Vol 6 Ch 16

Inside the hotel, it was cool, as if the heat outside had never existed. I slipped into light slippers and opened the laptop on the living room table. It was a laptop with only storage functions, no internet connection.

Click. I right-clicked through the WikiLeaks files. What had been released through hacktivists was only the tip of the iceberg, and Kwon Taeha had entrusted all of it to me. However I chose to use it, it was left entirely in my hands.

I pulled the bugging pen from my pocket and placed it on the table as well. There were well over twenty recordings stored already—conversations with Minling, Kwon Taeha, and Aeil Kwon, one after another.

I plugged the pen’s USB into the laptop and replayed the recording I had with the Blue House owner. Earphones in, I occasionally flinched at the sharp sound of the Jindo dog barking in the background. The half-hour-long conversation seemed to hold nothing worth extracting. Still, I decided to listen through again just in case. That was when the iPad lit up on the table. I paused playback, eyes narrowing. I had set it to alert me whenever an article related to STA appeared.

[……The German Federal Prosecutor has requested the summons of ‘Taeha Kwon,’ successor of ‘STA Corporation.’ The German Federal Prosecutor, in cooperation with the U.S. Federal Prosecutor, has begun investigating whether ‘Taeha Kwon,’ suspected of being BM (Black Man), formed ties with the U.S. Democratic Party after the subprime mortgage crisis. A spokesperson for ‘STA Corporation’ appealed to the company’s transparency, stating that no illegal actions occurred in the Arctic oil drilling project bid and that the investigation would reveal their innocence.]

The fact that it had even reached the Korean press meant this was no ordinary matter. Since the embargo incident, STA’s stock prices had been fluctuating daily, and now the Federal Prosecutor was involved. The scale was beyond what I had imagined. If it turned out that Kwon Taeha really had colluded with the Democratic Party, he could face not only fines amounting to billions or trillions of won but also a prison sentence.

I pulled out my earphones and lit a cigarette. Inhale, slow exhale. Think. I needed to calmly piece this together again.

I had first found WikiLeaks through my mother’s paintings. The gravestone bore the words: To my beloved lifelong companion.

If I were my father… if I thought from his perspective… The smoke cooled the turmoil in my chest.

He had married his wife to seize his father-in-law’s company—though love had been part of it too. Once he gained the company, he wanted power, wanted a venom strong enough to keep from ever being trampled again. That was why he had built WikiLeaks. His wife grew disillusioned with him, urging him to live an ordinary life like others. But he knew her bright, optimistic nature came from her privileged upbringing. Sometimes, he even resented her. After all, she had grown up that way because her father had stolen his own father’s invention. So he couldn’t always be gentle; he couldn’t always indulge her. Little by little, she wore down. In the end, she sank into depression and killed herself. Only after her death did he realize—he had ruined a life that could have been good.

By then, the family was on the brink of bankruptcy, and the only thing he had left to give his son was WikiLeaks. Even that, he couldn’t let fall into the hands of others. The predators at the top of the chain continued to use him, pinning even the kidnapping incident on him. He had lived ruthlessly enough to lose his wife, but no matter how much he struggled, all that was left was to be quietly devoured. In that case…

“Hawon.”

I blinked at the object extended toward me.

“It’s the Boss.”

I took the phone from Wagner.

“This is Joo Hawon.”

[You said you’d call when you arrived, but I’ve heard nothing.]

“I… lost my focus for a bit.”

Not as much as you, though.

[A few days from now, the Max will set sail.]

“…?”

[Everyone will be gathering there.]

It sounded like some kind of shareholders’ meeting.

[Maybe I’ll take this chance to open a kelp farm with the main dealer.]

“That doesn’t suit you.”

The idea of Kwon Taeha running a kelp farm was impossible to picture.

[Come back before the Max sets sail. Your CEO might be about to go broke, so let’s take one last cruise trip together.]

“Even when the rich go bankrupt, they say the wealth lasts three generations.”

[I don’t plan on living disgracefully off slush funds. More than that.]

I pressed the phone closer to my ear.

[I miss you.]

Heat spread from the ear pressed against the phone. I absentmindedly touched the other ear. If only he would complain, say he was struggling, or even blame me for making things worse. Why did he have to stir up my heart again, make me long to see him too? I wanted to meet his ash-gray eyes in person. I wanted to tell him everything would be alright.

“I…”

Even then, the words wouldn’t leave my mouth.

[I’m just saying. It’s not like you’re going to come to me right now, are you?]

He seemed to think my staying in Korea was nothing more than stubbornness.

“I’ll return before the Max departs.”

[Keep your promise.]

It was his way of telling me to come back even if I found nothing.

“This time, without fail.”

I handed the phone back to Wagner. He, too, must have been worried about his Boss, because after switching the call he answered with a serious look. Still, all he could do was respond to the man’s instructions.

Somewhere along the way, I had become a crayfish siding with its friend. The reason I wanted to piece WikiLeaks into one was partly to repay my debt to him, but also because I wanted Kwon Taeha’s trust. At the very least, I refused to be treated like someone who would run off to another man when things soured. They say the first time is hard, but the second time comes easily—yet there are also things you never do a second time because of how searing the first experience was.

“When exactly does the Max set sail?”

I asked Wagner after he ended the call.

“Two days after.”

He answered with a V sign.

Just two days. A short time, with a high chance I would return empty-handed. But more time didn’t guarantee I could get my hands on WikiLeaks either. I plugged my earphones back in and replayed my conversation with the man under the blue roof.

But that bastard cried once. That harsh man came to me only once, in tears. I remember it vividly—it was the last time we drank makgeolli together. Not long after, I heard he had killed himself. Do you know what day it was? The day they brought a stonecutter to carve Miss Heeon’s gravestone. I couldn’t read the crooked writing, but that day, Sangkyung  told me: if someday, far in the future, you ever came looking, I was to show you her gravestone.]

That part nagged at me, so I played it back. The Jindo dog barking in between didn’t bother me much.

“To my beloved life’s companion.”

Beloved…

The letters had appeared both in the letter Kwon Taeha received and the ones I had. Mine said “To my beloved son and to the Demon King.” His only said, “To my beloved Demon King.” But it was that letter that led him to me. I had been ignorant, doing nothing. And now, my father had apparently told him to show me my mother’s headstone. In the end, just as Kwon Taeha had tracked me down, it was now my turn to search for traces of my mother.

Our family home in Korea had been bought up by Baek Jaetak, and my mother had passed away in a psychiatric hospital.

“Ah!”

It suddenly came to me. The psychiatric hospital. Soyang River.

The last place my mother had been. That was nearly all I knew of her. Either way, I had to move. Whether I was right or wrong, anywhere was better than sitting still.

“Wagner, let’s go.”

Wagner, who had been standing near the door, straightened his clothes.

“Ok.”

“I’ll drive.”

“…Ok.”

His reply was a little late, maybe because he still didn’t trust me, but it didn’t matter. I packed up the laptop, iPad, and left the hotel room at once. I had chosen a room near the elevator on purpose, so the path was short. After a brief wait at the front entrance, the valet brought out the car. I slid into the driver’s seat, Wagner into the passenger seat. I switched the navigation system back to Korean. Since Soyang River was in Dong-myeon, Chuncheon, I searched for psychiatric hospitals nearby. Two places showed up, but neither matched the name. From what I remembered, it didn’t have “National” in its name, and it had probably been privately run. The wards had been spacious like a home, and the facilities clean—likely catering to the wealthy. I opened my iPad right away.

“1990 Soyang River Psychiatric Hospital.” “1991 Soyang River Psychiatric Hospital.” I searched sequentially. Then in 1994, an article popped up.

It was old, covering an incident at a psychiatric hospital in Dong-myeon, where Soyang River was.

It reported that wealthy old men who were perfectly sane, as well as heirs entangled in inheritance disputes, had been confined to the hospital in exchange for bribes. Outrage spread through society, and the hospital was shut down. The ones who had arranged for the innocent to be locked up were all their relatives. Looking further, I found that, absurdly, the building had never been demolished and had since become a spot for urban explorers.

I quickly typed the address of the closed psychiatric hospital into the navigation system. The voice told me it would take an hour and thirty minutes. Even if there was no answer there, I planned to retrace everything I remembered step by step. Only two days remained, but wasting time in impatience was not an option.

“Take a nap.”

“One hour. No sleep.”

Maybe to stave off boredom, Wagner connected the car’s audio system to my phone’s Bluetooth and played music. Whether or not he shared the same taste as Aeil Kwon, the speakers soon filled with an urgent piano piece, followed by the rich voice of a baritone.

It was Schubert’s “Erlkönig.”

***

[No Outsiders Allowed. Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted.]

Barbed wire encircled the building. The psychiatric hospital pressed against the mountain seemed to fall into darkness much faster than the city. Wild, unkempt grass lent the place an eerie air, making it too foreboding for anyone to approach, even the brave. On the internet, rumors spread that a woman had committed suicide here, which only deepened the horror surrounding the abandoned hospital. They had no idea that woman was my mother, and yet they gossiped so freely.

The main gate was secured with a massive padlock, a sign reading No Outsiders Allowed hanging from it. I glanced at Wagner, but even he didn’t look capable of breaking the lock. Together, we checked the wide stretch of barbed wire for any gaps. It was tightly wound up to nearly two meters high, clearly meant to keep out urban explorers. Circling back to the gate, Wagner suddenly raised his hand to stop me.

“Master. Nothing. It’s fine. Maybe.”

He pulled a gun from his chest, attached a silencer in seconds, and blasted the lock apart. My jaw dropped, and he only shrugged.

“Fix when leaving.”

Wagner looped the fallen chain back around the gate, pretending it was still intact.

“Good job.”

It was a brute-force solution, but there was no other choice. It wasn’t dark enough to use our flashlights yet, so we carried them unlit in our hands as we walked. Passing what must once have been the garden, we reached the front of the building. The glass doors were already shattered, sparing Wagner the trouble of drawing his gun again. Only once we stepped inside did we switch on our flashlights. Their brightness rivaled fluorescent lamps, and with both turned on, the place lit up quickly.

“Scared?”

Wagner held his flashlight under his chin as he asked.

“Your face is scarier than any ghost. Put it away.”

He laughed, almost embarrassed, as if he hadn’t meant to look like that. Truthfully, if my mother were still here, I wouldn’t have felt fear—just sorrow. She would have been alone in this place all along. I kicked at shards of broken glass. I remembered the number of her ward. [202]. Each floor only had two rooms, structured like small apartments with a living room and a bedroom. We searched for the stairs and climbed to the second floor.

At the landing, Room 201 and directly across, Room 202, came into view. As expected, the door was locked tight. Marks suggested someone had tried to force it open before, but unlike Wagner, no ordinary explorer would’ve had firearms.

“Can you shoot this one too?”

Wagner touched the doorknob, then nodded.

“Several times. Hawon, danger. Step back.”

Four muffled shots rang out, and Wagner kicked the loosened knob. The steel door creaked open, its hinges groaning from long disuse. As it opened, I had the strange impression of being blinded by light.

The breeze through the open window made white curtains billow. Bathed in sunlight, my mother sat before her canvas, painting. She turned to me with open arms, asking if her son had come. Without hesitation, I rushed forward and embraced her. It was a sunlit room, as bright and clear as her face. But the place before me now was an abyss. A daydream, nothing more—just a memory I had forgotten.

She hadn’t always hated me. She was simply a woman trapped by manic-depressive swings, clutching me close one moment and shoving me away the next.

I swept my flashlight across the darkness that had replaced those sun-drenched days. It smelled musty and stale, like a tomb newly uncovered after millennia.

“……!”

A soundless cry escaped my throat. Goosebumps raced across my skin. The sofa my mother used, the ornate desk, her canvases—none of it was there.

Instead, I found a camera tripod, dark stains of blood on the floor, a rope and old chair smeared with red, and a black curtain behind them. I had seen this scene before.

In Kwon Taeha’s abduction video.

Panicked, I swept the light from side to side. Wagner let out a low exclamation of awe. Pinned across the walls, sheets of paper covered every inch like a galaxy, pressing down on me with their weight.

My mother’s ward was where Kwon Taeha had been imprisoned. This place was the chalice filled to the brim with poison.