#there were so many signs about this being a low clearance bridge and the driver just barrelled through

[katesattic]

Had ro leave 20 minutes early for work because of this closure.

This isn’t even the first truck to crash into the bridge this year. For some reason truckers are incapable of reading the detour sign. On the bright side, trains don’t run on Vancouver Island so it’s not distrupting them. On the extra down side, railroad tracks have become hiking trails and this one was used to cross over a busy road and is now fully out of commission.

[niskrp]

:// SEARCHING OPERATIVE …

… searching for AGENT 013 / ACE OF HEARTS. classified files indicate that they go by KIM JUWON. born in YONGIN, SK, in 1992/20/02, further investigation makes it clear that they joined the agency TWO YEARS ago. they are a CLANDESTINE AGENT who specialize in LTU OPERATIONS. higher clearance is needed to access further information…

… ENTER PASSWORD TO ACCESS THE COMPLETE FILE.

:// ACCESSING BACKGROUND FILES …

tw: mention of suicide, infidelity

1992 (100 days).

kim hyunsik and his wife, nam seohyun, pose in front of the camera, slotting together in a practiced way. their eldest son, seungwon, stands in front of them, forgetting to smile in favour of peering up at the pale, pink thing in his mother’s arms. their friends and family clap nonetheless, laugh and coo at baby juwon, still oblivious to his surroundings, lavishly decorated as they are.

the kim family is picture perfect.

a flash, and the moment is gone, seohyun’s friends swarming the couple the first chance they get. she raises juwon up to meet his aunties’ eager smiles, but hyunsik knows what she really wants. he graciously plucks juwon out of her arms and the space is soon filled with a glass, champagne and bubbling.

children are supposed to be born out of love. but not even juwon, hyunsik thinks, rocking him absentmindedly, can mend the gap between him and seohyun, though she stands no more than a few feet away.

if seungwon is their firstborn, then juwon is their last resort.

2001 (9).

they’re on their second detour of the day, seungwon trailing behind an excitable juwon, only mildly irritated at the prospect of walking him home from school. it’s never just one thing with him. first, a drink, next, they’re across the city pressing their noses up against the national police university’s gates.

“why are we here again?” seungwon mutters.

“cause i wanna see the police!” juwon answers like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.

“they’re not police ye-”

“they’re so cooool!” juwon says a little too loudly. several students in uniform turn to look at them.

seungwon hushes him and not so subtly drags him by the backpack, ignoring his cries of i want to be just like them! the students think it’s all in good fun, looking on in amusement. seungwon sighs. “why, what’s so special about them.” his voice falls flat.

it’s after they round the corner that seungwon lets go of juwon, his brother’s pout doing little to soothe his impatience.

“they fight for justice!” and where did he learn that word? seungwon thinks.

“yeah, well, dad fights for justice, too.”

“but the police are way cooler!” a pause. “what dad does is boring.”

“whatever,” seungwon snaps, and whirls on his heel, marching towards home, where they should’ve been all along. “i’m telling him you said that,” he throws over his shoulder.

juwon freezes in horror, a split-second before he’s sprinting after him. “wait!”

2009 (17).

he goes through the night in a bit of a daze, dreamlike, disbelieving.

with his father’s recent ascension to justice of the supreme court, it’s been a string of events, one after the other. there’s just an endless stream of important people to meet, just another hand to shake, another person to smile at.

and his parents? they were certainly doing their part, talking and smiling, always smiling, father’s arm wound around mother’s waist, in her hand a sparkling glass of wine that she seemed to take endless sips from.

it’s as though the last few hours never even happened.

i know you’re having an affair, she had said, voice low and steady, abruptly ending whatever screaming match they were having just a few moments before. her mouth had wired shut after that, red lips pressed together in a taut line, the only signs of her fury present in the slight trembling of her hands.

his father had merely sighed, a quiet resignation while his two sons stood frozen in the background. he’d taken a few steps towards her, eyes darting to her arm though he didn’t dare reach out to touch her, not now. “i don’t want to make a scene, not tonight. can we talk about this later?”

and somehow, they had all piled into the car in relative peace, if not in uncomfortable silence. if the driver had noticed the tension in the air, well, it wasn’t his place to say anything.

it’s why juwon finds himself in his father’s office, the first place he’d gone to after they returned home, his mother sweeping into their shared bedroom. father still has his blazer on, eyes turned towards the floor, gaze unfocused, waiting for him to speak. there’s a hunch in his shoulders, but whether or not it’s of guilt… juwon isn’t sure.

an inhale, and he pauses, a million questions, a million answers, some that he decides he’s better off not knowing. what is there to say? what can he say? his parents had taught him to never fidget. he grips at his knees instead. “are you going to leave?”

“of course not, juwon,” his father answers automatically, and his eyes snap up, but there’s no rush, no weight to his words. “i’d never leave you or your mother.”

it’s simple, matter of fact.

“then why?”

“marriage,” his father begins, and leans backwards in his chair, “is more than a union of two people. it’s a merging of families. what we have… what your mother and i share,” he corrects, “is more than being husband and wife.”

his father finally stands and makes his way towards juwon. he stops next to him, claps a heavy hand to his shoulder. juwon meets his eyes.

“i have to a duty to your mother, and to you, and to seungwon,” he says slowly, “but we fell out of love a long time ago. i hope you can learn to understand that.” his father is quiet when he finishes, honest in his words, but not pleading. simple.

to understand… in time, he thinks he will. because this is the world they live in.

what other choice does he have?

“i forgive you,” juwon says, and he does.

a wry smile is all he gets in return.

2010 (18).

he does his duty to the nation, and to his parents, though perhaps not in the way they’d expected. after highschool was graduation, and with it came enrollment into the korean national police university.

it wasn’t ku or snu or even yonsei, but it was still a degree, juwon had pointed out.

my children should be able to do what they like, is the only thing his father said with a smile, his mother turning to him helplessly.

within reason, she argued.

in the end, no one, not even nam seohyun’s circle of friends, and certainly not his father’s circle of justices could say anything bad about a police officer. it was simply in bad taste.

and so juwon stays in his hometown of yongin, where knpu had always been, where his dreams, if he could call them that, had always been. he breezes through post-secondary with less friction than he’d anticipated.

2014 (22).

his parents will take any opportunity to brag, just as all parents do, just one more thing they can laud over each other, and his graduation to inspector is no exception. they make him attend a party in full uniform, his peers are all in business but they rove their eyes over him all the same, suggestive whispers of officer drifting around him like smoke.

it’s quiet after that, not by choice but by necessity. he begins his fieldwork immediately, rotating every few months into a new line of work: investigation, patrol, riot policing, they’re meant to get a taste of it all. he doesn’t have time to get on his knees, schmooze the chairman of so-and-so, beg for praise, acceptance. he’s better than that.

or at least he thinks he is.

if there’s one thing that juwon learns, it’s that everyone is out for themselves.

whether they’re wearing a suit in a conference room or pressed down to the dirt with juwon’s boot on their back, people are all the same.

juwon adjusts accordingly.

2016 (24).

an unexpected attachment to the narcotics department derails his plans for next decade or so of his life, or perhaps for the rest of it, looking back now.

it’s routine at first, until it’s not. it’s routine for the sake of routine, for painting a picture of someone he’s not—officially, it’s called undercover work.

you’re not playing a role, they’d told him, you’re playing a different version of yourself. truth is a matter of circumstance, juwon surmises. truth is convenience, lies are of omission.

his dreams of becoming a detective are lost somewhere along the way.

he’s simply too good at what he does: lying and manipulation, lying to maintain the lie. he’s more useful where he is, though he can’t quite find the pride to support his superiors’ praise.

he stays all the same.

2017 (25).

he accepts a transfer to the nis without much thought, commendation, recommendation, doesn’t consider the new weight placed upon his shoulders—it’s all the same, anyways. anonymous dedication to freedom and truth, our nation will count on you, those who exist these gates—he’s a cog in the machine, like all the rest. national police, national intelligence, organizations meant to inspire pride in the populace, but it’s all propaganda. nothing he does will ever change the world, no matter how many lives he ruins, no matter how many people he puts behind bars, it’s all the same.

but the results he gets are enough. he completes the st program with ease.

2018 (26)

he’s a newly minted agent, and quickly becomes water under the bridge. long time undercover operations where juwon ceases to exist, if it comes down to it, we’ll disavow any knowledge—he’s used to the feeling of drowning.

“kim juwon.” one of the higher ups, he recognizes, greets him on the way to his debriefing. “welcome home. and good fucking work.”

but he fights to stay afloat.

juwon merely bows in response, doesn’t bother with a thank you, sir—the man is already moving on before juwon can even raise his head—people like him only cared about results, no matter the cost.

the results being the dismantling and subsequent arrest of a gang with a large stake in the distribution of cocaine—he’s just come back from the south, his first assignment, totaling five months. it was slow work, like most undercover ops are, establishment of identity, trust, or at least the lowering of suspicion, bridging the gap between us vs. them. until he had found a sort of diamond in the rough: a man desperate enough to get caught in the affairs of the gang, threatened to be their dealer.

it’s a fact that juwon had exploited mercilessly, preying on his vulnerability, working his way into his confidence until he had found his way in. it was quick to unravel, after that.

so when the man is put on minute-to-minute watch, in case of suicide, juwon knows for a fact that it’s his fault.

“how so?” the prison guard had asked when juwon told him as much.

“i was supposed to be his only friend in the world.” juwon stares at the man curled on his cot from a monitor. “i made him trust me. and i betrayed him.”

“he’d be better off dead,” juwon mutters.

“yeah, well, that’s not for us to decide.” a beat. “only for us to carry out.” the guard sends juwon a cheeky grin.

juwon can’t help but bark out a laugh, shaking his head at the irony of it all.

“see you later, man.”

“yeah.” juwon takes one last glance at the broken man on the monitor. “see you.”

and he leaves it all behind him.

postscript.

“that can’t have been easy.”

“no.” juwon keeps his head lolled back against the plush armchair, stares up at the white of the ceiling. “it’s scary just how easy it was.”

:// ACCESSING PSYCHOLOGICAL EVALUATION …

outward: comfortable with teamwork, not by nature but by design. police academy made sure of that. though not much of a team-player himself, juwon will be the first to kick everyone’s ass into gear, growling into their faces about wasting time and the like. he recognizes the need for team-oriented exercises, the building of interpersonal skills,but to be honest, he’s glad he spends most of his time as an ltu operative alone. beyond that, he can follow orders just fine. along the same lines, tends to keep to himself, likes to watch rather than be watched. observant but also intuitive, sensitive to other’s feelings, but most of the time maintains that it’s none of his business. friendly enough to grab a drink with, takes things lightly, an easy smile playing on his lips. in his line of work, it’s necessary to be able to hold a conversation. though only when he wants to.

inward: cynical and disillusioned view of the world. privately believes that his work, the work of the nis, the police, it’s all futile unless a large scale reform is carried out, which it never will be. on the day-to-day, he’s making a difference, sure, but nothing is really changing. to add to that, recognizes that people are selfish, uses that reasoning to maintain his own selfishness. love, family, relationships, none of it is genuine, it’s simply a business model.

… END OF FILE. CONTACT THE AGENT DIRECTLY FOR MORE.