“Were you a soldier?”
“No. It was just circumstances—I got some help from someone I know. It wasn’t illegal or underhanded, so you don’t have to worry.”
Jang Jin-woo listened quietly to Marvin’s reply, which offered no real information, propping his chin in his hand. That apartment was the place Marvin had stayed temporarily when he was seconded to the intelligence bureau for training.
It wasn’t exactly a lie: one of the officers at the First Army Command had lent him the quarters when Marvin had nowhere to stay upon arriving in Seoul. Marvin had actually lived there for six months before leaving Korea as soon as his training ended.
Marvin felt he needed to be more guarded. Today’s appearance was only as a witness, but Jang Jin-woo was already someone with many questions about him. In a way, this opportunity to ask anything outright might even be welcome.
“All right. Have a seat there. I won’t take long.”
Marvin sat on the two-seater sofa Jang Jin-woo indicated. Normally, the person inviting you would sit opposite, but Jang Jin-woo didn’t move from behind his desk. Marvin had no choice but to turn halfway toward him.
“You know why you’re here. The deceased, Park Juseong, was the singer at Daegyeong Hotel, right? You visited his home with Nam Jin-yong, who was being questioned outside that day. Were you close to the deceased?”
“No. I didn’t know him personally at all.”
“So you just went because you’re the hotel manager?”
“Yes.”
Jang Jin-woo glanced at his laptop monitor, as if checking the police report.
“I heard you went inside alone, leaving Jin-yong outside, to confirm the body. Why did you do that?”
“Just in case. I thought it was necessary to verify whether he was really dead.”
“That’s brave. Most people would be too scared of a corpse and wait for the police.”
Marvin hesitated, unsure if it was a question or a mutter.
“Well… Jin-yong said there were no signs of injury and his whole body was blue, so I went in just to be sure.”
“You mean you knew it was a manifestamphetamine overdose?”
“Yes. I heard that sometimes people are still alive in those cases.”
“Impressive. Were you a doctor before?”
Jang Jin-woo was still typing on the keyboard, as if not surprised. Marvin felt he had to answer.
“No, I just read it online.”
Jang Jin-woo nodded as if that explained everything.
“You must watch a lot of crime shows. The detectives said your statement was very concise. Unlike Jin-yong, no fingerprints at the scene.”
“As you know, I arrived later. Jin-yong was the first to find him, so he was probably flustered.”
“Good answer.”
Marvin fought to keep his expression from turning cold. From the start, Jang Jin-woo had behaved like a professor grading an exam—this was pretty good, but not quite the correct answer. Then he suddenly stood up and walked to the door.
“You don’t seem to be acting… nor like some thug pretending to know things he’s just heard.”
That only made it more confusing.
Muttering to himself, Jang Jin-woo lowered the blinds on the window in the door, then sat on the sofa opposite Marvin. His iris color looked different than before.
“This morning, something really interesting happened. Want me to tell you?”
Leaning back in the chair, he looked at Marvin with a smile that made Marvin feel he shouldn’t smile back. A sudden sense of unease rose in him.
“To be honest, it’s been on my mind since that day—about you, Kim Ma-bin. Living like that must be uncomfortable. Unable to get your suppressants.”
He seemed to be referring to the story he spun at the hospital about a registration error in Marvin’s trait type. Marvin said nothing.
“So I inquired with the relevant ministry, thinking your trait registration might be wrong. But I got no response. I forgot about it until I saw you’d been summoned today. I checked again, and…”
He paused.
“There was no record.”
“Excuse me?”
Marvin’s reaction was genuine. It wasn’t an act or a calculation. He truly didn’t know.
“They blocked access. Made it private. I’m a grade-two public official. Strange, right?”
He spread his empty hands, as if to say, ta-da! What a surprise.
“Is that… so?”
Marvin’s mind raced. It seemed headquarters had intervened, making things more difficult. They could have just claimed no record and let it go, but blocking it entirely was rash.
“That could happen. I didn’t know.”
“Exactly. I’ve never seen it before; you must be even more surprised.”
There was no pity in his expression—only a careful scrutiny, as if reading Marvin’s thoughts. Marvin realized the situation had become dangerously serious.
He spoke less. Any further mistake could lead to real trouble. He stopped pretending to be meek. Jang Jin-woo wasn’t someone who could be fooled by pretense. Jang Jin-woo watched the more cautious Marvin and continued.
“I looked up the law on making a civilian’s specific information private. First, if it’s classified for national security—usually spies or defectors. Second, if the president personally orders a lock, usually via the National Security Office, though it’s rarely used. Third, and this one’s not in the law but something someone told me: there’s a 99% chance that civilian isn’t really a civilian.”
It was a blatant statement, and his expression matched—he stared with a gaze that left no room to look away.
“What do you think?”
He leaned his upper body forward, as if telling Marvin not to think of escape. It felt more like an interrogation than jotting down a report behind a desk. Marvin thought quickly.
“I… don’t believe I’m obligated to answer.”
The simplest defense was the right to remain silent. Even a murderer is guaranteed that right. Marvin was here only as a witness in a different case.
His question was deeply personal—a field littered with landmines that no one who understood its significance would deliberately investigate. Stepping on one would likely detonate both.
“That’s true. I’m just telling you this interesting fact in case you didn’t know.”
Jang Jin-woo stayed just beyond that boundary with practiced ease. He seemed to regard anyone forced to stand inside with mild pity. Curiosity was instinctive, and power made it harder to feign ignorance.
That was why Yang Jin-man was wise. Pretending not to know what you don’t need to know is harder than you’d think—especially when you have the power to dig deeper.
“Actually, there’s another interesting thing, somewhat related to this case. The organization that sold drugs to Park Juseong, the Dongyang faction, has recently been marketing their short-acting manifestant as… the real Omega drug.”
His eyebrow quirked up, like a model delivering a tagline in a commercial. “Interested?”
Marvin suddenly smelled an intense pheromone—so cold and sour it overpowered taste as well as smell, like an essence squeezed from a thousand lemons. It was ecstasy and disgust at once.
He thought it was coming from Jang Jin-woo, but it was a mistake—it was his own. The pheromone from his long-gone alpha days, resurrected into his senses by Jang Jin-woo’s words.
‘Bina, don’t worry. It’s all over.’
He saw Do-jin’s bright smiling face invading his ragged breath and agony.
‘Wow, it’s real. Insane… this actually works. How does it feel? Sorry I didn’t tell you earlier, but if I had, you would’ve refused.’
It took him a moment to grasp the meaning. Then he faced reality and grabbed the pistol lying on the floor. Senior prosecutor really had lost his mind, he thought. Marvin reached his own grim conclusion.
The mission was a failure. He would return to Korea alone.