Chapter 23: No Exit, No Witness

“This is the ridge here.”

Tae-i tapped his finger on the line he had drawn with a highlighter.

Matching the maps together, the long stretch of Bongosan Mountain to the northeast of Seoheung 3-dong was revealed.

And a mountain path crossed along the ridge.

Mu-yun reconsidered whether he needed to reassess the culprit’s estimated age.

“Ten years ago.”

Just looking at the places suspected to be connected so far, it was clear that the culprit had many places he wouldn’t know if he had only come into this neighborhood in recent years.

“By the way, is it okay for you to show me this?

Can I take pictures?”

Tae-i laughed softly.

“Do whatever you want.

It’s just a printout of a forest land register map that the Supervisor drew some lines on anyway.”

At that explanation, Mu-yun narrowed his eyes.

“You told the Supervisor why you needed it and got it from him, right?”

Tae-i’s mouth corners stretched wide.

“No.”

“Hey.”

“But anyway, it’s common information that gets passed around when planning which way to approach and put out a fire around here.

Paths without trees can become firebreak boundaries.

They also establish fire lines starting from there.”

Only after Tae-i added more explanation did Mu-yun take out his phone and photograph the map so it could be seen at a glance.

The letters came out a bit blurry, but not illegibly.

“So, we skip the path we already took.

We need to check these two places, then.”

“Why not the path we went up yesterday?”

“They said there was nothing to salvage there.”

The investigation there was already finished.

Mu-yun swept back his still-damp hair with his fingers.

He looked at the map, then outside the window at the side of an apartment building patterned with white and gray paint.

“Let’s check the back road of that Cheongsan Paradise apartment complex first.”

While he was at it, he could also stop by the management office to poke around, so to speak.

Originally, he shouldn’t be going around asking about things in plain clothes like this after work, but just checking rumors seemed fine.

Getting out of the car, Mu-yun loosened his stiff neck muscles.

***

“This way?”

“Yeah.”

Including the mountain path, they traced and walked down the route Mu-yun had run chasing the culprit that day.

Even searching the mountain side, no useful traces appeared.

It could have been that the rain had washed most of it away.

“He ran into that alley next to the daycare center over there.”

“You said his face didn’t appear, right?”

Mu-yun looked up at the CCTV camera near the daycare center.

“Yeah.

It was pointing at the daycare center’s main gate and the fence, so the angle didn’t cover the alley.”

Plus, even in the partial image, he was wearing his cap pulled down low, so only the shadow of his face was captured.

Even though there was one at the alley entrance and another right inside at the daycare center, it was the same.

Further in, there were studio apartment villas and, occasionally, a restaurant here and there.

Further down, as befits an area designated for residential redevelopment, there were many low, single-story buildings.

There were also old-style row houses with triangular roofs, attached directly to each other without any fences.

Mu-yun traced his memory of chasing the bastard frantically that day.

Arriving at the spot where he had caught only the culprit’s raincoat by a hair’s breadth and lost him, Tae-i stopped the car.

Where they got out was a back alley in an area dense with tall, multi-story hagwons lining Geumjin-ro.

Further in, the alleys became so narrow that large cars couldn’t easily enter.

Following the ‘No Parking’ signs painted in front of glass-framed doors that opened directly onto the street without any yard or fence, the two looked around here and there.

Dead-end alleys branched out like branches, each leading to the gate of a single-story house.

Going a bit further past them, at the end of the alley, there was an abandoned motel, its insides exposed through cracked paint like a dry rice paddy.

That was the end.

“There’s nowhere to go except the houses here or the motel, but the motel doors were all locked.

The seniors who came out later asked around, but no one said they saw a suspicious person that day.”

“Even though there’s no way out.”

Tae-i tilted his head and stood on his toes, surveying the area.

“Right.”

It was still a sigh-inducing situation.

Mu-yun let out a long breath, turned his back to the abandoned motel, and scanned the alley again.

To get to the main road, he would have had to go through at least one of the houses.

The distance from the culprit hadn’t been that great, so if he had run away, there should have been sound of footsteps, but that day it had just been quiet.

Only the rough sound of his own hurried breathing had echoed; there was no other noise.

Even though it was a residential area scheduled for redevelopment, it was still inhabited.

Mu-yun was just disappointed that no one had seen the bastard that day.

“Not easy.”

At Tae-i’s words, Mu-yun smiled bitterly.

“If it were easy, they’d already have a suspect and be investigating.”

Whether the culprit was just incredibly lucky, there was no CCTV capturing his face, and even scanning the CCTV footage from the surrounding alleys around here, there was no one wearing the same clothes at a similar time.

Besides his height and build, there was trace evidence left on the raincoat, but without anything to compare it to, for now, it was just evidence.

There was nothing more he, a patrol officer at the police box, could find out for now.

Just in case, he was retracing his memory, checking again if he had missed anything that day, but just like on the mountain, there was nothing to salvage.

“Let’s stop here for now.”

Tae-i looked around again and said.

If they had followed the original plan, after checking the spot where they lost the culprit, they would have gone to Bap-al’s owner to ask if they had seen anyone of a similar build, and also stopped by the monk at the foot of Bongosan Mountain behind Baekdu Seogwang Apartment complex to check.

Mu-yun rubbed his face with his palm.

“There’s still a lot to do.”

“You’re off tomorrow too.”

At Tae-i’s immediate response, Mu-yun licked his dry, chapped lips with the tip of his tongue.

Standing in the sunlight after being up all night made him feel like his body was withering away.

“Asking around won’t take long.

Wouldn’t it be better to finish up and then rest?”

At his suggestion, Tae-i firmly shook his head.

“Your complexion is worse than before.”

A large hand came up and covered Mu-yun’s forehead.

At the touch that covered not just his forehead but his eyebrows and eyelids, Mu-yun closed his eyes.

“Your temperature isn’t bad, but… you have a bit of a fever.”

“You sound like a thermometer.”

At Mu-yun’s sarcasm, Tae-i laughed.

“Because I know my normal body temperature well.”

He soon spoke seriously in a low voice.

“Let’s rest, then move.

You won’t accomplish anything being sick here.”

“…Okay.”

Even if he tried to stubbornly insist that this was nothing and he could continue, Mu-yun himself knew his condition wasn’t very good.

His heart, grown unbearably heavy, was weighing down his body.

“It’s not like today is the only day.”

Tae-i withdrew his hand that had been feeling his temperature and grabbed Mu-yun’s arm, pulling him.

The sound of shuffling footsteps echoed in the alley.

Getting to where the car was parked was quick.

Opening the passenger door, he pushed Mu-yun in, then Tae-i walked around and got into the car.

“Put on your seatbelt.”

“Yes.”

Mu-yun answered like an obedient child, chuckled, and put on his seatbelt.

Tae-i immediately started the car.

The car, driving along a narrow two-lane road, soon came out onto a main road.

Mu-yun, who had been blankly looking outside, placed his finger on the window and leaned forward.

“What day is it today?”

Tae-i tilted his head.

“April Fool’s passed, and Arbor Day is tomorrow.”

“No.

Because I see kids in school uniforms outside.”

Near the passing bus stop, there were also groups standing around in school uniforms.

Nearby, there were two elementary schools, one middle school a bit further away, and two high schools further down.

But it definitely wasn’t a middle school uniform.

“They look like high school students, but it’s not exam season already, is it?”

Although it seemed like he himself hadn’t graduated that long ago, Mu-yun recalled that even when he was in high school, the elementary school curriculum had been very different.

He opened his mouth.

Watching the boys who were tall as poles but still had a hint of youthfulness, Tae-i muttered.

“Midterms are still far off.

Looks like there was some kind of event.

Since they’re all wearing the same uniform.”

“Ah, you’re right.”

Their outerwear were all different, but as Tae-i said, the shirts and pants were more or less the same.

Mu-yun stared at them and narrowed his eyes.

“I think it was like that.”

“What was?”

“The shoes.”

The shoes a student getting off the bus stopped in front were wearing felt very similar.

Similar to what the culprit had been wearing.

“Those brand sneakers?”

“I don’t know if it’s the same, but they had a red decoration like that.”

Stopped at a traffic light, Mu-yun stuck his head all the way out the window and followed them with his eyes.

Tae-i also turned his head.

But it was only for a moment.

Honk!

Whether the signal had changed in the meantime, the car behind them honked as if telling them to go quickly.

Tae-i looked at the rearview mirror and started driving.

“We can look it up online, right?”

Even for the same brand, there wouldn’t be just one or two similar designs, but still, they could probably narrow it down to the closest matches.

Driving along, a few left turns brought them to their house front.

Parking the car, Mu-yun got out on limp legs.

He was confident that if he went straight up, showered again, and lay down in bed, he would sleep so soundly that no one could wake him.

But that resolve crumbled before he could take a few steps.

A crinkling sound of plastic tearing was heard.

Mu-yun turned his head toward the sound, and his eyes widened.

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