Chapter 46. There's Space Behind It
For the next several days, I spent most of my time thinking about what I'd seen inside that shrine.
Was this how someone felt after witnessing a horrific crime scene?
Meanwhile, 〈The Sixth Sense〉 aired safely.
Aran's shaman dance.
The chemistry with Janggun Bodhisattva.
Everything I'd expected from the broadcast appeared.
〈N.Dolphin〉 had already climbed to ninth place on the chart.
The members were celebrating because they'd never imagined reaching the top ten.
But I couldn't fully enjoy it.
The GIF hadn't been warning me about the 〈The Sixth Sense〉 broadcast at all.
It was pointing toward a much bigger problem.
The system had been upgraded.
Apparently, the difficulty had been upgraded too.
The room behind the shrine window wasn't literally behind the folding screen.
Well, directionally, it was.
But there was a separate room.
If you moved the folding screen, there was probably a door.
Open that door, enter, and you reached the room with the window I'd looked through.
Inside were stacks of machines that looked like DVD players.
They were piled up like old books.
The sight itself was shocking.
But just looking at the machines, it would've been hard to understand what they were.
If not for the sticky notes attached to each one.
Each machine had the name of an idol group written on it.
Most of them were currently high-ranking idols.
The devices were stacked in five rows.
Each row seemed to contain around twenty.
Some idol groups occupied an entire row.
Others only used one device.
Altogether, it looked like around twenty groups.
That was the source of the 2.7-million-won electricity bill.
At this point, the identities of Sipsa-bu and Baeksa-bu became obvious.
Those weren't simple players.
They were streaming macros.
The amount of macro usage varied depending on how much the client paid.
Naturally, the talisman itself had no effect.
It was merely evidence that someone had requested macro manipulation.
That explained why they burned or hid the talismans afterward.
And from a company shareholder's perspective it might sound ridiculous, but entertainment was an industry steeped in superstition.
A company spending money on a "talisman" was even easy to justify on expense reports.
So, to summarize:
Janggun Bodhisattva was going to be investigated for acting as a broker in digital-chart manipulation.
I remembered seeing the Full Story team leader outside the shrine.
Out of curiosity, I checked the current chart performance of Full Story's boy group.
They'd only been back for a few days.
Yet they were already around eighth place.
They weren't even that famous.
My stomach began boiling.
The digital market that 〈N.Dolphin〉 needed to race through on its way to number one had to be clean.
No noise.
No corruption.
But if people were running streaming macros like that, the chart wasn't clean at all.
At this rate, we wouldn't even reach near number one.
Janggun Bodhisattva wasn't innocent.
Prosecutor Yoon Jin-seo was simply doing his job properly.
This wasn't about protecting a broadcast anymore.
It looked like I needed to clean Blue Moon's flower road.
I immediately called Yoon Jin-seo's number, buried deep in my contacts.
"Suwon District Prosecutors' Office, Seongnam Branch, Criminal Division 3. How may I help you?"
A clerk answered.
"Yes. I'm Do Jun-hyeok. About six months to a year ago, Prosecutor Yoon Jin-seo investigated me as a suspect in a prostitution and drug case. I have something I'd like to confess regarding my conscience, so could I get the prosecutor's personal number?"
If I told the truth from the beginning, I might travel all the way to Seongnam and get thrown out at the door.
I needed to make Yoon Jin-seo interested first.
A short while later, Yoon Jin-seo himself answered.
"Yes, yes! You're Mr. Do Jun-hyeok, the person who was cleared during the Club Area case, right? You said you have something you need to confess?"
"That's right. I've been unable to sleep because of guilt ever since. I'd like to speak privately. Could I meet you?"
Yoon Jin-seo let out a bitter sigh.
His breathing trembled slightly.
Apparently, I'd shocked him.
"Haa... Yes. Come to Seongnam now. I'll arrange a private room where you can talk comfortably."
I hung up.
Until I arrived, Yoon Jin-seo would probably be trembling at the idea that he might've sent an innocent man to prison.
Of course, once we met, I'd tell him the real reason.
Since I was going to meet such a righteous prosecutor, I decided to drive at the exact speed limit.
I set the navigation system to slow-driving mode and started the car.
"Ah... seriously."
Yoon Jin-seo pressed his fingers against his temples as we sat across from each other in his office.
"I thought you were insane back then too. I didn't realize it was this bad."
"Hey. I really did feel guilty about not managing Won-woo properly."
It had been a while since I'd seen Prosecutor Yoon Jin-seo.
He was over 190 centimeters tall with broad shoulders.
His jaw was wide too.
If you met him inside an interrogation room, he looked less like a prosecutor and more like a gang enforcer.
He stared at me while rubbing his temples.
His face had gone pale.
It was quite a sight.
"Yes~. Thank you so very much. I'm truly grateful you let me experience what it feels like to think my life was about to collapse because of some pointless bait."
Then he glared at me.
"Fine. Let's hear the reason. Why did you prank-call a busy prosecutor? You think that's legally harmless?"
In the GIF, Yoon Jin-seo had clearly been investigating the shaman.
From my perspective, the kind of crime capable of attracting that much attention was digital-chart manipulation.
He could switch to a public investigation because he had enough evidence to charge Janggun Bodhisattva.
When he'd investigated me and Won-woo, he hadn't made anything public until the evidence became extremely strong.
So I was confident the future investigation succeeded.
Did my searching for additional evidence even matter?
Maybe the GIF had shown me a future where he publicly investigated but failed to prosecute?
If that were the case, the GIF should've included some hint of failure.
I couldn't understand why I'd been shown this.
Still, there was always the one-in-a-million possibility.
It was better to share what I'd discovered.
"I have a tip. If I only said that, I figured you'd tell me to report it to the police instead."
"What kind of tip?"
"It's about Janggun Bodhisattva from Palbong Shrine. He's going to appear on television soon."
I hadn't even explained further before Yoon Jin-seo suddenly became interested.
"Palbong Shrine?"
"Yes. I visited recently. There's a hidden room inside. You can barely see it through a very high window..."
"There's a hidden room in the shrine?"
Yoon Jin-seo shouted excitedly.
From his reaction, he already knew Janggun Bodhisattva.
But the hidden room surprised him.
Apparently, I really was helping.
"...That's a very generous reaction. Is the hidden room really that shocking?"
"You looked inside? Did you see who was in there? Why didn't you call the police?!"
He scolded me.
"Why are you trying to yell at me? I already told you I used bait because talking to a prosecutor seemed more effective than talking to the police."
"Police work and prosecutor work are separate! For something urgent like this, you should've called 112 immediately."
Yoon Jin-seo pulled out his phone and began moving quickly.
"Is it really that urgent? If you raid the place without solid evidence, it's pointless. Why call the police? Better to move carefully."
"You seriously know nothing about law."
Yoon Jin-seo's tone became forceful.
"Janggun Bodhisattva has kidnapped a woman and is holding her there. You're saying that isn't urgent? We need to raid the place before he moves her!"
I stopped Yoon Jin-seo before he caused a disaster.
"Calm down. There was no kidnapped person in there. Your imagination is incredible. What I saw wasn't a human being. It was an AI macro system."
"A macro?"
I explained everything I'd seen.
An entertainment planner who bought a talisman worth hundreds of millions and then talked about burning it.
A suspicious shrine electricity bill of two to three million won every month.
Why Janggun Bodhisattva said he couldn't sell any more Sipsa-bu talismans.
And the macro devices with idol-group names attached to them.
After finishing, I showed him the photo I'd taken of the devices.
Yoon Jin-seo sighed.
"How did you see that utility bill? Did you open it?"
The way he asked made it sound illegal.
So I shook my head.
"N-No. It was already open."
"It was really already open? Really?"
He stared at me.
"Was it already open, or did you personally open it?"
"Haa... it was already open. Do you think I'm stupid? Why would I open someone else's mail?"
"If you're not stupid, why did you open it? Opening or damaging another person's mail can get you fined up to thirty million won."
The lie didn't work.
"...Can we just let that go? I didn't steal anything."
Yoon Jin-seo exhaled lightly.
"It doesn't matter. We don't need the bill. If we trace the traffic directly to those macro devices, that's enough to open a case. It's probably programmed to repeatedly create accounts, stream, delete the account, then create another one. Once we understand the mechanism, we'll catch it quickly."
"Oh..."
"The harder problem will be proving that the clients knew what they were paying for. If they insist they genuinely thought he was just a powerful fortune teller, it becomes difficult."
That was true.
So that was why they ran the operation inside a fortune-telling shrine.
The superstition itself served as camouflage.
"Then what do we do? I want all of them caught..."
"Leave that to me. But was that really all you saw inside?"
Wasn't a massive macro system enough?
What more did he need?
He had literally just said the utility bill wasn't even necessary.
"Because of proving intent? Should I have taken a photo when I saw the agency employee earlier?"
"No. That's not especially useful. If they paid money, we can already prove they visited. I'll find a way to prove intent. What I'm asking is..."
Yoon Jin-seo scratched his head.
"You didn't see someone who looked kidnapped? You didn't hear any moaning or anything?"
"Why are we suddenly talking about kidnapping?"
"I told you earlier. Janggun Bodhisattva kidnapped a woman."
Kidnapping?
I'd thought Yoon Jin-seo's brain, fried from violent-crime cases, had simply invented some vivid fantasy.
"You're saying he genuinely kidnapped someone?"
"Yes. The investigation is almost complete. We're basically at the arrest stage. We're only delaying slightly because if the hostage is left somewhere alone, her health could be at risk."
Perfect timing.
If I'd come any later, I would've missed the last train on the kidnapping case and the macro operation might've slipped through untouched.
"Still, kidnapping feels completely out of nowhere..."
"From my perspective, digital-chart manipulation feels even more out of nowhere."
Yoon Jin-seo summarized.
"Fine. In that case, we'll have to identify the kidnapping victim through interrogation after arresting Janggun Bodhisattva."
He lowered his head in thought.
A shaman who was also a kidnapper.
If I were a kidnapper, I might hide the victim behind the folding screen.
But all I'd seen were macro devices.
Maybe I should've pushed my head farther inside and looked more carefully.
"By the way, what exactly happened with this kidnapping? If I know the circumstances, maybe something I saw will suddenly make sense."
Yoon Jin-seo looked up.
"Really? You noticed something suspicious?"
"No. I'm saying I might recognize something after hearing the story."
"Fine. I'll tell you what kind of person that shaman is. We're already involved together now, the case is almost finished, and his arrest is practically certain..."
Yoon Jin-seo briefly explained the case.
The person who reported it was a man in his fifties.
After divorcing his wife, he'd won custody of their daughter.
But the ex-wife claimed the daughter had developed sinbyeong, spirit sickness, and had gone to Palbong Shrine to receive a spirit initiation.
The mother said both she and the daughter had chosen it willingly.
The father insisted that wasn't true.
Yoon Jin-seo couldn't simply tear the shrine apart based on that.
So he'd personally visited Janggun Bodhisattva several times and asked where the daughter was.
The shaman refused to tell him.
Yet in front of the police, he claimed she'd already completed the spirit initiation and gone home.
Wasn't that suspicious?
"Apparently, after a spirit initiation, it's normal for the new shaman to live with their teacher for a few days. But she's been missing for months."
Yoon Jin-seo asked again.
"I've explained this much. Think carefully. Was it really only macro devices inside?"
I replayed the memory of that moment.
That unfamiliar sound.
Something difficult to explain as the turning gears of macro devices.
A noise more unpleasant than a boiler.
"Ah."
"Remember something?"
I answered.
"There may have been another machine inside besides the macros."
