Part 34: A Black Box
content warning: hand trauma, general violence/gore warning
[BGM: Pensive Moments]
Well, that's not good! Again, our goals are pretty obvious here- make sure Alicia's mission goes off successfully (or, at least, well enough she doesn't lose her fucking hand), and make sure Chang can rescue Kang and Min-Jun in time. That said, there's.... a lot of possible outcomes here, including quite a few Bad endings, so let's get started.
For starters, there's a few solutions that are very obviously not the right answer, like this!
[BGM: The Darkness]
I recognized the man lying on the floor.
Officer Min-Jun's eyes were wide open. There was a dark brown stain near his chest on his dark-colored shirt. The blood had already dried.
Judging from the amount of blood, and the shape of it, it must be a gunshot wound.
The fire was getting worse in the living room.
I covered my nose while looking around.
But I could barely see anything anymore.
The flames were now licking the clothes on Officer Min-Jun's body.
I couldn't just leave him here.
I carried his body out of the fire and handed it over to Lieutenant Kim, who had been waiting at the door.
The fire had become too big for us to go back inside.
We had to wait for reinforcements from the firefighters.
We waited until the firefighters had put out the fire before we went into the apartment again.
We found another completely immolated body in the bathroom.
The next day, while I was still lamenting Officer Min-Jun's death, I heard another piece of shocking news.
The second body was Lieutenant Kang.
I held onto the rope with my right hand and descended all the way to the ground from the outside of the building.
A couple of people had seen me while I was dropping down, and let out some admiring and terrified gasps.
But their attention was soon pulled away by the explosion from the top floor.
My target------ the president of Shenglong Corp., Liang Zilong, had not been in the room.
However, he was only part of the mission.
I had an even more important task, which was to find a black metal box. Unfortunately, I couldn't find the box either.
I spent a long time searching for it. He must have hidden it somewhere that wasn't in plain sight.
I could have had more time if it weren't for a bomb that had been placed in the closet by someone...
I had busted through the window as soon as I heard the ticking sound coming from the closet. But it was already too late...
I couldn't feel anything in my left hand. I looked down to where it used to be...
Well, we've learned a few more things here- the bomb seems to be inevitable (so even if the body isn't discovered it's still going to go off), and Kang is in the bathroom in the apartment. Let's try another combination and see what else we can learn.
The officers from Unit 3 broke into the apartment and they found Officer Min-Jun.
They also found me unconscious, I had apparently passed out at the bathroom door after inhaling too much smoke.
We were rescued from the fire.
When I finally woke up at a safe location, the first thing I did was to tell the people around me that Lieutenant Kang was still behind the jammed bathroom door.
He was passed out inside.
But it was already too late.
They told me that the fire had been put out for a while, and they had found a burned body in the bathroom...
My target------ the president of Shenglong Corp., Liang Zilong, had not been in the room.
However, he was only part of the mission.
I had an even more important task, which was to find a black metal box that he had.
Unfortunately, I couldn't find the box either.
I had spent a long time searching for it. He must have hidden it somewhere that wasn't in plain sight.
I could have had more time if it weren't for a bomb that had been placed in the closet by someone...
It was already too late when I heard the ticking sound coming from inside the closet.
The closet suddenly exploded.
The flames that erupted from it engulfed everyone in the room... including me...
And another one for Alicia...
The guards who had broken into the office caught me inside.
I jumped behind the couch, using it as cover.
I had hidden four guns and hundreds of bullets in my janitor's uniform.
I was going to claim my victory.
I pulled out the first gun and aimed at the big man standing at the door.
But then, the closet in the corner of the office suddenly exploded.
The flames that erupted from it engulfed everyone in the room...
That takes care of the Bad endings for Alicia, but there's still a couple more for Chang. Some of them are pretty samey, but there's at least one more that's got some more information... (Regallion's guess for Chang results in this ending.)
My kung fu instincts from my Shaolin training were telling me that I should not stay here any longer, and that I needed to get out as soon as possible.
Accompanied by the sound of shattering glass, I landed on the ground steadily.
Then I saw two cars stopping in front of the apartment building. Every person coming out of the cars was an officer from Unit 3.
The image of Officer Min-Jun lying there with his eyes wide open was still imprinted in my mind.
How did he die?
Why was he there?
Why would Unit 3 show up right now?
And what about that suspicious anonymous tip?
There were too many puzzles that I wanted to discuss with Lieutenant Kang when I saw him.
Never would I have ever guessed that the next day, I would learn an even more shocking piece of news.
The lieutenant had died, too.
And they put a warrant out for me, saying that I had become a fugitive.
This case, that had so many ties to Unit 4, had turned into a wild horse charging down a freeway.
I no longer had any control over the situation.
Perhaps I should not have just run away.
Maybe things would have been different if I had just stayed.
Well, I mean, let's be real- this whole situation was kind of fishy from the get go
There's one more Bad ending for Chang that's worth showing off, so let's get to it.
[BGM: Pensive Moments]
I smashed the window of the bathroom.
The shattered glass fell on an unconscious man.
I turned him over. It was Lieutenant Kang!
It was a burning inferno outside of the bathroom. Smoke was coming inside from underneath the door.
The temperature had also risen to a significant degree.
I tried to carry the Lieutenant on my back and retreat the way I had come in, but the fire outside had burned down the support beams and the ceiling collapsed.
The bathroom window was completely blocked and I couldn't even call for help.
The main entrance to the apartment was the only way left.
I opened the bathroom door. The heat rushing in almost made me feel like I was being suffocated.
The room outside had become a chaotic mass of black and red.
It felt so familiar.
I remembered the same chaos when I had been 7 years old.
There was a person who was carrying another person.
I was still a coward who couldn't do anything but cry.
If it weren't for a big brother passing by who bravely carried me out of the fire, Chang Gyeong-Min would not even be here at all.
I had never learned the name of the person who had saved me.
I could barely even remember what he had looked like.
The only thing I could remember of him was something he had said to me.
He said, 'This is my justice!”
The apartment was crumbling around me.
My breathing was becoming heavier and heavier, and my steps were getting slower and slower.
Eventually, I wasn't able to get out of the way when a dresser tipped over on us.
Flames were licking at our bodies, but I couldn't even feel the heat anymore.
Why... couldn't I do it...
Surprise, the only way to find out why Chang wanted to become a cop is if you get this specific Bad ending!
Anyway, let's start cleaning out some of these non-Bad non-S endings. (Regallion's guess for Alicia results in this ending.)
[BGM: The Darkness]
I smashed the window of the bathroom.
To my surprise I found Lieutenant Kang pased out on the bathroom floor.
Even more surprisingly, when I carried the Lieutenant into the living room his foot accidentally bumped the doors of the closet, which was knocked open.
Then a body rolled out from inside.
I recognized the body.
It was Officer Min-Jun.
It had only been a few days since we last saw each other. Never would I have ever imagined that I would be seeing him again like this.
I couldn't think anymore, so I had to leave Officer Min-Jun to Lieutenant Kim at the scene.
I drove Lieutenant Kang to the hospital myself, as fast as I could.
Fortunately, Lieutenant Kang was mostly okay. The doctor said he'd only had some serious alcohol poisoning.
However, this was only the beginning.
The next day I went to visit the Lieutenant, who was still in a coma, but a bunch of men from Unit 3 kicked me out once again.
They had reasons to believe that the Lieutenant might be heavily involved with Min-Jun's murder.
From now on they were putting him under 24-hour surveillance.
Damn it. I hadn't had time to check on Officer Min-Jun as I had to rush Lieutenant Kang to the hospital.
The autopsy had been concluded and the entire investigation and process was under the complete supervision of Unit 3.
It would be too late to look for more clues at the scene now.
My target------ the president of Shenglong Corp., Liang Zilong, was supposed to be in the office, but he was nowhere to be found.
Besides killing him I had an even more important task, which was to find a black metal box.
I got lucky.
I accidentally found the metal box that Ray had asked me to find when I dropped down to the floor to get away from the heavy smoke. It had been glued to the bottom of the couch.
After leaving the office, I ducked into the security stairwell again.
There was almost nobody in it.
I was wearing a janitor's uniform, and calmly started walking down from the 33rd floor.
I got down to the fifth floor.
Four security guards, followed by someone in a doctor's coat, walked past me and climbed up the stairs.
The person in the coat looked a little familiar, so I turned my head and took another glance at him.
Then I realized that he was looking at me, too.
And then I remembered. He was the doctor summoned to check up on me at Money Jia's mansion.
Money Jia's entire hosuehold had been wiped out, and everyone in the underground world knew that the Black Dragon Gang had done it.
Yet nobody dared to say a word about it. After all, Money Jia was merely a money man who had no other connections or support.
Nobody knew that there had been any survivors from the “unfortunate accident”.
But if anybody were to survive, that person must be deeply involved with the Black Dragon Gang.
If the doctor had recognized me, and told anyone about my presence, Shenglong Corp. would be able to connect the gang to their boss's death. Ray would be in serious trouble.
We were getting further away from each other, one step at a time, and this uneasy feeling kept dripping from my heart like a leaking water tap, one drop at a time.
I made up my mind just before they were about to disappear at the corner of the stairs.
My dagger cut through the air like a silver lightning bolt and went through the doctor's throat.
In the next second, four bullets left the silencer of my gun and took out the others in the stairwell.
I gave the doctor who had saved my life one last look.
He was lying on the stairs, with his left hand over his chest.
I never learned what his name was.
And I would never have a chance to ask him.
I closed my eyes, shook my head, and turned around.
It was too late when I suddenly realized something had just touched my back.
A cold, familiar, yet strange sensation kept pushing forward, through my skin, through the gaps between my back ribs, through my heart, and finally through the gaps between my front ribs, and my skin in front...
My dagger had missed the artery by just a little.
The tiny bit of mercy that remained in my heart had turned out to be my fatal mistake.
I watched as the box dropped out of my arm and fell down the stairs, clanking the whole way down.
I reached out, attempting to catch it.
But I couldn't...
Wow, we got a lot of new information here! For starters, it's now REALLY obvious Unit 3 has SOMETHING going on, though whether they're behind it is still unclear. More importantly though, we now know where the metal box is AND that the doctor from Money Jia's mansion is in the building while everything's going down- though whether he's actually relevant is unclear as well.
Let's get another ending for Chang.
[BGM: Pensive Moments]
No one was in the bedroom.
A lot of empty beer bottles were scattered on the floor, most of which were empty.
Some of them were not empty though, and the beer had spilled all over the place.
There were still a lot of burning candles on the floor, too.
”Lieutenant Kang is passed out over here!”
I heared Lieutenant Kim's voice coming from the bathroom.
I ran to the bathroom.
Lieutenant Kang looked extremely pale. His lips were purple and he was unconscious.
I had no time to wonder how on earth Lieutenant Kang had ended up here. We drove him to the hospital immediately.
The doctor told us that Lieutenant Kang had suffered from alcohol poisoning.
Thank goodness that we had gotten him here in time. If we had been a little bit later the consequences would have been severe.
Lieutenant Kang survived.
However, we had left so hastily that we hadn't noticed the unusual thing hidden in the living room at the time.
The next day, I went to visit the lieutenant, who was still in a coma, but a bunch of men from Unit 3 kicked me out once again.
They told me that Officer Min-Jun's body had also been found in Lieutenant Kang's home.
They had reasons to believe that Min-Jun was murdered, and that the lieutenant might be heavily involved.
From now on, they were putting him under 24-hour surveillance.
Well, the information that this apartment is Kang's home is, uh, kind of a big deal, actually. It explains why Kang is the immediate suspect in his murder, at least.
Next, the A endings- starting with Chang. (Shellception's guess for Chang results in this ending.)
[BGM: The Darkness]
I recognized the man lying on the floor.
Officer Min-Jun's eyes were wide open. There was a dark brown stain near his chest on his dark-colored shirt. The blood had already dried.
Before I could check any further, the officers from Unit 3, who had followed us here, had pushed me aside, and started examining the body themselves and taking notes.
It was a little strange. I was the one who had received the tip in the first place, but the scene had now been overrun by Unit 3.
Soon, the CSI unit arrived, too.
I still couldn't quite accept Officer Min-Jun's death. As the guys from Unit 3 wouldn't let me near the body I had no choice but to wander around the living room.
When I walked past a dresser in the living room, I noticed a knocked over picture frame.
I flipped it over. It was a photo of Lieutenant Kang with a woman in her 30s.
“Hey, you! Don't touch anything! Yes, you!”
The men from Unit 3 kicked me out of the apartment.
I had to stand by the door and watched them carry Officer Min-Jun's body away in a body bag.
Even more bizarrely, they had found Lieutenant Kang passed out in the bathroom due to apparent alcohol poisoning.
I only found out later that the place had been Lieutenant Kang's apartment.
And now, the A ending for Alicia.
I held onto the rope with my right hand and descended all the way to the ground from the outside of the building.
It had been going well for me tonight, at first.
I had accidentally found the metal box that Ray had asked me to find, when I dropped down to the floor to get away from the heavy smoke. It had been glued to the bottom of the couch.
But when I was about to escape through the window the guards that had broken into the office fired and hit me in my right hand.
I had to drop the box and leave Liang's office.
“Every mission relies on skill 70% of the time. The rest of it depends on your luck.”
---- Ray had taught me that.
I was out of luck for tonight.
Later that evening, an informant notified me that the target, Liang Zilong, had already been killed before I had even gotten there.
That meant that there had been someone else who had the same plan and the same intentions as Ray.
Perhaps they had been looking for the metal box, too.
The next day, I snuck into the building again.
But the black metal box was nowhere to be found.
Welp. Sorry about your hand (again), Alicia. Let's get to the S endings. (Shellception's guess for Alicia results in her S ending!)
We need the fire on Alicia's side so she drops to the ground and locates the metal box- and also so that the apartment doesn't catch fire for Chang. We need Alicia to go through the window so she can escape that way (and avoid even encountering the doctor from before- he seems important in some capacity, maybe later?). We want the door to be kicked open on her side, not Chang's, to keep Unit 3 from showing up immediately (but we also want it at the end of her side, so she can escape before the guards arrive). Lastly, we want the body to be found on Chang's side, so he knows Min-Jun's been murdered and focuses on it first...
[BGM: Misterio]
I held onto the rope with my right hand and descended all the way to the ground from the outside of the building.
I was also carrying a black metal box in my left arm.
I had accidentally found the box when I dropped down to the floor to get away from the heavy smoke. It had been glued to the bottom of the couch.
Although Liang Zilong was nowhere to be found, Ray had instructed me that the metal box was my top priority.
The guards broke into the office just after I had escaped through the window. I could hear him directing their whole team to go after me.
But it was already too late.
I started my motorcycle and went into full throttle.
Minutes later I had arrived at the back alley behind Melody Hall.
Ray opened the box in front of me. Inside of the box were two cubes the size of a palm, with different markings on them.
Ray gave me an award after he made sure the items were intact.
After that day, I had a dragon tattoo put on my stomach.
Ray said that I had earned that mark, as evidence that I had truly become his.
[BGM: The Darkness]
I recognized the man lying on the floor.
Officer Min-Jun's eyes were wide open. There was a dark brown stain near his chest on his dark-colored shirt. The blood had already dried.
Judging from the amount of blood, and the shape of it, it must be a gunshot wound.
Why would he be here?
Where on earth was this place?
What had happened to him?
I looked around the living room.
A lot of empty beer bottles were scattered on the floor, most of which were empty.
Some of them were not empty, though, and the beer had spilled all over the place.
There were still a lot of burning candles on the floor, too.
”Lieutenant Kang is passed out over here!”
I heared Lieutenant Kim's voice coming from the bathroom.
Lieutenant Kang? Why was he here too?
I got back up and walked to the bathroom.
When I walked past a dresser in the living room I noticed a knocked over picture frame.
I flipped it over. It was a photo of Lieutenant Kang with a woman in her 30s.
Lieutenant Kang looked much younger in the photo. He even seemed a little shy.
Both of them were in uniform with their guns holstered.
I couldn't look away from the woman in the photo for a long time.
Then I finally remembered.
She had been the previous lieutenant of Unit 2, Jeagal Seok. A legendary figure in the Busan Police Department.
She was a beautiful woman, but more importantly she was considered to be better than any of the male officers on the force.
She was famous for being incredibly courageous and decisive.
She was the idol of almost every young police officer.
Even during my days in the academy a lot of my classmates had her photos in their private collections. That was how I recognized her.
The photo had obviously been taken before she had been killed in the line of duty.
Lieutenant Kang looked like he had just joined the police, too.
Perhaps he was a fan of hers, too. There was nothing strange about that.
So, this might be Lieutenant Kang's home.
Why would Min-Jun's body be here, then?
I suddenly remembered the anonymous tip, and I was starting to get more and more suspicious.
Officer Min-Jun had been shot.
He was still in his undercover outfit, which I had seen a few times.
I went back to check on his body and there was nothing else in his pockets, but I did notice a keychain attached to his waist.
I heared Lieutenant Kim walking over from the bathroom.
He must be wondering why I hadn't responded yet.
I quickly took the keychain off and hid it.
Please Buddha. Please bless me.
Bless me so that I can find the truth and avenge Officer Min-Jun.
