincoat hood, stood once more before the dead body.
With an expressionless face, he looked down at the waxy, doll-like body that was beginning to stiffen.
And without a care, he lifted the two limp legs, one in each hand.
The series of actions was incredibly natural and skillful.
The man, who dropped the body, now a lump of meat, into the back of the Porter, unfastened the latch and lowered the aluminum panel.
The man, who loaded the body into the back of the Porter, one leg at a time, surveyed his surroundings, then casually closed the aluminum panel again.
With a single clank sound, he added a hum.
The man, who got into his newly acquired Porter truck, took the car key from his pocket and inserted it.
The engine roared loudly, sending shivers through his body.
He thought there was a reason he didn’t dislike the sound when he heard it earlier, and he gripped the steering wheel.
Soon, the Porter truck exited the narrow alley.
Finally, silence settled in the alley, which had been noisy with horrifying sounds.
But that too was only for a moment; as if on cue, raindrops pitter-pattered, plop, then the fierce sound of rain began to fill the alley.
The turbulent sound of rain filled the alley and even thoroughly cleaned the stained ground.
The cries of insects echoed mournfully over the cruel night.
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