The taxi stopped in front of an old row-style villa. Jin-yong, who had been squatting by the communal door, jumped to his feet.
"Hyung!"
"The police?"
"Not here yet."
"What floor?"
The two of them went up to the second floor, where Park Juseong had lived. Just then, a neighbor living on the lower floor opened her front door and looked up. She seemed to be wondering what was going on, since strange men kept coming by.
"How did you open the door?"
"It was already open. The latch was sticking out and the door just closed like that."
Jin-yong pointed at the latch sticking out from the door lock.
"Earlier, the person who lives here slammed the door really hard when going out. When you open and close it in a hurry, it happens often. The building is just that old."
The neighbor downstairs, who had been listening, suddenly interjected.
"Did you see that person leave by any chance?"
"I only saw their back. Maybe they were in a hurry, they went out without even dressing properly."
"Around what time was that?"
"Let me see, it was before I had lunch, so maybe around one? Why? Did the two of them fight again? It’s always the same with that place. They fight so much and then they just stick together again all the time. And the noise—seriously, it’s embarrassing for me."
The neighbor spoke in a complaining tone, arms crossed as if finding it all distasteful. Judging by her harsh words, it didn’t seem like she was on good terms with them.
"Ma’am, you heard me coming in earlier too, right? I was calling out, Juseong-hyung, are you here?"
Jin-yong asked urgently, thinking of her as a witness to prove his innocence.
"Oh, I heard that too."
"Ha, shit! Good. Then please explain to the police exactly what you just told me. Okay?"
"The police? Why? What happened? Is something really going on?"
Now even more curious, the neighbor crept up the stairs. Not wanting the scene to get contaminated, Marvin told Jin-yong to deal with her and went inside alone.
It was an old villa, but there was a lot of furniture. Various odds and ends were piled here and there, and there were even two sofas in the living room. Seeing that the dining chairs were all mismatched, it looked like two households had merged their belongings.
In the master bedroom, there was an adult man lying naked on crumpled sheets. His eyes were open, and from the livor mortis, it seemed he had been dead for three or four hours. As Jin-yong had said, bruises had spread blue all over his body.
Especially around the genitals, the skin had gone beyond blue to almost black. There was a strong possibility he had died during sex, or if not, that cardiac arrest occurred after intercourse. The man who left in a hurry was probably the lover. He must have run off out of guilt, but the reason was unknown. That was for the police to figure out.
Marvin came closer to check the iris. There were no unusual signs. That meant there hadn’t been an actual manifestation. As expected, it looked like a side effect of a commonly available first-stage manifestant.
"Yeah, so I kept calling out, Juseong-hyung, Juseong-hyung, as I went to the bedroom, and shit, I just had a bad feeling! You know? And then I saw a foot on the bed and—"
Marvin quietly stepped outside and lit a cigarette. By then, Jin-yong and the neighbor were deep in conversation. Whatever fear Jin-yong had felt from seeing the body seemed to have worn off, as he was now telling the story like it was some kind of adventure.
Standing in the alley, Marvin lit the tip of his cigarette. Somewhere, a siren seemed to be sounding in the distance.
A wrinkle formed between Marvin’s brows as he exhaled smoke. His headache still hadn’t gone away, and seeing a blue corpse for the first time in a while left him unsettled.
Short-acting manifestants contained psychotropic substances classified as narcotics. An overdose could cause hallucinations and cognitive problems. In the worst case, the whole body would turn blue and die. That’s why among junkies, the drug was nicknamed Smurf. Manifestant was a fancy name, but really it was closer to an aphrodisiac.
The way it worked was simple. Ordinary people also have trait factors in their bodies. If those factors pass a certain ratio, manifestation happens, and if not, they just live as Betas. So technically, everyone was a trait carrier.
Manifestants temporarily inflate this trait ratio, tricking the brain into believing it. The brain, convinced it is a trait holder, starts allocating too much energy to the act of sex. The body gets overloaded.
That’s why you’re supposed to take at least a month off between doses. The problem was, a lot of people kept shortening the break for the thrill. The human body isn’t a machine—it needs time to recover. If you keep forcing it without rest, cardiac arrest is the result.
One small mercy was that the deceased usually didn’t realize they were dying. Death by manifestant was considered a kind of death during sex.
In the U.S., there had even been cases where both partners died with penetration still ongoing, leading to postmortem rigidity. For a while, the internet had been obsessed with stories about how they managed to separate the locked genitals afterward.
A phone rang in Marvin’s pocket. It was Yang Jin-man.
"Yeah."
Yang Jin-man’s voice blared over the receiver. It sounded like he was outside, given all the noise.
Marvin switched the phone to the hand holding his cigarette and looked back. Police officers were putting up a guard line at the villa’s entrance, and neighbors were gathering, their voices buzzing.
"You remember Park Juseong, the guy who sings on weekends?"
"There’s been an incident. It looks like he died at home. The police will probably come by the hotel to investigate."
Marvin explained the situation and asked about the singer’s contract status.
"There was a show today and we couldn’t reach him, so Jin-yong went to his place. He called the police right away. So the hotel isn’t his employer, right?"
When Marvin said it looked like an overdose of short-acting manifestant, Yang Jin-man suddenly fell silent. Sensing something suspicious, Marvin asked if there was anything he should know. There was a sigh and the sound of lighting a cigarette from the other end.
Yang Jin-man took another deep drag on his cigarette. In short, the ones supplying drugs to Park Juseong were the gangsters acting as hotel guards.
"You’ll have to say that the pharmacy business over there has nothing to do with the hotel."
Yang Jin-man kept ranting on the phone by himself. Marvin quietly smoked his cigarette. He’d been about to tell Yang Jin-man to just expect a police interview, but it looked like he was mixed up with the suppliers. It felt like every single angle was being exploited for profit.
Of course, that’s how the hotel business always went. You needed someone to watch your back if you wanted to run a stable operation. It was even worse in the provinces, where territory was carved up more aggressively. From Yang Jin-man’s perspective, there was no way he could tell them to just "keep it moderate."
"The hotel’s going to get dragged into this, too."
It wasn’t good news for Marvin either. Somehow, life in Oseong, which had been quiet until yesterday, was starting to unravel.
Yang Jin-man’s problem wasn’t exactly Marvin’s, but if the hotel shut down, he’d have nowhere to stay. More importantly, he’d lose his source of suppressants.
"Yeah. Well…"
Unfortunately, it probably wouldn’t be that simple. There would definitely be an autopsy, and the lover who’d been at the scene had run off. The dead can’t speak, so there’d be no way to know if he’d taken the drug willingly. Most likely, the lover would be charged with involuntary manslaughter.
If it went that far, the case would be referred to the prosecutor’s office, and there would be no way for the hotel to avoid getting involved. Either way, it would only take one day for the police to trace where the drugs had come from.
But Marvin didn’t say any of this to Yang Jin-man. If he acted like he knew, he’d just get stuck with more hassle.
He listened to the complaints like a bystander and then hung up. Just then, Jin-yong called out, "Hyung, they want you over here!" The detectives must have arrived. Marvin stubbed out his cigarette and slowly walked over.