GBH 41

 Kim Deuk-pal accepted death entirely thanks to Choi Myung-hyun.

It was the first night of last winter when Kim Deuk-pal woke up as Song Yi-heon. He lay alone in the hospital room. 

During the day, he had been dragged to his own funeral in Song Yi-heon’s body, seen his portrait, and fainted, only to be brought back to the hospital room. Even after regaining consciousness, he was still Song Yi-heon.

Lying there in a daze, he raised his arm. The rough fists that had boasted an undefeated record in fights were gone. A hand covered with thin skin, unmarred by calluses, clenched into a fist at Deuk-pal’s will. The drying fingers felt unfamiliar. The arm with the IV needle was pitifully thin and weak.

No matter how many times he checked, it was the same. The trembling arm before his eyes was his, but he was no longer Kim Deuk-pal. It was hard to believe. He could have accepted it if he had died cleanly. But he couldn’t believe he had become another person overnight.

The sound of the second hand ticking grated on his nerves. The dripping of the IV fluid agitated him uneasily. Kim Deuk-pal struggled to sit up.

He couldn’t accept death. He suspected someone was playing a vile trick. Perhaps a rival gang was trying to destabilize his organization with this dirty tactic. Or it could be the work of human traffickers. The world Kim Deuk-pal the gangster lived in was one where people would resort to inhumane and illegal means for profit.

He needed to see his own corpse with his own eyes. Until then, he couldn’t believe anything.

“Huff…”

The body fresh out of surgery protested even the slightest movement. Deuk-pal grabbed the IV stand and swallowed his pain. Just placing his feet on the floor made a sweat bead on his forehead. As the pain subsided, he leaned on the IV stand and started to walk.

Moving at a pace slower than crawling, he made his way through the dark hospital corridor at night. When the elevator opened, a blindingly bright light spilled out. Kim Deuk-pal squinted as he pushed the IV stand into the elevator. Fumbling for the control panel, he pressed the basement button. By the time he leaned against the wall, his entire body was drenched in sweat.

The elevator’s heavy vibration stopped. Clenching his teeth, Kim Deuk-pal moved step by step.

It was past midnight, but the basement funeral hall was brightly lit. He heard voices and sobs, indicating people were still in the mourning rooms. He passed by them.

Earlier in the day, he had been shocked by his own portrait and had tried to see the corpse but had been taken to the hospital room. Once he calmed down, he remembered that the body would be in the morgue. The morgue was usually near the mourning rooms. He wandered aimlessly down the corridor of the funeral home floor.

As he looked around, he brushed aside the bangs obstructing his view. The hair, sticky with sweat, dust, and oil, was pushed back behind his forehead, revealing his face. Finally, he spotted an iron door with a morgue nameplate. This was it. Elated, he turned the doorknob, but the door wouldn’t open.

“Damn it…”

Kim Deuk-pal clutched at his hair. The door was locked. There might have been a way to unlock it by ramming it with his shoulder, but Song Yi-heon’s scrawny body wouldn’t even tickle the iron door if he tried. The limitations of his changed body made him easily discouraged. Kim Deuk-pal crouched down. Beads of sweat dripped from his chin.

“…Just a moment… The warrant is… originally…”

“…That’s right… In Seoul…”

.

Kim Deuk-pal perked up his ears. Amidst the sound of heavy footsteps from dress shoe heels, he could hear two people talking. They were coming this way. Kim Deuk-pal crawled behind the wall at the corner of the corridor, hiding himself and the IV stand.

The footsteps grew louder. The sound of a digital lock opening rang out.

“Let’s go in.”

As the two men entered the morgue, Kim Deuk-pal desperately gathered his strength to stand up. This was his last chance. If he missed this opportunity, he might not get another before the funeral.

He had no sense of the danger of being caught. His mind was consumed by the obsession to confirm the body before the people inside came out and locked the morgue again. However, his body wouldn’t cooperate. Kim Deuk-pal was struggling to steady his repeatedly buckling knees when—

“Yes, yes. As you instructed, I’m escorting the prosecutor…”

A man rushed out of the morgue. Only one voice echoed in the empty corridor, as if he was on a call. As the sound of the hurrying man’s conversation faded away, Kim Deuk-pal didn’t miss his chance. With his knees buckling, he pushed the IV stand and slipped into the morgue. The cooler temperature and smell of alcohol inside assaulted his senses.

“Hmm?”

The remaining man frowned at the intrusion of a stranger. A stern aura emanated from the man’s upright posture and deeply set eyes. Kim Deuk-pal recognized him. Prosecutor Choi Myung-hyun. Specializing in violent crimes, he had deep connections with gangsters.

Choi Myung-hyun didn’t take on impulsive or one-time violent crimes. He preferred planned, large-scale crimes, which were often organized and nine times out of ten involved gangsters. Thus, he was famous as the prosecutor who caught gangsters.

Even when high-ranking members were arrested and hired expensive lawyers, if Choi Myung-hyun was the prosecutor, the lawyers would prepare for the trial with the aim of reducing the sentence as much as possible. They did not entertain the possibility of defeating him.

The more cruel and violent the crime, the higher Choi Myung-hyun’s win rate. He could deduce the details of a crime as if he had been at the scene himself. Often, additional evidence was obtained based on his deductions.

When it came to crime, Choi Myung-hyun’s thought process wasn’t that of an ordinary person. It was closer to that of a criminal, sometimes even a perfect criminal. It seemed as if crimes were perfectly simulated in his head. As if he had lived his entire life dreaming of cruel and violent crimes.

It was so extreme that among gangsters, there was a joke that if Choi Myung-hyun hadn’t become a prosecutor, he would have become a serial killer or a psychopath.

Although Kim Deuk-pal had no direct contact with Choi Myung-hyun, he was aware of him.

Kim Deuk-pal hadn’t become a gangster out of ambition. He had no education or skills, and fighting was his only talent, which led him to gang life. He was fine with fighting, wielding fists or knives, but he couldn’t stand watching human trafficking or involving innocent people. Although there was an unspoken rule among gangs not to interfere with each other’s businesses, Kim Deuk-pal secretly leaked information to Choi Myung-hyun.

It seemed Choi Myung-hyun was also aware of Kim Deuk-pal, given that Deuk-pal’s body was now laid out before him.

“Ah…”

Momentarily puzzled as to why Choi Myung-hyun was in the morgue, Kim Deuk-pal approached with a low groan. He was lying on a long rectangular stainless steel slab. Seeing the face he had seen in the mirror all his life from another’s perspective gave him a strange sense of unfamiliarity and strong certainty at the same time. Even with the large and small injuries from the traffic accident scarring his face, he could recognize his own features in the damaged visage, having seen it all his life.

The white cloth covering the face was pulled back to the chest, revealing the dragon tattoo on the right arm, further confirming his identity. The eyes of the dragon tattooed on Kim Deuk-pal’s bicep, which had seemed alive with the movement of his muscles when he was living, were now just black circles.

Even after seeing the body, the desire to deny it remained unchanged. In fact, it grew stronger. He harbored a foolish hope that if his soul had returned, his body might come back to life. The sound of the IV stand’s wheels rolling echoed loudly. Kim Deuk-pal reached out his trembling hand towards his body.

Thwack-. Choi Myung-hyun, who had been watching, grabbed his wrist to prevent him from touching the body.

“Who are you? You’re not supposed to be in here. Where’s your guardian?”

To Choi Myung-hyun, the intruder was a small, thin boy. The boy, pale as if he’d seen a ghost, looked desperate despite seeming like he might collapse at any moment.

Kim Deuk-pal opened his dry mouth. Sticky saliva clung to his lips. He needed to twist his wrist free, but Song Yi-heon’s body was too weak. Kim Deuk-pal couldn’t think straight. He just looked at Choi Myung-hyun with pleading eyes.

Choi Myung-hyun, who had been staring at the struggling boy as if watching through prison bars, adjusted his grip on the hand. He extended the boy’s index finger while curling the other fingers into a fist. Then he placed the index finger under the corpse’s nose.

Kim Deuk-pal felt a chill run down his spine. No breath touched his finger. He tried to touch the skin under the nose with his finger, but Choi Myung-hyun forcefully prevented it.

“You can’t touch it.”

Choi Myung-hyun took ample time to let Kim Deuk-pal confirm that his breath had stopped.

“Hey, outsiders aren’t allowed in here!”

The hospital staff member who had returned from his call shouted. He tried to pull Kim Deuk-pal away, but Choi  Myung-hyun shook his head to stop him. While Choi Myung-hyun didn’t allow touching the body, he waited for Deuk-pal to confirm that breathing had stopped. However, unable to accept it, Kim Deuk-pal looked at Choi Myung-hyun as if interrogating him. Finally, Choi Myung-hyun nodded slowly, as if pronouncing a verdict.

He’s dead.

Only then did Kim Deuk-pal’s last hope that his body might still be alive shatter.

---

It was the afternoon of the day when housekeeper Lee Mi-kyung visited Song Yi-heon’s hospital room, and Kim Deuk-pal, after reading Yi-heon’s diary on the tablet, had sworn revenge in anger.

As he lay on the bed with his arms crossed under his head, fuming and ruminating over how such young kids could be so cruel, he suddenly felt a sinking sensation at his feet. It was ridiculous. How could his feet sink while lying down? But the sense of loss grew, enveloping not just his feet but his entire body. His heart ached, and a hollow feeling of helplessness and fear made him feel insignificant.

Although it was an unfamiliar and first-time sensation, Kim Deuk-pal realized what this immense sense of loss was. The funeral had ended. His body had been reduced to a handful of ashes.

Kim Deuk-pal vividly experienced the moment of losing his physical body. He also felt the deep bond between soul and body, confirming that even if he temporarily occupied Song Yi-heon’s body, he could never truly own it. Kim Deuk-pal reaffirmed his resolve to return the body if Song Yi-heon’s soul ever came back.