12 Hours After

Translator: Khan

Editor: RED

I hid myself for a moment and watched how things turned out. The remaining police officer was guarding the entrance to the subway after the other officer chased him down it. I cheered for them in the distance.

‘Come on, Korean police!’

If the big man ran away or was caught, it would not happen that Oh Hyun-joo was stabbed. At the same time, the article from 12 Hours After would be nullified for the first time. I watched there with a slight strain. Well, that was when it had been like that for about ten minutes. The big man was being brought up by the hands of the police officer from the subway station. I clenched my fist.

‘He was caught.’

I watched the scene, still distancing myself from them. I did not want to get in trouble for getting close. The two police officers were talking with the big man in the middle. I watched the scene closely. My eyesight was about 0.7. Because I chose not to wear glasses, I could only view the scene well from a distance.

The big man was about a head taller than the two policemen, but he was stumped in front of them. No matter how reckless he was, he seemed powerless in the face of public power. I looked at him and thought.

‘Good for you, criminal. Be judged by the law.”

But I was on my way. One of the policemen picked up a cell phone while the two policemen and the big man were arguing.

‘Is he calling headquarters?’

My cell phone was ringing. I answered it, staying hidden. “Yes, hello?”

“Sir. This is the 112 police. We’ve got the suspect you reported.”

“Oh, yes, thank God. What was he doing?”

“I think he was a kind of stalker. I can’t tell you in detail. I ran a background check, and he followed a celebrity before. He has a record of being arrested.”

As expected, the big man must have been a stalker of Oh Hyun-joo. I had heard a similar story, in the U.S. or in Japan. A stoker was with a delusion that a celebrity confessed that she loved him who she had never had a hand with, but she ignored him or cheated him while dating with someone else, and then he brutally murdered her with a knife.

‘Urgh, a scary stalker.’

I shuddered a little. But then, the police made a bit of a strange noise.

“Well, fortunately, he wasn’t as dangerous as you thought.”

“Yes? He wasn’t a dangerous man?”

He did not such a long weapon, and he was not dangerous. I pulled my head up with my cell phone and looked at the policeman on the phone. He went on talking without even imagining I was watching him.

“Yes, I don’t think he’s such a bad guy to stab someone like that.”

“No, he had a weapon.” When I said that, the policeman took something long out of the arms of the big man with one hand holding a cell phone that was talking to me.

“Ah, yeah, the weapon.”

But the scene was very strange. It was because the policeman was holding the middle part of the silver-colored object. In my distant eyes, it seemed that he was holding the blade in his hands.

‘Wouldn’t he get blood on his hands?’

I opened my eyes to get a better look at the hands of the policeman. His voice came over the phone.

“What you saw wasn’t a weapon. It was a tripod.”

“Tripod”? Then, when I asked in surprise, the long weapon in the hands of the policeman split into three parts. I was flattened at the moment.

“Yes. This guy didn’t carry a weapon, but he was just carrying a compact camera and a tripod. I think he was going to take a picture of his favorite celebrity.”

‘What? That wasn’t a weapon?’

While I was standing there blankly, the policeman thanked me. “Thank you for reporting it anyway. He wasn’t a felon as you thought, but he was a stalker with a criminal record.”

“Ah, yes.”

Having said so far, the police officer cut off the phone. I put my cell phone in my pocket and approached them. The big man was still at loggerheads with the police.

“What’s wrong with taking pictures of someone I like?”

“Because she doesn’t like you.”

I looked around for a moment, as if I had nothing to do with the scene, like many passers-by around me. I could see a simple tripod in the hands of the policeman who had just spoken to me on the phone. A pink compact camera was also in the hands of the policeman who had followed the stalker.

“I looked inside the camera. There are a lot of photos of Oh Hyun-joo that you took secretly. Let’s go to the police station and say it.”

Judging from the circumstances, this man seemed to be Oh Hyun-joo’s stalker.

‘But then, what about Oh Hyun-joo, who was stabbed in the article? What happened?’

It was a time when I had such a question. Suddenly, the eyes of the big man and the two policemen turned to me.

‘Hmm?’

I was standing by like a bystander who had nothing to do with the incident, but how did they know that I had reported it? Then, the policeman opened his mouth and blurted out, “Wow.”

Now it seemed the same for the other person. “Wow.”

I last saw the big man’s face. He was not wearing a mask, but he was smiling with a very innocent look. “Hehe!”

They were like people whose time had stopped. I felt a strong sense of deja vu.

‘I’ve felt this before.’

I soon realized these people weren’t looking at me, but they had seen Oh Hyun-joo, who left the hospital right behind me, coming. I unconsciously tried to turn around to join them.

But then, there was something in my eyes. Behind the big man who was smiling innocently, a skinny man of the same height with long hair was running. When I saw him, I looked down a little at him. The long-haired man was clearly holding a gleaming weapon in his hands.

I shouted loudly. “That man!”

However, the two police officers were slow to react, probably because of Oh’s magic. The two looked back, but in the meantime, the long-haired man went past the two policemen and ran over to me, towards Oh Hyun-joo behind me. For a moment, my mind went off like a burst.

One thought, ‘I’m the only one who can stop it’ and my dad’s voice, ‘Don’t ever confront a man with a weapon’ crossed.

‘What do I do?’ I was stuck in the spot.

But at that time, there was someone who responded before me and before the police. “No!” It was the first big stalker to be arrested. When he saw the long-haired man that passed him by, he rushed at him in a superhuman move, grabbed his shirt and hung on.

The long-haired man, interrupted while running toward Oh Hyun-joo, shouted nervously and stabbed with his weapon. “You pig!”

The weapon thrust itself into the side of the big man. He was stabbed so deeply that I couldn’t see the silver glare.

“Yaaah!” At that moment, someone’s screams rang out, and the surrounding area became a mess in a flash. But then, as soon as the shiny blade disappeared into the body of the big man, my dad’s voice, ‘Don’t ever confront a man with a weapon’ went away and my tensed body was free.

The control system disappeared, and I jumped at the long-haired man like a ghost. While he pulled the weapon from the waist of the big man, I grabbed his shirt, lifted one leg, and flung him down on the ground with the rebound.

Bang!

The impact reverberated through the ground.