PAX 42

I thought he meant he would drive me as far as the bus terminal, but the car seemed to go much further, and soon we passed the tollgate. I realized we were heading toward the Nageon District.

Why is he doing this?

I harbored doubts and kept an eye on Ahn Yutan. But since I couldn’t figure out his motives anyway, I soon gave up on that as well.

Is he going to tell me to get out at a rest area? Is he going to dump me in the middle of the highway and vanish into thin air?

Actually, that much wasn’t even a big problem. I could just walk a little and try hitchhiking. So, I decided to just lose interest in Ahn Yutan’s ulterior motives.

The loud music continued without pause. Ahn Yutan drove in silence, and I, too, leaned against the window in silence, staring only at the road stretching out ahead.

I have to go to Seoul again sometime soon. To find someone I can entrust with the background check on Mom and Dad.

I resolved to stop at just that. I’d been putting it off and off and putting it off until now, so I really need to do it. Just that.

And after the results come back, I’ll think about the next step. If my suspicions were all just delusions, then that’s good, and if I find something fishy… then I can think about the next step accordingly. I don’t want to think that far yet.

Just imagining the process—finding someone to conduct the background check, contacting them, and commissioning the work—which wasn’t even all that difficult, made me feel drained already. Thinking beyond that would surely overload both my body and my mind. So, for now, let’s just think up to that point.

While I was steeling my resolve, it suddenly occurred to me. The fact that Ahn Yutan had set someone to tail me.

This, too, isn’t a certainty, but since he’s shown up knowing where I am and what I’m doing three times already, it can’t be considered a wild guess. He must be monitoring me in some way.

If that’s the case, there’s a bit of a hitch in contacting someone to perform the background check on my parents. Obviously, I don’t want to conduct business related to my family under Ahn Yutan’s surveillance.

Who is following me and how? A bike? A car? I haven’t felt any such signs at all.

I stealthily glanced at Ahn Yutan again.

“If you’re horny, just say you’re horny. Stop peeking at me.”

A sigh-filled response came out.

“Is it those guardians?”

“What?”

Ahn Yutan turned down the music.

“Are the guardians you keep with you tailing me?”

“Did you just call them guardians, you little shit?”

Ahn Yutan hit my shoulder with his fist. It was right above the spot where I’d been grazed by a bullet, so it was a close call.

“Are the Guardians you keep with you tailing me?”

“Huh? My guys? You?”

“I said it clearly. There’s no need to follow me around and monitor me. I have no intention of pulling any funny business behind your back.”

Ahn Yutan stared ahead for a while with a faint smile.

“Then shouldn’t it not matter if they’re monitoring you or not? If you don’t do anything shady, you shouldn’t have anything to hide.”

“Why should someone who isn’t doing anything worth monitoring have to be monitored? I’m saying I don’t want to go through that.”

“Why is someone who isn’t doing anything worth monitoring so sensitive about being monitored?”

“Ugh, goddammit.”

I spat out the curse and immediately thought that a palm or a fist might fly my way, but contrary to my expectations, Ahn Yutan was giggling.

“Don’t worry about it and just act like you usually do. It’s not like I’m doing it with bad intentions; I’m doing it to keep our dear safe, so I’d prefer you call it protection rather than surveillance.”

“The most dangerous person around me right now seems to be you.”

“That’s true. But there must be another entity that’s the next most dangerous. I have to protect you from that entity.”

He’s impossible to talk to. No matter who he’s put on me, I have no choice but to catch them myself.

“You don’t have to go out of your way to say thank you. I’m not doing all this trouble just to hear things like that.”

I felt tired and leaned against the window, when something suddenly came to mind.

“But those, uh, those two Guardians, are they okay?”

“Where? Their faces? Their abs? Their dicks?”

“No, you said the Guardian who comes to you keeps changing every year. Then shouldn’t you consider them closer to the side of Unit Leader Ahn Juik? Can you trust them?”

“Do you think I trust them?”

What is with that nonchalant expression?

“You don’t even trust them, yet you keep them around and expose all your plans?”

“What exactly do you think I’ve exposed?”

I thought for a moment.

Come to think of it, when we first met and I requested the assassination of Kim Junik, those two Guardians were present, but when we talked about killing Ahn Juik at the swimming park, it was just Ahn Yutan and me.

Perhaps he was adjusting things in his own way so that the most core information wouldn’t be exposed.

I don’t know. Ahn Yutan doesn’t really seem like the type to be that meticulous.

“Still, haven’t you let them hear and see quite a lot? They even know I meet you in secret.”

“I let them know things that don’t matter if they know. And I keep them from knowing things they don’t need to.”

“What things have you kept from them because they didn’t need to know?”

“Us fucking.”

I stared at the side profile of Ahn Yutan, who was smiling with all his teeth showing.

“That you’re fucking loud when you’re being penetrated.”

Ahn Yutan looked extremely excited.

“That you fucking love being penetrated by me.”

Anyway, that’s not a lie.

Yeah, well, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t go out of your way to talk about those things to the Guardians in the future.

I felt tired again and leaned against the window, looking ahead. He’ll handle it. If it fails, it’s him who fails, not me.

“They’re guys who have been with me for about six months.”

Ahn Yutan said.

“I’ve tamed them well for six months, so they’ve become quite useful; it doesn’t seem like anything you need to be anxious about.”

“How did you tame them?”

“The same way I tamed you.”

Does that mean he beat up one of their family members and shoved them in front of their eyes?

“And showed them a taste of money.”

Maybe he gave that purple Porsche to the Guardians as a gift.

“And promised them a hopeful future.”

It seems he presented that blueprint like the ‘merger between Pachulso and the Guardians’ that he once suggested to me, to them as well. I don’t really know what a future that would feel hopeful to those two Guardians is.

Guaranteeing them the spots of the right-hand and left-hand man to the leader of the Guardians?

Is that really a hopeful future for those two?

“Still, leaving all that aside, it’s more accurate to see them as following me voluntarily because they’ve fallen for my charisma.”

That damn charisma….

I don’t know what kind of personalities those two have or what they value most in life, but I still don’t find them very trustworthy. It would be better to assume they are beings who could betray us at any time and move cautiously.

Ahn Yutan didn’t say he trusted them either. Of course, he did say he didn’t trust me, either. I don’t know how he intends to carry out such a massive task without an ounce of trust.

…Come to think of it, it’s not ‘if he fails, he fails, not me.’ Once I’ve dipped my foot in, if he fails, I fail, too.

I imagined the murder plot reaching Ahn Juik’s ears. Me being dragged away by a few guards. Ahn Yutan is his son, so Ahn Juik probably wouldn’t kill him, but he’d likely discipline him in a radical way. And as for me… well, I’d probably be tortured and then die. I don’t think Ahn Juik would apply the rule of not touching doves to this kind of situation.

Or Ahn Yutan could pin everything on me. Say that I seduced him into doing it. That he had no fault whatsoever. The intensity and level of the torture would be higher. I would die in an even more unpleasant way.

I also imagined a situation where Ahn Yutan acts wishy-washy on the day of the physical fitness test, fails to kill Ahn Juik, and ends up being surrounded by the guards instead. This is even worse. He said if he failed, he would make me kill my own family one by one with my own hands. Or maybe all the Pachulso staff there would be surrounded and dragged away by the guards as well.

There was never an option to not join the plan to assassinate Ahn Juik from the beginning. If I said I wouldn’t do it, Ahn Yutan said he would ‘interview’ the Pachulso family members one by one. My family and I die if we don’t participate, and we die if Ahn Yutan fails to kill his father.

So, the only choice left to me is to try my best to ensure Ahn Yutan doesn’t fail.

But what on earth is that effort? To keep encouraging Ahn Yutan so he can stab his father well? Is that even okay?