PEN Vol 4 Ch. 24

Click. 

The sound of the lock engaging echoed, and Chae Beomjun sighed quietly.

“He was in a bad mood today, and of all times…”

“What is all this? Out of the blue.”

At Cheon Sejoo’s question, Chae Beomjun shrugged as if he didn’t know either.

“I don’t know either. The elevator was under maintenance, so I had some things delivered by a courier service, and this guy followed the deliveryman upstairs and started making a fuss. So, the president told him to stop, but this guy, not knowing his place, started picking a fight. So, since there were no witnesses, the president couldn’t hold back and hit him once, and he just collapsed… and of all places, he hit his head on the corner… But, Manager Cheon, that delivery boy’s face…”

Chae Beomjun stopped mid-sentence, his eyes widening as he dramatically ran his hand over his own face. Cheon Sejoo looked at him disapprovingly, annoyed that he was talking about a delivery boy’s face while a man was dying in front of him. He was utterly pathetic.

Ignoring Chae Beomjun’s rambling, Cheon Sejoo took out his phone and called Moon Sunhyuk, who answered immediately.

-Yes, Sir.

“Where are you?”

-I’m at the office. Do you have any orders?

“Bring something to dispose of a body. We need to erase the CCTV footage, so come with Chuljoo too.”

-Where should we go?

“Our apartment building.”

-…Yes, I’ll be right there.

Moon Sunhyuk seemed momentarily puzzled but accepted the order without further questions and hung up. Cheon Sejoo stood there, staring down at the dying man.

The man, whose body twitched intermittently, occasionally let out a choking sound as if he would take his last breath at any moment, but he held on until Moon Sunhyuk and Yoon Chuljoo arrived. Ironically, unlike with Kim Hyunkyung, he felt nothing watching this man die. Cheon Sejoo couldn’t hide the bitterness at his own detachment.

About 40 minutes later, Moon Sunhyuk and Yoon Chuljoo arrived. Cheon Sejoo stuffed the man into the bag Sunhyuk had brought. Then, together, they carried the bag to their work vehicle. Meanwhile, Yoon Chuljoo connected to the apartment’s security server, erasing the CCTV footage and elevator operation records in real-time. He also hacked the man’s phone and extracted his information.

Leaving Sunhyuk to handle the clean up on the 43rd floor, Cheon Sejoo took the man to the workshop. There, with an expressionless face, he injected the man with an anesthetic and sliced open his abdomen with a scalpel.

This was to carry out Shin Gyoyeon’s orders. The overwhelming stench of blood made him dizzy, but he performed the task with practiced ease. He had done this countless times; there was no room for guilt now.

In the cold, airless workshop, Cheon Sejoo transferred the man’s organs into an icebox. Most of the money earned this way went to Cheon Sejoo. It was a kind of hazard pay, sanctioned by Shin Gyoyeon.

Cheon Sejoo spent this gruesome money meaninglessly. This was the money he used to pay off Kim Hyunkyung’s debt. Because it wasn’t money earned through legitimate means, Cheon Sejoo felt no qualms about giving Kim Donggil the money he made from selling other people’s organs.

He also used this money to cover his food and living expenses. He had bought Sejin meat with this money. How would Sejin react if he found out? Cheon Sejoo swallowed hard, remembering Sejin looking at Kim Donggil with disgust. He could never tell him this.

However, he could honestly tell Sejin that Kim Hyunkyung’s medical and funeral expenses were all paid with money Cheon Sejoo had saved up. The money he earned from tutoring during school, the money he saved during his internship and residency, was mostly spent on this.

It had been saved for Hye-in’s college tuition, and he hadn’t been able to touch it after her death, but he didn’t regret using it for Sejin. He even felt relieved to see his emptied account balance, thinking that perhaps he’d saved it all this time just for this very reason.

As he was finishing up in the blood-soaked workshop, lost in these thoughts, he received another call from Shin Gyoyeon. Cheon Sejoo couldn’t go home that night.

It wasn’t because he had to dispose of the witness’s body. Shin Gyoyeon seemed to have taken a liking to the delivery boy. Through Chae Beomjun, he gave Cheon Sejoo the delivery boy’s wallet and ID, instructing him to “take care” of his residence.

Take care? 

This was the first time he’d been asked to do this to a civilian. Unsure of what it meant, he asked, and Chae Beomjun explained. He said Shin Gyoyeon had decided to “keep” the boy for a while, and Cheon Sejoo was to “take care” of the boy’s affairs so there wouldn’t be any trouble during that time.

So, Cheon Sejoo set off with the worn wallet and the key card to a goshiwon¹, its address almost completely rubbed off.

The delivery boy’s residence wasn’t far from Shin Gyoyeon’s apartment. 

Before getting out of the black sedan he used for work, he opened the wallet he had been given. It contained a few thousand-won bills², a resident registration card, and the goshiwon key card. There seemed to be a folded photo inside, but he intentionally didn’t take it out. Cheon Sejoo stared at the ID card, which held the picture of a very pretty boy, then got out of the car with the wallet in hand.

It was already past midnight, so there was no one around. Nevertheless, he pulled his hat down low and checked the surrounding CCTV cameras first.

There was a security camera about 30 meters away, but it wasn’t high resolution. After confirming this, Cheon Sejoo headed into the building.

The goshiwon was on the third floor, and there was no elevator. The building had no management office, no security cameras, just a key card panel at the entrance to each floor. He swiped the card from the delivery boy’s wallet and opened the goshiwon door.

The inside was dark. To the left of the entrance was a small room labeled “Management Office,” but it was empty. A quiet tension hung in the dimly lit hallway.

A musty odor, characteristic of old buildings, permeated the air. Cheon Sejoo, holding his shoes in his hand, searched for the room number written on the delivery boy’s key card

Room 102. 

However, the rooms seemed to be numbered from the back, as Room 102 was located at the very end of the hallway, not near the entrance. As he silently walked down the hallway, he could hear the sounds of those still awake behind closed doors.

The clicking of keyboards and mice, the sound of dry coughs. Even at this late hour, many people were still awake. He could easily guess what kept them from sleeping, and a slight gloom settled over Cheon Sejoo as he walked.

Finally reaching room 102, he held the key card to the panel, and a green light flashed as the lock disengaged. The door creaked open. Cheon Sejoo double-checked that the hallway was empty, slipped inside, and closed the door.

The room was incredibly cramped. A mattress, half the size of a single bed, lay on one side, and a desk, also half the usual size, was attached to the wall in the remaining space. Where a window should have been, a built-in closet reached the ceiling. Beneath the closet, its old sheet peeling off, was a small window, barely the height of Cheon Sejoo’s palm.

As if to prove the goshiwon’s age, crumpled tissues, blackened with dust, were stuffed into the gaps of the rusted aluminum window frame. The room’s occupant had clearly tried to block the drafts, but the room was still frigid, as if the heating wasn’t on at all.

He searched the room with an indifferent expression. Most of the belongings were inside the closet. A worn pair of pants, two short-sleeved T-shirts, three pairs of socks, a single piece of underwear, instant rice, and cup ramen.

Then, just in case, he lifted the thin blanket and the electric mat underneath, and as he checked under the mattress, he found two crumpled ten-thousand-won bills³…

Cheon Sejoo felt like he was falling through the floor as he sat down on the delivery boy’s bed. A hollow laugh escaped his lips, and his breath formed a white cloud in the cold room. The formless vapor felt like it was crumbling the walls he had painstakingly built around himself. He composed himself with difficulty and took out the resident registration card from the delivery boy’s wallet.

Yoon Heesoo, twenty years old.

He was the same age as Sejin, and January 2nd. Since midnight had passed, it was his birthday today. On a day meant for celebration, he was confined on the 43rd floor, facing an uncertain fate.

The absurdity of the situation made Cheon Sejoo laugh weakly. Then, something occurred to him, and he took out the folded photo from the wallet.

It was a family photo. A man in a neat suit, a woman in a dress, and between them, a toddler, about a year old, in a tiny suit with a bow tie, sat with a tearful face. Judging by the delicate and pretty features, it was undoubtedly the delivery boy, Yoon Heesoo.

However, Yoon Heesoo’s parents’ faces were obscured. Black ink marks, as if painted over with a pen, covered their faces. They seemed to have been smudged, as if someone had rubbed it with their fingers a few times, but not enough to discern their features.

Cheon Sejoo stared at the photo, sensing the resentment it held, then turned it over. On the back, someone had scribbled a message:

‘No family, unclaimed. Please cremate the body, do not bury.’

Seeing that sentence, Cheon Sejoo’s patience finally snapped. Unable to contain the surge of anger, he bit his lip hard. As if that wasn’t enough, he put the photo down, buried his face in his hands, and let out a deep sigh.

His body felt heavy, his head throbbed. The anger and sorrow he couldn’t show in front of Sejin, who had lost his mother, now crashed over him. His eyes burned, and a lump formed in his throat. Cheon Sejoo gasped for breath, finally shedding silent tears.

He couldn’t understand why innocent, kind people had to suffer like this. From Hye-in’s death to Kim Hyunkyung’s death.

And Sejin, left alone at the young age of twenty, and Yoon Heesoo, who didn’t even have any possessions to sort through before his impending death. Everything he had seen and experienced made Cheon Sejoo resent the world.

Why?

Why was the world so cruel to the vulnerable…?

He wanted to scream. He wanted to rage and demand to know why. But there was no one to answer his questions…