Kill Your X Chapter 69

“Ugh, cough, cough!”

As the door opened, a cloud of yellow dust spewed out from inside. Faced with the stuffy air characteristic of a long-sealed space, we all instinctively covered our noses with our forearms.

“Aww man, the dust is insane. I think my rhinitis is going to act up.”

“Hmm. There’s nothing in here. Gyujin. You said there was an item here that lured the victims?”

The inside of the cabin was as small as it looked from the outside. It took less than a few seconds to look around the space, which was barely two pyeong (T/N: One pyeong is approximately equal to 3.31 square meters or 35.58 square feet).

I once again retraced my memories. My father had a rather long conversation with the victim inside this cabin. I clearly remember that the person, who had been suspicious of my father before going in, had a complete 180-degree change in attitude when they came out.

Something hidden is definitely here.

I slowly walked around the narrow space with a low ceiling. Then, I suddenly noticed a part that felt out of place. I tapped each of the old, creaky wooden floorboards with the toe of my shoe, and only one section, about a handspan wide, had a different echo.

“Hyun Jin. Step on this. And compare it to the spot right next to it.”

“The floor? Hmm, oh, oh! It’s a little different. It feels like it’s empty inside here.”

“Both of you, move.”

Detective Nam immediately got down on the floor and found a hidden crack. He grabbed two wooden planks and lifted them up whole, and a hidden underground space was finally revealed.

“The cabin was a fake, this was the real deal.”

Detective Nam stuck his head into the opening and then quickly went inside. When Hyun Jin, who was watching from above, tried to follow him, he stretched out his hand to stop him.

“There’s no room for you to come in, so you stay there, Hyun Jin. Hoo, sss.”

Detective Nam shone his flashlight around and was at a loss for words. From a quick glance, it looked like something was tightly packed inside. Detective Nam instructed Hyun Jin to shine a light from above and took several pictures of the interior with his phone camera. When he came back up, he had a mesmerized expression on his face.

“I want to see the pictures too. What on earth is in there? Is it the murder weapon? A knife? A gun? Rope?”

“This is….”

“It’s drugs. The amount in there is worth at least several billion won. Judging by the packaging, it seems to have been left like this for a while.”

On the night of the incident, my father lured his colleagues here, claiming to have found definitive evidence related to organized crime. To think that it was drugs of all things.

“Detective. Those are real drugs, not counterfeits, right?”

“Yes. This amount exceeds what a single broker would typically handle, so it’s a mystery why it’s hidden here. And why it hasn’t been picked up yet.”

In the first place, it was an amount that would be difficult to transport to this mountain alone. I don’t know how he did it, but it seems my father obtained a large quantity of real drugs, placed them here, and then pretended to have caught a criminal hiding them.

“Detective. An amount this large would be a pretty big case even for the violent crimes unit, right?”

“It’s more than pretty big. In a situation where even dealing in grams is a problem, imagine if the drugs here were to be released onto the market. The country could really be devastated. This is the first time I’ve seen this much in a single haul.”

We left the cabin for the time being. Hyun Jin, his tension released, collapsed onto the ground.

“So the bait to lure the missing detectives was the drugs. Even if they came here initially suspecting my father, seeing such conclusive evidence must have tempted them for a moment. He made them let their guard down like that and then….”

It was too quiet next to me, so I turned my head. Detective Nam was staring at the distant mountains with troubled eyes.

“Are you okay?”

“Kang Junseop, Choi Sehun. Those two were the most just and responsible people among the police officers I knew. There were countless times I felt they were amazing while working with them. They would jump into any dangerous situation, no matter how perilous, to apprehend a criminal.”

His dry voice, which had sounded somewhat cynical at first, gradually became tinged with emotion.

“Foolishly, I’m only now having these thoughts. If only those friends had been a little more self-serving, if they had just turned a blind eye to the corruption and chosen to become Song Jeonggun’s accomplices instead, they might have saved their lives. Perhaps they could have lived much more prosperous lives….”

The sorrow of losing his colleagues overnight. The regret over a past where he couldn’t act rashly even though he knew something was wrong, overwhelmed the man. As the atmosphere grew increasingly serious, Hyun Jin hesitantly got up from his seat. I looked at the sky and saw that the sun had set even more than before.

There is no time to be lost in sorrow. It is now time to act.

“Detective. Please start posting the broadcast announcement on the community sites. The place where the bodies are buried is behind that large tree over there.”

I grabbed the shovels we had left lying around and went to the spot in question. Hyun Jin, who trotted after me, poked the ground’s surface lightly with his shovel.

“There are large trees all over the forest, but only here are a few trees cut down. Do you think the culprit marked it in their own way?”

“I think so. The location where the bodies are buried won’t be outside the area marked by these trees, at the very least.”

“Wow, I have to be really careful when I dig. I’m suddenly nervous.”

While Hyun Jin was stretching and warming up, Detective Nam found a spot with a relatively good signal and set up the tripod. As the scheduled broadcast time approached, Hyun Jin covered his face with a black cap and a mask. I, on the other hand, was bare-faced.

“Sunbae, don’t you think it would be better for you to wear at least a mask? Even on the news, they cover the suspects’ faces. Oh, I’m not saying you’re a suspect, Sunbae, but anyway, you don’t need to reveal your face so openly like this.”

“Even if I cover my face, my personal information will spread all over the internet once the broadcast starts. It’s not a pleasant thing to bring up, so I’m sorry to mention it, but you were also involved in a controversy once. I didn’t know, but people in our country are really good at searching for information.”

“Sunbae….”

“And after the broadcast starts, try not to talk as much as possible. You never know if some pervert might try to guess your identity from your voice. I didn’t know, but there are a lot of really strange people in the world.”

Hyun Jin kept his mouth firmly shut for a while. With most of his face covered, it was difficult to tell what expression he was making or what he was thinking.

I did ask an unreasonable favor, but I guess it will be difficult to maintain the same relationship with Hyun Jin as before after this incident. A fierce competition between guilt and gratitude raged within me. I resented the reality where I had no choice but to be extremely selfish.

“This is the first time I’ve shoveled since I was discharged from the military. You too, right?”

I intentionally threw out a lighthearted comment, but Hyun Jin said something else. The look in his eyes above the mask was quite sharp. It was a rare kind of sharpness from him.

“Sunbae, I’m asking because I’m really curious.”

“Yeah.”

“Why on earth are you doing all this? Is there another reason you couldn’t tell me?”

“Why do you think that?”

“To be blunt, you lived just fine for ten years knowing the truth, Sunbae. Of course, I agree a hundred times over that what you’re doing is right, but if you do it this way, you’ll lose too much, Sunbae. On the other hand, the only thing you gain is the realization of justice.”

At Hyun Jin’s words, the first person I thought of was Seo Seunghan, who must be locked up in the detention center. No matter how tough an environment he grew up in, it must be his first time going to prison, so I was worried it would be hard for him. He was a being who was originally in hell. I didn’t want him to stay in such a dark and hopeless environment for even one more day.

In the end, every reason led back to Seo Seunghan.

“Our Hyun Jin, you should be a detective instead of a librarian, huh?”

I grinned at Hyun Jin.

“What?”

“You’re right. For the first time in my life, I have someone I want to protect.”

“Who is that.”

“The broadcast is starting. Get ready!”

I made a zipping motion over my lips. Hyun Jin, bewildered, just gripped the handle of his shovel tightly.

Before long, the live broadcast began.

Detective Nam’s preparation for the broadcast was thorough. He split the screen into two, showing a full view on one side and a hand-held camera view on the other.

I heard that he had posted the announcement about uncovering the evidence on several community sites in addition to the video site, and the phrase ‘The decisive evidence that will take down Song Jeonggun in one fell swoop’ seemed to have been quite effective in attracting attention. As soon as the broadcast started, the number of viewers was tallied in the hundreds.

Detective Nam, wearing a mini microphone, spoke to the camera. His tone was reminiscent of a police briefing.

“We will now begin the search for the bodies of the victims of the police disappearance case. In discovering the crime scene that has been hidden for over ten years, we have, coincidentally, received great help from Song Jeonggun’s son. He has known about his father’s crimes for a long time, but was unable to speak out due to fear, and has finally mustered up the courage to do so.”

With that, the camera turned to me. It was close to evening, so it was getting dark, but not so dark that my acquaintances wouldn’t recognize me.