After Story 174

After Story 174

The world has become good. CCTVs were installed in many places, and the various convenience stores that opened on nearly every street installed cameras of their own. Before, investigations required asking people questions, but these days, there were many cases where simply checking a nearby CCTV was sufficient.

Despite that, however, there were still uncovered areas. Alleys with old commercial buildings, old districts, and residential areas that were still under development… once car dash cams became a norm, it would increase the number of arrests, but at the moment, that still seemed like a far distant future.

Apparently, 2010 will be the year when everyone would use a dash cam in their car. But as of now, the year 2000, it still seems like a distant future.

“Excuse me, sir. I’d like to ask you some questions.”

Lee Daecheol showed a photo to the owner of the dry cleaning shop and explained the situation briefly.

The owner looked at the photo indifferently before speaking,

“I wouldn’t know anything by looking at a photo.”

“Please don’t say that and have a closer look at it.”

“I did have a close look. But nothing comes to mind even if I see it. Heck, if I could remember a visitor from five years ago, would I be running a dry cleaning shop? I would’ve studied better and done something else.”

A customer came into the dry cleaning shop. The owner looked at Daecheol, signaling him to get out without showing that scary-looking face of his.

“If you happen to remember anything, please contact me.”

He smiled awkwardly before leaving the store. There were no results today. There were no results yesterday either, and he would probably not gain anything tomorrow.

Daecheol took out a memo that he had folded. They were clues to the missing person.

“Dammit.”

As soon as he returned to the police station and sat at his desk, the department leader came over.

“Where were you fooling around this time?”

“The weather was good, so I went for a stroll.”

“You sure do keep going on that stroll a lot. The entire country might be just strolling grounds to you.”

The leader gave him a cup of coffee. When he drank it, he noticed it was cheap 100-won coffee from a vending machine.

“Got anything?”

“Nope.”

“How long are you going to keep holding onto that?”

“You know I’m only looking into it when it doesn’t affect my work.”

“I do, but it’s been five years, so I was thinking it’s about time to let it go.”

Daecheol worked on his document as he listened to the leader’s words. He wrote labels for various pieces of evidence and also wrote some details for a search warrant.

“If you did as much as you could, you should learn to let things go. No one can blame you for it.”

“I get it already.”

“Look at your answer. You won’t listen to a single goddamn word I say to you.”

Daecheol thanked the leader for the coffee and organized the documents. Although he was an investigator that did fieldwork, he spent more time working on documents at his desk when looking at his overall work hours.

“Detective Lee.” A junior of his approached him.

“It’s about the case you were talking about last time. The one where a woman in her twenties went missing.”

“Oh, that. Got something?”

“Nothing. Even her family canceled the missing report. I don’t know if they just accepted it or gave up.”

“Anything being investigated?”

“You know how it is. We don’t dispatch people to look for a missing adult. There isn’t anything of note, so who would investigate that? Also, her last call mentioned that she was going to come back after earning money, so well, I’m sure she’ll come back once she does that.”

Daecheol nodded. In South Korea, around 80 thousand people went missing every year. Among them, 20 thousand were classified as missing. The majority of that was the elderly with dementia, and the next most numerous were toddlers.

When a completely fine adult went missing, they were classified as ‘leavers,’ meaning, there were approximately 60 thousand leavers every year.

Of course, the majority of them would return to their houses. They would return once their financial and whatever other problems they had were resolved, and as such, would return to society, automatically dissolving their missing status.

However, there should certainly be some people who go missing because of someone else. They would get quietly buried in a place where no one can find them forever.

The junior looked at the photo on the table and spoke, “This is that case from five years ago, right? When a missing college girl was discovered as a corpse. Wasn’t there an investigation team that was formed but then disbanded?”

“It disbanded.”

“Then why are you still looking into it?”

“Because the case is still there, even though the team isn’t.”

Daecheol drank the cooled coffee. The voice from five years ago became vivid to him again.

-Detective, I told you. Our girl isn’t someone who would go missing. I told you. We told you! So why!

He shook his head.

“Anyway, thanks for looking into it.”

“Don’t mention it.” The junior turned around before stopping. “Erm, detective Lee.”

“Yeah?”

“This is something that a friend of mine who looked into this missing case told me, but apparently, there is a case of a college girl missing in Songjung-gu. The missing person’s family came over and apparently caused a total ruckus.”

“Really?”

“It shouldn’t be related to the case from five years ago, but it happened in the same district, so I’m telling you just in case.”

“How long has it been since she went missing?”

“Over a month, from what I’ve heard, but I don’t know the details.”

“Okay. I’ll ask you for something else later.”

“At that time, sweet’n’sour pork won’t cut it.”

Daecheol sighed and pressed between his eyes. As his junior said, these two cases shouldn’t be related. The reason he was concerned about it despite that was probably because of the word ‘missing.’ The leader was right. This was a disease. A damned disease known as guilt.

* * *

Cha Myungjoon shouted okay after clicking his finger. The scene looked so good that he couldn’t help but click his fingers.

Hwang Hojoong, who was acting ‘Lee Daecheol’ at the desk, stood up from his seat.

“Hojoon-hyung, that was really good. How can you be so good?”

“If you keep putting me on a pedestal like that, I’ll be too embarrassed to continue.”

Hojoon laughed cutely with a baritone voice. He was really quite something. Casting him was just as big of an achievement as casting Yang Ganghwan and Han Maru.

“Senior, please take it easy,” said Maru, who was on the side.

Hojoon told him not to say something like that and waved his hand in the air.

“I can’t take it easy if I don’t want to embarrass the drama.”

“Embarrass the drama? Oh please. You’re leading it right now.”

“Maru, I feel my stomach churn whenever I hear something like that.”

The two of them joked around.

When it was confirmed that Han Maru would play Ahn Changsik and Yang Ganghwan, Yoon Hojung, Myungjoon immediately started pondering who he would ask to play the role of Lee Daecheol.

This drama had a total of three main characters. The college student Ahn Changsik, who was finding more and more about the case, Yoon Hojung the main culprit, and the investigator character Lee Daecheol, who would help Changsik out.

Although there were a lot of fantasy elements, as it was a drama based on reality, it was impossible for Ahn Changsik, a college student, to resolve everything by himself. This necessitated the existence of a helper, and that was where an investigator who had lingering attachments to a past came in.

It was a character that needed detailed emotional expression, just as much as Ahn Changsik and Yoon Hojung. There were also quite a lot of action scenes on top of that. While they could use professional stuntmen for the dangerous scenes, any scenes that revealed the investigator’s face had to be done by the actor himself.

He had less screen time than Ahn Changsik and Yoon Hojung, and there were many action scenes to digest, on top of all the detailed acting scenes. It was a picky character.

First of all, it was impossible to scout a famous actor. Yang Ganghwan and Han Maru were the two top actors in the drama, so there shouldn’t be many stars who would want to play a character with less content. Not that they had any budget to cast anyone like that in the first place.

To use a veteran supporting actor, the budget was too tight. Just as he was agonizing over who to cast, since he couldn’t exactly use anyone since it was a protagonist-level role, Maru gave him a recommendation.

“How about senior Hwang Hojoon for the role of Lee Daecheol?”

It was a name he hadn’t heard of before. When he asked how Maru knew this person, he replied that he met him in the movie he shot before Depths of Evil. Apparently, both of them were minor characters who didn’t appear that many times.

“He’s someone with great skills. He just hasn’t come across the right work yet.”

This drama was something that was only set alight thanks to Maru. Yang Ganghwan was practically brought by Maru as well.

He decided to play along with, no, believe in Maru’s words and had a meeting with Hwang Hojoon.

The first impression he had was that this man was a farmer. He had a thick neck, copper skin, and big hands. He was also wearing a vest with the logo for the farmer’s association.

Just like his impression, Hojoon was currently doing actor work while helping out at the greenhouse being run by his brother. He definitely did not have the face of an investigator who might look fine on the outside but was brewing a storm of depression on the inside.

He had a gentle smile and spoke deeply and slowly. Based on his image alone, he definitely was no Lee Daecheol.

However, Myungjoon changed his mind after seeing a few videos of him acting. Of course, Maru’s endless persuasion helped a lot in changing his mind.

His company also seemed against it at first. However, when both Maru and Ganghwan came out strongly, saying that they wouldn’t do it without Hojoon, the opposing opinions all disappeared.

Like that, the shoot started. There, Hojoon completely manifested Lee Daecheol into reality.

The man who became an innocent farmer when the camera was off, could play Lee Daecheol so well. It made him wonder just how it was possible even as he watched it all happen.

“Senior, it’s about time you become used to it. You’re the main character of a drama.”

Hojoon vigorously shook his head at Maru’s words.

“Of course not! You and Ganghwan are the main characters. I’ll suffice as long as I’m a sidekick that works hard.”

“Let me make a prediction. By the time this drama ends, everyone will reach out to you to work together.”

“I’d have no other wish if that happened. Thank you even if it was just a formality.”

“Just wait. We’ll see if I’m just saying this out of formality, or if it’ll truly happen.”

Maru left the place for a while. Hojoon looked in the direction Maru went to and spoke,

“Director.”

“Yes.”

“You know? No one has ever told me that they believe in me to this extent. But that young man, he didn’t even see me that many times, but he won’t hesitate to tell me that he believes in me. At first, I felt like that was too much for me. I mean, isn’t that right? I don’t have anything good going for me, and my acting is inadequate too. But right now, I’m truly grateful. I gain energy thanks to his words.”

Hojoon turned his head around to look at him.

When they first met in a café, his eyes would always droop slightly downwards, but now his eyes were fixed right in the middle. Myungjoon could feel the overflowing confidence in his eyes.

“You see, I’m not that quick-witted. So if you ever think that something’s not right when you see me acting, please tell me right away. I’m good at listening to feedback and fixing things.”

“Would there ever come a day I need to advise you on acting? You’re perfect even now.”

Myungjoon tapped on Hojoon’s thick arm with his fist.

The sync between the actors was too good.

Even when Maru and Ganghwan quarreled against each other because of a conflict in acting, when Hojoon butted in and smiled, they all laughed as though they weren’t in a conflict at all.

His smile was practically that of the merciful Buddha. Whenever Hojoon was at the shoot, not a single person raised their voice, including Myungjoon himself.

“Okay then. Let’s go to the next bit,” Myungjoon said to the staff members.

* * *

He couldn’t see his neighbor. Ahn Changsik silenced all sound from his house, just in case he missed his neighbor coming back.

It had been a month since his sister went missing. The police told him that they couldn’t do anything about an adult leaving the house.

His mother went to the Songjung-gu police station and caused a ruckus. Even that, however, changed nothing.

The police brought up realistic reasons and calmed his mother down. The reality of his sister’s disappearance didn’t seem to mean much to the police.

The man whose number increased from 4 to 5.

Changsik clutched his face. He kept attending trials during the past month, mainly focusing on murder cases. However, it was not easy to find a rule to the numbers.

To simply rule the number as the number of murders someone committed, there were too many things he was unsure of. There were some people who had a zero above their shoulders despite being defendants after all.

Moreover, he had never seen anyone with a number above 1. It drove him crazy.

Once, he completely flipped and told the police everything — that he could see what other people couldn’t see, and that it seems to be related to the number of murders someone committed.

When he saw the policeman’s face after saying all that, Changsik ended up laughing in vain. The policeman was looking at him with pity.

He did understand them. Even he would feel the same. A number only one person could see? That was ridiculous.

Ultimately, the only clue left to him was his next-door neighbor. The timing of his sister going missing and the man’s number increasing overlapped. Though, this was just intuitive evidence.

However, what could he do even if he met his neighbor? Should he ask if he knew of his sister? Even if he did know her, how would that be a sin? Did he have the authority to ask him for an alibi? Can a mere citizen resolve a matter that the social infrastructure didn’t help with?

As he was agonizing over it, he got a number from an unknown number.

-This is Lee Daecheol from Yangdo-gu’s violent crimes department. Are you available for a call right now?