Chapter 10

They carried the limp Karzen into the van, loaded him inside, and climbed back in.

“Did they inject him with something?”
“Not an injection. It would take at least two people to inject a dwarf that large and strong. Look. The man who approached the driver hands him something, and the driver takes it. There were only two people in the taxi, the driver and Karzen. That driver is definitely in on it. They probably gave Karzen something to drink in the cab and knocked him unconscious.”
“I see.”
“He would’ve been thirsty after crossing dimensions for the first time. Then there’s a friendly taxi driver in an unfamiliar country. Perfect for lowering his guard. Karzen was a naïve dwarf who had only just arrived, so he probably drank whatever water or beverage the driver offered him and lost consciousness.”
“And then they kidnapped him.”
“Exactly.”

The monitor showed the van pulling ahead of the taxi.
The CCTV feeds continued switching as they tracked the vehicle.

“The trail ends here.”

The van entered the underground parking garage of a building.
The camera followed it descending farther underground before the screen went black.

“I don’t know whether the camera is broken or deliberately disabled, but I’d say the latter is much more likely. The floor below is also a parking garage, and there aren’t any cameras down there.”
“…Then what?”
“I couldn’t trace them any farther from here. I don’t know whether they changed vehicles or entered the building. There were too many cars leaving afterward to follow every single one.”

Jun-gyeong folded his arms and stared at the blank monitor.
Ok-hee stared at him for a moment before speaking.

“So we start with the taxi driver.”
“I see.”
“Here. The taxi company and vehicle number. The driver is indeed an employee of the company. His name is Kim Sang-won, and he’s still working there. Which means…”
“He’ll keep doing the same thing.”
“Exactly. Idiots tend to repeat themselves.”
“Then let’s move immediately.”
“Take this with you.”

Ok-hee held out a plastic case about half the size of a cigarette pack.
Inside was a small earpiece.

“It’s what I mentioned before. Since you’re still not comfortable using a smartphone, I decided to make up for that.”

Jun-gyeong immediately put it in his ear and left.

Jun-gyeong looked up at a rainbow-shaped sign.

“Dongyang Taxi.”

He turned toward the crime-prevention CCTV camera mounted beside a utility pole.

-Yes, that’s the place. Give me a moment.

Jun-gyeong nodded and walked into the taxi company.

-2676. There it is. Lucky us.

Jun-gyeong checked the license plates of the taxis lined up before him.
Then he checked the driver’s name displayed in front of the passenger seat.

“Didn’t you say Kim Sang-won? The name is different.”
-He may have changed shifts, or he could be waiting for the next shift.

“Hey, who are you? Looking for a cab? That one’s not running right now.”

Jun-gyeong turned toward the voice.
A half-bald man with a toothpick in his mouth was gesturing lazily with one hand.

“Don’t bother with that one. Wait by the entrance over there and take the next cab heading out. It’s mealtime, so that car isn’t going anywhere.”

Jun-gyeong gave a slight nod and approached him.

“Where’s the cafeteria?”
“The cafeteria? Why, you planning to eat here?”

The man looked Jun-gyeong up and down.

“You don’t exactly look like someone who’d eat here. Go that way. There should still be some food left.”

Jun-gyeong dipped his head slightly and headed toward the cafeteria.
He slid open the double aluminum doors and stepped inside, where the small cafeteria was packed with people.

-Haah~ There’s too many people. I can’t identify him from here.
“There’s no need.”

Jun-gyeong assumed that opening the Book of Karmic Sin would make it easy to identify Kim Sang-won.
But text immediately appeared above every head in the room, overlapping into such a chaotic mess that it became even harder to tell who was who.
So Jun-gyeong stepped forward and shouted.

“KIM! SANG! WON!”

Every person eating instantly turned to stare at him.
A handsome man stood there in a shirt that looked ready to burst.
He had a delicate, almost feminine face, yet his body radiated unmistakable masculinity.
He was striking enough to attract attention without raising his voice, but once that deep, resonant shout rang out, not a single person failed to look.
Even the cooks and nutritionists in the kitchen leaned out to see what was happening.

Then several of those gazes shifted toward one particular man.

“Ah, fuck.”

Clatter-!

Kim Sang-won immediately threw down his spoon and bolted toward the kitchen.
Watching through the cafeteria CCTV, Ok-hee raised one corner of her mouth.

-Nice! Gooood~.

Jun-gyeong leisurely turned around and walked back outside through the entrance.
No matter how hard Sang-won ran, there was no escaping Ok-hee’s surveillance within Seoul.
Just as she had said, CCTV cameras were everywhere throughout the city.
Especially when he was fleeing on foot rather than by car.

“Huff… Hah… Fuck. What the hell was that? Police? Did those idiots get caught? Huff… Huff… Fucking brain-dead gangsters.”

Sang-won ducked into a narrow alley and wound through several turns, repeatedly looking behind him.

“There’s no way he’ll find me after this. No detective would chase someone this damn hard.”

He slipped through the rear door of a building halfway down the alley.
Then he climbed the stairs to the fifth floor, opened a door, and went inside.

“Fuck. No way that bastard finds me here.”

He dropped heavily onto a filthy sofa.
A cloud of dust rose around him, but he merely waved a hand through it a few times and stared blankly at the window with exhausted eyes.
Dust and old adhesive film coated the glass so heavily that barely any sunlight entered.
A tattered billiards sign outside the window fluttered in the wind, suggesting the place had once been a pool hall.

Clunk-

At the sound of the door opening, Sang-won’s head snapped around.
This was an abandoned shop in a dead commercial district.
No one had any reason to come here.
His eyes widened in shock.

“Wh-What? How did you… find this place?”

Jun-gyeong stepped inside and looked around.
An old sofa, some billiards equipment against the wall, and two pool tables were the only signs that the place had once operated as a billiards hall.

“Who the fuck are you? A detective?”

Jun-gyeong looked at him.

Kim Sang-won looked around and picked up a pool cue from the floor.

“How did you find me?”

He thrust the cue forward threateningly.
Jun-gyeong simply watched him, regardless of what he did.

Whoosh- Whoosh-
“Don’t come any closer! Move and I’ll kill you!”

Kim Sang-won swung the cue wildly back and forth.
Watching the man stagger off balance under the force of his own swings, Jun-gyeong spoke quietly.

“You’re right on the line.”

Jun-gyeong glanced over the Book of Karmic Sin and spoke to him.

“Put that down.”
“Go fuck yourself, you bastard!”

A faint smile appeared on Jun-gyeong’s face.

“Is that so? You’ll regret it.”

He couldn’t kill the man unless his life was threatened, but that hardly made Sang-won a good person.
There were plenty of ways to make him regret his life without killing him.
Jun-gyeong slipped a hand into his pocket.
When he pulled it back out, he was holding the short blade that resembled a sashimi knife.

“Wh-What? How the hell did that come out of there?”
“As long as I don’t kill you, it’s fine, isn’t it? That’s easy enough.”

Startled by Jun-gyeong’s words, Sang-won began backing away.
His eyes trembled as he stared at the blade.

“Y-You… Don’t tell me… You’re…”

Sang-won swallowed hard, his whole body trembling, before forcing out the words.

“Y-You’re with the cleanup crew? D-Did the Saenara Gang send you? Why? Ah, fuck. Are they cutting me loose?”

Terrified out of his wits, he began babbling on his own.

“You bastards. You used me all this time, and now you’re doing this? How is that fair?! Fuck, do you know how much shit I went through? I did everything you asked. I picked out targets, drugged their drinks and knocked them out, delivered them for you. Fuck! Why are you doing this to me?”

His indignant rant continued as though he were the real victim.

“I never told anyone anything. Not that you were the Saenara Gang, not that the kidnapped people were being gathered at Incheon Port. Not even that you… kidnapped an elf.”
-They kidnapped an elf?! Those fucking lunatics!

Ok-hee shouted through the earpiece, and Jun-gyeong frowned.
The situation seemed to be becoming far more complicated.
Jun-gyeong did not know why kidnapping an elf was such a serious matter, but judging by Ok-hee’s reaction, it was clearly no ordinary problem.
Even so, Jun-gyeong’s objective had not changed.
From the beginning until now, his goal remained finding Karzen.
Jun-gyeong spoke in a low voice.

“I won’t kill you.”
“You won’t kill me, you’ll just cripple me! You think I don’t know? You’re going to leave me rotting in a wheelchair for the rest of my life!”

Tears began filling the man’s eyes.

“It’s not like I wanted to know any of this. How would I have known if you hadn’t made me deliver those drugs or aphrodisiacs or whatever they were?”

Jun-gyeong’s eyebrow twitched sharply.

“Deliver?”
“Ah, fuck! Yeah! Drug deliveries. Why are you pretending you don’t know? You made me do it three times! You had me deliver them to Warehouse 16. Warehouse 16 at Incheon Port. All I did was deliver the drugs and get treated to women once or twice. So go fuck those bastards up instead of me.”
“……”

Sang-won dropped to his knees and began begging.

“I… It wasn’t me. I only delivered the drugs. I didn’t do anything wrong. It wasn’t me…”

Jun-gyeong calmly approached him and placed the blade in his hand.
The man looked back and forth between the knife in his hand and Jun-gyeong.

“I have a few rules.”

Jun-gyeong took one step back.
With his arms crossed, he looked impassively down at Sang-won, who was trembling like a leaf while clutching the blade.

“One rule says I cannot kill a human unless my life is threatened.”

One corner of Jun-gyeong’s mouth twisted upward as he looked down at the man.

“And another says I don’t leave men alive after they violate innocent women. You did exactly that, and now you’re holding a knife and threatening my life.”
“Th-This… Y-You put this in my hand…!”

Sang-won was just beginning to protest.
Jun-gyeong’s hand lashed out like a whip and seized him by the hair.
The strength in his grip was impossible to believe it was from a human.
He hauled Sang-won upward as though he meant to tear the scalp from his skull.

CRRK!!
“Aaagh!”

Sang-won screamed as pain tore through his scalp, his head bending back like a sunflower on its stalk.
His distorted face, smeared with tears and saliva, came directly before Jun-gyeong’s icy gaze.

“It’s all right. You trampled all over those women without even understanding what you’d done wrong. Then you forgave yourself. So I decided to do what you did and convince myself that my life is in danger. A threat to my life.”

His low voice entered Sang-won’s ear with a chilling gentleness.
Jun-gyeong lightly twisted the wrist of the hand holding the knife.
Driven by irresistible force, the razor-sharp blade slowly rose beneath Sang-won’s own chin.

“The moment you laid your hands on a drugged woman.”

Sang-won’s pupils dilated violently.
He couldn’t even force out a scream begging for his life.

“That was the moment your life ended.”

Thk-

Without hesitation, Jun-gyeong drove the blade upward.
With a sharp metallic scrape, hard jawbone and soft flesh were grotesquely crushed as the blade drove deeper.

“Kgh… Kh… Save… me…”

Blood surged from Sang-won’s throat.
Jun-gyeong tightened his grip and drove the hilt farther upward.
When the blade pierced through his tongue and reached the base of his brain, Sang-won’s convulsing eyes went dull.
Jun-gyeong pulled the blade free without a trace of emotion.

SPURT-!

The compressed blood vessels ruptured, spraying dark-red blood like a fountain.
Jun-gyeong’s shirt was drenched in blood, but he didn’t care.
He could never forgive men who forced themselves on innocent women.
It was Jun-gyeong’s nightmare, the trigger that set him off.

He calmly wiped the blade clean on Sang-won’s clothes.
Ok-hee’s urgent voice came through the earpiece in Jun-gyeong’s ear.

-I’ll handle the cleanup. Go straight to Incheon. If an elf has been kidnapped, this could become a serious problem.
“…”
-If the elf is sold overseas or violated, no, even if they manage to escape safely, there could still be consequences. It could trigger an interdimensional war.

Jun-gyeong frowned at the word war.

-Those lunatics. They went after elves of all people, a race with pride coming out of their ears. They’re completely insane. Please hurry. Whatever happens, we have to stop this.
“Then wouldn’t there still be a problem even if we simply free the elf?”
-I’ll handle the aftermath. For now, just rescue the kidnapped people. I’ve already sent transportation for you.
“I’ll do that.”

As Jun-gyeong stepped out of the building, the roar of an engine began approaching from somewhere nearby.

VROOOOM- RAAAAAAR- SCREEECH!!