The Vice Squad was located in the oldest wing of the police precinct. The air here was different—not thick with the smell of blood and gunpowder, but stale with the dust from stacks of unprocessed case files, sweetish from cheap perfume confiscated as evidence, and acrid from the smell of old paint peeling off the windowsills. A quiet and dreary bureaucratic chaos reigned here, where the most serious crime was considered to be an incorrectly filled-out Form 17-B.
Lao Han sat at his new desk, piled high with folders bearing screaming titles like "Illegal Massage Parlor 'Jade Butterfly'" or "Complaints about Indecent Behavior in Yeouido Park." He wasn't looking through them. His empty gaze was fixed on the wall in front of him, but it seemed he could see through it, through the entire building, straight into that alley where just a few days ago bodies had lain. His fingers, accustomed to gripping a pistol handle, now slowly drummed on the cardboard cover of a case file.
A few minutes later, a young woman approached him. Her black hair was pulled back tightly in a ponytail, revealing stern yet lively facial features. Her eyes, sharp and perceptive, studied her new partner with unconcealed curiosity mixed with slight anxiety. In her hands, she held a thin, almost scrawny folder.
"Detective Lao Han?" Her voice was clear, an attempt to break through the wall of his silence. "My name is Xin Shi. Inspector. The captain said we'll be working together. Were you briefed on this case?"
She placed the folder in front of him. Only two words were written on it: "Missing. Hee Rak."
Lao Han slowly shifted his gaze from the wall to the folder, then to her. His eyes met her gaze, and Xin Shi felt an inexplicable chill. There was neither welcome nor hostility in those eyes. There was only emptiness.
"And?" he uttered in a single syllable.
"And... his parents filed a report two days ago. Seventeen years old. Disappeared after school. Didn't take his things, hasn't been in contact. No ransom demands, no signs of a struggle. Usually, such cases..." she hesitated, "...we put on the back burner. Teenagers often run away on their own. But the captain said to give this one to you. For... warm-up."
Lao Han silently opened the folder. Inside was a standard questionnaire, a couple of photos of a smiling boy with a basketball, and the missing person report itself.
"You clearly think this is a waste of time," Xin Shi stated, reading his thoughts. "But he's someone's son. His mother has been calling every day. She's desperate."
"Despair is a statistical error," Lao Han's voice was as even as that of a newsreader reciting the weather forecast. "Dozens of people go missing in Seoul every day. Most of them voluntarily. They run from debts, families, themselves. The rest are found in the river or in a ditch. The emotions of relatives do not change the probability function of the outcome."
Xin Shi looked at him, trying to understand if he was saying these cynical things on purpose, or if this was his natural way of perceiving the world.
"Alright. Let's test the probability function. Shall we start with the family?"
…
The Hee Rak family's apartment was in a modest but clean residential complex. The air in the living room was thick with an anxiety that even the neatly arranged family photos on the shelves couldn't dispel. The mother, a thin woman with eyes swollen from crying, was fidgeting with the edge of her apron. The father, stooped and silent, sat in an armchair, his gaze fixed on the screen of the turned-off television.
Lao Han didn't introduce himself. He stood in the middle of the room, his empty gaze sliding over the details: the photographs, the dust on the picture frames, the too-neatly stacked magazines on the table.
"He's a good boy," the mother began, her voice trembling. "His grades... not perfect, but he tried. Dreamed of becoming a professional basketball player. Spent all his free time on the court. He would never have just left! Never!"
Xin Shi nodded softly, her face expressing sympathy:
"We understand. Tell us, was there any change in his behavior before the disappearance? Maybe new friends, problems at school?"
"No, everything was as usual!" the woman shook her head. "He had one group of friends—Gong Yi, Jin Sook, and the others. They're always together. They're all in shock, we called them."
Lao Han walked over to the bookshelf and picked up a basketball with a few faded autographs on it.
"Did he value this ball?" he asked, addressing the ball more than the people in the room.
"Yes! It was his talisman. He wouldn't let anyone touch it. He even slept with it when he was little," the mother sobbed.
"But he didn't take it," Lao Han stated, putting the ball back in its place. "He didn't take anything that was valuable to him. This either indicates an extreme state of panic, or that he didn't plan to be gone for long. Or that his departure was forced and swift."
The father looked up at him for the first time. There was a quiet fury in his eyes.
"What are you implying? That he was... killed?"
"I am speaking of probabilities," Lao Han parried. "Was your son involved in something that required secrecy from him? Maybe a girlfriend you didn't know about? Debts?"
"No!" the mother almost shouted. "He was an open boy! He had no secrets from us!"
Lao Han looked at her with his soulless eyes, and the woman involuntarily took a step back.
"Everyone has secrets," he said quietly. "It is secrets that become the reason people disappear."
…
The next stop was his friends. They had agreed to meet at an inexpensive internet cafe near the school. Gong Yi, a stocky guy with intelligent but frightened eyes, and Jin Sook, tall and slightly clumsy, sat in a corner booth. In front of them stood untouched glasses of cola.
They looked exactly like teenagers whose friend had gone missing should look—confused and dejected. But in their despondency, there was not just sadness, but a sharper, gnawing note—an almost animalistic fear.
Xin Shi started the conversation, her tone calm and encouraging:
"Guys, we know this is hard. But any small detail could help. When was the last time you saw Hee Rak?"
Gong Yi nervously ran a hand through his haircut. His fingers were trembling slightly.
"Two days ago. After school. We... we were supposed to meet up."
"Where? What for?" Xin Shi pressed gently.
"Just... to hang out. Nothing special," replied Jin Sook, his gaze wandering somewhere behind the detectives, refusing to meet their eyes.
"At the court?" interjected Lao Han. His question didn't sound like a question, but like a statement of a fact he already knew.
Both guys flinched as if from an electric shock. A fleeting, but distinct flash of panic appeared.
"No, not at the court," Gun I blurted out too quickly. "Just... in the park. We went to the park. And he didn't show up. We thought he was running late, and then... he stopped answering."
"Did he mention any problems? Maybe conflicts with someone?" continued Xin Shi, picking up on their nervousness.
"No. Everything was fine with him. Absolutely," said Jin Sook, shaking his head with an unnatural, exaggerated insistence. "He was okay."
Lao Han observed them without moving. His empty gaze was fixed on their hands, gripping the glasses until their knuckles were white, on the nervous twitches at the corners of their lips, on how they avoided direct eye contact. He wasn't just seeing frightened friends. He was seeing people locked in a cage of their own fear.
"You are afraid," uttered Lao Han, and his lifeless voice sounded deafeningly loud in the quiet of the booth.
Gong Yi and Jin Sook froze.
"What? No... we're just worried," mumbled Gong Yi.
"You are not afraid for him. You are afraid for yourselves. You are afraid to say something wrong. Because you know there are consequences far more serious than a scolding from your parents or from the police."
Real, mute horror was visible in the boys' eyes. They didn't know what to say. They felt that any word could be a mistake, and any admission—a sentence.
"We... we don't know anything," whispered Jin Sook, "We were just waiting for him in the park, and he didn't come. That's all."
Xin Shi looked at them, and her perceptive gaze filled with disappointment and anger. She clearly saw that they were lying.
Lao Han slowly stood up. He had seen everything he needed to see.
"Your fear is understandable," he said, "You have made your choice."
He turned and walked towards the exit. Xin Shi, pressing her lips together in frustration, threw a last glance at the boys—it held both reproach and a futile hope that they would change their minds. But they sat there, heads bowed, two mute statues of fear.
…
Outside, she was overcome by a wave of powerless rage.
"They were lying! They were lying the whole time! They know what happened, but they're too scared to say! Because of this, that boy could die!"
Lao Han stopped, looking at the stream of cars. The dusk was tinting Seoul in bluish tones.
"Their behavior is logical. They calculated the risks. The risk of retaliation from those they fear outweighs the abstract probability of helping a friend. In their frame of reference, it is a rational act."
"That's cowardice!" Xin Shi exhaled.
"That is the instinct of self-preservation," he corrected. "Primitive, but effective. They are part of an ecosystem where the law does not work. It has its own rules. Their silence is the observance of those rules."
"But we can't just stop!"
"We are not stopping. We are collecting data. The data states: the disappearance is connected to a structure that inspires such fear that even close friends prefer to remain silent. This narrows the search, but makes it... inadvisable for the Vice Squad."
"What do we do now?" Her voice held a challenge, almost despair.
"We return to the department. You will write a report stating that you interviewed the family and friends, and no suspicion of a criminal nature regarding the disappearance was found. The case will be filed away until new information is received."
"But that's a betrayal!"
"This is following procedure, based on the available data. The data provided by the witnesses is false. Therefore, any conclusion will be false. We have hit a wall built of human fear. You cannot break it with your forehead."
"Then we won't achieve anything!"
"We have already achieved something," he looked at the city again, and his empty eyes seemed to absorb all the evening light, reflecting nothing. "We have confirmed that there are zones where the truth holds no weight. Where silence is considered the truth. And as for Hee Rak... his fate is now in the hands of those whose name his friends are afraid to even whisper. We are merely extras here."
He walked on, his dark silhouette dissolving into the thickening dusk, while Xin Shi, in turn, remained standing for a while, clenching her fists.