How would I know what happened during the time I didn’t see?
And he wasn’t really curious about the truth. He just needed to watch the situation appropriately, stick with wherever seemed to have a higher survival rate, and then safely escape this place once things were resolved.
While building connections with people who have some standing outside, and preparing for the future.
A truly future-oriented attitude.
“It has nothing to do with Goeidam.”
“Surely it’s not a hobby?”
“Would it be a hobby…?”
So the current act of warmly (the other party’s wishes weren’t particularly important) striking up conversation was also part of that future-oriented attitude. If that guy happened to be the culprit, he hoped the connection would spare his life, and if he wasn’t the culprit, well, then he wasn’t.
Of course, the immediate task while getting close to that guy was to search through the radios piled up in this room.
To do that, I first need to build rapport to lower his guard.
Isn’t conversation between people the foundation of friendship?
“Right, right.”
First, agreement.
“You can’t treat alerts put out by families with desperate hearts lightly, and our Captain So would never do such a thing!”
Next is praise.
“Hmm. But then why were you listening to missing person alerts?”
Oops, my sincerity came out without me knowing.
“Someone ordinary like me wouldn’t understand—there must be some deep meaning, for sure!”
But if you attach flattery right there, there’s no problem at all. Jingle jingle, jingle jingle.
“…”
Jingle… huh, not working?
Son Yowan quickly switched from the flattery tactic to the rapport tactic.
“But listening just now reminded me of something!”
“I already turned off the radio for you, so what did you hear that reminded you of something? Are you hearing hallucinations?”
“Ah, it’s a figure of speech, a figure of speech! Anyway, there’s a godam like that in a neighborhood I know too!”
Changing tactics seemed to have been worthwhile. The person who had only responded with silence to vigorous jingling just minutes ago showed a reaction.
The Detective, who had been covering his eyes with his arm in a half-lying position again, asked with a sigh mixed in.
“A godam, you say? Not an incident.”
“Yep, a godam.”
Son Yowan recited a godam that circulated among peers in the Peripheral District, even though the other person hadn’t asked.
A child left home saying they were going to play with friends and didn’t return for a long time. At first, people thought the late return was due to being absorbed in play, but even after the sun set and everything turned pitch black, the child didn’t come back.
Only then did they frantically search the whole neighborhood for the child.
On the first day, several people said they’d last seen the child playing in the sand at the playground.
On the second day, those several people said they hadn’t seen the child at the playground.
On the third day, those several people said they didn’t know the child at all.
On the fourth day, all the villagers said they didn’t know the child at all.
On the fifth day, my husband said to me. “When did we ever have a child?”
Only my younger sibling believed that I had a child. So my sibling and I frantically searched for the child together.
Then we saw a little girl playing alone in the sand at a playground. She was a little girl who had played with my child several times. I hurriedly ran over, grabbed the little girl, and asked.
“Do you remember ○○? You played together last time too.”
The little girl stared at me blankly, then answered.
“I know.”
I was so happy I almost collapsed and cried. But the moment I staggered and unconsciously pulled the little girl toward me, the little girl’s whisper brushed past my ear.
“Ahjumma. ○○ is here. I held ○○’s hand earlier too. The hand was cold and very light. Must have gotten much smaller.”
I was dazed for a moment, not understanding what she meant, then the next moment I pushed the little girl away and frantically dug through the spot where the child had been playing in the sand.
I caught something in the sand. Very small and hard and cold and plump and elongated…
I heard the little girl asking.
“Does Imo know ○○?”
I turned around. I saw my sibling. My sibling’s face looked pitch black with shadow. Those lips suddenly stretched wide to the side, then contorted.
“Aaaaaaaaaaah!”
My sibling started screaming like crazy. Blood splattered each time my sibling swung a kitchen knife I didn’t know when they’d been holding. My face became drenched with blood. It wasn’t my blood but my sibling’s blood. My sibling collapsed forward with a thud.
The little girl muttered.
“Imo got smaller too…”
“That was the story.”
Having finished speaking, Son Yowan glanced at the other person. The man was quiet. He was still covering his eyes with his arm, so there was no way to tell if he was listening or not.
Is he sleeping?
Well, he was someone from Goyo, so this kind of common godam would sound too boring.
Tak.
But then, the sound of fingers tapping the armrest came from the sofa where the Detective sat.
Tak. Tak. Tak. Tak…
Sure enough, the Detective was slowly tapping the armrest with the fingers of the arm that wasn’t covering his eyes.
Eventually he asked.
“Children…”
“Children?”
“Many must have disappeared, even there.”
It was an unexpected remark, so Son Yowan inadvertently hesitated.
“The process of godam formation is diverse. Cases where stories popular in other regions flow in and transform to suit that area, cases where actual incidents are reflected, cases where vague fears are inflated as they pass from mouth to mouth. Cases where someone deliberately creates a story to instill fear in the listener so the audience won’t engage in certain behaviors…”
Meanwhile, the Detective continued his explanation, albeit in a voice laden with fatigue.
“You’ve heard it, so you must have noticed, but in the occurrence and spread of godam… the personal emotions and circumstances of the people who start, transmit, and inflate them are deeply involved. That is a characteristic of oral transmission—emotions easily mix into words spoken by mouth… Actually, these days godam are transmitted more through keyboards than mouths, but we assume that kind of writing is closer to speech than to written text. Because the refining process is remarkably insufficient, and emotion precedes logic, so we see its essence as… not much different from speech.”
The ‘we’ the Detective referred to seemed to be Goyo.
Son Yowan thought for a moment and understood what the Detective was trying to convey. Indeed, even he himself thought less when writing with a keyboard than when writing by hand.
“Then let’s return to the properties of godam. Since the formation of godam reflects the characteristics of those who enjoy that godam, naturally the godam circulating in your hometown would be the same… Then that godam would reflect the desires of the residents comprising your hometown or actual incidents that occurred there. That’s why I asked. Whether… disappearance incidents were also frequent there.”
Did I say it was godam circulating in my hometown?
Son Yowan briefly had that question, but answered first.
“I think so?”
Only then did he finish his thought.
I must have.
Otherwise, how would the Detective know it was Son Yowan’s hometown story? They weren’t acquaintances to begin with, and he had thoroughly pretended to be Chairman Son’s troublesome eldest son without even bringing up the Peripheral District.
Tsk, careless.
“It’s not that I’m answering Captain-nim’s question carelessly, it’s that I really don’t know. Hmm, the neighborhood I mentioned is quite an underdeveloped countryside…”
Son Yowan subtly changed his expression and watched the Detective’s reaction. Good. The other person showed no particular reaction. He seemed to have no interest!
“…From what I heard, that’s how it was. After sleeping one night, peers who played together the night before would suddenly disappear so frequently that no one even paid attention anymore. Some really did get lost, but there were also too many cases of entire families fleeing in the night due to poverty.”
Among Son Yowan’s friends, there were many children who evaporated one day without even knowing ‘why they disappeared.’ At first, Son Yowan also asked around about where and why his friends went, but at some point he stopped doing that.
“So in the Peripheral District, whether it’s children or adults, they don’t bother asking why someone disappeared. No, no. That’s what I heard. So it’s difficult for me to answer Captain-nim’s question. Because I don’t even know if they went missing or just left.”
Even after Son Yowan finished his answer, the Detective said nothing. The silence lasted quite a while. A bit longer than usual.
“Indeed, that’s how it is.”
Only when Son Yowan started watching his reaction again did the Detective mutter that. It was a very bland reaction for having spoken at such length.
“I understand that Peripheral Districts are generally all like that, and indeed they are.”
“Captain-nim, have you been to the Peripheral District?”
Judging this topic roughly finished, Son Yowan asked without much thought while rummaging through his head for the next topic.
