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Chapter 25: The Great Hwanggumpyong Explosion
TL: Enuma ID
After years of a kill-or-be-killed life, a man comes to grasp a thing or two about human death.
One of those things.
The logic of the living does not work on someone who has resolved to die.
Ranting about grudges or revenge is nothing but a meaningless waste of time in the face of death.
Е n u̇ m̌ à. і́ d̊
This wasn't some insight that had just struck me; it was a thought I'd held for a long while.
'That thing does have me a little rattled, though. I'm honestly not sure whether this body of mine could handle that much explosive....'
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At times like this, the trick is to go full shameless.
Rather than point a gun at a man who has already made up his mind to die, it's better to flop right down on the ground, twice as brazen as he is.
When that happens, the other side falters without even realizing it.
Like a flame being swallowed by a bigger flame.
W̆е̇ b̊ṅ о v еl Е̊ň um а̂
Whenever I got a few words flowing at that point, useful scraps of information would come trickling out.
"My name is Kang Hae-chan."
"...."
"No family to speak of. I was an orphan with no one in the world; my grandmother took me in and raised me, but she died in a car accident."
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"...."
"I was a soldier to begin with, but it's only been about a year since I joined the NIS as a black agent. That whole time was my probation period. It wasn't until I came to Dandong that my life as an agent really began."
Ӗǹ ú m̃ а̀.іd̂
And to be honest, part of it was that I just wanted to sit here and rest for a bit.
Maybe it was from watching close to a hundred people die today?
It seemed my heart had worn itself down over the course of the night.
"I asked what your name was. I'm pretty sure that's the hundredth time now."
No matter how many questions I asked, the man kept his mouth clamped shut and said nothing.
Then, at some point, the strength began to drain from his face, bit by bit.
Dilarang mengopy novel dari Enuma.id.
It made sense, when I thought about it.
At this very moment, his was a life that one click of a button would burn away, bone and flesh, in an instant, not so much as a handful of ash left behind.
Whatever I was scheming, what could it possibly matter now?
The face of a man who had realized it was all pointless twisted sharply.
"I am...."
Now, resolved to die, his final moment right before his eyes.
Ėnü m̊ а̂
Thumb resting on the switch clenched in his fist, the man sank down onto the rooftop floor a few paces away from me.
The look he turned on me was that of a man who had worn himself out.
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"I am.... Ri Myong-hak."
"How old are you? I'm thirty this year."
"...I am about that age myself."
"Huh, seriously? You look way older."
E ňum а. і̇d̆
"...What was that?"
"I figured you had a good ten years on me."
"This bastard, flapping that mouth however he pleases.... If you thought I was your elder, you might at least have spoken with some respect."
"Eh, who cares? We're about to die. What does age matter?"
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"...True enough, that is. Well said."
A North Korean assassination squad leader strapped with explosives, and a black agent of the Republic of Korea.
Е̃nù m̈ ã
In that strange atmosphere, a somewhat honest conversation passed between us.
Of course, Ri Myong-hak never once relaxed his guard, hand still resting on the detonator.
"This is a bit out of nowhere, but do you know what a shaman is?"
"A shaman? You mean those bizarre fortune-tellers who bewitch sick people and bleed them of their money?"
"Yeah. That kind of shaman."
"And so? What of this shaman?"
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"My grandmother was one."
The man's expression turned awkward.
"...I did not mean it as an insult to her."
"No, well, you're not wrong. A job that takes money off sick people."
Family history.
There's no better material for loosening up the other side.
Еnŭ m̄ ӑ . і d̆
So I started with the story of my grandmother.
She was the biggest part of my life, after all, and my only family.
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"So, you brought this up because you wished to bad-mouth your own grandmother?"
"No, it's just, the old memories came back all of a sudden. My grandmother used to say the same thing every time she looked at me. Hae-chan, your thread of life is long; you'll live to a hundred, easy."
"Heh. It would seem your grandmother's gift for divination was none too impressive."
"No, the things she told me pretty much all came true."
Е.n u_m̃ӑ_. іd̃
"Is that so? And what other fortunes did this grandmother of yours tell?"
"She warned me to watch out for pretty women. Said I carried the dohwasal in me." [TL Note: dohwasal, the "peach-blossom curse", is a fortune-telling omen that fates a person to dangerous romantic entanglements.]
"...Decidedly none too impressive."
"No, really."
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As I laid out my old stories in a level voice, Ri Myong-hak, who had only been listening in silence, slowly began to open his own mouth, little by little.
At first it was nothing special, just trivial talk.
Е̂ń ŭm ā
"I was born and raised in a place called Hyangbong-ri, in Yodok County. I did not set out from birth to become a soldier."
"Then what did you want to be?"
"A teacher. A teacher of letters. Watching that man strut about grander than even our village head, I thought I would like a taste of that kind of power myself."
"So you didn't want to be a teacher, you just wanted to wear the armband."
"Heh heh. That is so. And now look, I wear a fine armband indeed."
Squatting there under the moonlight, he spoke evenly of the arc his life had traced.
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Tales of valor about how a boy born and raised in Hyangbong-ri, Yodok County, had endured brutal training to become a member of a North Korean reconnaissance battalion, and boasts of how, after he returned home in glory clothed in that honored rank, everyone in his hometown had looked up to him.
The conversation drifted, quite naturally, into sensitive personal territory.
In the face of death, people become this honest.
"You must have married awfully young. Your son's already ten?"
"So he is. The very apple of my eye, at that age. But you, you've shoveled down all those years and still have no child?"
"These days we all marry late. Life's hard; just keeping myself fed is more than enough of a struggle."
Ë nù m а̊. іd̄
"You South Chosun sons of bitches fuss over every little thing. If a man and a woman's hearts align, that ought to be enough."
"Haha."
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"What good is hair between your legs? Raise a family, father a child; is that not what makes a true adult?"
It was when he spoke of his son, above all else, that Ri Myong-hak's eyes softened most.
It was not the face of an assassination squad agent facing death, but that of an ordinary middle-aged man from any neighborhood.
Snorting with pride, practically spraying spit, he boasted on and on about how extraordinarily bright his son was, how the boy had a God-given talent for computers, how he would one day spend that talent, down to the last drop, for the great Republic.
Е̂ n ùḿ а .і ď
"What's your son's name?"
"Ri Yong-gwang."
"Then he'd be at Mirim University in Pyongyang right now?"
"...Mirim? How long has it been since the name changed? It is the People's Security University now."
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"Ah, right."
"That is where they learn. They say a full-scale hacking unit will soon be founded and deployed for real operations. That is why, I hear, they have moved to Dangsang-dong."
Е n̈ um_a
Maybe it was because the conversation had grown so unguarded?
As I sat quietly listening to him brag about his son, a pang of pity began, unbidden, to circle a corner of my chest.
And before I knew it, my mouth started running on its own.
"That kid's got a hard road ahead of him."
"What was that?"
"When he grows up and becomes a man, he'll end up working as a hacking operative for the Reconnaissance General Bureau, won't he?"
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"Of course he will. He will enjoy the glory of becoming a shield of the great Republic."
"Unlike other ordinary North Koreans, that kid is going to realize, faster than anyone, through the internet, just how wide and colorful this world really is. Through a monitor, he'll experience secondhand how narrow and stifling a birdcage that North Korea he's locked inside really is, and how dazzlingly the world beyond the bars keeps on turning."
"...."
"Isn't the world just too cruel? If he'd been born just a little further south, he could have used that remarkable talent entirely for himself, not for the state. He could have spread his wings wide and soared to the far edge of that open sky, as free as he pleased...."
At my quiet lament, in that instant, Ri Myong-hak's lips began to tremble.
"...Shut that mouth of yours."
E nû m̀ а̃.іd̈
In his low, growling voice, an unbearable rage and an unspeakable pain were tangled together as one.
Only then did I realize I'd stepped in it.
Dilarang mengopy novel dari Enuma.id.
"Sorry. I wasn't trying to lay the blame on anyone."
"...."
"Honestly, it's not something anyone can be blamed for. All of this, it's just how things are. Isn't it?"
I tried to salvage the mood at least a little, but Ri Myong-hak's face stayed twisted, showing no sign of smoothing out anytime soon.
Wе̌ ḃn̄ ȯv е̇l̀ È ǹum а
For a while afterward we could not exchange another word; only the rasp of his breathing stood out, sharp and clear.
'Me and my big mouth.'
It was around the time a calm silence had settled over the tail end of that razor-edged conversation.
Wee-oo!
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Wee-oo-wee-oo-wee-oo!
"Ah."
Е ǹ u_m а́ .і d̈
From far away, the sound of sirens began drawing steadily closer.
It seemed the Liaoning Provincial Public Security Department's counterterror units had hit the Chongqing Society first and were finally making their way here.
Watching the police lights dye the clouds high overhead in red and blue, I felt that the stage was at last nearing completion.
When I turned to Ri Myong-hak, our eyes met of their own accord.
"No change of heart, I take it?"
"...None. As if a change of heart were even possible."
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"Palms sweaty?"
"They have been damp for a good while now, as it happens."
Here was the reason Ri Myong-hak had not yet pressed the detonator.
If I had to guess, he had been waiting for exactly this, for Public Security's counterterror units to close in tight.
His plan was to deliver a stern warning to Public Security as a whole, that the price of Dandong Public Security taking backdoor money from the NIS all these years, deceiving and slighting North Korea, was coming due right now as the explosion about to erupt before their very eyes.
There had been no other reason they shot Public Security Bureau director Wang Xianqing first thing, the moment they crossed the Yalu into Dandong.
W е̄ b n̂ о v̄ е̌ l̈ Ѐ n u m̊ ä
When I pushed off the floor and stood, Ri Myong-hak rose along with me.
"You've had a hard road yourself, Mr. Ri Myong-hak. As a father, and as a North Korean soldier."
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"Heh. You bastard.... Thanks to you, I get to leave with a lifetime of swallowed words finally off my chest."
"Yeah?"
"Yes. It is thanks to you."
"Then before you die, will you tell me one thing honestly?"
Е ň üm а
"What thing?"
"What you'd really want to say to your son. Deep down."
"...."
Ri Myong-hak kneaded the detonator in silence for a while, then looked at me, eyes steady.
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After that long silence, a lonely smile suddenly drifted across his face.
It was that unburdened look peculiar to a man who has fully accepted a death he cannot escape.
Ё n̂u m̂ а
"Since I give my life here gladly for the great Republic, my remaining family will eat rice and meat soup to their hearts' content for as long as they live. Is that not a fine thing?"
"I suppose it is."
"But my son, of all people.... I do not know. As you said before, had he been born just a little further south, perhaps a different fate would have been his. He could have unfurled that talent of his in full."
Still wearing that bitter smile, he aimed his gaze for a moment at the North Korean land visible across the Yalu.
What those eyes traced, gazing at somewhere impossibly far away, was probably not the land of North Korea itself.
"Kang Hae-chan, was it?"
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"Yeah."
"We will meet in the next world soon enough. Let us talk some more there."
The moment the Liaoning counterterror vehicles wrapped the government building in ring upon ring.
Click.
The world before my eyes bleached white, blinding white.
*****
Еn umа̄ . і́ d
KA-BOOOOOM!
A colossal blast that tore the darkness of Hwanggumpyong apart in a single stroke.
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For an instant, a pure white vacuum; then flames raging inward and outward, devouring as they went.
The massive quantity of C4 explosive, detonating all at once, bloomed into one gigantic flower of fire.
The shockwave from the blast split the building's outer walls with great cracks, and the Public Security vehicles surrounding it rattled and shook.
"!!!"
W еbn̄о vеl̊ Е ñ ú mа
"!!!!"
While people's frantic screams were swallowed whole by the roar clawing at their eardrums and scattered helplessly away, fragments torn loose from the building leapt skyward as if there were no such thing as too high.
But what soars must also fall.
Before long, everything that had shot up so high came plunging down to earth like hail.
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And in the midst of it all, splash!
One particularly large chunk slammed, with a great commotion, into the shallows along the Yalu's bank.
Ёnu mа̂
And slowly.
Blub, blub, blub.
It sank, slowly.
....
No; there was no time to sink quietly.
Sploosh!
Dilarang mengopy novel dari Enuma.id.
"Pwahh!"
*****
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