DYBS 06

Chapter 6

The Dream Bought for Ten Thousand Won

“I’m a detective, and I believe a detective is someone who separates good from evil and uncovers the truth hidden away. To me, it doesn’t matter whether that truth is rich or powerful.”
“Don’t give me that crap. If Kim Hyeon-bin hadn’t been an assemblyman’s son, nobody would have cared.”

Eun-ho passed by the waiter, leaned back against the wall, and put a cigarette in his mouth.

“People are saying that Han So-jeong, the victim who died so unjustly under Kim Hyeon-bin’s car on the tree-lined road, became a ghost and took her revenge.”
“Honestly, I’d rather that were true.”
“But you know it isn’t, don’t you? That there’s no such thing as ghosts.”

Eun-ho lit the cigarette between his lips and moved closer and closer to the waiter. Intimidated by his towering height, the waiter flinched and backed away.

“W-what are you trying to say! I have to go in to work now.”

This time Eun-ho slung an arm around the waiter’s shoulder.
Unlike Jin-tak, his height made the arm pressing down on him feel like a noose.
When he lowered his head close to the waiter’s face, the bitter cigarette smoke and his distinctively sharp gaze were perfect for making anyone nervous.

“So what I’m saying is, I’m going to prove that what killed Kim Hyeon-bin was a human, not a ghost. Understood?”

At Eun-ho’s low-pitched voice, the waiter’s shoulders flinched and trembled.
The relatively gentlemanly demeanor he had shown until now was gone.
When the waiter cautiously glanced at his eyes, they were filled with an unfathomable, icy chill.

“Haah……”

When Eun-ho withdrew his arm from the shoulder and leaned back against the wall, the waiter let out a long sigh, as if the tightness in his breathing had been released.

“Fine. I’ll talk! But you have to promise to keep it a complete secret from the bar……”
“Of course.”

Jin-tak, who had been quietly watching, answered with a kindly smile to reassure the visibly anxious man.

“The truth is, that day I went to serve their room, and they were talking about the dead woman as a drinking story, like it was some grand adventure. It made me furious, so I secretly filmed Jo Gi-jun getting into Kim Hyeon-bin’s car on the main road.”
“Who’s Jo Gi-jun?”

The waiter took his phone out of his pants pocket, opened a video from his album, and showed it to the two detectives.
In the video, Kim Hyeon-bin sat in the driver’s seat and lowered the window, and another man stumbled up and climbed into the passenger seat.

The man in the passenger seat waved to the women in front of the bar who were seeing them off, then they drove away.

“He’s Kim Hyeon-bin’s friend. But those two weren’t normal friends. There was a clear hierarchy, you could say? I overheard that Jo Gi-jun’s father is the chairman of Hwagang Corporation and pours a lot of money into Kim Hyeon-bin’s father.”
“Hmm, so that’s the backstory.”

Jin-tak answered while carefully recording the waiter’s story in his notebook.

“Honestly, the reason Kim Hyeon-bin drove drunk was that Jo Gi-jun always demanded to be taken all the way to his front door. The strange thing is… a family like theirs had a private chauffeur.”
“A simple power struggle… is that it?”
“Who knows. Jo Gi-jun insisted that Kim Hyeon-bin drive him personally, and I don’t know why. But the mood was different that day. What was it… Kim Hyeon-bin had some kind of dream… he said he had a bad feeling and was going to call the chauffeur.”

When the dream came up, Eun-ho’s expression instantly crumpled and he pushed off the wall he’d been leaning on and stood up straight.

“A dream? Hmm, a dream… And then?”
“Jo Gi-jun went ballistic! You wouldn’t believe it. He threw everything in the room, said Kim was ignoring him over some stupid dream, and even cursed out his parents.”

Perhaps it was a night so awful that just thinking about it again was terrible; with fingertips trembling slightly, he swallowed hard once and continued.

“After a long rampage, when Kim Hyeon-bin reluctantly said he’d take him home, Jo Gi-jun suddenly flipped again, threw an arm around his shoulder like nothing had happened, and left the bar laughing.”
“Why does Jo Gi-jun insist on Kim Hyeon-bin driving him?”

At Jin-tak’s question, the waiter thought for a moment, then shook his head.

“I don’t know, maybe it was just a power play… I really don’t know beyond that.”

Sensing that something crucial still hadn’t come out, Eun-ho’s gaze began to sink cold again, and the waiter flinched and avoided his eyes.

“I really don’t know! That’s everything I saw and heard. Even if I wanted to say more, I have nothing left, so please just go. If the people at the bar find out I leaked even this much, I could die without a trace.”

Eun-ho looked at the collapsed Jo Gi-jun and gave a nod to the junior detective watching, who moved in perfect order, set the chair upright, and sat the drained man back down.
After placing a small can of coffee on the table last, the junior detective left the interrogation room, and a hushed silence wrapped around the two.

Psst―

Eun-ho popped open the can of coffee and held it out to Jo Gi-jun, breaking the silence.
Jo Gi-jun, his eyes darting anxiously, gulped down the coffee roughly and set it down, and his lips and hands trembled.

“What happened between you and Kim Hyeon-bin?”
“G-g-get me a lawyer.”
“On the day Kim Hyeon-bin died, do you admit that you pressured him, though he said he couldn’t drive, and forced him into the car?”
“Ha… I said I’ll talk through my lawyer.”

Beside Jo Gi-jun’s trembling hand gripping the coffee can, Eun-ho tossed down a small photograph.
It was a scene photo taken by the paramedic who had responded to the accident.
Kim Hyeon-bin, slumped in the driver’s seat, his face unrecognizable and drenched in red blood, was captured in horrifyingly explicit detail.

Meanwhile, as Jo Gi-jun stared blankly at the photo, the wariness in his eyes was stained with pity.

“Just tell me what happened on the day of the accident.”

Contrasting with his neat way of speaking, Eun-ho crossed his long legs and took on a insolent posture.

“Ha… so that day.”

Jo Gi-jun’s eyes turned once more to the photo capturing Kim Hyeon-bin’s ghastly final state.
Then the guilt hidden in a deep ravine seemed to surface little by little.
But.

“I came out of the bar, drove straight to my house… and then he left right away. That’s all.”

At Jo Gi-jun’s evasive statement, Eun-ho folded his arms and raised his head.
When the white fluorescent light fell on Eun-ho’s face, his razor-sharp nose bridge gleamed even more keenly.

“Tell me why it had to be Kim Hyeon-bin driving.”

His lowered gaze was full of chill.
His even lower voice carried a strange sharpness.
A trickle of cold sweat ran down Jo Gi-jun’s uneasy spine, and he habitually jiggled the watch on his wrist.
The glittering watch jingled with an oblivious, cheerful clinking sound.

At that moment, Jo Gi-jun, meeting Eun-ho’s eyes, flinched and grabbed his shaking wrist, hiding it under the table.

“You did drugs, didn’t you?”

At Eun-ho’s blow, which caught him off guard, the pupils of the bowed Jo Gi-jun dilated.
And without answering, he jiggled the watch again.
In the instantly frozen air of the interrogation room, Eun-ho continued in an even colder voice.

“That’s why Kim Hyeon-bin always had to drive you home every time you drank. Don’t hide anything about what happened that day. Otherwise I’ll start investigating you as a drug offender.”

As soon as Eun-ho finished, Jo Gi-jun’s watch sounded again.
After a stifling, endless silence, he seemed to decide to confess everything and swallowed hard.

“Right… every day we drank, I did drugs in Kim Hyeon-bin’s car. But that day, that bastard said he’d had a bad dream and would wait outside.”
“So Kim Hyeon-bin didn’t do drugs that day.”
“Yeah, damn it. And when I got out, honestly I was so high I couldn’t tell if it was real or a dream… but it seemed like Kim Hyeon-bin was talking about his dream with some old man, and I think that man said he’d buy the dream for ten thousand won and asked him to hire a chauffeur……”
“An old man?”

To Eun-ho, who had been certain Jo Gi-jun was the culprit, the appearance of the word “old man” made his heart drop.

“Unni! Are you sure it’s this neighborhood?”

In Zone A of Samil-dong, which had undergone massive redevelopment and was lined with brand-name apartment complexes each proud of being luxury, Miso had turned into an alley between the apartments and kept climbing an endless flight of stairs.
After climbing for a long while, high enough to reach the upper floors of the apartments, the stairs showed no sign of ending.
With no end in sight, Yeong-ah, following behind, turned around to look at the view and said:

“There’s a neighborhood like this in Seoul… Unni, can we stop climbing now? I’m afraid of heights, you know!”

Looking down at the stairs they’d climbed, Yeong-ah felt a dizzying vertigo and staggered.

“We’re almost there. Hurry up! The sun’s about to go down.”

The sun, sinking as if about to fall, dyed the sky with crimson sunset light.
With the glittering apartment windows added in, Yeong-ah hurried her steps with her back to the sunset, which boasted quite a splendid view.

“So it’s this house. But how did you know, Unni?”

Yeong-ah stood before a front gate whose paint, surely blue once, had peeled in patches into some indeterminate color, and asked Miso.

“Han So-jeong, the victim of the Samil-dong drunk-driving case, once came to our institute.”
“Gasp! Really? Then why don’t I remember?”
“You wouldn’t. She couldn’t come in and was hesitating in front of the building when I ran into her. I only got her name and what neighborhood she lived in.”
“Ah… I wonder what was troubling her.”

Yeong-ah said, looking at the old gate that creaked and swayed even in the gentle breeze.
Next to the gate, a nameplate announcing the owner of the house read “Han Gang-su.”
Miso had found the house by searching for the surname “Han” in the rough neighborhood.

“Who knows. Maybe she had a worry she couldn’t confide anywhere. She said with a deliberately bright face that she’d come again, but a person’s complexion can’t be hidden.”

With a rather tense expression, Miso pressed the button beside the nameplate that looked like a doorbell.
The gray button clicked in and out, and the loud ring of the bell inside the house could be heard even outside the gate.

“Who is it?”

A middle-aged woman’s voice, softer than expected, seemed to call out from inside the house.

“Hello! We’re here about Ms. ‘Han So-jeong.’”

Perhaps the name “Han So-jeong” was unexpected, for after a brief moment of hushed silence, footsteps could be heard approaching to open the door.
Before long, the old gate swung open with a loud screech.

“Are you So-jeong’s friends?”

Looking over Miso and Yeong-ah, who seemed about So-jeong’s age, the middle-aged woman guided them into the house without any particular suspicion.

“Hmm, it’s ordinary.”

Inside, the house had the feel of an old home with conspicuous cherry-colored molding, but was an ordinary house like any other.

One peculiarity was that Han So-jeong, smiling brightly in the large family photo prominently displayed above the living room sofa, no longer existed in this world.

Her neatly buttoned white shirt, long straight hair without bangs, small delicate eyes and nose, and unusually plump, glowing red lips stood out, and especially the corners of her mouth, which gave her a prettily demure face.

“How did you know our So-jeong? College friends?”

The middle-aged woman, who from the family photo seemed to be Han So-jeong’s mother, brought warm tea to the living room table where Yeong-ah and Miso sat side by side and asked.
The corners of the mouths of the two women, who closely resembled So-jeong, caught Miso’s eye.

“Yes, when So-jeong went through that, we should have come to see you right away… I’m sorry.”

Miso hesitated for a split second but decided to pose as Han So-jeong’s friend.

“It’s already been a year since So-jeong left us… and I still can’t get my bearings. Parents have to keep their wits about them so our So-jeong can rest easy in the other world, but,”
“That’s right. They say a wife who loses her husband is a widow, a child who loses parents is an orphan, but there isn’t even a word for the heart of a parent who loses a child… I can’t begin to imagine how hard it must be.”

As soon as Miso finished, Yeong-ah jabbed her side with an elbow.
Miso flinched, realized her slip, and glanced at So-jeong’s mother’s reaction.

“Ha ha, you even talk like my friends.”

She raised the already slightly lifted corners of her mouth even higher and gave a pretty smile.

“That’s why even among friends, this unni is called an old soul. Ha ha.”
“Huh? Ha ha, right, right! My way of talking is a bit strange, isn’t it? Ha ha ha.”

Clang―

As soon as Yeong-ah and Miso finished their awkward recovery, So-jeong’s mother set her teacup down with a stiff expression, almost slamming it.
The glass of the teacup made a precarious sound, as if it might crack or might not.
The air, suddenly sinking cold, froze the two in place.

“Who are you two?”

From the corners of her mouth, which had by now come down, a voice spread dark as pitch-black night.

“Our So-jeong didn’t go to college.”