( tw murder )
The day sees you go about it as usual, leisure as any Tuesday could be. Through midday, you receive a call. The number is unknown but something compells you to pick it up and place it to your ear. The man on the other end enthusiastically exclaims your name. “Jeon Noeul!” His breath is labored over the other end, and a laugh cuts through the receiver. “That little problem of yours … that guy? Consider it … taken care of.” A clicking noise akin to a revolver muffled in the background. “Remember this: you fucking owe me one.” The other end clicks again. Then silence. The next sound that emerges from the receiver is a different voice: Every wish comes at a price.
The muddled sounds find clarity–it’s a voice of an unknown man, the sound of a gun, the words of murder and a threat that only crashes against his ears; he can’t make sense of what’s happening, can’t make sense of this, of anything. One moment the man has been in coma since years, and the next–
he’s dead, he tells himself, he’s dead–he’s killed a man, and he doesn’t have to move past that realization for his father’s shadow to wash over him; it feels cool, completely in his head but so real, so heavy; his shoulders curve and he stares, eyes still wide, breaths still paused, brim with a heat that forces his lungs to expand, to inhale. Of course he’s wished for this, for the only person who knew about what he’d done to finally find peace in heaven or hell, or wherever people who engage in illegal gambling activities go.
Still, Noeul never thought it’d happen this way: with a stranger showing up and ending someone’s life. And while it wasn’t Noeul who pulled the trigger, it feels as though this is all his fault: he has killed someone, he’s no better than his father; he’s just as cold, just as deadly, and even his hands feel distant, foreign, as though he’s changing in the aftermath.
Maybe this is what a murderer feels like, he thinks: cold hands, quivering lips, eyes that sting with tears, little pricks of guilt and confusion and that inevitable sense of doom. He’s wished for this, he reminds himself, and finally finds his voice to answer. When he opens his mouth, the line clicks dead already and Noeul is left staring at the wall, at the window, at the way the sky is clouded by a blank sheet of gray, grim and ugly.
He should be glad, he reminds himself, and yet he isn’t sure of what he seeks anymore, whether mercy or forgiveness, whether an opportunity to have a different outcome. He can only hope the threat was nothing but empty words.
