Instead of answering, Choi Eunhyung picked up the bottle of distilled liquor. Glug, glug, glug. There was something wicked about the sound of clear liquor filling the tiny glass.
“Yeah.”
“Why? Chief Chilgu said someone from Pride tipped off the police…”
“Hey.”
He raised the glass to his lips and gave an incredulous snort.
“You're a maid. Mind your own business.”
“How am I supposed to mind my own business? You're the acting chairman…”
“…”
“What if the police suddenly come barging in?”
He emptied the glass in one neat swallow and answered without so much as a grimace.
“Don't worry. I won't tell them to arrest you.”
“I'm not worried about myself.”
The large fingers that had been tracing the rim of his glass twitched and came to an abrupt halt in midair. With her cheeks flushed red and her head swimming, Hyungnam chattered on without even realizing what she was saying.
“Even if you're the one who did the bad things, the chairman was the one who ordered you to.”
“…”
“It's cowardly of him to run away all by himself… I mean, go on a business trip.”
He had been resting his chin on his hand, watching Hyungnam with his head tilted to one side. Presently, he swept his smooth bangs back with his hand, as though by habit. A feeble laugh escaped him before he spoke.
“That's what lackeys do.”
“…”
“Get arrested in someone else's place. Go to the police station. Go to prison. What wouldn't they do for money?”
“…Do you get paid too, Manager Choi?”
The question was entirely unexpected. Eunhyung raised his eyes as if to ask what she meant, and Hyungnam gave a small wave of her hand before hastily explaining.
“I don't mean anything strange by it.”
“…”
“It's just that, somehow, I thought you… I thought you'd be the sort of person who'd act out of loyalty even without money.”
“Now that you know I get paid, do I suddenly seem like a greedy bastard?”
“That's not what I meant…”
Hyungnam muttered, embarrassed. After a moment's hesitation, she spoke again, cautiously.
“There's never been anyone the chairman let into the house when he wasn't here. No one's ever stayed overnight, either.”
Eunhyung gazed quietly at Hyungnam's upturned eyes as she blinked at him. Then he let out a short, breathy laugh.
“You just never saw them. There were others before.”
“…”
“Those bastards all went sniffing around elsewhere, got their fingers cut off, and were thrown out.”
“…”
“So the only thing you can trust in this world is money.”
Had their fingers been cut off figuratively or literally? She couldn't tell exactly what he meant, but since his conclusion was that money was the only thing worth trusting, she supposed those people he had trusted must have betrayed him in the end.
Hyungnam sank into thought.
There had been a time when she, too, had firmly believed Park Shineok was simply a good employer. She could never have imagined that the generous old man would take anything from her beyond her labor.
No, since he'd paid her, perhaps it wasn't taking anything from her at all. She had never desperately tried to escape or leave the house, either. Perhaps, on the contrary, he had simply paid a fair price to have her.
If that was the case, Eunhyung's claim that money was the only thing worth trusting seemed right, in a way.
Scraping a fingernail down the tip of her finger, Hyungnam asked with something like a sigh.
“…If someone pays you. If they pay you a lot of money.”
“…”
“Could you betray the organization, too?”
Choi Eunhyung answered easily, without the slightest hesitation.
“Yeah.”
“…”
“If someone negotiates a better salary, you change jobs.”
“Salary negotiation.”
Hyungnam repeated the difficult words. Eunhyung watched her for a moment, then drew in a sharp breath through his teeth.
“But now that I think about it…”
“…”
“You've really been saying some outrageous things. You're getting too insolent for your own good.”
“What?”
“I'm going to tell the chairman exactly what you said earlier.”
“Ah! N-no, you can't.”
“Then drink.”
Hyungnam narrowed her eyes at the glass of distilled liquor he had pushed in front of her.
It was filled to precisely seven-tenths of its capacity, without a single drop spilled on the outside. There was something about that neat precision that reminded her of Choi Eunhyung.
What would that taste like, I wonder?
Hesitantly, Hyungnam lifted the glass and glanced at Eunhyung to gauge his mood. He sat with his arms folded, waiting for nothing more than the liquor to pass between her lips.
She half expected him to ask whether she intended to perform some elaborate ritual over the drink.
Before he could hurry her, she quickly tossed it into her mouth. The cold, clear liquid slipped down her throat as easily as water.
“Why did you ask me how many people I've killed?”
“Cough! Cough!”
“Got someone you want dead?”
Before she could even register the sweetness spreading across the lining of her mouth, the liquor went down the wrong way.
The question had struck a nerve.
While Hyungnam coughed violently, he merely watched her with an indifferent expression, as though he were perfectly willing to wait as long as necessary.
In that case, changing the subject or avoiding the question would hardly get her out of it.
When her coughing finally subsided, Hyungnam glanced sideways at him and dabbed the moisture from the corners of her eyes with the back of her hand.
“But still, cough… you shouldn't kill people, should you?”
It certainly didn't seem like the sort of thing one ought to say in front of a hired killer. But how often did a person get the chance to speak about someone they wanted dead with a man who was capable of killing?
Hyungnam let out a short sigh, then broke the silence.
“Are you very expensive, Manager Choi?”
Eunhyung's face went rigid.
Oblivious to the implications of her question, Hyungnam nodded to herself for no particular reason and continued muttering with innocent earnestness.
“Later, you see. When I've earned a lot of money. There's someone I want dead. Yes, there is.”
“…”
“I'll hire you, Manager Choi. Give me a discount when the time comes.”
No answer came.
Instead, he filled her glass again.
Like an obedient puppy, Hyungnam accepted it and gulped the liquor straight down. Choi Eunhyung did not take his eyes off the small hollow of her throat as it dipped and rose with her swallowing.
“Why later?”
At his question, Hyungnam lifted her delicately angled eyes toward him. She blinked slowly several times, as though lost in thought, before parting her small, closely set lips.
“Because if that person dies now, I'll have nowhere to go.”
“…”
“If that person suddenly dies, I won't have anywhere to go either. That's why.”
Hyungnam slowly repeated the same thing, changing only the endings of her sentences.
From the radio the proprietor had turned on, the voice of an old female singer drifted sweetly through the room.
Ah, who could be living in the southern village beyond the mountains?
Her small head swayed from side to side in time with the languid rhythm. For a moment, she seemed to have forgotten that anyone was sitting across from her.
The man raised his glass of distilled liquor to his lips, but swallowed the saliva gathering in his mouth before he swallowed any liquor.
Hyungnam alone failed to recognize the danger in him.
***
The more exhausted his body became, the more his mind seemed to float free of it. Each time he thought he had finally drifted off, he invariably discovered that he was merely lying there with his eyes closed.
The return of his insomnia was irritating, but Choi Eunhyung did not even furrow his brow. He knew that much movement alone would be enough to drive sleep away.
Don't think about the sensations.
The feeling of a blade forcing its way through skin and muscle with a dull, tearing resistance. The warmth of fresh blood inevitably splashing onto the backs of his hands. The shouts and battle cries that had filled his ears.
Not that any of those sounds had posed the slightest threat. They had been nothing more than dying screams.
His chest, which had grown loose and relaxed under the influence of whiskey, began to rattle with agitation again. At last, his smooth brow contracted, casting the faint shadow of a vertical crease between his eyebrows.
It was absurd.
Merely recalling the sensation of driving a knife into a human body for the first time in ages was enough to send his heart pounding.
No wonder Chairman Park called him a butcher, in a tone that might have been praise or mockery.
And yet.
Don't think about death.
If he hadn't killed, he would have been killed a dozen times over by now.
Other people had pulled their families out of poverty through education or business. Choi Eunhyung had used his dexterity to raise himself out of the gutter, with nothing but his own body to his name.
He had no reason to apologize to the dead. Nor did he feel any need to repent.
Every life he had extinguished belonged to someone harmful to the world. Disgusting sewer rats, nosing their way toward respectable society, swishing their long tails as they searched for something to eat.
He had simply done his duty as the trap.
The night deepened.
Stop thinking.
His sleeplessness tonight surely had nothing to do with having killed someone again after so long. It must simply be the unfamiliar bed.
Eunhyung tried to sweep aside the thoughts crowding his mind and buried his head in the unfamiliar pillow.
“…”
From somewhere in the distance came a muffled sound, as though a woman were sobbing.
Eunhyung's closed eyes twitched briefly just as he was beginning to sink into sleep.
Does aaanyone knooow this persooon?
His keen ears immediately made out the woman's words.
Fuck. Patti Kim.
The sleep that had been gathering around him vanished in an instant. Yet he did not even have the strength to open his eyes and check the time.
He had gone all the way to Taereung on an assignment beginning before dawn.
He had reached a position where he no longer needed to go out on jobs himself, but there was no helping it. It was part of the deal he had struck with Chairman Park in exchange for volunteering to take the fall and go to prison.
The chairman had ordered him to make absolutely certain the small fry were dealt with before he went behind bars.
Every nerve in his body gradually tightened. The backs of his hands, which he had wrapped tightly around the knife handles with blue tape, began to sting.
Even the unpleasant sensation of blood soaking into his skin like fibers came back to him.
So much for getting any sleep.
By now, he was thoroughly furious.
Who the fuck is playing a song with some crazy bitch wailing away at this hour?
If I'd known this would happen, I'd have stayed at my own place in Buamdong, even if it meant getting chewed out by Chairman Park.
The chairman said he paid a fortune to a geomancy expert to choose the site for this house. Auspicious site, my ass. The fucking place looks like it's made for ghosts.
He turned his sleek body over, caught the blanket between his long legs, and buried the other side of his face in the pillow.
But even then, one ear remained exposed, and there was no escaping the eerie singing.
He was left with no choice but to try to fall asleep using the song as a lullaby.
Half asleep, his full upper lip twitched with displeasure.
I don't know which bastard is playing that song, but if I catch them, I'll kill them.