After Story 95

He heard a light snap from his wrists that he cracked. He touched his nose as he walked forward. The criminal became wary and moved backward. There was no sign of resistance. It looked like he would give up and turn himself in if he coaxed him.

That wasn’t bad either. That was much smarter than using force to arrest him.

“It’s all over now. That place is a dead end. If you want to run, you would have to run past me, but can you do that? It must be hard for you so don’t bother,” he said as he looked into the criminal’s eyes. A killer was nothing special. This man was just trash who only targeted the weak.

He slowly approached the criminal. He recalled his senior telling him that the team always had to move in twos, but this was a special case. He couldn’t exactly tell a criminal to wait until another officer arrived.

His eyes perfectly adjusted to the darkness. He could now see the surrounding terrain as well instead of just the criminal. He couldn’t find any spots the criminal could use to run away. If he kept pressuring him like this, he should be able to arrest the criminal.

The criminal looked around before speaking,

“You by yourself?”

He chuckled.

“Does that change anything?”

From young, he had never lost a brawl. He could subdue a frail man instantly if he so wished. In fact, he would have to worry about not injuring him too much.

“You are taking me lightly too, aren’t you?”

“You just found that out?”

He provoked the criminal. It would be easier if the criminal got agitated, making his actions larger. This was a perfect strategy. Who would think of him as a rookie investigator?

He could imagine himself smiling amidst the shower of praises from his seniors. This would happen not too far in the future. It would be a reality as long as he could arrest the man in front of him.

The criminal, who was on guard from a distance, walked forward.

He inwardly smiled. So this man was coming at him now?

The criminal approached him without hesitation. Now, they were close enough for him to make out the criminal’s face.

He gulped. It wasn’t that he was nervous. Saliva just pooled in his mouth. He was much larger in terms of weight class and that should be the case in terms of experience as well. He had been doing sports for years after all. He would not get defeated by such a lean man.

He checked for escape routes once again. The criminal would definitely look for an opportunity to run toward the entrance, just like when he ran to the warehouse.

Honestly, he didn’t have the confidence to keep up if it was down to endurance. He was gasping for air after just chasing him down here after all. If this man ran towards an open space instead of a dead end like this, it would’ve been much harder to catch him.

The criminal put his left foot forward. Perhaps he was preparing to run away? Just as he got ready to act in response, he could see the criminal reach out to his inner jacket.

“I know pricks like you. You believe in your big bodies and act like you can do whatever you want. But do you know what? Being bigger just means that there are more places to stab.”

The criminal immediately rushed forward after taking out the knife.

He gasped and dodged. A sharp knife flashed past his face. He stopped in an awkward position and glared at the criminal.

This madman actually took out a knife? He must be out of his mind. He actually decided to kill a policeman.

He reached out to his waist, but he couldn’t find anything. This was bad. He left his vest with his pistol back at the office.

“You don’t have your gun with you, do you?”

The criminal’s eyes became a level sharper. He couldn’t even reply; his palms were sweaty. According to the field manual, facing a criminal holding a knife was no different from suicide. Not only that, he didn’t have the knife-resistant vest nor the extending rod.

He looked at the tip of the criminal’s knife. His vision had narrowed in on the knife and he couldn’t see anything else. He took one step back. The very best of his efforts allowed him to step that single step back.

His body suddenly didn’t listen to him anymore. The moment he turned around, he felt like that knife would pierce his body.

He felt stifled as though he fell back first. His head, filled with pleasing imaginations, had turned blank.

What colored that newly whitened page was his own figure turning red and falling down inside the warehouse.

Only then did reality hit him. The rookie investigator dreaming of success had disappeared, and all that was left was an ordinary citizen in front of a knife-wielding murderer.

He had never gotten stabbed before, but he could predict what would happen. He would be utterly powerless.

He looked left and right. There was nothing he could use as a weapon. The criminal didn’t miss that moment when the inside of his head turned into a mess.

The knife assaulted him. Now, the criminal looked like a giant knife to him. The slightest nick would chop his body.

He remembered the bodies of the victims. This man was someone who chopped apart the arms and even each finger joint to throw the bodies away.

The moment that knife touched him, he would no longer be a criminal investigator but simply an addition to the corpses being thrown away.

He stepped backward. He had to survive. He wanted to survive.

Forget being an investigator, getting an award or a promotion or whatever, he didn’t need any of them. He was willing to give up his status as a civil servant if he could run away from this knife-holding devil.

It was fortunate that he had his back to the entrance. If he ran away like this, he would be able to survive.

There was some distance to a residential area, but if he ran away like this, he would at least be able to survive.

It was around the fifth step when his right ankle was twisted. He couldn’t tell whether he stepped on an obstacle or simply just misstepped. Before he knew it, he lost his sense of balance.

He screamed inwardly and floundered, but he didn’t regain his balance at all.

Thud-

A big noise could be heard. Even though it was just one person falling down on their butt, it numbed his ears as though a pile of construction materials had collapsed.

His hand propping himself up from the ground felt sore. He thought he would intuitively get into a protective position due to all the practice he did, but his body betrayed his expectations.

He fixed his eyes on the concrete floor. He didn’t have the courage to turn around.

He could hear footsteps. His chin trembled.

He barely managed to turn his head around to look behind him. The knife was approaching him, cheerfully and stably. There was no hint of hesitation at all.

This man would knife him just like a chef chopping up a fish on a chopping board. Death was now in front of his eyes in corporeal form.

He turned around and crawled on the ground with his two arms and legs. He momentarily forgot how to stand up or walk.

That man seemed to be enjoying this situation; it was as though he had seen many people like this. That calmness was what stifled him.

“Everyone was the same. Not a single one was different. You know, a knife is really fair. Don’t you think so too?”

Something must be wrong with his lungs. They were functioning properly, but why was it that he was lacking breath? Air lingered at the tip of his tongue before disappearing. His whole body was demanding oxygen.

The criminal’s shadow loomed over him. He struggled. He kicked the criminal while he was down.

However, as though enjoying it, the criminal just avoided his kick lightly. He seemed like he was waiting for the frog on the dissection table to become still and just looked around.

“Anyone? Hello? Hey!”

He screamed for help. Even though he knew that this was a deserted area without any people nearby, he couldn’t help but shout. There was nothing else he could do.

Just as he saw the light seeping into the warehouse, the criminal charged at him. It happened in an instant.

All of his nerves were directed at the knife. The knife mercilessly dug into his flank.

* * *

As he had quite a rough-looking face, he always got roles like detective or criminal. This time was no different. It wasn’t a villain role that had any significance in the story. It was just ‘killer A’ that appeared at the beginning of the drama. Well, it wasn’t like he was in a position to be picky.

Thanks to his rough appearance, he managed to get murderer or detective roles. Otherwise, he might have been doing part-time jobs all the time until he left the acting scene.

Jungho thought that his partner actor, Maru, was in a similar situation; he was just one of the many minor actors doing all sorts of roles because he didn’t have a fixed role yet.

He might have prepared a lot of things in order to digest the role he was playing, but minor roles were ultimately just minor roles. They were consumables for the sake of the story. If the lead characters were comparable to the main dish, the supporting characters would be the side dishes that complement them.

As for minor characters, they were on the level of chopsticks. They were used purely for the sake of the story and the lead characters.

It wasn’t that he was complaining. He knew that the drama industry wasn’t so easy for minor actors to request cool scenes.

Maybe because of that, while he did his best regardless, he did not hold onto any hopes; he had no hopes that he might make it big through this scene. The delusion that someone would recognize him had long since entered the trash.

Do your best, but don’t have any hopes. Jungho also muttered these words to himself whenever he played a minor character.

“AACK!”

A short scream hit his ears. Maru, no, investigator Park Uijung who had fallen down, stopped struggling. Jungho felt a sense of glee. The little chickling investigator was underneath his feet.

Jungho thought as he looked at the investigator clutching his flank and curling up.

Struggle more. Do something more! Try saying what you said again.

The reason to say his lines and the emotional agitation maintained a strange balance.

Jungho thought back to when he played around with dragonflies when he was young. He would hold the dragonfly by the wings between his index and middle fingers and keep watching it. The dragonfly would curl up and twitch its head a few times before turning still.

After turning still, the dragonfly would become a different toy. He and some other friends would flick their index fingers aiming at the dragonfly’s head.

They would let go of the wings just as the head flew off. The dragonfly would then fly perfectly fine for a while even after losing its head. He and his friends would laugh while looking at it.

It wasn’t something they did out of malice. They did not think that it was a terrible thing to do. Only after they grew up and got to know about more things did they slightly freak out at what they did.

And now, Jungho overlapped that dragonfly with Maru. Before the camera started rolling, Han Maru was just Han Maru, a minor actor who works hard.

However, once the acting began and Maru fell down struggling, he was no longer Han Maru. He registered as a completely different man. Jungho let that strange sensation take over his body.

He was no longer acting according to the manual. He truly stabbed ‘Park Uijung’ with the mind of a murderer.

He saw the knife that dug underneath Maru’s flank. It was natural. It was a plastic knife, so it couldn’t actually stab into the flesh. It would be disastrous if it did happen.

But for some reason, he felt annoyed. It felt like he had missed the stab. It would be better if the knife actually got stuck in the flank.

Jungho flinched at the sudden thought. He felt like the harmony between reason and emotion had tilted. He even started worrying if he should continue acting like this.

Just then, Maru, who was on the ground, reached out and grabbed his collars. This was not planned beforehand.

However, it looked all the more natural. It was the last desperate struggle from the crime investigator dying like a coward. The ‘I’m taking this guy down with me’ mind had activated after realizing that he had been stabbed.

It was strange. Those emotions, those thoughts were transmitted through Maru’s hand.

This wasn’t something they hadn’t talked about at all beforehand, yet it looked natural as though it was part of the script. He even thought that this was the right way for things to go.

Jungho twisted his lips. While his lips wouldn’t be captured by the camera anyway, he didn’t care. Right now, the target he had to show all of his acting to was not the camera outside his consciousness, but the partner in front of him who was acting with all his might.

He was only a minor character, who would only show up in the ending credits in name just once, but he couldn’t care at this moment.

Jungho pulled out the knife. He took off Maru’s hand that grabbed his collar with his left hand. He heard a gurgling underneath his throat. It was a shout that his vivid emotions had created, one that wasn’t in the script.

He stabbed, stabbed, and stabbed again.

A few times, the knife actually hit Maru’s flesh. He was probably bruised.

However, he couldn’t stop there. He could not afford to stop there.

He felt like he knew why Maru reached out to him midway. It must have been his signal not to stop. It was also a form of encouragement telling him that his acting was best and that he should not stop.

So, he had to respond.

As a murderer.

To the best extent of his skills.