Episode 231
Surprisingly, Hong Kyung-jun was sincere.
“The case I’m in charge of is not over yet. It’s not impossible to work together, but I don’t think it’s polite to the victims of the case. I know other capable people, so I’ll introduce them to you…”
“Stop making such a fuss, you’re driving me crazy.”
“What are you talking about? You came here with tattered hands over the weekend. You can’t ignore my legitimate opinions like this.”
“Who is ignoring me?”
Even when I was so tired I thought I would die, I could still laugh at the absurdity of it. Lee Jae-heon said this while giggling in front of Detective Hong Kyung-joon, who was looking at me seriously.
“I know that you, detective, who is not very flexible, are sensitive about this, but calm down. It’s nothing serious, it’s just a fight between brothers.”
“So, should I report this as domestic violence?”
“Oh, detective, if your brother threw a pillow at you, would you report it as domestic violence?”
“How can that be the same as this? And the pillow can also be used as a murder weapon. Mainly for suffocation.”
“There are no rich people who can think of themselves as ordinary. You have to accept the difference between royalty and commoners.”
“This is a matter of character before the state of one’s finances….”
Lee Jae-heon nodded immediately as Hong Kyung-jun spoke with a frown.
“I admit that.”
“… … .”
“I can’t do it.”
Lee Jae-heon couldn’t help but acknowledge my brother’s character. When Hong Kyung-jun’s expression became sullen and even bitter, Lee Jae-heon looked at his hand and said.
“Fingersnails won’t grow back anyway. It’s okay.”
“Is the psychological damage that Mr. Lee Jae-heon suffered okay?”
“Now you’re making sense.”
“… … .”
“… Don’t look at me like that, I’ll be careful.”
Anyway, the inhabitants of this world were all chicks, so it was frustrating. Even when his colleagues in his previous life accidentally lost their limbs, they were busy teasing each other. It wasn’t Lee Jae-heon’s taste to drag them on like this.
But this kind of hyper-concern was also necessary.
“If I had been a better person, this wouldn’t have happened… What a shame.”
“…Mr. Lee Jae-heon is a good enough person.”
“No way.”
With a self-deprecating snort, ‘Lee Jae-heon’ did not hide his tired face.
“There is no place for me even in hell.”
Well, I’m not a character from this world.
Lee Jae-heon swallowed the light-hearted remark and looked at Detective Hong Kyung-joon with a calm gaze. The reason he looked a little upset was because Lee Jae-heon’s unexpected words seemed quite absurd and sudden. Lee Jae-heon covered his current face with the face from his previous life if possible.
“… I had a vague belief in my family. At least they wouldn’t do something like this. They wouldn’t do something crazy like this. Well, something like that… Actually, I don’t really think it’s a belief. It’s just things that people naturally expect.”
“…You believed that he wouldn’t commit a crime?”
“I didn’t even want that, and there are things like that. For example… .”
Although he looked calm, ‘Lee Jae-heon’ could not meet Hong Kyung-jun’s eyes.
“Things like threats, robbery… murder.”
At the very least, it was to let people know that ‘Lee Jae-heon’ had a proper sense of law-abiding and common sense. That he was different from ‘Lee Jae-heon’s’ family, and that he was not the same type of people as them.
“… You said you were going fishing with your brother. So does that mean your brother committed murder? When you went down to Busan today?”
“Brother, you didn’t kill anyone.”
“then….”
“I killed him.”
He has a calm but shaky voice, and a calm face but a calm gaze.
“This is my first time killing something in real life….”
“… Mr. Lee Jae-heon.”
“Detective Hong Kyung-jun.”
I can confidently say that the current Lee Jae-heon would have an expression similar to that of his previous life.
“Is there an empty seat in the prison?”
Detective Hong Kyung-joon’s face hardened even more as he raised the corners of his mouth as if he was mocking someone else. Of course, this is an expression I often made in my past life. By now, Hong Kyung-joon would be looking at Lee Jae-heon and thinking of his dead shooter.
In this way, the sins of ‘Lee Jae-heon’ had to be covered up and passed over.
“You said you would arrest me someday. You even said you would handcuff me.”
“… I didn’t say this with this situation in mind.”
“Did you know that it was me? I, even in real life… am a person… .”
“… … .”
“I feel dirty.”
He frowned once, then pretended to be calm again. This showed that he had no intention of evading the sin he had committed.
“It always feels dirty to kill something alive.”
“…How many people did you kill?”
“Should I also include the ones killed in the other world? Then it would be fine.”
“Mr. Lee Jae-heon.”
“There was one.”
To be exact, there were six people including the errand boy, but Lee Jae-heon swallowed that fact as it was. It was a story that was not necessarily necessary for the setting of ‘Lee Jae-heon’.
“Well, even so… .”
Lee Jae-heon, who had been quietly watching Hong Kyung-joon looking at me with strange eyes, narrowed his eyes and smiled as he continued to speak.
“What does it matter? He’s already a murderer.”
At those words, Hong Kyung-joon’s eyes wavered. It meant that the suffocating sense of duty that could be called Detective Hong Kyung-joon’s specialty was partially crumbling. Lee Jae-heon thought that Detective Hong Kyung-joon could not be an exception unless the current situation were different. He had to push through the current atmosphere as much as possible.
That way, they would identify ‘Lee Jae-heon’ with his dead shooter, and then even if he commits a crime later, they would turn a blind eye to it a few times. That much forced trust was needed.
“I originally planned to keep my mouth shut and let it go… but I didn’t know that our detective would come looking for me. What a shame, I could have remained a good citizen who committed no crime.”
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“… You don’t seem particularly sorry. If you really wanted to hide it and move on, you wouldn’t have opened the door so easily. You seem more like a victim than a perpetrator right now, so if you hadn’t told me, I wouldn’t have known and let it go.”
“Maybe so.”
The faint smile on Lee Jae-heon’s face gradually disappeared.
“But I don’t like that.”
“…What exactly do you want?”
“I hope that Detective Hong Kyung-jun will remain faithful to his job.”
“Are you telling me to arrest Mr. Lee Jae-heon?”
“I don’t know for sure, but won’t it happen someday?”
He spoke with a face that was almost expressionless but very tired, and in a flat voice.
“People die in the end. There is an end. There is also a process to get there.”
“… I know. It’s a given.”
“I have never once felt like this process was going my way. When I was born into the Lee family, when I was first devoured by the other world, when I survived and couldn’t die in it… Even when my coworkers discovered the existence of the other world.”
“that….”
“I’ll probably live a long time. I’ll try my best. There are new survivors, and I know more than they do… Jeong In-ho will help me. With that expectation, I won’t die.”
“I can’t tell Mr. Lee Jae-heon to die in peace. You killed a person and became a murderer. You deserve to pay the price.”
“I don’t want any words of comfort from you, inflexible detective. Didn’t I say that before? I just want you to stick to your job.”
He smiled faintly.
“Since I couldn’t choose the course, I want to decide even the ending.”
“…Is this a sentence that I will die?”
“It’s a declaration that I will live like that. I can’t escape the other world anyway, and I will die in it someday. That’s not something I can do anything about. Even if Detective Hong Kyung-joon wanted to put me in prison, he wouldn’t be able to do that. That would only be possible after I die…”
“… … .”
“So, detective, live longer than me.”
Hong Kyung-jun was looking at Lee Jae-heon with a stern face, and he could see the sticky confusion deep inside the other person’s eyes. It meant that he was looking at ‘Lee Jae-heon’ and the shooter.
“Then I’ll be arrested too.”
Now there is nothing he can do.
All that’s left is to calmly wait for Hong Kyung-jun to fully accept my feelings.
* * *
“Oh, of course not now.”
“…What do you mean?”
“Arrests, investigations, whatever. I’ve been working hard to get things done, and then you suddenly start acting wild and trying to catch criminals, and it’s a headache. Please refrain from doing so.”
“I think the words ‘restraint’ are needed by Jae-Heon Lee, not me.”
Hong Kyung-jun felt a headache and pressed his forehead with his hand.
I knew very well that it was not polite to compare people. Even if the person was not a good person subjectively or objectively, it was even more so. Even the facial expressions, speech, and actions were lacking, and even the accidents. It was difficult to understand why there were so many similarities.
“…I hate criminals.”
“Everyone would do that.”
“There are many people who don’t like it, and I dislike it more than average.”
“That’s what a detective should do.”
“I guess you’re a little less tired now.”
Crime is harmful.
“Really… crime should not exist in this world.”
Of course, there are many people who don’t know this. Or, there are many who do it even though they know it.
There are people in the world who harm good citizens who exist somewhere with the words ‘flexibility’, ‘tradition’, and ‘custom’, and that is clearly a crime. Hong Kyung-joon detested such criminals. However, he was not stupid enough to run wild without knowing the reality. That was the reason why he did not handcuff the police chief who was obviously committing corruption.
“I think that’s what you’re telling me to hear right now.”
“You understood. I feel so relieved.”
“It doesn’t look like that at all.”
“under….”
But perhaps it was precisely because of that lack of subject matter comprehension that I was living an even more chaotic life. It would have been better if I had not made any exceptions at all.
He asked Lee Jae-heon, who was looking at his tattered hands as if nothing was wrong.
“…Do you want to die?”
“…Is this a threat?”
“I was literally asking if you wanted to die.”
“Everyone asks me that, but I’m really full of the will to live.”
“That’s the funniest joke I’ve heard all year.”
“Even if people talk….”
“People who have a will to live don’t live like that.”
Not wanting to live, wanting to die… ultimately means that life is painful.
“… As you may have investigated, there was a person who was my senior.”
“… Are you talking about the deceased person?”
“That’s right. And Mr. Lee Jae-heon looks exactly like that senior. By the way, I neither respect nor admire that person.”
“You insult both the living and the dead at the same time.”
“He was that selfish of a person.”
He would gently grate people’s nerves with his sly smile, and he never took a case seriously even when it was filed. He was a detective who always solved cases on the edge, moving through loopholes in the law like a snake jumping over a wall. Aside from being annoyingly competent, his personality was not at all emulatory. Thanks to that, Hong Kyung-joon’s rigid thinking became a little more flexible.
But it felt like it would disappear at any moment, and it was obvious that he didn’t expect anything from anyone. And yet, he showed selfish and cruel affection, and when he came to his senses, he was by that person’s side.
“He was a selfish… to be precise, yet kind person. He didn’t respect or admire me, but he was someone I could treat as a friend.”
“… It’s a difficult story to understand.”
“One day, that person killed a person.”
“… … .”
“I committed murder.”
I still remember that day.
“I killed the criminal who murdered multiple minors.”
The shooter at that time was smiling happily. His face was as if all the tasks he had to do were over, and he looked at Hong Kyung-jun, who had come to see him, with a calm look of pride. Looking at his blood-covered appearance, Hong Kyung-jun realized that this was the end for him.
That was the ending he had decided on.
“… The body was badly damaged and there were many witnesses, so perhaps it is natural that no leniency was taken into account… and the person himself said he had no intention of defending himself and went to prison.”
“That’s an interesting story.”
“Not long after that, he committed suicide in prison.”
Hong Kyung-jun met Lee Jae-heon’s gaze.
“I was laughing.”
Brightly, to the point of being annoying.
The shooter who died like that without any regrets was the only exception for Hong Kyung-jun. He was an exception that even he, who hated criminals so much, could not completely hate or completely deny. That was not only Hong Kyung-jun, but all the detectives who remembered him were like that.
And Hong Kyung-jun had to worry about the same thing again.
“… I hope that the ending that Jae-heon Lee wants is not like that.”
“sure.”
“Damn, I can’t believe this.”
Whether to accept the person in front of you as an exception or to hate him.
“Please live a normal life.”
The answer was already out there.
Lee Jae-heon was more than just an exception.
