T/N: The first part of the chapter has Dusik’s internal dialogue then switches.
Content warning: brief mention of the deed in “online comments”
Inhale, exhale.
Reporter Kim Dusik said he wanted to borrow me for a moment. Since he had once been my direct senior in the Culture Department, he said there was something he wanted to tell me separately.
And now, at the rooftop sky garden of the broadcasting station, he had been doing nothing but smoking cigarettes.
“Want one too?”
“I don’t smoke.”
“Boring bastard.”
In my previous life, you dragged me around every day and made me smoke, and now you’re trying it again?
Not a chance.
“If you have something to say, please say it.”
After exhaling the last drag, Kim Dusik had a strange look on his face.
“What have you been eating these days?”
“Pardon?”
“I mean, what do you eat to make your liver come crawling out of your body like that?”
“Did I do something wrong?”
“Wrong? You did. When you were a trainee, you reported to me every time you tried to cover anything. But the second you shed your trainee label, you started ignoring me.”
“I learned a lot from you when I was a trainee. Now that my trainee period is over, I need to earn my own keep.”
“Earn your keep, huh….”
Look at this bastard. He doesn’t lose a single word?
He was the kind of guy who would freeze up obediently if I dragged him up to the rooftop like this and set the mood.
But now, he was looking at me with such confidence that if he went one step further, he might actually throw a punch.
Why?
No matter how much I thought about it, was there any reason a person would change this much?
I could admit that his face was decent, but there were plenty of good-looking guys at the broadcasting station.
Two days ago, Kim Dusik had pretended to leave work, gone to a jjimjilbang1, then returned to the station in the dark hours before dawn without anyone knowing.
“A rookie reporter with meager reporting experience, and a complete fresh rookie with no experience built up anywhere else, suddenly goes after a university professor?”
That was because he felt like he would go crazy if he could not find the answer to that question.
Where Kim Dusik’s steps led him was the editing room.
There, Kim Dusik watched the raw reporting footage Ju Myeongjin had filmed over and over.
Lee Hyeonwook’s voice from the screen was bold enough to swallow someone like Professor Lee Chan whole.
“Was this bastard originally the type to push this hard?”
As Kim Dusik examined the field footage from different angles, something suddenly caught his ear.
“Bad guys never live committing only one kind of wrongdoing.”
Lee Hyeonwook had clearly said that to Professor Lee Chan.
Wasn’t that a saying I had carved into my heart like truth after I started my career as a reporter?
Had I ever said that to Lee Hyeonwook?
Or was this guy the same type as me?
“It would be nice to pull this bastard over to my side.”
It did not matter whether he had eaten something wrong and changed as a person, or whether he had only pretended to be naive during his trainee period.
If he was the kind of guy who could do reporting that tore into people like this, the thought that he could become my blade filled my mind.
Because going forward, I would have many occasions to make that blade dance in order to clear my own path.
Should I tell him I have a National Assembly member behind me and ask him to join too?
People who grew up with nothing, like Lee Hyeonwook, tend to lose their minds once they taste money.
Those who once got lost in a sense of mission and then fell on their own become the most obedient dogs.
“That way you talk about earning your keep. As your senior, I’d like to teach you the proper way to do it.”
“You don’t like the way I work?”
“There isn’t only one road to the destination.”
This bastard, in my previous life, rolled me around for a year and a half before extending a hand. Now that I had broken two exclusives, he was already drooling.
“You speak as if you know a shortcut, Senior.”
“You know this isn’t an ordinary opportunity, right?”
Opportunity? This is a new life I got after dying. Why would I get tangled up with you again?
As I was turning my head, trying to figure out how to slip away, Kim Dusik tapped my shoulder.
“Keep working hard. I’ll call you separately soon. I’ll head down first.”
Kim Dusik mistook my brief silence as agreement.
I considered telling him no, then changed my mind.
‘If this goes well, I might be able to meet that bastard who’s your shortcut sooner than expected.’
“Did you make it back safely from the Korea Press Center?”
“Of course. Even there, our Reporter Lee shone so brightly…”
At Social Affairs Department Head Lee Jinyeol’s question, Culture Department reporter Go Hakjun answered out of nowhere.
“Reporter Go. Why are you naturally walking into our department?”
“Hyeonwook is my classmate from when we joined, after all. I clapped the loudest at the ceremony too. I was even going to escort him to his seat before leaving.”
The article I wrote, titled ‘The Truth about the Professor who Exploited his Students’, received the Reporter of the Month Award.
[Click here for the diarrhea professor’s personal info!]
└ [His eyes are already gone.]
└ [That’s not a human being.]
└ [Here are the coordinates for the graduate students who went along with it.]
└ [No need for long words. Physiognomy is science.]
[This is why, if I know someone who says they’re going to graduate school, I pack a lunch and follow them around to stop them.]
└ [This is why I quit grad school after one semester. It was overflowing with professors like this.]
└ [I feel self-loathing that my tax money has to feed that person.]
└ [Don’t feed him food. Feed him shit.]
[While we’re at it, we need to dox all graduate school professors. How do we know there isn’t another person like that?]
└ [Who would go to grad school when it’s this scary?]
└ [You couldn’t go even if you wanted to. Go eat more school lunch first.]
└ [What are you talking about? If you eat shit, you get accepted right away.]
People were shocked that such abuse, something one human should never do to another, had happened not somewhere else, but at a university.
The movements of graduate students who had been treated as less than human were also unusual.
“Could you come report at our school too? There’s a truly crazy professor here.”
Their voices had not yet risen loudly above the surface, but tips kept coming in that several large posters were appearing on school website boards and offline bulletin boards on campuses.
For a while, abusive professors would keep their heads down.
“You got the photos taken well too, right?”
“Yes. Reporter Ju Myeongjin took them well.”
Go Hakjun and Ju Myeongjin accompanied me to the awards ceremony held on the nineteenth floor of the Korea Press Center.
After the ceremony, K treated us to a huge meal at a nearby Chinese restaurant. I am waiting for the day my seed money explodes so I can scold him with money.
“But you lost a lot of weight, didn’t you?”
“Hehe. Does it show?”
Go Hakjun’s health had improved enough that even Department Head Lee Jinyeol could notice.
“You’re taking your medicine properly, right?”
I added my own nagging.
“Of course. Thanks to the savior of my life, I feel like I’ve fulfilled the dream of extending my lifespan.”
“You need to manage your health well. I never know when I’ll ask for your cooperation on a report.”
“Oh? Cooperation? Really? I’m better at running than before now too. Just contact me anytime. Your five-minute standby team is waiting.”
“Good. That’s very reassuring, Reporter Go!”
Seo Suyeon, who had wanted to join us, was out on fieldwork because of a report.
Somehow, Ju Myeongjin, K, Go Hakjun, and even Seo Suyeon had become Team Lee Hyeonwook.
“What are you doing here? Lunch break is over.”
“Ah, yes, yes. I’m going. Hyeonwook, I’m off.”
“Sure. Good work today too.”
Culture Department Head Kim Mungil, who was passing by with a paper cup of mixed coffee in his hand, shuffled over and collected Go Hakjun.
“Reporter Lee, congratulations from me too. You worked hard.”
“Yes. Thank you, Department Head.”
Because I had suddenly moved to the Social Affairs Department, I had only spent a very short time with Department Head Kim Mungil.
If it had been someone else, he might have felt offended that a subordinate who left so quickly was looking down on the Culture Department or on him.
But Department Head Kim Mungil, who had a kind nature, sincerely congratulated me.
In this life, I would never let good people like this slip away.
“Now, since all the outsiders are gone, shall we talk about our Reporter Lee Hyeonwook’s reward?”
At the word “reward” from Department Head Lee Jinyeol’s mouth, the clacking keyboard sounds that had been coming from all over fell quiet.
“I don’t like you. I’m saying that.”
After I went to the rooftop with Kim Dusik a few days ago, Kim Dusik’s attitude toward me had softened considerably.
He was probably waiting for the right time to win me over, but Seo Suyeon watched me with sharp eyes as if I had already gone over to Kim Dusik.
“Noona. How can you say something so harsh about our hyung?”
Ju Myeongjin, who was pushing a shopping cart at the mart and putting meat in it, scolded Seo Suyeon.
After he had started calling me hyung, Myeongjin had somehow even sorted things out with Seo Suyeon and begun calling her noona.
“Harsh? Wasn’t Reporter Lee here Kim Dusik’s sniper? How can the look in their eyes toward each other change overnight?”
“It’s not what you’re thinking, noona.”
“What do you know?”
“I don’t know either, but I don’t doubt Hyeonwook-hyung. Unconditional faith. You should do that too, noona.”
“Hallelujah!”
Beside Ju Myeongjin, K, who was sweeping bottles of wine into the cart, raised both arms high into the air and shouted.
Haa. What am I supposed to do with him, seriously?
“But really, the reward is just two days off?”
“What more should there be?”
“Wasn’t there a cash bonus, a salary renegotiation, or anything like that?”
“Come on, noona. Is that something the department head can decide as he pleases?”
“I guess. If you really think about it, Department Head Lee is just another salaried worker like us.”
“I’m satisfied with two days off.”
“When I watch that guy, there’s something about how he acts nice all by himself and makes everyone else the bad guy.”
“He really is a nice person.”
There was a new face beside Seo Suyeon, smiling softly and taking my side.
It was Jeon Yeongsu.
The landlady, who watched Jeon Yeongsu’s story on the nine o’clock news, fainted that night.
The truth of what her precious son, whom she could hardly bear to see hurt, had suffered drove a nail into her heart.
“Young reporter, thank you so much. I, I didn’t even know my son was dying… Huhuhuk… How can I ever repay this? Huhuhuk. Thank you so much for saving my son. Young reporter, you saved me too.”
Jeon Yeongsu snapped back to himself through his mother’s tears. The lawsuit proceeded step by step, and he realized that there were people around him.
“Thank you for inviting me too.”
“We’re more grateful. Thanks to Yeongsu-hyung, we get to eat so much of the food your mother made that our stomachs might burst.”
“Exactly. An MT is more fun the more people there are, and the more delicious food there is.”
Even the people who cooperated in this report received two days off.
We were swept along by the opinion that we had to use those two days meaningfully and ended up going on an MT. We had stopped by the mart to buy alcohol and meat that would go well with the generous food the landlady had packed for us.
“Huh?”
“Hyung, what’s wrong?”
“Myeongjin, did you bring the hidden camera K bought?”
“Yeah. K kept singing about how we absolutely had to film our MT, so I brought it.”
“Where is it right now?”
“He said the MT starts at the mart, so we’re filming right now.”
Ju Myeongjin showed me the hole in the crossbody bag he was wearing.
Then his finger pointed to K, who was holding a hidden camera in his hand and filming our faces and the food in the cart.
“What’s wrong, hyung?”
“You, take that camera and follow me. Before we go on the MT, let’s do a little reporting.”
We needed to follow the mother and daughter shopping near us.
From behind, they looked ordinary enough, each pushing a cart while shopping, but the items inside the carts were strange.
It had not yet become known to the world, but the shopping method of scammers that would be exposed a few years later was unfolding before my eyes.
Digging into the cases in my reporter’s notebook was basic, but there was no law saying I could not do other reporting too.
- A jjimjilbang (찜질방) is a traditional Korean public bathhouse and wellness complex. ↩︎
Leave a Reply