***
Since the Detective had moved to a first-floor room after revealing his identity when the body was discovered, this was Son Yowan’s first time seeing the Detective’s new room as well.
From the outside it looked dark, but once he actually went inside, thanks to the indirect lighting installed here and there, it was at least bright enough to make out his surroundings.
‘Oh.’
That’s why Son Yowan froze the moment he entered, his posture stuck mid-scan of the room.
All kinds of antique radios surrounded the four walls of the spacious open room. Radios packed together like bricks climbed all the way to the top of the walls, looking down at people. He felt an inexplicable sense of intimidation.
Though there was a difference between televisions and radios, Son Yowan was momentarily reminded of an art piece from before the World Funeral. It was a work where the artist had stacked television monitors high like a tower.
Come to think of it, aside from here, there were old radios scattered throughout Manghyang. There had been one decorating the room Son Yowan was staying in, and even in the corridor where he’d been wandering with the actor, there were a couple embedded in the walls.
‘They said this is the Godfather’s villa, so does that mean the radios here are that person’s collection?’
If that was the case, this place might be like the main exhibition hall for the antique radios the Godfather had collected.
‘Anyway.’
Only then did the Detective, who had just come inside, notice Son Yowan looking at him and opened his mouth.
“Phew…”
No, he was about to say something but suddenly sighed first instead.
“Captain So, do all of these make sound?”
Sighing the moment you see someone’s face was clearly rude enough to hurt anyone’s feelings, but Son Yowan wasn’t part of that ‘anyone’. He wasn’t even curious about the reason.
‘So what if I hear the reason?’
Even if he got the answer that it was because of him, it’s not like he’d give up the room now, so it was best to just pretend not to know.
“They do…”
Rustle.
“They’re the same as the other antique radios and the decorative radios here. If you tune the frequency, broadcasts or alerts come out, and even if you don’t bother tuning them, occasionally when a signal gets picked up, songs or stories come out…”
Thunk.
Every time the Detective moved in the darkness, sounds came out. Son Yowan glanced at him.
“What are you eating?”
The Detective held up whatever he’d taken a half-bite of to the indirect lighting.
“You’re eating seolgi. Do you like rice cakes?”
“Even eating a little… keeps me full for a long time.”
“You’re talking about it like it’s combat rations.”
The Detective didn’t seem inclined to say more about his ‘combat rations’.
‘He really eats without any pleasure.’
With a frozen fish expression, no emotion whatsoever, just his mouth chewing away—you could tell him he was chewing sand and he’d just go ‘I see.’
Son Yowan returned to the original topic.
“If they work normally, isn’t that difficult?”
“What do you mean.”
“If an alert or something goes off, that means all of these will activate at once. You can just not listen to broadcasts or music, but alerts go off automatically, right?”
Son Yowan narrowed his brow, apparently imagining the scene.
“Wow. That’s gotta be incredibly noisy, right?”
Rustle.
While unwrapping the second seolgi, the Detective tossed out a curt reply.
“No kidding.”
“?”
Son Yowan found the Detective’s words strange. Not ‘not really’ but ‘no kidding’? It sounded like it was already noisy even without the special situation of radios spewing out alerts all at once.
But even straining his ears, he couldn’t hear any sound from anywhere…
“…Phew.”
In the meantime, the Detective, having eaten enough seolgi to roughly fill his stomach, collapsed onto the large sofa. Son Yowan sneakily glanced at him as he closed his eyes completely and only let out small breaths, thinking:
‘Is he going to sleep?’
What a strange fellow. Based on his momentum (well, there wasn’t much, but considering the Detective’s usual energy level, anyway), Son Yowan had expected him to interrogate him immediately upon entering about what this business of incomplete memories meant.
‘Well, if he doesn’t ask, that’s even better for me.’
It was just an excuse he’d roughly made up to stick close to the Detective anyway…
“Tell me, Son Yowan-ssi.”
Oh crap, damn it.
“Hahaha, I thought you were sleeping.”
“I’m just closing my eyes.”
“Are your eyes dry? Or do you have high intraocular pressure?”
“There’s no problem… with my eyes.”
Son Yowan tried to recall the Detective’s eyes. They were lifeless eyes that looked more fish than human, but if he said there was no problem, it wasn’t Son Yowan’s business.
‘Hm?’
But if he said ‘with my eyes’, doesn’t that sound like there’s a problem somewhere else?
Son Yowan thought deeply.
‘His mind, then.’
That must be it.
“Son Yowan-ssi.”
“I wasn’t thinking anything? I definitely wasn’t thinking anything rude. Of course not, considering who you are.”
“That’s not it, I’m asking when you’re going to tell me.”
The Detective let out a deep sigh.
“So, you were thinking something rude…?”
“To summarize just the key points, it’s exactly what I told Captain So!”
Son Yowan hurriedly began reciting about his ‘lost memories’.
“My memory of the night before Captain So issued the Soyo alert isn’t intact.”
“How far do you remember?”
“Uuum, after eating dinner, playing a few rounds of mahjong with noona, then going to the bar and having a few cocktails…”
“That was around 10:20 at night.”
“How do you know?”
“Because someone who claimed to dislike it kept dragging me to drinking sessions, so I came to know.”
“Wow, what a nasty bastard that is!”
“That nasty person, please continue your statement…”
“Of course, of course. Um, we changed locations midway and switched drinks too, so I drank more, and that was around midnight?”
“Similar to usual.”
“Yes yes. I’m quite a regular person, you know.”
It was half joking but half sincere. In fact, Son Yowan’s daily routine after entering Manghyang had been similar, and ‘that day’ he was reciting now was no different.
But.
“But only that day had gaps in your memory?”
Thwack!
“Why are you hitting the table?”
“Because I thought ‘That’s it!’ Sharp thinking, as expected of Captain So!”
“So, what’s your guess, Son Yowan-ssi?”
“At first I thought someone drugged me.”
“Do you have anyone who holds a grudge against you, Son Yowan-ssi?”
He glanced at the Detective, who still had his eyes closed.
“No, why would there be?”
That guy didn’t drug me, so there’s no reason for anyone else to.
“Thinking about it, nothing was stolen from me either. And it doesn’t seem like they took any organs either. Hmm, maybe they implanted some kind of chip? There was an old urban Godam like that, where they implant some small chip in your body to control…”
Mid-sentence, Son Yowan went “Uh…” and rolled his eyes before asking.
“Um, Captain? By any chance, is there a case where two Godam become Goeidam simultaneously in one region…?”
“It does happen, but Son Yowan-ssi, that Goeidam you’re suspecting doesn’t exist here…”
Only then did Son Yowan clutch his chest in relief. Phew!
“Anyway, even if I blacked out and something happened to me, all that happened was being dumped outside my lodgings, and since I didn’t lose anything, at first I thought it might be nothing.”
“But.”
Son Yowan’s head worked hard. This was the timing to make his move.
“But!”
Bang!
For dramatic effect, Son Yowan even slammed the table hard and resolutely stood up (yes, he did. Without the owner’s permission, he had already been sitting on someone else’s sofa).
“I realized after the incident happened. That the time period when my memory blanks out happens to be when the Goeidam occurred!”
Rustle.
But what came back was the sound of the Detective unwrapping a packaged seolgi.
‘This guy?’
Son Yowan didn’t back down. If he wasn’t reacting to this meaningful development, he just needed to add more MSG to the development!
“What could have happened to me that day? Given the timing, naturally it wouldn’t be unrelated to the Goeidam…”
But wait. As he spoke, Son Yowan himself started to feel uneasy.
‘Wait. Wait a minute.’
The information that this place was inside a murder play, or the fragmentary future he’d seen, suddenly came to mind the very day after the day he was talking about now—could this be?
‘Related to the Goeidam occurrence?’
Nah, no way.
…….
Uuuum.
“So… are you confessing or something? But confession is only possible if you have memories.”
“No, no. Not a confession.”
When there were other people around, claiming he might be the culprit was a mindless dopamine-driven development to follow the Detective, so he couldn’t arouse real serious suspicion here.
“There’s a more likely scenario, Captain. Let’s think about it this way. What if I saw something I shouldn’t have seen that night, so the culprit needed to erase my memory…”
Rustle.
That bastard unwraps another one in the middle of all this. I don’t know what he’s stuffing in his face with the expression of a father chewing chimhyanghwan.
“Son Yowan-ssi.”
“Yes…”
