LITMIR.BIZ

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Reseng said.

      “Not to change the subject, but why the hell is tuition so expensive now? My older daughter just started university. I’ll need to burn at least five more bodies to afford her tuition and rent. But where am I going to find five bodies in this climate? I don’t know if it’s just that the economy’s bad or if the world’s become a more wholesome place, but it’s definitely not like the old days. How am I supposed to get by now?”

      Bear frowned, as if he couldn’t stand the thought of a wholesome world.

      “Maybe you should think about those pretty daughters of yours and go straight,” Reseng said. “Stick to cremating cats and dogs instead, you know, more wholesome like.”

      “Are you kidding? Cats and dogs would have to get a lot more profitable first. I charge by the kilo for cremating pets, and nowadays everyone’s into those tiny ratlike dogs. Don’t get me started. After I pay my gas, electricity, taxes, and this, that, and everything else, what’s left? If only people would start keeping giraffes or elephants as pets. Then maybe Bear would be rich.”

      Bear shook the soju bottle and emptied what was left into his mouth. He stretched. He looked worn-out. “So should I sell them?” he asked abruptly.

      “Sell what?”

      “C’mon, I already told you! Mr. Kim’s śarīra.”

      “May as well,” Reseng said irritably. “What’s the point of holding on to them?”

      “That so-called monk offered me three hundred thousand won for them, but I feel like I’m getting ripped off. Even if they did come out of Mr. Kim’s garbage can of a body, they’re still bona fide śarīras.”

      “Listen to you,” Reseng said. “Going on as if they’re actually sacred.”

      “Should I ask him to bump it up to five hundred thousand?”

      Reseng didn’t respond. He was tired, and he wasn’t in the mood to joke anymore. He stared wordlessly into the fire until Bear got the hint. Bear gave his empty soju bottle another shake, then went to get a fresh one.

      White smoke spewed out of the chimney. Every time he dropped off a body for cremation, Reseng got the ridiculous notion that the souls of those once-hectic lives were exiting through the chimney. A great many assassins had been cremated there. It was the final resting place for discarded hit men. Hit men who’d messed up, hit men tracked down by cops, hit men who ended up on the death list for reasons no one knew, and assassins who’d grown too old—they were all cremated in that furnace.

      To the plotters, mercenaries and assassins were like disposable batteries. After all, what use would they have for old assassins? An old assassin was like an annoying blister bursting with incriminating information and evidence. The more you thought about it, the more sense it made. Why would anyone hold on to a used-up battery?

      Reseng’s old friend, Chu, had been cremated in this same furnace. Chu was eight years older, but the two of them had been like family. With Chu’s death, Reseng had sensed that his life had begun to change. Familiar things suddenly became unfamiliar. A certain strangeness came between him and his table, his flower vase, his car, his fake driver’s license. The timing of it all was uncanny. He had once looked up the man whose name was on his stolen driver’s licence. A devoted father of three and a hardworking and talented welder, according to everyone who knew him, the man had been missing for eight years. Maybe he had ended up on a hit list. His body might have been buried in the forest or sealed inside a barrel at the bottom of the ocean. Or maybe he had even been cremated right here in Bear’s furnace. Eight years on, the family was still waiting for him to come home. Every time he drove, Reseng joked to himself: This car is being driven by a dead man. He felt that he lived like a dead man, a zombie. It only made sense that he was a stranger in his own life.

      Two years had passed since Chu’s death. He’d been an assassin, like Reseng. But unlike Reseng, Chu hadn’t belonged to any particular outfit; instead, he’d drifted from place to place, taking on short gigs. The Mafia had a saying: The most dangerous adversary was a pazzo, a madman. A person who thought they had nothing to lose, who wanted nothing from others and asked nothing of him- or herself, who behaved in ways that defied common sense, who quietly followed her or his own strange principles and stubborn convictions, which were both inconceivable and unbelievable. A person like that would not be cowed by any formidable power. Chu had been that kind of person.

      On the other hand, it was easy to deal with adversaries who were backed into a corner and desperate not to lose what they had. They were the plotters’ favorite prey. It was obvious where they were headed. They ended up dead because they refused to acknowledge, right up to the very end, that they could not hold on to whatever it was they were trying to hold on to. But not Chu. Chu had been out to prove that this ferocious world with its boundless power could not stop him as long as he desired nothing.

      Chu had been prickly, but his work was so clean and immaculate that Old Raccoon had usually given him the difficult assignments. He’d wanted to make Chu an official member of the library and had warned him, “Even a lion becomes a target for wild dogs when it’s away from its pride.” Each time, Chu had sneered and said, “I don’t plan on living long enough to turn into a cripple like you.”

      Despite not belonging to any one outfit, Chu had lasted for twenty years as an assassin. He’d done all sorts of dirty work, taken government jobs, corporate jobs, jobs from third-tier meat-market contractors, no questions asked. Twenty years—it was an impressive run for an assassin.

      But then one day four years ago, Chu’s clock had stopped. No one knew why. Even Chu had confessed to Reseng that he didn’t understand why it had happened, why his clock had suddenly stopped after running so faithfully for twenty years. What led up to it was that Chu decided to let one of his targets go. She was no one special, just another twenty-one-year-old high-priced escort. Shortly after, a news story came out about a certain national assemblyman who had leaped to his death. He’d been hounded by accusations of bribery, corruption, and a sex scandal involving a middle schooler. There was no way that a lowlife like him who enjoyed sex with middle school girls had committed suicide to preserve his honor, which he’d long since done a great job of destroying on his own. Every plotter who saw the news must have instantly thought of Chu. And Chu didn’t stop there. He also went after the plotter who’d put out the contract on the escort. But he failed to track the plotter down. Not even the great Chu could pull that off. By then, Chu was a wanted man. It has to be said that plotters spend more time on finding safe hideouts for themselves and ensuring their own quick exits than on planning hits.

      The plotters’ world was one big cartel. They had to take out Chu, but not for anything as flimsy as pride. There was no such thing as pride in this business. They had to take him out so as not to lose customers. Like any other society, their world had its own strict rules and order. Those rules and order formed the foundation on which the market took shape, and then in streamed the customers. If order fell, the market fell, and if the market fell, bye-bye customers. Chu had to have known that. The moment he made up his mind to save the woman, he signed his own death warrant. Chu risked everything to save one unlucky prostitute.

      It took the meat market’s trackers less than two months to find her. She was hiding in a small port city. The high-class call girl who’d once entertained only VIP clients in four-star hotels was now selling herself to sailors in musty flophouses. If she’d holed up quietly in a factory instead of going to the red-light district, she might have dodged the trackers a little longer. But she’d ended up on the stinking, filthy streets instead. Maybe she’d run out of money. Since she’d had to leave Seoul in a hurry, she would’ve had no change of clothes and nowhere to sleep. Plus, it was winter. Cold and hunger have a way of numbing people to abstract fears. She might have thought she was going to die anyway, and so what difference did it make? It’s hard to say whether it was stupid of her to think like that. She couldn’t possibly have enjoyed whoring herself out in a port city on the outskirts of civilization, sucking drunk sailor dick for a pittance. But she would’ve felt she had no other choice. All you had to do was look at her hands to understand why. She had slender, lovely hands. Hands that had never

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