Chapter Index





    Ch.9Chapter 9. Safety Mechanism

    “Juliane, that woman. She said she was a Justice Department employee.”

    The moment I heard it, I felt cognitive dissonance.

    Hmm. Justice Department employee.

    So what?

    “No way, that’s crazy.”

    It’s not just ‘so what.’

    Justice Department means she’s a spy assigned to monitor me.

    This is unbelievable.

    “Thanks. Let’s just keep things this way, okay?”

    “Let go…”

    For the first time, I didn’t feel annoyed with Cuss, so I roughly ruffled her hair.

    I almost panted like a horny dog for a woman who was probably trying to throw me back in prison.

    Fine. I get it now.

    If I just dump someone like Juliane…

    But I can’t.

    Damn it. Those legging-clad hips keep flashing before my eyes.

    And those obscenely large breasts she’s so proud of.

    “Should I have a little fun?”

    If she’s trying to monitor me, she’ll want to stay close.

    If I push her away, they might resort to other outlandish surveillance methods.

    Isn’t turning crisis into opportunity the mark of a first-class person?

    If I come on strong, Juliane won’t be able to reject me because of her monitoring duties. Even though she’ll hate it inside.

    Forcing myself on a woman who hates it…

    That’s kind of exciting.

    “Good job, man. Fucking good job.”

    “Let me go!”

    “You little shit. I told you not to bite.”

    “Aaaaargh!”

    Why does this girl with weaker jaw strength than mine keep provoking me?

    She left a big bite mark on my arm before finally surrendering.

    But I’m worried about tonight.

    This crazy bitch tried to stab me earlier—what if she tries to kill me in my sleep?

    I can’t spend every night trembling in fear.

    I need some kind of defense.

    “Ah.”

    A brilliant idea came to mind.

    I immediately opened my laptop and started writing an email.

    It’s an outdated communication method nobody uses anymore, but I prefer it.

    Cuss peeked out from behind the sofa, craning her neck curiously.

    “Do you know what this is?”

    “Machine… emitting light… with human letters…”

    What’s wrong with her?

    Why is she acting like this?

    “Hey. Get a grip. This is called email. Think of it as an electronic letter. Do you understand what it says?”

    “…”

    Cuss stared at the screen for a while, her brow twitching.

    “This! This reveals my identity! You’re breaking your promise! Don’t you know your parole will be revoked too if you do this!”

    “Calm down. Relax. This is scheduled to be sent tomorrow morning.”

    “So you haven’t sent it yet?”

    “That’s right. But tomorrow morning, if for some reason I don’t wake up to delete this email… you know what will happen, right?”

    “…”

    If you kill me, you’re screwed too.

    Cuss isn’t stupid, so she must understand.

    Her lips pressed together tightly, her cheeks puffing out—it was a satisfying sight.

    I think she looks prettiest when she’s angry.

    “If you understand, answer me.”

    “…I understand.”

    “Good, good. Now I can finally feel safe.”

    “But that. Have you completed the scheduling?”

    “No, not yet. I was about to.”

    “I… see…”

    Shit.

    Something feels off.

    “Then die!”

    “You mother fu— Kuhek!”

    Suddenly, a tentacle shot out from under her skirt and wrapped around my neck.

    This familiar sensation.

    I’d forgotten because I’d only seen her cute side lately.

    This fucking monster used to slice people’s necks like it was nothing.

    “Aang…!”

    Whether by instinct or not, Cuss pulled me toward her with the tentacle and bit down on the top of my head.

    Her mouth had shrunk considerably, so my face wouldn’t fit entirely inside.

    Confused, Cuss started looking around.

    One tentacle wasn’t enough to strangle and suffocate me.

    If you can’t kill me, what happens?

    You get beaten, that’s what.

    “You little… ugh…”

    “Uhek?”

    I grabbed her thin waist and lifted her up.

    Damn, she’s incredibly light.

    Perfect weight for a body slam.

    But now’s not the time for that.

    Not the time to play airplane either.

    “You need to… come to your senses, right?”

    “Kwuek!”

    I slammed her down immediately.

    Cuss’s back hit the table first, and the table bent.

    Damn cheap Chinese crap…

    I think I heard something mechanical breaking with a crunch when the table collapsed, but maybe it was my imagination.

    Anyway, either because her strength gave out or she admitted defeat, the tentacle around my neck loosened.

    Cuss rolled on the floor, clutching her back and moaning like an old woman.

    “Huu… uhuk… it hurts…”

    “I’ve scheduled it now. From now on, if I don’t cancel the send every morning, you’re headed back to being a lab rat. Got it?”

    “Ahuhuk…”

    “I said, do you understand, you little shit?”

    “I got it…”

    I kicked her head lightly, and finally got the answer I wanted.

    How nice it would be if she just did this from the start.

    Why does she always have to suffer before complying?

    She’s such a stubborn girl.

    “Clean up whatever broke.”

    “Huhuk…”

    As long as no bones are broken, she’ll heal.

    Leaving Cuss behind, I grabbed my phone.

    These days everyone has implants in their heads, so mechanical phones like this are discontinued and hard to find.

    But I feel uncomfortable having something implanted in my body, so I had no choice.

    Is this the sorrow of being old-fashioned?

    When I was young, I often made fun of old men who couldn’t use smartphones, and now I’m just like them.

    “I should set up our next date.”

    Juliane can’t refuse my date requests.

    Next time, maybe I’ll try to move things along quickly.

    Heh. Just imagining it puts me in a good mood.

    “Jinsoo… I think my bone is broken…”

    “Eh, come on. Stop lying.”

    Seriously, don’t joke about that.

    You don’t even have health insurance.

    Just the stomach pumping cost me a fortune.

    What do you mean your bone is broken?

    That would break my back financially.

    Please tell me you’re kidding.

    ***

    LA Justice Department Building basement. Records room.

    In the reading room, a woman was brooding over piles of documents.

    ‘As always, the Justice Department loves keeping records on paper instead of transferring data to electronic archives.’

    As a member of the newer generation accustomed to accessing all information through retinal displays, Juliane found this extremely inconvenient.

    “Ugh… why is there so much?”

    “That’s what happens when you put off what you should have looked at earlier, kiddo.”

    “Ah, thank you.”

    With the click-clack of heels, a coffee cup was placed on the table.

    When Juliane turned her head, she saw her superior in office attire.

    This person could probably be quite popular if she took off her glasses and dressed up.

    Or maybe not. She might be too intimidating for men.

    “But doesn’t this seem strange?”

    “What?”

    “This mother-daughter rape and murder case.”

    “Hmm.”

    Her superior bent down to look at the military police log.

    It was a horrific case where the wife and daughter of Commander Taylor, who was the captain of an Aegis ship at the time, were raped, murdered, and their bodies dumped in the mountains.

    The suspect was a Korean-American, Staff Sergeant Jinsoo Kim, who served on the same Aegis ship.

    With the captain’s strong accusations and no clear alibi, he was detained for investigation.

    “No matter how I look at it, there wasn’t any decisive evidence at the beginning of the case. Yet they detained him for three whole months. Does that make sense?”

    “They must have had strong circumstantial evidence.”

    “Even with strong circumstantial evidence… how can an investigation drag on so long without physical evidence?”

    What happened next was even more mysterious.

    During the investigation, Jinsoo Kim’s daughter was hit by a truck and died.

    She tried to find information about this incident too, but it seemed to have been deleted over time.

    There were no CCTV records, no interrogation records of daycare staff—nothing.

    All that remained was the fact that a one-year-old child who could barely talk had somehow walked out of the daycare alone, reached a major road, and was hit by a car.

    Jinsoo Kim’s misfortune didn’t end there.

    A month later, his wife died too.

    It was suicide by hanging.

    There was extensive documentation on this, including a scan of the suicide note she left.

    Not long after that, Jinsoo Kim confessed to all crimes, and since his confession matched the evidence exactly, he was sentenced to death.

    “Doesn’t this seem too unnatural?”

    “Why? Maybe he was just overwhelmed by misfortune upon misfortune and confessed out of despair.”

    “That could be the case, but…”

    Something felt off.

    No matter how detailed and accurate the confession was, did it make sense to hand down a death sentence based on that alone?

    Juliane looked up at her superior expectantly, but the woman turned away, seemingly uninterested.

    “I know what you’re thinking. Don’t dig too deep.”

    “Why not?”

    “As you suspect, Jinsoo Kim might be innocent, or he might not be. When I was a rookie, I was full of righteous indignation too, re-investigating cases and making a lot of people uncomfortable. Sometimes someone I truly believed was innocent turned out to be a skilled psychopathic serial killer, and sometimes someone I was determined to put behind bars turned out to be innocent. In this job, you can’t trust your intuition. Trust only the law and the documents. That’s the way to keep your sanity.”

    “…”

    What if those documents you’re telling me to trust were fabricated?

    She wanted to ask but decided to keep her mouth shut.

    The atmosphere suggested her superior would explode in anger if she talked back.

    “I understand.”

    “Good.”

    Her superior patted her shoulder and left.

    Juliane picked up the steaming coffee cup.

    Her superior was always strict but took good care of her juniors, and this warm gesture was—

    “Ugh…”

    Incredibly bitter.

    ***

    “Haa… haa… you little shit…”

    Damn.

    When was the last time I ran this hard?

    Probably about five years ago when some pissed-off muscle-head was chasing me, snorting with rage.

    Anyway, I just ran for my life.

    “Hey! Watch your damn kid better!”

    “You drive properly, asshole!”

    I was running to prevent a truck from hitting Cuss.

    Honestly, I don’t care if she dies.

    I just don’t want the hassle of filing a death report and going to court.

    “Hey, are you hurt? Get up now.”

    A crowd had already gathered around us.

    I quickly stuffed Cuss’s tail, which had popped out, back under her skirt and helped her up.

    Thanks to my protection, she seemed uninjured.

    This girl whines about the slightest scratch…

    Instead, my arm got scraped on the asphalt, causing a slight abrasion.

    This much will heal on its own if I just spit on it.

    “I told you to cross on the green light, you idiot.”

    “I did cross on the green light. See, green light there.”

    “That’s the traffic light for vehicles. You need to look at this signal, for fuck’s sake…”

    I couldn’t help but sigh.

    She looked at the vehicle traffic light that you can barely see by turning your head, instead of the pedestrian signal right in front of her?

    I couldn’t understand it within my common sense.

    I don’t know if I’m the idiot or she is, or maybe we both are, but it feels like nothing I teach her gets through.

    It seems like these mishaps happen because the “common sense” we share is different.

    No matter how I try, I can’t set aside my own common sense to teach someone who’s completely blank.

    Come to think of it, there are people who are good at that sort of thing.

    “Hey. This isn’t working.”

    “Hmm?”

    “You need to go to school first.”

    I need to send her to school.

    That way she might adapt to human society, one way or another.

    I’m a bit worried she’ll cause trouble, but it’s fine.

    It won’t be me dealing with a kid’s tantrums at school—it’ll be the teachers.


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