“Ask them to mainly focus their search underneath boulders. Since he said that it was difficult to dig, because of a large rock.”
Of course this was a lie.
It would be strange if I was too certain about the gravesite, so I was obscuring the facts a little.
“Okay. Phew. All because of one crazy bastard, we won’t even get to celebrate our promotions properly.”
Starting from the awards ceremony in the morning, today had dragged on for far too long.
After these last words from Black, we all kept quiet.
Because if we wanted to dig with all our might when we arrived, then we needed to save our strength for now.
The rough roar of the engine rang loudly in the silence.
***
Hwangmok Village.
In the middle of the night, this peaceful country village had become so noisy that it was as if a war had broken out.
“There’s no darn road down thataways. Y’all need to be headin’ around there instead.”
“Mah god! Oi, yer bastard. That there’s my momma’s grave yer digging up!”
“Ah! I-I’m so sorry!”
“No, no, yer can’t head over thataways, neither.”
Or it might be better to say that a hurricane had hit, as a storm of elderly people dressed in their pyjamas whirled around, giving orders and supervising the police officers and soldiers as they searched.
Although it was hard to tell if this was actually helping or not.
“You’ve arrived quickly.”
The head of the Gangwon Police Investigative Division greeted us.
“We’re lucky that the mountain isn’t that big, but we can’t do anything about the fact that it’s still night, so the search is going a lot slower than it could be.”
“Since there’s not much time, we’ll also get started pitching in. We’ll give them all our thanks for helping out once the sun rises.”
We picked up our shovels and headed up the mountain.
Working in groups, the cops and soldiers were searching underneath large boulders.
Thud- Thud-
Scatter-
It was so dark that we could only see in the areas illuminated by our flashlights.
On top of that, the ground had hardened up due to the cool night air.
Ding-
“Ugh.”
And if you hit a stone by accident, your wrists were left tingling in pain.
Despite this, our surroundings were filled with the ambience of people working silently.
Dig, did, and dig again…
Just how much time passed already?
With my whole body drenched in sweat, my arms were starting to lose strength.
Thud thud-!
Thud-!
“Oi. You there, keep digging.”
“Phew. Fuck me…”
With the guidance of some search dogs, we had managed to reduce the range of our search slightly, but there was no further progress.
Curses mixed with annoyance and disappointment were leaking out of everyone’s mouths.
Night had already passed, and the dark sky was beginning to brighten.
It was now bright enough that we almost no longer needed to use flashlights.