The Taste of Lies Chapter 2

Youngmin held out a cutter. The steel tool was large enough to pry open a car door. The man gave a light nod and took the cutter.

Scrape, clang!

The metal seal binding the container door was cut away. Stepping back one pace, the members rushed forward and grabbed the lever.

“Open!”

Creak—

The massive doors swung open to both sides. Eyes swollen with anticipation turned toward the inside.

But,

“…?”

“Did we get the wrong container?”

There was nothing inside. Neither the diplomat’s household goods nor the items he was supposed to send were there.

The container was completely empty.

The air carried from afar flowed out of the container in vain. Amid the embarrassing silence, the sound of dozens of people running rapidly could be heard—thud, thud, thud.

“Kim Sangtae, hands up! Police!”

The command amplified through a megaphone echoed across the night sky.

The man whose name was called turned around in confusion. The cutter slipped from his hand.

“Hands up! Move and we’ll shoot!”

Police special forces in bulletproof vests and helmets, armed with rifles, sprang out from all directions. His ominous预感 had been correct. He hadn’t expected it to become this worst-case scenario, but…

“Ma Youngmin, this is—”

Bang!

A gunshot rang out. The members did not obediently follow the police’s warning. A frightened fool pulled the trigger. Using the gunshot as a signal, some rushed forward, others fled—pandemonium broke out. Muzzles on both sides spat flames.

Ting—!

A bullet ricocheted off the asphalt ground.

“Ugh—!”

Youngmin clutched his side. Dark red blood seeped through his fingers, staining his white shirt.

“Ma Youngmin!”

His field of vision narrowed to a point in an instant. How did the police find this place? Sangtae couldn’t even form that obvious question. Only the red blood spilling from Youngmin filled his vision.

“Come here!”

Sangtae slipped his body under Youngmin’s armpit and started running. The wound must have been deep—the weight of Youngmin leaning against him felt immense. Youngmin was a head taller than Sangtae, making even taking a single step laborious.

“Fuck, what the hell happened…? Stay with me, Ma Youngmin!”

Dodging incoming bullets, Sangtae moved Youngmin almost by dragging him and took cover behind a container. The smell of gunpowder and brine stung his nostrils. Youngmin’s glasses were gone, and his face was slick with blood and sweat.

The moment he saw the blood seeping between his fingers, everything else in Sangtae’s mind was erased. The screams of the members, the gunfire, the chairman’s threat that it would be over if this operation failed.

He had to save him, no matter what. He couldn’t leave him behind. Gripped by that compulsion, he couldn’t even feel the fire under his own feet.

Sangtae loosened his own tie and pulled Youngmin’s off as well. He tied the two together and bound them tightly around Youngmin’s ribs, pulling them taut. After that rough first aid, Sangtae draped Youngmin’s arm over the back of his own neck.

“Ugh…”

“Hang on. I’ll, I’ll get you to a doctor.”

Careful to leave no blood trails for the police to follow, he moved his feet. Walking between containers stacked high as fortress walls, he headed in the opposite direction from the noise.

In the distance, a barbed-wire fence came into view. Just around the corner was a side gate; beyond that lay the parking lot. Their vehicle was parked there. He didn’t have a license, but he could manage to drive somehow.

“Just hold on a little longer. We’re almost… there.”

“…?”

“…What’s wrong?”

Suddenly, Youngmin stopped walking. The weight on his shoulder grew heavier.

Is he exhausted?

Suppressing the urge to collapse himself, Sangtae turned his head toward Youngmin.

“Too tired? Should I carry you on my back?”

“…?”

He didn’t answer. But then, as if by magic, his shoulder felt light. The weight of Youngmin he had been bearing disappeared.

“What?”

Sangtae came to his senses with a jolt. Something strange had happened. Youngmin, whom he had thought was exhausted, was standing upright on both feet.

His side, which should have been soaked with blood, was already dry. The shirt was stained with an artificial color, as if splashed with fake paint.

On the parched dirt ground, only two pairs of footprints lay scattered messily. There wasn’t a single drop of blood that should have fallen to the ground. The blood on his hands smelled sweetly of ketchup.

“What the—!”

Before he could finish speaking, Youngmin reached out his arm at a speed that made it utterly impossible to believe he had been shot in the side.

He roughly pushed Sangtae’s shoulder backward. Before the impact of his shoulder hitting the container could even reach his head, a bony hand grabbed Sangtae by the throat.

“Guh, ugh…”

Sangtae struggled. He desperately tried to grab and pry off the hand strangling him, but the more he did, the more fiercely Youngmin squeezed. His lifted toes kicked at the dirt ground.

Why?

Eyes wide, Sangtae gaped like a goldfish. For a situation where Yeonhaepa’s life-or-death smuggling operation had gone awry and members were being shot dead, the question was far too trivial.

Youngmin did not open his mouth. Flailing, Sangtae asked again.

Why?!

Asking a question too insignificant even to mock, Sangtae recalled the kiss from just a few minutes ago.

Come to think of it, Youngmin’s tongue had tasted of iron.

Youngmin had reassured Sangtae that things would go well, but he had known of the failure. Whenever he lied, he always bit the inside of his mouth until it bled.

The kiss had tasted of lies.

“Betrayal…”

Youngmin had betrayed Sangtae.

Twice over.

Sangtae had charged headlong into a foretold misfortune.

See? As expected, love blinds you, doesn’t it?

∞ ∞ ∞

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁣⁣⁠⁠⁣⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁣⁠⁠⁠⁣⁣⁣⁣⁠⁣⁣⁠⁣⁣⁣⁠⁠⁣⁠⁣⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁣⁠⁣⁠⁠⁣⁣⁣⁠⁠⁠⁠⁣⁣⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠This neighborhood was called Meokgogae, which, when interpreted, meant Black Hill. It was because of the black peat that came up abundantly even when you dug only thirty centimeters into the ground.

What was buried in Mukhyeon wasn’t just peat. Digging down hundreds of meters revealed vast amounts of coal, and in those days when every household used briquettes, repeated mining had covered the skies here with coal dust.

Black dust settled everywhere. On the earthenware jars, on the rooftops, and even on the pure white school uniform shirts.

It was literally a black hill neighborhood, but the people here remembered that time as Mukhyeon’s golden age. Even if they spent every day digging in the mining face, they bought houses, bought cars, and trains carrying coal came through. Schools, hospitals, movie theaters, and nightclubs were all built back then. They also got the chance to escape tiresome Korea and immigrate to developed countries.

Now that most people use gas boilers, it’s all just a past that has disappeared, leaving behind only a few old men suffering from pneumoconiosis.

Sangtae sat on a bench at the bus stop next to the terminal. His face was oddly expectant and excited. Though he couldn’t hear any music through the earphones in his ears, he could hardly keep his bouncing knees still.

A few months ago, a casino opened in the region facing Mukhyeon across the Taebaek Mountains. Since he didn’t have the money to buy rat poison even if he was starving to death, Sangtae thought the casino had nothing to do with him, but in reality, that wasn’t the case.

Not long ago, Sangtae bumped into an unfamiliar face in Mukhyeon. The other person, seemingly in a hurry somewhere, bumped shoulders first and didn’t apologize. His punk pride couldn’t tolerate that.

Harsh words were exchanged, and eventually fists flew. Added to that was the attention of passersby.

“Take this and get lost.”

The moment he was punched and knocked flat, banknotes fluttered down over his head. The bills the man scattered at random from his wallet smelled of crisp new money.

Sangtae realized belatedly.

So this is hush money.

The visits of unfamiliar faces continued. Before long, the people of Mukhyeon learned that those fellows were idiots who had lost all their money at the casino gambling tables, borrowed more from loan sharks, and then lost nearly all of that too. They had been fleeing in the opposite direction from Seoul to avoid repaying the money, carrying petty cash in their wallets—an amount that was quite a fortune in Mukhyeon. And before they could even spend what was left, they were caught by loan sharks or hanged themselves in the mountains of Mukhyeon. The hush money the man had thrown at Sangtae was also that kind of money.