Episode 231
Surprisingly, Hong Gyeong-jun was sincere.
“Because the case I’m in charge of isn’t over yet. It is not impossible to proceed together, but I think it would be disrespectful to the victims of the incident. “I know other talented people, so I’d like to introduce them…”
“Stop making a fuss, you’re crazy.”
“Are you making a fuss? Didn’t your hands become tattered over the weekend? “You can’t ignore my legitimate remarks like this.”
“Who ignores you?”
Even when I felt like I was going to die from exhaustion, I still managed to laugh at something ridiculous. Lee Jae-heon said with a chuckle in the face of Detective Hong Gyeong-jun, who was looking at me seriously.
“I know you’re sensitive about this, Detective, who is as inflexible as an ant’s tears, but please calm down. “It’s no big deal, it’s just a little fight between brothers.”
“So, can I report it as domestic violence?”
“Ah, Detective, are you going to report it as domestic violence if your brother throws a pillow?”
“How can that and this be the same? And pillows can also be used as a crime tool. Mainly from suffocation.”
“Even though people are rich, there are no people who can think normally. “You have to accept that there is a difference between royals and ordinary people.”
“This is a matter of character rather than a matter of wallet…”
Lee Jae-heon immediately nodded as Hong Gyeong-jun said with a frown.
“I admit that.”
“….”
“개새끼 진짜… 인성 더러워서. “I won’t be able to meet you.”
Lee Jae-heon couldn’t help but acknowledge his brother’s humanity. When Hong Gyeong-jun’s expression turned sour, Lee Jae-heon looked at his hands and said.
“Don’t your fingernails grow back anyway? it’s okay.”
“Are you okay with the mental damage Jaeheon Lee suffered?”
“Now it makes sense.”
“….”
“…I’ll be considerate, so don’t look at me like that.”
Anyway, it was frustrating because all the residents of this world were chicks. My colleagues from my previous life were busy teasing each other even though they accidentally lost limbs. It wasn’t Lee Jae-heon’s taste to drag it this heavily.
However, such overly sensitive concerns were also necessary.
“If I had been a better person, this wouldn’t have happened… It’s a shame.”
“…Jaeheon Lee is a good enough person.”
“No way.”
With a self-deprecating snort, ‘Lee Jae-heon’ did not hide his tired face.
“There is no place for me in hell.”
That’s because I’m not a person from this world.
Lee Jae-heon swallowed his light words and looked at Detective Hong Gyeong-jun with a calm gaze. I felt a little bad because Jaeheon Lee’s unexpected words seemed so absurd and sudden. Jaeheon Lee overlaid the face of his past life onto his current face.
“…I had a vague belief in family. At least it won’t go this far. I wouldn’t do something crazy like this. Well… Actually, it’s a bit hard to call it faith. “It’s just something we naturally expect as humans.”
“…Are you saying you believed you wouldn’t commit a crime?”
“I didn’t want that, wasn’t there something like that? For example…”
Although he looked calm, ‘Lee Jae-heon’ could not make eye contact with Hong Gyeong-jun.
“Things like threatening robbery…murder.”
At the very least, it showed that ‘Lee Jae-heon’ had a proper law-abiding spirit and common sense. Just because they are different from ‘Lee Jae-heon’s’ family, they are not the same type of people.
“…You said you were going fishing with your brother. So are you saying that your brother committed murder? “When I went down to Busan today?”
“You didn’t kill anyone.”
“Then…”
“I killed him.”
He creates a calm but shaky voice and a calm face but calm gaze.
“This is my first time killing something in real life…”
“…Jaeheon Lee.”
“Detective Hong Gyeong-jun.”
I can say without a doubt that the current Lee Jae-heon would have an expression similar to that of his previous life.
“Is there an empty spot in the prison?”
Detective Hong Gyeong-jun’s face became even more tense as he raised the corners of his mouth as if he was laughing at someone else. That’s right, because this is an expression I often made in my past life. By now, Hong Gyeong-jun would have been looking at Lee Jae-heon and thinking of his dead shooter.
In this way, ‘Lee Jae-heon’s’ sins had to be crushed and moved on.
“You said you would arrest me too someday. “They also put handcuffs on me.”
“…I did not say this with this situation in mind.”
“Did you think it was me? “I’m doing it, even in real life… with people…”
“….”
“I feel dirty.”
He frowned once and then put on a calm expression again. It shows that he has no intention of avoiding the sin he committed.
“It always feels bad to kill something living.”
“…How many people did you kill?”
“Do we also have to count what we kill in the other world? “Then it will be okay.”
“Jaeheon Lee.”
“There was only one person.”
To be exact, there were six people in total, including the errand boy, but Jaeheon Lee just swallowed that fact. It was a story that was not necessary for the setting of ‘Lee Jae-heon’.
“Well, even so…”
‘Lee Jae-heon’, who was quietly watching Hong Gyeong-jun looking at me with strange eyes, narrowed his eyes and smiled.
“What does it matter? “He’s already a murderer.”
Hong Gyeong-jun’s eyes wavered at those words. This meant that the frustrating sense of duty that could be said to be Detective Hong Gyeong-jun’s trademark was partially falling apart. Lee Jae-heon thought that Detective Hong Gyeong-jun could not be an exception except in a situation like the present. We had to push the current atmosphere as much as possible.
That way, they will identify ‘Lee Jae-heon’ with his dead shooter, and then even if he commits a crime later, they will turn a blind eye to it at least a few times. That much unreasonable trust was needed.
“I originally planned to keep my mouth shut and move on, but… I didn’t know our detective would come to visit. “It’s a shame I could have remained a good citizen who didn’t commit any crime.”
“…It doesn’t seem particularly disappointing. If you really wanted to hide it, you wouldn’t have opened the door so easily. “My current appearance is closer to that of a victim than a perpetrator, so if you hadn’t told me, I wouldn’t have known.”
“Maybe so.”
The thin smile on Lee Jae-heon’s face gradually disappeared.
“But I don’t like it.”
“…What on earth do you want?”
“I hope Detective Hong Gyeong-jun is faithful to his job.”
“Are you saying we should arrest Lee Jae-heon?”
“I don’t know, but someday… won’t that happen?”
He spoke in a calm voice, with a face that was almost expressionless but very tired.
“People eventually die. There is an end. “There is a process to get there.”
“…I know. “It’s natural.”
“I have never had this whole process go my way. “It was like that when I was born into the Lee family, it was like that when I was first eaten by the underworld, it was like that when I survived and couldn’t die in it… It was even like that when my co-workers found out about the existence of the underworld.”
“That’s…”
“I’ll probably be alive for a while longer. I will try my best. Also, there are new survivors and I know more than them… Because In-ho Jeong will help me. “It means I won’t die because I have such expectations.”
“I cannot tell Jaeheon Lee to die in peace. You killed someone and became a murderer. “You must pay for your sins.”
“I don’t want any words of comfort from you, the inflexible detective. Didn’t I say this before? “I just hope that the detective will stick to his job.”
He smiled faintly like that.
“I couldn’t choose the course, so I want to decide the end myself.”
“…is this a sentence to die?”
“It is a declaration that we will live like that. I can’t escape this world anyway, and I will die in it someday. That’s not something I can do. Even if Detective Hong Gyeong-jun wants to put me behind bars, he won’t be able to do that. That will only be possible after I die….”
“….”
“So, detective, live longer than me.”
Hong Gyeong-jun was looking at Lee Jae-heon with a stern face, and he found the muddy confusion deep inside the other person’s eyes. It meant that ‘Lee Jae-heon’ and the shooter were being overlapped.
“Then you can catch me too.”
Now all he can do is done.
All that’s left is to wait calmly for Hong Gyeong-jun so that he can fully accept my true feelings.
* * *
“Oh, of course not now.”
“…What do you mean?”
“Arrest investigation, anything. I’ve been working hard to take care of the problem, but if the detective suddenly goes on a rampage trying to catch criminals, it’s a pain in the ass. Please take care of yourself.”
“I think the admonition to be self-respectful is what Jaeheon Lee needs, not me.”
Hong Gyeong-jun pressed his forehead with his hand because his head was pounding.
I knew very well that it was not polite to look at people over and over again. This is even more so if the target is not a great person both subjectively and objectively, and their facial expressions, speech, and actions are not enough, and even lead to accidents. It was hard to understand why there were so many similarities.
“…I hate criminals.”
“Everyone would do that.”
“There are a lot of people who don’t like it, and I hate it more than average.”
“That’s what a detective should do.”
“I guess you’re a little less tired now.”
Crime is harm.
“Really… crime should not exist in the world.”
It goes without saying, but there are people who don’t know this. Or, there are many people who commit it knowingly.
There are people in the world who harm good citizens who exist somewhere with words like ‘flexibility’, ‘tradition’, and ‘custom’, and that was an obvious crime. Hong Gyeong-jun hated such criminals. However, he wasn’t so stupid that he didn’t know reality and went on a wild rampage. This was the reason why they did not put handcuffs on the wrists of the chief, who was obviously committing corruption.
“I think you’re telling me to listen now.”
“You understood well. “I feel refreshed inside.”
“It doesn’t really look like that.”
“Ha…”
But maybe it was just because of my poor understanding of topics that I was living an even more chaotic life. It would have been better if there were no exceptions at all.
I asked Lee Jae-heon, who was looking at his tattered hands.
“…Do you want to die?”
“…Is this a threat?”
“I was literally asking if you hoped to die.”
“Everyone asks me that, but I am truly filled with the will to live.”
“That’s the funniest joke I’ve heard this year.”
“No matter what people say….”
“People who are motivated in life don’t live like that.”
Not wanting to live means wanting to die… in the end, it means that life is that painful.
“…You may have investigated, but there was a senior above me.”
“…Are you talking about the person who died?”
“you’re right. And Jaeheon Lee looks exactly like that senior. For your information, I neither respect nor respect that person.”
“You insult the living and the dead at the same time.”
“He was such a selfish person.”
He got on people’s nerves with a bright smile and never took things seriously even when a case was reported. A detective who jumped over loopholes in the law like a snake jumping over a fence, always solving cases at a critical level. Aside from being annoyingly competent, there was nothing about his personality that was worth imitating. Thanks to this, Hong Gyeong-jun’s previously rigid thinking became a little more flexible.
But it felt like it would disappear at any moment and it was obvious that I had no expectations from anyone. However, he showed selfish and cruel affection, and when he came to his senses, he was staying by that person’s side.
“He was a selfish… exactly, yet kind person. “I didn’t respect him or respect him, but he was someone I could treat as a friend.”
“…This is a difficult story to understand.”
“That kind of person killed someone one day.”
“….”
“I committed murder.”
I still remember that day.
“It was killing a criminal who murdered multiple minors.”
The gunner at that time was smiling happily. His face was refreshed, as if all his duties had been completed, and he looked calm and proud as he looked at Hong Gyeong-jun, who came to visit me. Looking at that person’s blood-covered face, Hong Gyeong-jun realized that this was the end of that person.
That was the conclusion he decided.
“…It may be natural because the body was greatly damaged and there were many citizens who witnessed it, but extenuating circumstances were not taken…and he himself went to prison, saying he did not have the will to defend himself.”
“That’s an interesting story.”
“Not long after that, he committed suicide inside the prison.”
Hong Gyeong-jun made eye contact with Lee Jae-heon.
“I was laughing.”
So bright that it’s obnoxious.
The only exception was Hong Gyeong-jun, who died as if he had no regrets. Even he, who hated criminals so much, was an exception that he could not completely hate and completely deny. That was the case not only for Hong Gyeong-jun, but also for all the detectives who remember him.
And Hong Gyeong-jun had to worry about the same thing again.
“…I hope that this is not the ending Lee Jae-heon wants.”
“sure.”
“Damn, I can’t believe this.”
Whether to recognize the person in front of you as an exception or to despise it.
“Please live a normal life.”
The answer was already there.
Because Lee Jae-heon was more than an exception.
