BFRS 3

The man on the work table looked a little thinner than before. It might have been because I had drained all his blood. Well, I had also taken out a few organs, so his actual weight would have lightened a bit. Then the rest isn’t really necessary. As I picked up the electric chainsaw, I suddenly remembered the broker asking me last time if any brains had come in. He had said that although they aren’t transplanted, sometimes they’re needed in laboratories.

He had said that due to the nature of the product, there’s a limit to acquiring them through donation, so they sometimes look through illegal channels… Holding the saw, I stared at the man’s head for a moment. I’ve tried opening the skull and taking out just the brain before, but if he says he doesn’t need it, it’ll become a hassle again.

“…Just in case.”

Still, the brain tended to fetch a pretty high price. It was bothersome, but considering the market price, it wasn’t something I couldn’t do. I put down the saw and picked up the well-sharpened filleting knife again.

The brain, corneas, two kidneys, liver, pancreas. I also saw he had gold teeth earlier, so I pulled out two. Plus, the amount of blood was considerable. What blood type was it? I hoped it was a rare blood type if possible. Then they’d pay double the usual price.

In many ways, it was a prime body. Out of gratitude, I patted the man’s shoulder, who was splayed out on the work table.

“You did a lot of good deeds at the end, so you will go to heaven.”

I didn’t know what kind of life he had lived, but at least he had a heartwarming end, so wouldn’t he be given a chance for reconsideration? I could see the body, which had long since had its corneas taken and been rummaged through to remove the organs. In the process, one eye was also a gaping hole because I had handed an eyeball to Chairman Jang. It was already a wreck, so taking a knife to the head one more time probably wouldn’t cause any problems. In any case, the clean-up was my job.

I carefully held the knife and tapped here and there around the crown of his head and forehead. It had been a while since I’d taken out a brain, so I was a bit confused. Well, should I just cut first and think later?

After safely removing the brain, I transferred it to a sterilized box and put it in the refrigerator. The refrigerator’s temperature is set to maintain the freshness of the organs. It’s professional equipment used in hospitals, which Chairman Jang had procured for me separately.

I had never left this place. Unlike Chairman Jang, who came all the way down from Seoul every time, I stayed and guarded this small house in the mountain valley. When my father was around, we lived here together, but now it was just me. Even when things needed to be moved, people came down from Seoul, or a separate deliveryman would come and load the goods.

“Hmm.”

Now that I’ve taken out the whole brain, all that’s left is to just cut up the rest. Organ extraction required a lot of care because the organs couldn’t be damaged, but disposing of a corpse wasn’t that difficult. To borrow Chairman Jang’s words, it was nothing more than a form of manual labor. Because I had to slice and finely chop this huge thing.

Something that was hard to believe had been human just a little while ago was lying before my eyes. What kind of reaction would someone have if they saw this butchered mess? What did I care about that? As long as I did my job properly, that was enough. I picked up the electric chainsaw and turned on the power. When there were a lot of jobs, I got tired quickly, so it was better to first sever all the joints with the saw and then dismember the body.

Whirrrrrrrr, holding the saw that made a loud noise firmly with both hands, I brought it to the neck. The saw blade slowly cut into the man’s neck. When cutting the cervical vertebrae, it would grind, grind, grind, and not cut well, so I had to put more strength into it and hold steady. And around the time I felt the blade had passed completely through the neck.

Thump!

The man’s head fell to the floor with a thud.

The rest is easy. I cut off the limbs and then chop them up again at each joint. The torso was finished by cutting it into three or four pieces depending on the physique.

“Heave-ho.”

I load the dismembered corpse onto a cart, then place a new corpse on the work table. And then I repeat the previous procedure. This corpse has nothing else to get from it, so I can just cut the heel to drain the blood and reduce the weight before dismembering it.

“Hah.”

Perhaps it was because I had been concentrating on the work for quite a while. Sweat soaked my work clothes from the inside. The heat couldn’t escape, so it was very hot and humid. I counted the number of suitcases Chairman Jang had brought with my eyes and looked at the cart. Should I call it a day? It seemed like it would be too much to clean up everything at once.

I decided to leave the remaining corpses for tomorrow and picked up the hose. The inside of the warehouse reeked of blood. If I didn’t clean up right away, the smell would seep in and I’d have a hard time. No matter how troublesome it was, the final cleanup was something I couldn’t put off.

I sprayed water to wash all the pooled blood down the drain, then scrubbed the floor and the work table hard with bleach and hydrogen peroxide solution. I also disassembled the knives and saw blades and put them into water mixed with detergent. In one corner, an air purifier and a dehumidifier were running hard. I had also bought several high-performance deodorizers and placed them around. Even so, the smell of blood didn’t completely disappear.

Even I, who had become desensitized, would feel that fishy smell every time I entered the warehouse. Still, I couldn’t just not clean at all. I finished the cleanup by gathering the empty bags with the empty bags, and the bags that still contained corpses with those, and organizing them.

I came out pulling the cart. There were several warehouses on the property, and the back door of every warehouse was connected to the incinerator. The incinerator was hidden so far inside that it was hard to find with the naked eye. Even Chairman Jang had said he never knew there was an incinerator in a place like this.

An incinerator was essential for the job. To leave no trace of the corpse, burning it was inevitable.

I dumped the transported corpse into the incinerator and lit the fire. I could feel the flames shoot up with just the press of a button. It would take time for it to be completely incinerated. In the meantime, I…

“…I’m hungry.”

I should get something to eat.

I came out of the warehouse and took off my work clothes, and only then could I breathe.

“Haaah…”

As soon as I came out, I took off the t-shirt I was wearing. I had sweated so much that it was stuck to my body and wouldn’t even come off easily.

When I opened the refrigerator to get out some side dishes, I saw the ribeye that Chairman Jang had brought. The refrigerator was large, even considering I was a one-person household. This, too, was a gift from Chairman Jang. After the refrigerator, which was well over 30 years old, broke down, he saw me holding out without buying a new one and bought it for me on his own accord. I told him it was too big for one person to use, but he insisted that bigger was always better than smaller and even had it installed.

Thanks to that, the refrigerator had never once been full. The food I ate was all pretty much the same. In the empty refrigerator compartment, only the meat Chairman Jang had bought was sitting there by itself. There was so much of it that it made the side dish containers look shabby.

I left the meat he had bought and took out my usual side dishes. The things I ate were always the same. A few seasoned vegetable dishes, dried radish strips, soy-braised black beans, kimchi. Sometimes I would add pan-fried tofu or soy-sauce-braised eggs. When the weather got cold, I would make soybean sprout soup or dried pollock and radish soup with dried pollock I bought from the market.

Every time Chairman Jang saw my side dishes, he would nag me, saying they never changed. What could I do? This was just my taste. After finishing my meal, I turned on the TV for a bit, and a familiar drama came on. The same drama was on TV all day long. It was so long that even if it aired 24 hours a day without a break, it wouldn’t finish. You had to watch for days on end to see the end.

“Why can’t you believe that I’m your man…”

I had seen the same drama so many times I was sick of it, so I had memorized most of the lines. I had memorized the whole plot too. The part playing now was almost the latter half. The two main characters had gotten together against the opposition of those around them, but of all things, the female lead gets amnesia a week before the wedding, making it difficult for them to get married.

Who are you? Where am I? That was the first thing the female lead, who had lost her memory in a car accident, said after regaining consciousness. Since then, the male lead tried his best to prove that he was her fiancé, but the woman couldn’t believe his words and made him suffer.

I stared blankly at the drama, but it wasn’t interesting, so I turned it off again. Just then, the color in the corner of the screen flickered. This would happen sometimes if I left it on for too long. The village chief would click his tongue, asking if I still used a TV like this. He even brought me a paper full of pictures of TVs, telling me to get a new one, but I didn’t really feel like buying a new one. It worked fine, so I didn’t feel the need to replace it.

“…Ah.”

Through the window behind the TV, I could see the sun setting. The weather was now nice enough to be called summer, but since it was a mountain village, the sun tended to set early. I need to set the greenhouse temperature. I didn’t care about the flowers growing in the garden, but the ones I grew in the greenhouse were for sale, so I had to pay careful attention to the temperature and humidity.

I don’t want to move…

I had greeted guests and had a long work session for the first time in a while, so I really felt lazy about moving. Still, I had to go. In the beginning, I had complacently thought that one day would be fine, but then the tulips that had sprouted well had wilted. I managed to make them bloom, but a considerable number of seedlings had died. It was an experience I didn’t want to repeat, so since then, I’ve been excessively careful.

Still, I’m feeling lazy today, so maybe I’ll move a little slowly. The sun hasn’t completely set yet, and anyway, there’s no one to nag me for procrastinating a bit.

I sat at the dining table, dawdling, and then got up much later to clear the empty dishes. I now noticed a box next to the refrigerator that I hadn’t seen before. On its two largest sides were drawings of various fruits and bottles containing red and yellow liquid. This, too, was something Chairman Jang had brought. After finishing the dishes, I tore open the box and turned it upside down. Instead of the bottled drinks that were supposed to come out, what poured out were bundles of cash. Wads of 50,000 won bills wrapped in white bands tumbled out.

“One, two, three, four…”

The amount was a little less than the body count, but if I included the discount I had agreed to at the end, the calculation was spot on.

“Perfect.”

Chairman Jang always told me my calculations were precise, but he was better. We had done business for so long that Chairman Jang knew like a ghost how much I would discount and add. But I feel like something is missing.

“Ah.”

As I carefully went over the calculation process, I remembered that I had decided to add the cost of the eyeball extraction separately at the end. He must have forgotten about that. Or Chairman Jang might have pretended not to know and slyly left it out. Sometimes he made mistakes on purpose. It felt like he was testing me to see if I would notice.

I’ll have to call and tell him tomorrow, I thought, as I put the bundles of cash back into the drink box. I carried the box to the attic. In the corner of the shabby attic was an unfittingly large safe. This safe contained my entire fortune. When I entered the eight-digit password, the safe opened automatically.

On one side of the safe, gold bars were stacked, and on the other, bundles of cash were piled high. When I had too much cash and it was hard to store, I would exchange it for gold bars for storage.

I didn’t have a separate bank account. Business was always in cash. It was my ironclad rule to always receive the work fee as a down payment. Even if they brought a corpse to be processed, if they didn’t bring the money, I sent them back. The words “I’ll pay you later” didn’t work.

Usually, the ones who said they’d send the money later were new clients I hadn’t been dealing with for long. When I told those who brought reeking corpses to come back with the money, some of them drew knives. They said I was inflexible. I couldn’t understand those who drew knives in front of me. Especially people who stabbed indiscriminately to kill a person.

My profession was to dismember and dispose of corpses. I was a little different from those who butchered a human body without any skill. Those who had drawn their knives solely to pay later generally bowed politely to me and left. Usually, it was after I had severed their tendons. Sometimes, they left in a hurry. It was probably better to hurry if they wanted to reattach a cleanly severed finger.

Those who left like that would later come back with bundles of money. When we met again, they were generally polite.

After putting the rest of the money in the safe, I came out of the attic, lazed around a bit more, and then headed to the greenhouse. Strangely, when I went into the greenhouse, I felt particularly suffocated. My main income came from here, so it was right for me to pay more attention to it, but the greenhouse was also the place I was most reluctant to go.

After putting it off and putting it off, I finally adjusted the humidity and temperature and then returned to the house. Since I had been to the greenhouse, my daily routine was finished. When President Jang heard my bedtime and wake-up time, he teased me, saying I lived like a kindergartener, but a person living alone in the mountains has nothing else to enjoy at night. Rather than that, it was better to go to bed early and start the day early in the morning.

I lay in bed and turned off the light, and pitch-black darkness came. It was strangely dark, as if I had covered everything with a black cloth, and not even a little bit of light seeped in. There was no other furniture in the room besides the bed, so even if I got used to this darkness, there was nothing for my eyes to catch on. Knowing that, I still blinked my eyes for no reason.

As was to be expected, I couldn’t see anything. I couldn’t hear anything either. I swallowed my dry saliva once for no reason. A loud gulping sound was heard from my throat. That sound was proof that I existed. I blinked slowly several times and then closed my eyes again.

Tomorrow, I had to move diligently from the morning. There were still several corpses I hadn’t even taken out of the suitcases. It would take more time than I had to drain the blood, prepare them, and incinerate them all. Ah, I also had to collect the bone ash from the one I burned earlier. Plus, I couldn’t neglect tending to the flowers just because I was handling those. On top of that, the broker from Seoul was scheduled to come.

I’ll be busy in many ways. I should probably postpone any new requests for a while. The job Chairman Jang had given me was just that big.

After making the big decision, I closed my eyes with a peaceful heart. Today was another peaceful, ordinary day.