Chapter 36. If You Don't Come Out, I'm Coming In
"What? I'm not sure what you're talking about. Slow down a little..."
"I'm at that ten-story, apartment-style concrete cemetery along Manila Bay that you told me to look for. But..."
Oh Su suddenly stopped talking and lowered the phone.
I had no idea what he was doing.
After waiting around ten seconds, Oh Su continued in a whisper.
"I'm at the Navotas slum cemetery in northern Manila. Please come here. Something's wrong with this place!"
"What's wrong? Explain it so I can understand. What's strange about it?"
"After hearing what you said, I searched to see if there was some cemetery specifically for children, but there wasn't. The people in Navotas told me this place had a lot of children buried here, so they brought me here. Kids are running around on top of the graves and playing..."
Everyone had probably climbed onto a grave while visiting ancestors when they were young and gotten scolded by their parents.
It sounded something like that.
"Anyway, I asked those kids why so many children had died. They wouldn't answer. Instead, in the middle of the night, they brought me to their workplace. Do you know what was there? I'm about to send you a photo..."
"What was there?"
Oh Su swallowed hard.
"Bag straps made from car seat belts. Training pants made with inner bicycle-tire rubber. And people... a human factory...!"
A human factory?
Of course Oh Su, a man obsessed with cyberpunk, would say something like that.
He had apparently fallen headfirst into some dystopian fantasy.
"It's the twenty-first century, and this is near Manila. Does a human factory sound remotely realistic to you?"
"I don't know anymore. I'm going back to Korea. If I stay here any longer, I'm going to lose my mind..."
And just like that, Oh Su hung up before even finishing what he wanted to say.
I finally asked him to do one important thing, and all he gave me was human factory.
No, there had been two other clues.
A bag made from seat belts.
Training pants made from bicycle tires.
Put those together with the phrase human factory, and it sounded like the opening paragraph of some avant-garde poet's essay.
I tried calling Oh Su again.
All I got was an automated message telling me his phone was turned off.
If the photograph had contained a few more clues, maybe I would've figured out the secret hidden in this Navotas place much earlier.
Instead, I sent someone there and the place swallowed him whole like the Bermuda Triangle.
What was I supposed to do?
All I'd received was a dark photograph and barely more than a day to work with.
"Yes? Ah, yes. Understood. I'll do that."
I put down the phone, steadied myself, and looked at Youngchae.
She kept glancing toward me while still speaking with Hong Eun-hye.
"Ah... The manager? His girlfriend... Yes, as far as I know, he has one. Please keep it absolutely secret..."
Just hearing that snapped me right out of crime-dystopia noir and back into reality.
Nice reflexes.
Good excuse, Youngchae.
"Manager isn't here right now. I don't know where he went. When he gets back, I'll definitely tell him you called. Yes. Understood. Thank you so much for your hard work today!"
Youngchae ended the call.
"What did she say?"
"Ah. You know that Top Prime photo shoot she mentioned earlier? She said it's going ahead. She also explained the items."
"Really? And that thing about my girlfriend..."
Youngchae tried to laugh it off, then carefully asked,
"Do you actually have one?"
"A girlfriend? Please. I'm already old enough that if this were the Joseon era, nobody would be surprised if I were married with children and grandchildren..."
Right.
I didn't have one.
Still, thanks to Youngchae claiming that I did, maybe I'd gain at least a tiny bit of freedom from Hong Eun-hye.
Just the fact that Youngchae had gone out of her way to protect me was worth celebrating.
"Anyway, they said they'll send over some products that won't officially release until around next month. They're mostly black accessories, so Teacher Hong said to coordinate outfits with that in mind."
"Really? What accessories?"
"What did she call them again? They were kind of unusual."
Youngchae thought for a moment.
Then she said,
"A bag made from discarded seat belts... and training pants with bicycle-tire accents? Something like that."
When I'd received Oh Su's call, I hadn't noticed because I was already on the phone.
A few minutes later, I found a text message waiting for me.
Oh Su had said he was going to send a photo.
This was it.
It was a horribly blurred photograph of a columbarium.
The picture was so dark and shaky that I couldn't even tell what he expected me to look at.
Fortunately, there was one useful detail.
Visitors had painted the compartments containing the remains in different colors.
When someone they knew died, they had to return often to pray for them.
So people painted their acquaintance's compartment a specific color to make it easier to find.
The compartment belonging to Nicole, the child who had supposedly "fallen asleep before All Saints' Day," hadn't been painted yet.
But I could still locate the position based on the surrounding colors.
At the time this photo was taken, Nicole should still have been alive.
The current date had been the seventeenth.
In the spam photograph, Nicole's date of death was the eighteenth.
Just in case, I checked flights to the Philippines.
But considering the travel time, it was already too late.
I lost an entire day without being able to do anything.
Still, the situation wasn't completely hopeless.
There was a vague possibility that Oh Su had already caused some change in the future.
And once he returned to Korea, I could finally ask what he'd meant by that ridiculous phrase, human factory.
Except Oh Su, who'd said he was coming straight back to Korea, remained completely silent for days.
The eighteenth passed entirely.
Still nothing.
Who did he think he was, Hyecho?
Had he gone off to meet the Buddha?
Thinking about it calmly, even if I'd bought a ticket and flown to the Philippines the moment I received the spam message, I still wouldn't have reached that place as early as Oh Su did.
That meant the photograph probably hadn't been sent because I personally needed to solve the incident.
Then what I needed to do was use everything I'd learned so far and figure out what the image was really trying to tell me.
I still had no idea what human factory meant.
But the seat-belt bag and tire-accented training pants...
Oh Su and Youngchae had both mentioned them.
The easiest possibility was a connection between the Philippines and Top Prime.
Maybe Oh Su had accidentally stumbled across the production line for the new items Youngchae was going to promote.
Top Prime was famous for recycling waste products like seat belts and waterproof tarps.
And if someone entered a factory without proper protective equipment and inhaled toxic fumes, hallucinations weren't exactly impossible.
Should I have just chosen another ordinary brand instead?
Had accepting Top Prime been a mistake?
Using that idea, I checked Top Prime's website and read the company information.
There was no connection to the Philippines.
The headquarters were in Denmark.
Its factories were in South America, Ghana, China, and Malaysia.
Nothing in the Philippines.
I couldn't figure anything out.
That meant I was missing one clue.
But what other clue could there possibly be?
Days passed.
Oh Su still didn't return.
I couldn't contact him either.
Sometimes the call rang.
Sometimes it was rejected completely.
Most of the time, his phone was simply turned off.
It was driving me insane.
