Author: 헤복

Publisher: 비요드

© 헤복, 2023

This book is a copyrighted work protected by copyright law. Unauthorized reproduction, duplication, or distribution is prohibited. Violators may be subject to civil and criminal legal liability.

Please support author by buying original version if you can read Korean

Disclaimer:
This work is a fan-produced translation intended solely for private study and entertainment. The original copyrights are held by their respective owners, and this translation does not claim to supersede or replace the original text. This is a non-profit endeavor, and no financial gain is sought or received from its distribution. Any unauthorized reproduction or commercial use of this translation is strictly prohibited. If you are a rights holder and wish for this translation to be removed, please contact me immediately.

This story is set in the fictional South Korean city of "Danhyeon-si." It assumes a setting where prosecutors have investigative authority. This is fiction, unrelated to any actual cases, place names, organizations, individuals, or institutions. There are differences from real-world systems, practices, and laws.

Chapter 1 - Deep

Misfortune is like a snake. It slithers in silently and bites the defenseless ankle of a person without warning.
That was the conclusion I reached after counting and recounting the misfortunes that had befallen me around that time.
As I grew up, I wondered whether there had been subtle signs that my younger self had failed to notice — omens of the misfortune to come. The kind of premonitions that often appear in dramas and movies: a glass cup falling and shattering, or rain and lightning suddenly bursting from a clear sky.
But no matter how carefully I thought it over and retraced everything, the world had sent me no signal whatsoever. That night, the misfortune that would come for my dad and me after midnight must have slithered quietly into the house like a snake, curled up tight at the feet of my sleeping self.
Secret and silent, yet swift. Targeting my ankle, exposed and defenseless.
At thirteen, still an elementary school student, I dozed off on the sofa watching TV while waiting for my dad, who was late coming home from work. It was mid-July. A sultry breeze that had crept in through the open window swept past my forehead, which had begun to bead with sweat from the tropical heat. In my sleep, the young me curled up comfortably, catching the scent of the lingering monsoon in the wind.
When I recall that night, I remember the cold, porridge-like feeling of the sofa cushion I kept pressing down on each time I drifted in and out of sleep; the voice of the announcer flowing from the TV; the white fluttering hem of the curtains. Those are my last memories of peaceful sleep.
Past midnight, at the sound of the front door's passcode being pressed, I slowly lifted my heavy eyelids. I saw my dad taking off his dress shoes in the entryway, but I was too drunk with sleep to get up right away. A locked-in voice barely squeezed through my pressed-together lips.
"Dad, you're home?"
"Lee Chae-ha, it's 12 and you're still up? You have school tomorrow, you need to sleep early."
"I was sleeping on the sofa."
"You need to stretch both legs out in bed to get proper sleep. That's how you have good dreams."
Striding over and hugging me tight enough to crush me, Dad was still wearing a long-sleeved shirt and even a jacket. It was midsummer, so he must have been terribly hot.
When he was a taxi driver, he'd dress casually in short sleeves. But after becoming the chauffeur for the casino president, Dad went to work dressed as smartly as an office worker. It was a brand-new casino that hadn't begun operations yet, but there was the inaugural president preparing for the opening, and my dad was that president's driver.
Just as Dad had begun wearing fancier clothes, his monthly pay went up too. Within a year of Dad becoming the casino president's driver, we moved from a north-facing villa where the laundry never dried properly to an older apartment. For a family of just two left after Mom died of cancer, it was a house far too big for us.
I rubbed my sleep-crusted eyes and asked, "Was the president working late again today? You used to come home by 8, but lately it's always midnight."
"Sorry, sorry. The casino opening is right around the corner, so the president's extremely busy. Once the opening happens, Dad's pay goes up even more, you know?"
"Really?"
"Of course. Just wait until the casino opens. The people struggling in the abandoned mining town will all get jobs, and Danhyeon will become livable too. Just like Buyong-si in Gangwon-do."
There was pride in Dad's boastful voice — the pride of having become the driver for an important person. That was understandable; winning the bid for a second domestic casino had been a long-cherished wish of Danhyeon.
People don't often know that there were mining towns outside Gangwon-do too. Scattered across Gyeonggi, Chungcheong, Gyeongsang, Jeolla, and elsewhere, they were so much smaller than those in Gangwon-do that they never even drew attention.
After the era of the mining towns came to an end, the miners outside Gangwon-do also lost their lifelong workplaces. They wandered in search of a living but could find no way, no escape from poverty.
Many miners flowed into the abandoned mines of Danhyeon in Gyeonggi-do, which bordered the Chungcheong-Gyeongbuk coal fields. But even pooling their heads and trying every possible approach, making a living remained hopelessly bleak. After all, Danhyeon, though technically part of Gyeonggi-do, was on the outskirts of the capital region, without a single subway line. It was a small city where survival was desperately bleak, with nothing but leftover factories that other regions had refused to host.
Yet the miners and their families did not give up. They modeled themselves after the Gangwon-do Mining Association, which had succeeded in bringing in a domestic casino. They formed their own association, named it the "Other Regions Mining Association," and demanded that the government present them with a solution too. It had been a long and arduous struggle.
Their earnest prayers were finally answered by the world, emerging from the darkness of the abandoned mines. They had succeeded in bringing the nation's second domestic casino to Danhyeon. It had been exactly five years since the Buyong Casino came to Gangwon-do.
The permit was granted on a modest scale compared to Buyong, but the association members embraced one another and wept tears of joy. Footage of their dramatic celebration aired on the 9 o'clock news and spread across the nation.
The inaugural president tasked with preparing the casino's opening happened to be Dad's high school friend. President Kang, as soon as he took charge of the casino launch, had recognized his old friend first when he happened to get into Dad's taxi.
Dad, for his age, was honest, naive, and somewhat talkative. He had surely poured out all the hardships he'd endured to his friend, tears welling up. Losing his beloved wife to cancer and sinking under a mountain of debt from her medical bills. And the story of his young son who'd lost his mother at a tender age.
The two caught up on all their long-overdue reunion, and the warm-hearted president generously offered his pitiful old friend a position as the casino chauffeur.
After that, Dad had to call his friend "President," but he was beaming every single day. If my deskmate gave me money and told me to use honorifics from now on, I think my pride would have been deeply wounded.
Maybe things change when you become an adult. Dad truly looked happy. He kept saying he was grateful he could now send me to an English academy — and a math academy too.
But I liked the Dad who, instead of sending me to academies, taught me how to solve problems himself, and who always came home between taxi shifts to eat dinner with me. The table between us was small, and the side dishes were nothing but kimchi and dried anchovies — but even so.
"I'm fine even if Dad doesn't make much money. I wish you were home more."
"Aigoo, my precious son. They say by the time kids turn ten they're telling their fathers to get lost, but Chae-ha must still be a ways off from puberty."
"It's just boring being alone in the evenings."
I said it as indifferently as I could, figuring I should answer like a 'puberty kid.'
"Still, I need to earn a lot so I can buy our Chae-ha nice clothes and send him to academies. Otherwise, I won't be able to face your mother later."
"Why bring up Mom? Stop it. You'll make me cry."
"You still cry? Then cry whenever you need to. Cry until you can talk about Mom without tears, so we can talk about her freely together."
"Enough. Stop it."
Anyway, Dad could be a bit much. Not wanting to show my tears, I answered somewhat curtly. This time, I think I really did act like a teenage boy in puberty. I quickly changed the subject.
"So did you make a lot of money?"
"Yeah. Past 11, the president gives me a million won for my hard work. Look at this."
Dad pulled a thick wallet from his jacket and readily pressed fifty thousand won into my hand. I tried to pull my fingers away because it was too much money, but Dad's expression as he gave his son allowance looked so happy that I ended up accepting it. The folded bill settled into my palm.
"Thanks. But if you're off work, why call him 'President'? You said he's your friend."
"What does it matter. He's my friend, but I respect him, so I can call him President."
"His name is Woosung?"
"Yeah, Kang Woosung."
"Woosung — that's a nice-sounding name."
Kang Woosung. It sounded like an actor's name.
Dad added his usual nagging at the end.
"Hey, Lee Chae-ha. I may call him Woosung, but you call him President. Anyway, go in and go to bed. I'm going to watch a little TV on the sofa and then sleep."
"You said sleeping on the sofa isn't allowed… Fine. Good night."
I rose and gave Dad a light hug. From Dad in his long sleeves, the scent of the summer breeze wafted richly. A faint smell of cigarettes drifted up too. Given how late he'd come in he'd probably had a rough time driving his drunk friend home to some far-flung apartment. I gripped the bill tight in my hand, catching the scent of cigarettes, then let go.
I went into my room, lay down, and immediately fell asleep. Of course, I couldn't sleep as deeply as I had on the sofa — almost as if I'd had a premonition of the fate bearing down on me.
All night I was tormented by strange dreams. When a large hand finally shook my shoulder and woke me, the last lingering dawn light that I would never forget for a long time cast its glow on Dad and the wallpaper behind him. What if I hadn't opened my eyes that day?
What if, like Mom, a single night's sleep had turned into forever — if I hadn't had to experience the event that would shake my entire life.
Through my sleep-heavy eyelashes, Dad's face wavered in and out of view. His scratchy stubble brushed my cheek, and Dad, who had stopped doing it for a while, even gave me a kiss as he gently patted me — me, who just couldn't seem to get up that day.
"Lee Chae-ha, wake up. You have to eat breakfast."
"What time is it?"
My voice scraped out like grains of sand rolling.
"6:30."
Only after hearing the time did I realize why it had been harder than usual to wake up.
"Dad, even eating at 7 was too early. At this hour, I'm the only one in my class eating breakfast."
"The president has an early meeting today, so I have no choice. Still, I have to make you breakfast. If your mom saw you making your own breakfast and going to school by yourself, she'd throw lightning bolts from heaven."
"Bringing up Mom again. Stop it."
Even as I grumbled, I sat up and pushed my legs out from under the blanket. I turned off the rattling electric fan and left the room.
We ate breakfast together, and I saw Dad off to work. His jacket had a smooth gold button on the cuff, without any pattern. He'd probably chosen what he thought was a classy suit, but the design looked terribly tacky.
"With the bonus the president gave you yesterday, buy yourself some decent clothes."
"Yeah? I think I look great."
"The button is tacky. It's too shiny."
"Our son has an eye for aesthetics, I see. You don't realize the button is the point. Aigoo, this jacket is hot. I need to get to the car and turn on the AC. Alright, I'm off to work."
"See you later."
Wanting to see him off all the way to the front door, I lifted myself from the dining chair. Looking back now, I'm so glad I did. Because I got to see Dad's face one more time.
I casually said goodbye once more as he put on his dress shoes.
"Have a good day."
"Yeah. Study hard today too."
"Don't worry."
After seeing him off, I did the dishes and got ready for school.
But because I'd woken up so early, time still stretched out in heaps. Even after watching TV for an hour and leaving the house, I arrived at school first. After changing into my indoor shoes, I lifted my head absentmindedly — and the empty schoolyard seized my gaze.
The great cloud shadow that had been draped over my face lifted, and behind it, the July sun thrust its face forward, glittering like the gold button on Dad's jacket. Beneath the scorching sun, a dry wind swept across the sand. Watching the fine dust lingering in the air, I felt lonely, as if I were the only one left on this round earth.
A strange event occurred less than half a day after that.
Near the end of third period, an unexpected person came to the classroom. Recognizing the face of the unfamiliar visitor, I felt a shock as if all the skin around my spine had clenched tight. It was my maternal aunt — someone I hadn't seen once since Mom passed away. A relative showing up during class meant something terrible had happened at home.
The appearance of an adult who wasn't a teacher drew every student's eyes to the front door of the classroom, and the homeroom teacher rose from her desk with a surprised look. As she exchanged words with my aunt, the teacher's expression gradually darkened. At one point, she even covered her lips with both hands as if horrified.
I tried to shake off the familiar feeling of misfortune running a chilling streak down my spine, but the black leech that had clamped onto my young skin and was trying to swell its belly wouldn't fall away easily.
"Chae-ha, pack your bag and come out."
Finally, the teacher's shadowed eyes turned toward me and called my name. Silently packing my bag, in that brief moment, I imagined every kind of possibility.
Had Dad collapsed from a heart attack? Been hit by a car? Had he gotten cancer like Mom? Could he be dead?
Please. Just let him be alive.
The heavy stares of my classmates on my back, my aunt's face when I approached her up close — it was cold, and my fingertips felt even colder, like an icebox. The heat of the blood moving through my veins cooled as fast as a desert night.
Ominous imaginings and premonitions felt like they would shatter me at any moment, but I forced myself to appear composed until I climbed into my aunt's car and arrived at our destination. My aunt didn't say a single word to me.
"Just not the hospital. Just not the hospital…"
Afraid the news would be that Dad had died, I couldn't bring myself to ask first. I just sat quietly, seatbelt fastened, staring straight ahead. Until the car arrived at the police station.
My wish that it wouldn't be a hospital was granted — but the bewilderment didn't go away. I was led into a small room inside the station and seated across from a heavyset detective.
"Lee Chae-ha, you're Lee Gil-young's son, right? Danhyeon Elementary, 6th grade?"
"Yes, that's right. My dad… did something happen?"
It was a question I'd barely managed to ask through the fear clenching my heart, but the detective gave no answer. He just asked one-sided questions: what time Dad had come home yesterday, what he'd said when he came in, whether anything strange had happened. Then he took my phone and checked every single call I'd received or made. I didn't know much, but it still took quite a long time before I was released.
I had a gut feeling that something deeply wrong had happened to Dad. Something very big.
He must have died in an accident.
Tears brimmed hot at the edges of my conviction-filled eyes.
On the way to my uncle's house, I barely managed to ask my aunt what had happened, but only a cold answer came back.
"I can't say it with my own mouth."
"Dad… he's not dead, right?"
Summoning every last ounce of courage, I parted my lips. Because ever since Mom passed away, death was not an abstract concept to me.
"It's not that, so don't worry. Your dad is perfectly fine. It's just that only he is fine — that's the problem."
I couldn't understand what had happened, but my aunt's answer was an enormous comfort. Something strange seemed to have occurred, but as long as Dad wasn't dead, I believed that the two of us could overcome anything together.
The worst I could imagine was Dad leaving me like Mom had, going to the eternal sky. Like a cloud beyond reach, like a star.
What I didn't know at thirteen was that there are so very many other ways a parent can leave a child.
In the afternoon, I arrived at my uncle's apartment and saw my uncle's face, fraught with irritation. Only then did the heat begin to return to my body, which had stayed cold from the long tension. With the worst fear — that Dad might be dead — gone, the gazes around me began to press in oppressively.
My uncle, holding the remote control, gestured toward me.
"Lee Chae-ha. Come here and watch the news."
I peeled off my backpack, which had clung to me all day like a turtle shell, and sat at the far end of the wide sofa where my uncle sat. On the TV, a person with a jacket pulled over their head sat at an iron desk, surrounded by police and reporters.
Beneath the detective's worn green jacket, a garish gold button flashed into view for a moment. It looked just like the tacky button I'd teased Dad about on his clothes.
The reporter's voiceover flowed out.
"At 7 a.m. on the 12th, the body of Kang Woosung, president of the Danhyeon Casino World, was discovered in his bedroom by his eldest son, a high school junior. Police believe Mr. Kang was murdered by Mr. Lee, a chauffeur employed by the casino, and have urgently arrested him. Mr. Lee is known to have debts of approximately thirty million won. It appears he threatened Mr. Kang with an awl to extort a large sum of cash, then committed murder in a sudden escalation. However, the amount Mr. Lee took after killing Mr. Kang was a mere 950,000 won."
950,000 won…
That was the million won President Kang Woosung would sometimes give Dad as a bonus when work ran late — minus the 50,000 won allowance Dad had given me the night before. Yesterday, Dad had said he'd received that money too.
"Mr. Lee stabbed the victim in the neck multiple times with an awl. Police have secured testimony that Mr. Lee had previously instigated a violent incident while working at a taxi company. According to a colleague's claim…"
My insides turned ice-cold. The blood that had filled my body with warmth instantly drained down beneath the soles of my feet. As if a hole that huge had suddenly opened in the bottom of my foot, my blood leaked away as though my body had never been warm.
My uncle clicked his tongue loudly.
"Damn it, this is so embarrassing… Since there's no one among your dad's relatives to take you in, you'll have to stay at our place, what else can we do. Stay quiet, like you're not even there. Do as you're told. You know your uncle's temper, right?"
"You son of a bitch… I'm holding back because you're the son of the late Eun-young, but I swear…"
My uncle's voice buzzed like a giant hornet, but I just stared blankly at the screen. Even at my uncle's barrage of cursing and lament, I couldn't answer or move properly. The image of my dad turned criminal became a different kind of eternity from Mom's, streaming through my head.
In truth, by then my soul had already left the solid earth and was endlessly sinking beneath the dark water. Down to a sea so deep and cold it would drain away all body heat.
Unable to move my arms or legs, I sank deeper, and deeper still, and finally looked up with black pupils at the surface I had left behind completely. The water's surface glinted like the golden button that had sparkled under the reporters' camera flashes at the police station. The warmth I'd felt when Mom held my hand one last time at the hospital had now become sunlight, rippling across the surface of the water that I would never reach again.
That person is not my dad. The gold button is exactly like the one on Dad's clothes but… someone could have bought the same outfit. So, it can't be Dad… It must be a misunderstanding…
I repeated that thought until the sunlight vanished and I could no longer breathe.
But my consciousness already knew the truth — that the gold button didn't matter. Because even before I spotted the gold button, I had already recognized that the person sitting there in someone else's jacket was my dad…
Even wearing unfamiliar clothes, hundreds of times, thousands of times… since my life began, I had seen my dad's profile too many times to count. There was no way I wouldn't recognize him.
Sinking endlessly into the dark sea, I dimly sensed it. What would unfold from now on would be different from all the despair that had come before — and Dad, like Mom, had already left this lonely planet forever.
The sinking would never grant my feet the ground to touch.

END OF CHAPTER 1