"My lungs are thick with the smoke of your absence."
― Raymond Carver, Where Water Comes Together with Other Water: Poems
--
Hyunwoo walked along the neighborhood, hands in his pockets. A month had passed but he was finally back in quadrant four, which meant he'd probably get to say hi to his tiny friends today.
Only when he paused outside the fence of the Walour Motel, there was just one kid in the lot.
"Hey," Hyunwoo greeted, a little thrown off by the absence of the trio's other members.
Kihyun, who was sitting on the far curb and poking at the cracking blacktop with a stick, looked up, his frown never changing.
"Where are Hyungwon and Minhyuk?" Hyunwoo asked, unsure if Kihyun was angry or tired or hungry or just his normal self. He'd be happy to leave, if that was what Kihyun wanted, but the boy seemed sort of sad.
Kihyun just shrugged in answer to his question. "I dunno. Gone," he muttered, poking again with the stick. It made a light scraping sound as he dragged it over the rough surface, and it cut off abruptly when he looked back up at Hyunwoo.
"Gone where?"
"I dunno," he said again, dropping the stick. It clattered against the ground before stilling, and then his hands were empty. They fiddled anxiously with his pockets. "I haven't seen them in a while."
Hyunwoo opened his mouth before hesitating. He could just give Kihyun some space, but everything about today felt wrong. Maybe he'd bother Kihyun for a while longer. "How long?"
Kihyun's shoulders hunched up, fell back down. His head tipped forward, unruly hair hiding his eyes. "Two weeks, maybe."
Hyunwoo's pulse took off, but he tried to reason with himself. Maybe, in this sort of neighborhood, that sort of thing happened. Perhaps people moved around or disappeared for a while. But it wasn't normal to him. "Does that happen a lot?"
Kihyun looked back up, and his eyes were sort of watery, like he'd gotten dust in them, or maybe like he was on the verge of crying. "No," he said, his voice rough now, scraping against his throat like the stick against the blacktop. "It doesn't."
Hyunwoo opened his mouth to ask more questions when he heard one of the residents shouting down from a balcony. "Hey! Kihyun! Who're you talking to?" The voice, rough in a way that belied a lifetime of smoking, belonged to a middle-aged woman with wrinkles beyond her years and frizzy hair that hung around her pinched face like an electron cloud.
"Nobody, Ma," Kihyun yelled back up, kicking his foot against the ground.
"You's talking to someb'y," she said, lifting a cigarette up to her lips with shaky hands before speaking again. "Who's you talking to?"
"I told you, nobody," Kihyun repeated. "Just myself."
"Fine," she said, tapping the cigarette against the balcony railing. A few ashes fell off the end and were caught up by the breeze. "Betta not be lyin' to me."
"I wouldn't lie to you, Ma," Kihyun said again, and after a second, the woman disappeared inside the apartment and the balcony door shut behind her.
Hyunwoo, who had tucked himself behind a part of the fence that was draped over with ivy and weeds, peeked out, but Kihyun motioned for him to go away. "Later," he mouthed.
Hyunwoo nodded, not wanting to get Kihyun in trouble, but his mind was preoccupied as he continued on with his patrol. He'd put in a call to the station, see if Jooheon or any of the others on patrol had seen anything.
He hoped Kihyun could tell him more this afternoon.
--
"Nobody noticed anything?" Hyunwoo repeated, shocked by Jooheon's answer. He was sitting in his squad car, having immediately called his partner up once he'd finished his patrol, which had been much faster than normal in an effort to figure out what had happened.
"No, I just checked with the other three guys who patrol that sector when you're not there, and they didn't notice anything unusual. They don't remember if the kids were in the lot or not. I'm sorry, Hyunwoo."
"Can't be helped," Hyunwoo said after a moment, frustrated nonetheless that two young boys had been missing for two weeks and nobody else had noticed. "Look, Jooheon, I'm worried."
"And you're sure this isn't just a misunderstanding? Maybe they relocated or-"
"It's not," Hyunwoo said. He winced at hearing how terse he sounded, but he had no patience at the moment. Something was wrong; couldn't anybody else see that?
"Okay," Jooheon agreed softly. "I'm sorry, Hyunwoo, but you know I have to ask."
"I know, I get it," Hyunwoo said, exhaling through his teeth. "I'm just- I'm worried, that's all. Kihyun - that's the other boy who was there today – he sounded worried too. I think something happened, Jooheon. I think the boys are legitimately missing."
Jooheon's line was silent for a moment as he pondered their next step. "Have you talked to the boys' parents?" he finally asked.
"No, not yet," Hyunwoo said, followed by another exhale. He felt stupid. Of course he should have just asked the parents and cleared this whole thing up before stirring up a panic about what was more than likely nothing particularly unusual.
"Well, I'd have a word with them, but don't expect too much," Jooheon advised after a moment.
"What do you mean?"
"Not everyone in that district is a gold star parent," Jooheon said dryly. "Some of those kids have probably been fending for themselves since they were born. And I doubt they'll even talk with you. They're not big on cops."
Hyunwoo just nodded since he didn't really know how else to take that information, but then he realized that he was on a call so of course Jooheon couldn't see him. "If I talk to their parents and they're really missing, then what do we do? I mean, do you know offhand if stuff like this has happened around here before?"
Jooheon was quiet on the other end of the line. "There have been...similar cases, in that quadrant specifically. Sometimes it's drugs. They need new runners or kids get dragged in too deep."
"And the other times?"
There was a soft shuffling that Hyunwoo insinuated was the shaking of a head. "A few girls have gone missing before, but this doesn't really match those cases. Different target demographic."
"All right," Hyunwoo said, trusting that Jooheon would give him any information that would be helpful. He worried at his lip; he hoped the kids hadn't gotten caught up in any drug operations. They didn't seem like the type to do so, but in the end, how well did he really know them? He saw them, at most, half a dozen times a month. He didn't know anything about them except their first names. Maybe it was wrong of him to get so invested, but he couldn't help it. "I'll double back, talk to the parents, Kihyun too if he's out. I'll fill you in then."
"Got it. Keep in touch," Jooheon said, and then the call went dead.
Hyunwoo grimaced. Even if it made him out to be the fool, he hoped that it was all just a simple misunderstanding. That would at least mean that the boys were safe.
He left his car earlier than normal for his afternoon rounds and headed straight to the Walour Motel.
--
Kihyun wasn't yet out in the lot, which made sense since Hyunwoo was earlier than usual. He headed straight through the main entrance and to the service desk, where he flashed his badge and explained that he needed to speak with Hyungwon's and Minhyuk's parents.
"Is there a problem, Officer?" the employee asked with narrowed eyes.
Hyunwoo assumed that if he were to say there was, then he'd be kindly shepherded out of the motel with no shortage of excuses as to why they were unavailable. So he tried to be as candid as possible. "Nobody's in trouble. I'm just worried about the boys' safety, and so I have to ask them a few questions."
The employee still looked hesitant, so Hyunwoo continued on.
"Look, you don't even have to show me to their apartments. If you can just ask them to meet me here in the lobby, that would be fine. I just need to have a quick chat with them and verify that everybody's okay." He didn't want to say that they were missing because if the employee knew where the boys were and that they were involved in something illegal, she'd likely clam up even further.
"Fine," she answered after a long moment. "I'll call and ask them if they'd like to speak with you." She hesitated, hand on the phone. "Just so I'm clear, is this a mandatory conversation? Are they going to be arrested if they don't talk with you?"
Hyunwoo shook his head, tucking his hands in his pockets to seem less threatening. Even though he had a young face, the badge was intimidating to some people, especially those who had had poor previous experiences with law enforcement. "They don't have to talk with me if they don't want to, but I promise I'm only here because I'm worried about the kids. I would appreciate if they could spare a few minutes. I'm sure nothing's wrong, but I'd just like to confirm that with them in person. Otherwise, a lot more people might show up and start asking questions." He hadn't wanted to resort to that subtle threat at the end, but for people who valued their privacy and weren't on particularly friendly terms with the police, he figured that they'd welcome the chance to keep it that way.
"All right," she answered before pointing him toward the chairs in the lobby and picking up the phone.
The chairs were old and red and looked like they'd been plucked from a garage sale, but upon sitting down in one, he found them to be surprisingly comfortable and sturdy. He only had to wait a few minutes before a reedy woman and a stocky man stepped out of the dingy elevator.
Hyunwoo immediately got to his feet, inclining his head respectfully. "Thank you for your time today. Are either of you Hyungwon's or Minhyuk's parents?"
"Minhyuk is our son," the woman said before casting a quick glance over at her partner. He stood several feet behind her, his stony face giving Hyunwoo the impression that he wasn't here to talk, just to make sure that too much talking didn't happen. "I don't know about Hyungwon's mom. Maybe she was...busy."
She didn't want to talk to him, Hyunwoo guessed. Which was fine, at least he'd gotten someone to talk to. "Mrs. ...I'm sorry, I don't know your last name. How should I address you?"
She seemed startled to have been asked the question, and she sent another quick look over at her husband as though seeking permission before she pulled nervously on a strand of hair. "Lee. You can call me Mrs. Lee. That's fine."
Hyunwoo risked a small smile. He'd read somewhere that some animals viewed baring teeth as aggressive, so he tried not to show too much. "Mr. and Mrs. Lee, thanks for taking the time to talk with me today. I'm worried about Minhyuk."
"Minhyukkie?" she asked, pulling on the same tuft of hair again. One of the strands broke off, and she stared at it before pulling it off her finger and stretching it between her hands, snapping at the ends to pull it taut. "What about him?"
"Ma'am, have you seen him lately? I'm sorry if this seems invasive to ask," Hyunwoo hurried on, noticing that the man in the corner seemed to be growing less content with each passing second. "I just haven't seen him around, and I usually see him when I pass through this area."
"He wasn't there?" she asked, pulling at the hair again. It snapped in the middle, and the halves fell onto the carpet below. She resumed pulling at the tuft. "He's usually out playing with the other kids, I don't know."
"When was the last time you saw him?" Hyunwoo pressed.
She bit at her inside cheek, eyes skittering across the lobby wall and to her husband before continuing their anxious wandering. "I don't...I don't know. A bit. You know how kids are."
Hyunwoo knew how kids were, and he knew that not knowing when you'd seen your own kid last wasn't a good sign. "Does he disappear like this a lot?"
"I don't know," she said again, looking behind her to her husband, seemingly wanting him to speak up so she didn't have to decide what to say.
"Boys will be boys," he said, changing neither the cold look in his eyes nor the crossing of his arms.
Clearly he didn't want to speak to Hyunwoo, but was it because something illegal was going on? Or did they genuinely not know where Minhyuk was?
Would they have even thought to ask if he hadn't shown up?
"All right," he said after a minute, inferring from the attitude of the room that their pleasant chat was over. "I just wanted to let you know that I'm trying to find Minhyuk and make sure that he's safe. The same goes for Hyungwon, so if either of you or Hyungwon's mom hear or think of anything that might be helpful, please contact me," he said before pulling out a business card with his cell phone number and handing it to the woman.
She took it with a shaky hand, immediately looking over at her husband to see if she was allowed to accept it, but he didn't give any inclination.
She bobbed a quick nod at Hyunwoo, slipping the card into hidden recess in her baggy shirt, and then the two were back on the elevator, disappearing out of Hyunwoo's sight.
He sighed and left the building with a nod of thanks to the service desk employee who looked altogether too pleased to see him go.
Feeling a bit let down after not finding out anything conclusive, he swung around to the back and was relieved to see Kihyun out in the lot. He was about to call out when Kihyun threw a finger to his lips, shushing Hyunwoo, and checked over his shoulder before smoothly scaling the fence and hopping over onto Hyunwoo's side.
"I can't be seen talking to you," Kihyun said, his tone urgent and eyes serious. "They won't like it."
"Who, your mom?"
"My mom, and everyone else. We don't talk to cops."
That had been the first thing Kihyun had said to him, Hyunwoo recalled. And it was no surprise to him that the community would frown upon it. But Kihyun was the best source of information he had right now.
"I understand. I don't want to jeopardize your safety, Kihyun," Hyunwoo said, wanting to make it clear to Kihyun that he had a choice in this matter.
"There isn't any other option," Kihyun said, clenching his hands and unclenching them. "You're a cop. If they're really missing, you can find them, can't you?"
Hyunwoo hesitated. He was afraid of making Kihyun a promise that he wouldn't be able to keep, but those were certainly his intentions. "Kihyun, I want you to know that I'm taking this issue very seriously. I'm going to do my best to find them. But first, I need to know..." He hesitated, not wanting to break the fragile trust they'd built up. "Kihyun, are Hyungwon and Minhyuk involved in anything that's illegal? Something that might explain where they've gone?"
"No," Kihyun answered immediately. He looked frustrated to have been asked, but he didn't seem to be lying. "I know you probably think they're running heroin for someone or whatever, but they're not. Whatever happened to them isn't their fault."
"All right," Hyunwoo said, nodding. He was content with Kihyun's answer, and maybe he just wanted to believe it because that's what he'd been hoping to hear, but it was good enough for now. "I know it's hard to answer these questions, so thank you, Kihyun."
The boy just nodded. "So are you going to look for them now?" He looked up at Hyunwoo with a combination of desperation and hope in his eyes, and Hyunwoo felt nearly sick with the weight of expectation.
"I will," Hyunwoo promised. Maybe he didn't say it was a promise, but he meant it. Even if nobody else looked into the boys' disappearance, he was going to, and he would do his best to bring them home. "Thanks for telling me, Kihyun."
Kihyun just gave a weak nod. "I didn't want to," he said quietly. "We don't talk to cops." He repeated the words as though they were a mantra he'd been told since birth, and that was probably true for the most part. "But if I didn't tell you," he continued, looking up with a helpless expression on his face, "nobody would've. And that means nobody would be out there looking for them."
Hyunwoo took in the sadness in his eyes, and something darker, something that alluded to Kihyun's pain at having betrayed what he believed to be a rule of his own community. "I'm going to find them," Hyunwoo said, making the promise he'd been hesitant to do before. Not just for the boys' sake, but for Kihyun's too, to thank him for being the only one brave enough to speak up.
"Go back inside," Hyunwoo instructed, already turning back to his squad car. He had more urgent things to do than finish a patrol. "Don't tell anybody you talked with me. If you can, meet me out here tomorrow morning."
Kihyun nodded and turned, lodging his foot in the diamond formed by four wires to boost himself up over the fence, whereupon he swung a leg over and jumped down. Hyunwoo felt him watching him for a few moments longer before his gaze disappeared.
--
"They're missing."
"You heard from the parents?" Jooheon asked.
"No. Well, yes, but nothing definitive. They can't say the last time they saw him, and they can't tell me if this is normal behavior."
"So how can you be certain?"
Hyunwoo grew quiet, picturing Kihyun's face in his mind once more. He'd mentally stored the image to drive him onward because he wasn't going to let Kihyun down. "I just know. I've got a gut feeling about this, Jooheon." Which was weird, since before transferring to this station, he'd never really had a gut feeling about anything. "Something's wrong. We need to find those boys."
"All right." There was no hesitation on Jooheon's end, no doubt, and Hyunwoo appreciated the confidence Jooheon had in him and his hunch. "Where should we start?"
"I'm not sure," Hyunwoo admitted. "Kihyun was adamant that neither of the two boys was involved in any drug transactions."
"And you believe him?" Not an accusatory question, just a question.
"I do."
"All right," Jooheon said again, moving forward. "So let's assume for now that it's not drugs. Let's make the assumption that they were either taken by force or lured away from the motel. What does someone have to gain by taking two kids, if not for the drug trade?"
"There's dozens of reasons," Hyunwoo said, and his stomach coiled up as he began listing each horrible thought, one after another. "They could be sold to someone else. Some places run stings where they abduct kids and sell them off as 'kids for adoption' to some other unwitting family. Then there's the prospect of forced labor. Trafficking of various natures. Dark organizations that use kids for medical purposes – for organ transplants, blood transfusions, bone marrow, stem cells..."
"So there's a lot of fish in the sea," Jooheon summed up. "It's hard to tell if there are similar cases because not a lot of these sorts of things get reported in that neighborhood. So it seems like our next step is trying to figure out if anyone unusual was making contact with them prior to their disappearance."
"I can talk to Kihyun tomorrow," Hyunwoo said, still feeling sick thinking about all the things that could have happened. "But until then, I don't know what else to run on. Maybe I'll come back to the station and start combing through the databases, see if I run into anything similar or anything that stands out."
"That's as good of a place as any for the time being," Jooheon said. "I'll ask around too and see if anyone's heard of anything. And I'll check back in with the guys patrolling the last two weeks and see why the hell they didn't notice anything."
Hyunwoo let out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding. "Thanks, Jooheon." He was still sort of upset at them too, even if he didn't have any real reason to be. There were lots of reasons why they wouldn't have noticed. If they drove around instead of walked, then they'd probably never even talked to the boys. If all they'd been looking for was illegal activity, then they wouldn't have even stopped.
But still. Part of Hyunwoo was wondering, if he'd been patrolling two weeks ago instead of someone else, if this all would've happened.
--
His research turned up nothing concrete, so his next move was to return to the Walour Motel the next morning to have another chat with Kihyun.
Kihyun was already out in the lot when he walked by, and he came by the fence, keeping his back to the apartment balconies so no one would see that he was talking. "Did you find out anything?"
"Not yet," Hyunwoo said, hating the way Kihyun's shoulders sagged in disappointment. "I came to ask you some more questions."
"I don't know where they went," Kihyun said, clearly frustrated that Hyunwoo seemed to be repeating the same questions from before.
"I know, I believe you," Hyunwoo reassured, making sure to keep his voice down so no one came outside. "But I think you might know things that maybe you don't even realize are important. Like did you notice anyone unusual hanging around in the last few weeks? Anyone you didn't recognize?"
Kihyun shook his head. "No strangers except you."
It was clearly an attempt at humor, so Hyunwoo gave a small smile, but neither of them felt very comical at the moment. "All right, so no outsiders. But was anyone hanging around Hyungwon and Minhyuk? Try to think back."
Kihyun's eyes edged upward toward the sky while he ran back through his memory. "Nobody I can remember." He frowned after a moment as though he'd recalled something unpleasant, but he shook his head.
"What is it?" Hyunwoo asked.
"Just a guy," Kihyun said. "He's not a stranger, he's from around here."
"And he was hanging around Hyungwon and Minhyuk?"
Kihyun shrugged. "It's not like he's new. He shows up now and then. He's a few years older than use – maybe nineteenish? – and sometimes he brings snacks or cans of pop and stuff."
Hyunwoo's newfound gut instincts were very interested in this information. "How long have you known this guy?"
Kihyun shrugged again. "I don't know. He's just sort of always been around, him and some of the older guys."
"But you don't like him?" Hyunwoo asked, trying to read Kihyun's body language.
Kihyun gave yet another evasive shrug. "He's fine."
"But?"
Kihyun looked at Hyunwoo, eyes searching Hyunwoo's for something. Hyunwoo couldn't tell if Kihyun found what he was looking for. "I don't know. I just never really liked him. I don't trust people who give stuff away for free. Nothing's free."
Hyunwoo nodded slowly. It made sense to him why someone like Kihyun had so thoroughly distrusted him in the beginning when he'd brought Hyungwon cream for his eczema or when he'd bought them snacks. "So you don't trust him. Did Hyungwon and Minhyuk?"
Kihyun shrugged and looked down at the blacktop, dragging the toe of his sneaker along one particularly long and linear crack. "I guess. Sometimes you're too hungry to think about stuff like that." He got quiet after a moment. "I told them not to meet with him and those guys unless I was there, but maybe they did. Maybe they got into something."
"You did your best," Hyunwoo assured him, not wanting Kihyun to feel guilty, but the boy looked up with a frown nonetheless.
"Really?" he asked. "Did I? They're missing, aren't they? Clearly I didn't do my best. Or if I did, then my best is pretty shitty."
"Kihyun-"
"I have to go in," Kihyun said, turning abruptly before looking over his shoulder at Hyunwoo. "I don't know his full name, but everyone just calls him Hendy."
--
published 01/25/21 (mm/dd/yy)
4116 words