BFRS 2

“There won’t be anything left to use.”

“Sigh.”

The man was already dead. The moment Chairman Jang had swung the knife, the man had flapped like a mackerel, but that too was only for a moment. As if he wouldn’t make a mistake this time, Chairman Jang precisely stabbed the man’s left chest, then stabbed his side several times. The man’s swollen hands trembled finely before stopping. Even after that, Chairman Jang kept stabbing the man who had already become a corpse.

“Who was the bastard who handled this pig?”

At my words, Chairman Jang got up, strode over, flung the door wide open, and shouted. It was me, sir. Was it you? Yes, sir. Is there a problem… Hey, you son of a bitch.

Thwack.

“Ugh!”

“Can’t you do your job properly? Do I have to personally check every single time to see if you’ve finished them off properly?”

“I-I’m sorry, sir!”

After that, the sound of a lively beating followed. It happened from time to time. Cases where they were delivered alive. That was also the reason I didn’t send the delivery guys away immediately after they finished.

I dispose of the corpses, but I do not kill people myself.

It was a principle of not taking life that had been passed down from my father. I heard that in the past, there were cases where people would bring someone alive and ask for them to be killed. My father refused every time without a single exception. When that happened, the person in charge of the delivery would either kill the living person on the spot, or have no choice but to take them back and bring them again.

In that respect, Chairman Jang was a good person to do business with. He never once deviated from the rules I set forth. The sound of the beating didn’t stop. It seemed the man, who had quit doing field work a long time ago, was displeased at having to hold a knife for such a trivial matter.

Listening to the sound of Chairman Jang beating his underling, I picked up a keenly sharpened scalpel. It was a fresh corpse that had just died. I had no idea how much I could get from it. From the corneas to the organs in the belly and the blood, this was all money.

“Ah.”

I had been wondering why the sound was so loud, but the door wasn’t properly closed. I hated the idea of contamination in that short time. If the product value dropped, the money I could receive also decreased. If the condition was bad, I had to sell them off to the Korean-Chinese kids, but they tended to buy things cheap and sell them expensive, so I didn’t prefer them either. Once they got you as a sucker, they would keep trying to lowball you afterwards, so unless it was an urgent case, I tried to avoid doing business with the Korean-Chinese.

I squatted and waddled over to the doorway, reaching out my hand. The distance was so close that my hand could barely reach. Just as my hand was about to touch the handle, the door was suddenly flung wide open.

“Oops.”

Chairman Jang, who had been taking his anger out on his subordinate, grinned and stepped back inside. His shirt, which had been clean at first, was splattered with crimson blood from how many times he had stabbed the man.

“Go stand over there. And please close the door tightly.”

“Why? Ah. Mr. Kim, you’ve earned some pocket money.”

Chairman Jang, who had been asking why he shouldn’t come over, saw the scalpel in my hand and readily moved away to sit down. A freshly killed corpse was a rare thing. It’s not an easy task to kill someone and immediately lug the corpse all the way here. This place was so deep in the mountains that it took a long time just to get here from the town center.

Chairman Jang watched as I removed the corneas. As I removed the two corneas and quickly moved them, I heard his voice again.

“So, how about it, think I can get a discount this time?”

I blinked for a moment at his sly voice. Corneas, pancreas, liver, lungs, heart… no, the heart was just damaged, so that’s no good. Instead, both kidneys were usable, and on top of that, there was the blood. A body that had just become a corpse was worth a lot of money in many ways. It was to the point where I should have been the one handing money over to Chairman Jang, who was singing for a discount.

“…I’ll have to cut him open first. You stabbed him too many times earlier, Chairman.”

“Hah, you’re not falling for it.”

Still, I didn’t say that it seemed like it would be worth a lot of money. That’s just how business was. You had to sound like you were hurting, like you were dying. Chairman Jang shook his head as if he couldn’t win against me. That was true. I couldn’t be sure that Chairman Jang, holding a knife for the first time in a while, had stabbed the man while avoiding the organs. He was once a man famous for precisely ending a life while avoiding the organs, but as far as I knew, it had been quite a while since Chairman Jang had killed someone himself.

“But I’ll give you a bit of a discount.”

“Well, thanks for that.”

It was a sarcastic tone, but that was all. Originally, I was planning to handle the corpse Chairman Jang had pointed out first, but I had a change of heart. The more recently a corpse had died, the higher its value. That’s because there were many things that could be extracted. As I pushed the corpse on the work table to the side, I heard Chairman Jang click his tongue. The loud sound of the corpse hitting the floor echoed throughout the warehouse.

“Couldn’t you have set it down a little more gently?”

“He’s dead anyway, what does it matter?”

The joints of the man, who had been walking around perfectly fine until two days ago, were bent grotesquely. He had probably never been this flexible when he was alive. Well, that was none of my business. I lifted the man who had just died at the hands of Chairman Jang and placed him on the work table. He was large in build to begin with and also had a lot of flesh, so he weighed quite a bit.

“I don’t know where you get all that strength from in that body of yours, Mr. Kim.”

The things Chairman Jang would spit out like that, one by one, got on my nerves. Every time he came to see me, he was a man who would bring all sorts of groceries. Even though he knew full well that I lived alone, he would bring several pounds of raw meat. He’d say I had to eat meat to have strength. My job was to tear human skin and chop bones every day, so I wondered if he was mocking me. It was only after I heard him muttering that I was too thin while fiddling with my arm that I realized he was being sincere in his own way.

The work table was custom-ordered, so it was larger than those used in most butcher shops. The neck of the man, who had already become one of the deceased, dangled limply. His corneas were already removed and gone, and his ability to control his joints had also disappeared, so his mouth hung open.

After positioning the man’s head properly, I fumbled for his arm to find a blood vessel. Since he was large, it seemed like a decent amount of blood would come out. While drawing the blood, I cut open his abdomen and checked the condition of his organs.

“Hmm.”

“They’re okay, right?”

“…Yes.”

He was truly worthy of a man who had risen to his position with just a knife. The way he had stabbed, narrowly missing the liver, was nothing short of art. As for the small intestine… it didn’t matter if it was butchered. It wasn’t really useful for anything anyway.

“Aren’t I a VIP? I worry about your livelihood, Mr. Kim, I look after your household, I even give you pocket money.”

He was talking strangely again, so I just ignored him. He was always like that. The first time I met Chairman Jang was when I was very young. Back when he wasn’t yet a chairman. He, who held a rather high position even at a young age, used to force young me to call him uncle. He would often say creepy things, like I should give him a kiss since we hadn’t seen each other in a long time. Still, I have a memory I want to forget, of a time when I was happy with the snacks and candies he gave me and did as he said without knowing any better.

“Phew.”

“When are you going to do that one?”

As I removed and transferred the organs one by one, Chairman Jang pointed to the corpse I had dropped on the floor. I remembered that he had asked me to handle it first. It seemed there might have been some kind of deal with the client.

“Should I pull out one eyeball for you first?”

“That would be great.”

In any case, I had safely moved all the organs, and the blood pack was almost full, so it didn’t matter if I handled it later. At my offer to pull out an eyeball, Chairman Jang nodded readily. I wiped away the blood and approached the man’s corpse, which was staring at the ceiling with its joints bent strangely. His eyes bulged like a frog’s, so they looked easy to pull out. I positioned the blade, looked at it from various angles, then peeled back the eyelid and carefully pushed the blade in. The sensation of piercing living flesh was transmitted vividly.

“Can you pull those out too?”

When I took out a round, bloodshot eyeball and handed it to him, Chairman Jang gestured to the others with his chin.

“All of them?”

“Yeah.”

It wasn’t particularly difficult. It seemed he had to show them to the client as proof that the job was done. As I approached the other corpses that hadn’t yet been taken out of the bags, something suddenly occurred to me, and I looked at him.

“You’re better at it than I am, Mr. Kim. You’re a veteran.”

He’d read my mind like a ghost, which was asking why he hadn’t pulled them out himself. There was no way that man couldn’t pull out a single eyeball. I looked at the man, who was uncharacteristically acting weak and asking me to do it, for a moment before turning my head away.

“I’ll charge extra for this.”

“Ah, but I helped you earn some pocket money too.”

“That’s why I gave you a discount for one person.”

“Hah, you’re not falling for it.”

So stubborn, so stubborn. Listening to Chairman Jang’s muttering, I pulled out the remaining eyeballs one by one. I washed them clean in running water, and they looked quite round and cute. Suddenly, all the remaining corpses were one-eyed.

“I’ll finish up the rest properly and send them to you.”

“Yeah, yeah, okay. Call me if you need a truck.”

“What kind of flowers should I choose?”

“Something pretty, like you, Mr. Kim. Ah, no. White chrysanthemums would be good. Those have a lot of uses.”

I nodded at the man’s words. Chrysanthemums were something I often grew, even if not for commercial purposes.

“I’m leaving. Don’t see me out. Oh, right, I put some ribeye in the fridge, so grill it and eat it later. That’s grade A++ Korean beef. It’s something even I can’t get, but I’m giving it to you because I was thinking of you, our Mr. Kim. You know how I feel, right? You have to eat well to do strenuous work.”

“Go on.”

He was getting long-winded again. If I made the mistake of replying, it would probably take another age, so I just said my goodbyes, and only then did he slowly start to move. In the distance, I saw one man whose face was particularly swollen. He was probably the one who had made Chairman Jang pick up a knife himself by not properly checking if the person was dead or alive. Thanks to him, I was the only one who hit the jackpot, but I didn’t go over to say hello.

After sending off Chairman Jang’s group, I contacted a broker. When I told him the amount of organs and blood extracted from the man who had just died, he said he would stop by soon. He always acted annoyed whenever I called because the distance was so great, but he was someone who came without fail, saying my goods were of high quality.

I was scheduled to meet the broker tomorrow… so it would be best to finish the troublesome work before then.

Disposing of the corpses that had no product value was simple. Corpses with nothing to extract were literally nothing more than chunks of meat.

The people who brought me already dead people wanted to erase any trace of the corpses. If a person died, a body was bound to be left behind. But if the deceased person’s body disappeared, you couldn’t say they were dead.

It was not my role to send those whose lives had ended safely and comfortably on their way to the afterlife. That was a job for an undertaker. I simply did the work of completely eliminating things that had completely lost their lives and were nothing more than huge lumps.

Sometimes, if I was lucky, I could carve out all sorts of various organs like I did today, but such days were very rare.

“Heave-ho.”