“My God… I’m so scared these days I can’t even go outside once the sun’s down, do you know that? Tae-san. Does it make any kind of sense? In a little city like this, gangsters killing ten innocent citizens…”

So Yeon-sil, the nurse noona in charge of the private rooms, shivered with fear in front of me.

The place had come apart.

It wasn’t only the city I live in — it had become a national case.

On the president’s instruction, a special investigation headquarters was set up.

The chief of police was out of his job immediately.

The chief of police and senior officers were written into the entertainment ledger Park Dae-chul handed over.

A cold wind of purges blew on a grand scale.

Several prosecutors and police officers who had passed through our city took off the uniform.

Bodies weighted with stones came out of the upstream reservoir used as the drinking-water source.

White bones were found on the slope of Mount Jangju too.

And they found the body of the schoolgirl Park Dae-chul killed first.

A girl who had been processed as a missing person all this time, whose parents had gone on looking for her.

Her body included, every one of Park Dae-chul’s grotesque crimes came out.

The Yeokjeon Gang members under him were all taken into custody.

Murder, aiding and abetting, the offense of organizing a criminal group, intimidation and the rest.

Any number of charges came to light.

The mood in the city was grim.

But I knew.

That this too shall pass.

“That’s just it. If I were in one piece I’d escort you home every night, noona… I’m worried, noona. You’re far too pretty for it~.”

“Oh my~ thank you, even if it’s only talk. If the world had nothing but men like you in it, Tae-san, how nice that would be.”

I’ll pass on that.

I prefer being the only man like me.

“Why did Park Dae-chul do it, they say?”

“That’s just it. Everybody says he was possessed by a ghost. Turning himself in in the middle of fighting with his own man… do you think he was on drugs?”

“That’s just it. It has to be drugs, doesn’t it?”

“The doctors say the same. Went out of his mind on meth. They found methamphetamine at the house too, apparently.”

Park Dae-chul did not give me up.

He doesn’t know who I am either, but it went out on the news as a man turning himself in after a fight with his own subordinate.

He was smart.

It was a message to me without words.

It means he sincerely wants his family left alone.

All right. I won’t touch the family either.

Park Dae-chul will most likely get the death sentence.

Public opinion rose up like a brushfire.

Denunciations of the government broke out all over the country.

The opposition parties, who looked like opportunists built on pro-Japanese collaboration and the conglomerates, blew this case up.

The way those people behave, which the public only came to see in 2017.

The administration, already shaky, ran to the very edge of danger.

History had changed from the 2006 I had lived through before.

The administration got weaker and the city got clean.

The punks and gangsters who had been living off the city all vanished.

Even the middle school kids who played at being delinquents were all investigated.

Compulsory transfers were handed down to their parents.

The case was so big that parents who had raised their children badly moved away too.

In one moment the city became a clean zone.

Everything was settled exactly as I had wanted.

“But they say the body of that girl, the first one Park Dae-chul killed, was perfectly whole? My God… the grief she must have been holding…”

“That’s just it. The grief she must have been holding…”

An astonishing thing had happened.

The girl’s body, found at a grave-moving site on the hill behind the house in Park Dae-chul’s home village.

The body of the girl who had been raped and whose life had ended there had not decayed.

Her parents, grandparents now, are said to have fainted at the sight of her.

A child dead and yet come back whole.

It made a loud splash across the society pages.

At the same time, I was frightened.

Why! Why did I see her that night!

Even now my heart tightens when I think of it.

When I was pressing Park Dae-chul, I was not myself.

In my last life and this one, I had never beaten anybody like a dog that way.

Starting with dealing with Hong Seong-hyeon, my behavior has gotten violent.

Thorough and cold, like pulling out a weed at the root.

It was the same when I was beating Park Dae-chul.

Using the Taegeuk Five Elements Dual Intent Mind Art I picked up in illegal tutoring, I emptied Park Dae-chul’s mind out of him.

Threatening a gangster by hitting him has its limits.

But the tendon-splitting, bone-displacing method of torture, the kind you only see in martial arts novels, worked on him.

Using internal power, I made the energy and blood in him twist.

At the same time I treated his body so no damage would stay.

Park Dae-chul will go to prison and live a long life there without catching so much as a cold.

But the pain would have been past describing.

That is why the threat about the family worked.

Park Dae-chul was softer about his family than I expected.

That night, I saw her, and I spoke.

When Park Dae-chul said he had killed nine people, a girl appeared beside him.

She glared at Park Dae-chul with blood-colored eyes.

The black-skirted uniform schoolgirls used to wear.

I nearly fainted myself in the middle of beating him.

I knew by instinct that she was a ghost.

There was no human life energy in her at all.

And I knew.

That Park Dae-chul was lying.

Nobody said it, and the feeling drove itself into me.

And when Park Dae-chul confessed the girl’s murder to the officer too, she left.

She bowed her head to me and thanked me.

And she disappeared along with the light.

Ugh! I’m not turning into an exorcist or a shaman, am I?

An immortal, come to think of it, is a kind of ghost.

I even took illegal tutoring from a man who became a soul after he died.

It felt uncomfortable, as though I’d been hooked up to a medium.

Luckily, though, I haven’t seen another ghost since.

Plenty of people must have died in this hospital, but no ghost has shown itself to me.

“Anyway, Tae-san.”

“Yes, noona.”

“Aren’t you bored? Doesn’t it get stuffy, being in a hospital room every day?”

“I have to study. These days I take lectures over the internet, so there’s no room to be bored.”

“Hohoho. Our Tae-san really is different. Other high schoolers get admitted and their blood just boils and they run wild~.”

“Huh? Their blood boils?”

“Yes. These kids don’t do the studying they’re told to do, they’re too busy looking at the nurses’ figures. They make work for nothing just to be a nuisance. And with sly eyes~ heh heh heh.”

Noona let out a slyer laugh than any of them.

I had the suspicion she knew all about it and enjoyed it.

And when high schoolers at their most vigorous get admitted to a hospital, isn’t it only natural?

They’re creatures who go into heat at the smell of perfume from a woman passing a hundred meters off.

And the moves that show off a figure like that are…

“Please leave me out of that fallacy of generalization.”

“Of course. Somebody like our Tae-san is so dependable that noona would like to lie down beside you and nurse you twenty-four hours a day~.”

Whoa, whoa. That is not happening, ma’am.

I am not that innocent a guy.

I’m old enough to know everything there is to know, and in the past…

I had a girlfriend I loved with my whole body and my whole heart!

And what is that heavy-lidded look?

I told you, I know everything!

“Tae-san. What is it your mother does, anyway?”

“Why?”

“Your mother is so refined~.”

“She’s a painter.”

“Ah! I knew it, she looked like someone who does art. She’s the first person in this town I’ve seen who suits a foreign car like that.”

So she saw. She saw.

Our mom’s foreign car.

Then again, So Yeon-sil noona was in charge of the private rooms.

I get admitted to a private room at the drop of a hat, so I must look like something special.

Apart from the medical bills, the room alone was five hundred thousand won a day.

It made your average hotel room rate look small.

I may be a high schooler, but it would be strange if she weren’t tempted.

Even now the student nurses go wild the moment they catch my eye — buy me a coffee, take me to a movie.

“Mom’s standards are pretty high, so I’m worried about that.”

“Why? Is there a problem?”

“Look how old I am, and she’s already set her requirements for a daughter-in-law. Education, minimum a doctorate or somebody who’s passed the state exam, a doctor at the base level. On top of that a Korean cuisine cooking certificate is essential, and she looks at the family’s traditions too. In a world like today’s, does that make any sense? Love is all you need! It isn’t as if my parents are getting married in my place, is it? Right, noona~.”

“Huh? Uh-huh…”

Her answer was in no way enthusiastic.

She had the look of somebody feeling the pressure.

So Yeon-sil noona was old enough to know that love doesn’t put food on the table.

Sorry, Mom.

Your undutiful son has made you into a soybean-paste lady.

Still, cutting it off like this was the right thing.

When a nurse noona with a good figure and a good face comes on that strongly, it’s hard for me too.

Knock, knock.

Just then a knock came at the door, brisk and bright.

“Who is it?”

Slide.

Before my question was finished the door opened smoothly.

And.

“Oppa!!!”

Whoa! S-Seo-ryeon!

Astonishingly, the future superstar had appeared with flowers in her hand.

And with that word oppa, sweet however often I hear it.

But why is her uniform skirt so short today of all days!

“Who’s this?”

So Yeon-sil, who hadn’t let go of her lingering hopes, asked about Seo-ryeon.

Her voice was loaded with wariness.

“I’m Tae-san oppa’s girlfriend.”

“!!!”

“My oppa is a lot weaker than he looks. Please take good care of him.”

This Seo-ryeon and her nerve.

She took So Yeon-sil noona out in one shot.

Seo-ryeon, saying girlfriend and bowing her head on top of it.

Tall, and skin with a killer firmness to it.

And a girl with a kind face and figure turned out to have a kind nature too.

Nurse So Yeon-sil was in no way a match for her.

Noona, our connection ends here~

“R-right… well, enjoy yourselves. Tae-san, I’m busy today, so I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Yes. Keep up the good work, noona.”

Goodbye, noona.

It was fun while it lasted.

So Yeon-sil noona vanished through the open door in a hurry.

“Seo-ryeon, girlfriend is going too far.”

“Pff, don’t worry. Right now oppa is playing hard to get, but the time is coming soon when you’ll be grateful I’m your girlfriend.”

Knowing Seo-ryeon’s future, I kept my mouth shut.

The girl I met at the pizza place.

I still don’t know why she likes me.

“Aren’t you busy?”

“What’s a student got to be busy about?”

“You should be studying.”

“The entrance exam is ages off, what studying? And I’m not the type who succeeds by studying.”

There can’t be another kid who knows herself this well this early.

She hadn’t flowered completely yet, and the way Seo-ryeon carried herself was more than enough to bewitch me.

But I am not an easy man.

“What’s this about?”

“What do you mean, what’s this about. My boyfriend is in the hospital, so of course I come. And I’m disappointed! If you’re admitted you tell me right away. How do you let me find out through the grapevine? Isn’t that too much?”

“…”

Women really were something else.

My girlfriend in the past was similar on this point.

But I’m not the man I was.

“I’ve been busy lately.”

Look at this answer, cool enough to give off a smell.

I am this kind of man.

A man who can hold his head up straight even in front of a future top-tier idol.

“Sure~ well, that’s oppa’s charm. I’ll forgive you.”

Look at that.

Seo-ryeon has fallen deep into my charm too.

“Anyway, oppa, are you really all right? They said you hurt your head?”

Seo-ryeon came closer to me.

She set the flowers she was holding on the center table and came toward me.

Stop!

Miss, this is dangerous.

Slide.

Before I could stop her — no, while I didn’t want to stop her — her hand touched my head.

Haa… is a hand allowed to be this soft?

“Does it hurt?”

“N-no…”

It isn’t my mind, it’s my heart that suddenly hurts.

My breath is about to go short!

This was seriously dangerous.

The fresh scent coming off Seo-ryeon was making things very hard for me.

The mood had gotten to where a kiss right then wouldn’t have been strange.

I shouldn’t be doing this…

I still have her, my first love.

Knock, knock.

And then, right on cue, a knock came.

And the door opening as though it were nothing.

“Huh!”

What is this!!!

(End of Chapter 30)