Sharp Shooter Seoul

by Charlie Godwyne

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Book Details

  Dedication

  Sharp Shooter Seoul

  About the Author

  Sharp

  Shooter

  Seoul

  CHARLIE GODWYNE

  Arriving in Seoul for their first international mission, Taka and Kei are hoping to finally catch an illegal filmmaker with a preference for children. Unable to speak Korean, almost entirely reliant on his lover, Taka isn't enjoying being the fish out of water—but he'll do whatever is necessary to catch the scum they're hunting. And maybe get a chance to ask Kei to marry him.

  But they've only barely arrived in Seoul when everything starts to go wrong, and Taka's hopes reduce to simply getting them both home alive.

  Sharp Shooter Seoul

  Sharp Shooter 2

  By Charlie Godwyne

  Published by Less Than Three Press LLC

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission of the publisher, except for the purpose of reviews.

  Edited by Erica Roberts

  Cover designed by Natasha Snow

  This book is a work of fiction and all names, characters, places, and incidents are fictional or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people, places, or events is coincidental.

  First Edition September 2018

  Copyright © 2018 by Charlie Godwyne

  Printed in the United States of America

  Digital ISBN 9781684313488

  To My Dad

  Sharp Shooter Seoul

  One year after Osaka crime-ring bust, 2036, first international mission to Seoul, South Korea

  Taka

  Kei navigated the entire entry process from the Incheon airport to the train platform to get us to Seoul Station. The train arrived. The doors opened and I was about to rush on, like a Tokyoite, when Kei blocked me with an arm across my chest.

  "Wait," Kei rasped through the pollution mask and pointed.

  From the platform on the other side of the train, the doors opened and a veritable army of older ladies dressed in pink aprons, masks, and caps swarmed onto the train. The lady in the car right in front of us punched a button inside the door and all of the seats rose and rotated to face the other direction. Our pink grandma warrior proceeded to dust and wipe down the train car at an extremely vigorous pace, ending with mopping the goddamn floor, then rolling her cart out. The entire transition took maybe three minutes.

  The doors opened in front of us.

  "The previously-immaculate train is now even more immaculate," I said. "Can we board?"

  "It's the wrong train," Kei said.

  "Oh."

  The next train didn't have the robotic seats and the fancy ladies to straighten it up. It was no less clean, a gleaming LED-lit white everywhere except the (still clean) floors, which were gray. It was like being inside a cell phone store.

  I was sad the announcements were only in Korean and English. No crutch for me, then.

  The train took off. A few seconds in, a super hot man appeared through the windows like an apparition. It was some kind of advertisement on the inside walls of the tunnel. He smiled and waved at us, held up a cell phone and winked, then proceeded to run alongside the train, holding the phone out to us like we should definitely buy it.

  I gawked.

  Kei's cheeks bunched up and eyes shone, a sure sign a smile was happening behind the mask and filter. My beloved asthmatic. "Japan doesn't do that in the subway tunnels."

  "Is he digital?" I asked.

  "Stickers."

  My jaw dropped. "Someone put up thousands of stickers on the inside wall, like a flip book?"

  Kei nodded.

  I gazed at the hot man running alongside for the entirety of the tunnel, convinced I would buy whatever cell phone he wanted me to if he were to actually ask. Ask in Japanese, that is. I could survive with my English, but Kei was the one of us with Korean language experience, and I was a fish out of water. As the train slowed down, he stopped running and waved goodbye, then froze in his final pose, looking down at his phone, as the train came to a stop.

  Kei tapped my shoulder to snap me out of it. We stepped off the train.

  "I thought you were going to stay on that train just to watch him run with you all the way back to the airport," Kei snipped.

  I nudged Kei's shoulder. "You're the only one for me."

  I earned nothing but a shake of the head. "Got your phone turned off?"

  "It's in pieces in my bag."

  "Mine too."

  We wove our way above ground at the massive Seoul Train Station, trying to find the second-east exit that would lead us to our hotel. Kei's filter was due for a change in about an hour, so we wanted to establish our home base first before anything else. As this was our first international mission, our police chief at Tokyo headquarters had arranged for us to meet the chief of police in Seoul. The Seoul chief would be able to tell us about the district where we suspected Mikabe, a pedophilic, Japanese illegal filmmaker, to reside. Though we planned for maximum collaboration, we also weren't taking any chances, and thus had fabricated passports arranged for undercover police. Kei had already relayed to our Seoul police contact that we would need Korean cell phones for any communication that needed to take place inside the country. This was all very new and stressful, but it was a solid beginning in expanding our apprehension of Japanese nationals who used trafficked people in films. This was a huge opportunity for us.

  Kei squeezed my hand anytime we needed to make a turn amid the crowds. We were both native Japanese speakers, but Kei had also studied Korean and Chinese in college, and being half-American, could also speak English. My genius partner. Though I was glad Kei was getting to use the language skills from our tiny college in Tohoku, I was desperately searching for any Japanese language signboards, or at least unsimplified Chinese kanji characters so that I could read where we were going. There was English, of course, but that had never been my strong suit, and the Korean Hangul was as good as gibberish to me, though Kei had certainly tried teaching me on the flight from Tokyo.

  "You've got our documents?" Kei asked as we neared an exit.

  "Everything's in my bag," I said. We'd obtained all the necessary documents to be issued firearms by the Seoul police. If they didn't like our paperwork, then Kei and I would do some sightseeing on our boss's dime and head back home. There was no way I was going after Mikabe without the heaviest weapons my police badge could get me.

  "How's your filter doing?" I asked Kei with a reassuring squeeze of my hand, looking over the mask.

  Kei squeezed back. "It'll get me to the hotel room." Kei pushed open the exit doors.

  We stepped out onto the platform of the exit to find every direction blocked by riot police.

  Just as we stepped out, Kei tackled me to the ground.

  Something cracked against the ground and went boom.

  I smacked against the concrete and only afterward realized I should cover my head. Kei landed on top of me and shielded me from something. Heavy boots ran all around us and women screamed. Kei's hand pressed urgently over my nose and mouth and I realized what my partner signaled. I pulled my shirt up over my nose and mouth a moment before I smelled it: tear gas.

  I looked around Kei's arms to see riot police everywhere. They were dark shadows moving through the mist of the smoke bombs. The tear gas burned my eyes, but through my tears I saw young Koreans scrambling around in the confusion. Each of them had a white blanket draped over their shoulders and clasped in the front. One of them whipped around and I realized it was the South Korean flag. The young person stumbled and fell down for no reason.

  Then I realized
what the bomb had been, the same moment I barfed my guts out on the pavement.

  Concussion bombs. They radiated sound waves to throw protestors off their balance and allow the cops (with riot helmets on) to swoop in and zip-tie them. My stomach emptied convulsively and I felt the ground beneath me heave and pitch like we were on a ship on stormy seas. The only comfort was the heavy pressure of Kei's body weight on me while I screamed at my stomach to calm down so I could clear my airways.

  I dry heaved, breathing again. Kei's mask pressed into my shoulder, but I couldn't understand what my partner was shouting at me. Kei had trained with concussion bombs extensively before we'd received permission to go abroad. The Japanese police during the 2020 Olympic riots in Tokyo had not used them—but in China, the most polluted places also had the most riots, and the most police brutality. Kei couldn't afford to vomit inside a mask, and be left with the choice to either breathe unfiltered air or drown.

  I turned my head toward my partner and tried to figure out what Kei was telling me. Kei kicked my feet and was slapping my knees hard with one hand.

  Oh, my sluggish mind supplied. Stand up. Get up.

  With my help Kei heaved me up, but once vertical my stomach felt the need to expel what little stomach acid it had come up with in the intervening moments. Kei tugged my hand and I followed my partner's back through the smoke until we found the station doors again. Kei dragged me through the doors and collapsed on the other side. I slunk to the ground while Kei tore off the gas mask and heaved on all fours, barfing so hard the echo ricocheted off the walls. Or maybe that was my fucked up ears doing that.

  I picked up Kei's mask and held it away from the sick, hoping just being inside the station was enough that Kei wouldn't have an asthma attack too.

  Someone shouted right next to me.

  I just about jumped out of my skin. My vision swam but eventually I focused on a cop in riot gear, rifle trained on us.

  He shouted at us again.

  I shook my head at him, no clue what he'd said in Korean.

  "Hands up!" he shouted in English.

  Kei got a couple of words out in Korean before throwing up again.

  I raised my hands, one of which was holding Kei's gas mask.

  "We are Tokyo police." I said in English. "We are here with permission of Seoul Police Chief Kim Suyeong to track down a Japanese national conducting illegal activity in Seoul."

  The cop froze, but he did not lower his rifle. I knew what this must look like—vomit-covered foreigners in civilian clothes telling some story. This must look like bullshit.

  "I have the documents in my pocket," I said. Then, very slowly, I reached in my pocket and pulled out the piece of paper and handed it to him.

  The cop took the paper and read it. I glanced at my heaving partner and saw Kei's muscles tighten. That made me nervous. Then I saw a tiny blue light on the side of Kei's mask and my problems compounded—that was the warning light that the filter would be shutting down soon.

  "I can contact my police chief in Tokyo who can explain why we are here," I said as calmly as I could in English.

  Though really, we were just inside the station, anyone was allowed to be here, despite whatever reason the cops had shut this area down. This was a public space. I saw the skyscrapers around the station, way taller than in Tokyo. People worked here, commuted back and forth.

  The cop said something to Kei in Korean.

  "He will accompany us to headquarters," Kei said to me in English, keeping it loud and out in the open.

  "In handcuffs?" I squeaked in Japanese, as our cop fished with something on his belt.

  Kei followed my line of sight and spoke to the cop again, tone still smooth and even, despite still convulsing with dry heaves every few seconds. Way to keep it chill, Kei.

  Our cop escorted us to a police vehicle. I had to keep myself from touching Kei's hand. He did not place us in handcuffs, but there was an officer smooshed in with us on both sides in the car. We rode in silence.

  "Once we meet the chief, I'll interpret for you," Kei said quietly in Japanese.

  I nodded. "Blue." The color on the mask status indicator.

  "I know," Kei said.

  The area surrounding the station was shut down for blocks. I'd never seen so many police. This was Seoul. Everything I'd seen online was fun and lively—there should be buses and scooters and cars everywhere, pedestrians on their phones or window shopping or grabbing a bite of kimbap at a street stall. Children, dogs, the sights and noises of vibrant city life, just in words I didn't understand. Instead, there was nothing but empty streets and police vehicles, black riot shields and cement barricades. What the hell was going on? The uniforms occasionally changed, making me wonder whether the army were here too. I couldn't admire the skyscrapers or the shops or the little parks scattered about with street vendors and pedestrians chatting. I couldn't take in anything except for the presence of force.

  We arrived at Seoul police headquarters and our accompanying officers insisted on holding each of us by the arm and guiding us in. We waited at the door until an older man who looked to be in charge came out to meet us. He looked at the document I'd produced and then guided us back.

  Kei introduced us in Korean. The chief sat down behind his desk and waved us to take a seat.

  "My name is Chief Kim Suyeong," Kei translated for me.

  I bowed. "Takahashi Masamune. I apologize for the way in which it came about that we would visit you."

  I got into my bag and pulled out the entire folder of documents covering our stay in Seoul. Chief Kim said something.

  "He confirms that he received the same packet from our chief," Kei said.

  Of course we both knew that. I'd been the one to draft it for our chief in Japanese and Kei had translated it. We'd already been working with investigators in Seoul for weeks to solidify the locations of different film studios I'd tracked from the videos I'd found.

  The filmmaker Mikabe—his stage name—was a prime suspect for human trafficking into the sex trade. He used kids in his pornography, some of them pre-pubescent. Others were young women who might technically be of age, but clearly were trafficked. I'd spent dozens of hours with translation software, capturing their pleas in different languages, Kei having to console me when I woke up from nightmares.

  Mikabe himself had been convicted of human trafficking in Japan, but then his sentence was reduced to "complicity" in trafficking to settle his plea bargain. He'd only spent four months in a Japanese prison, clearly not rehabilitated. He was released from custody only to go further underground and continue making illegal films. I'd been tracking him for years before finally finding evidence that he was in South Korea. He hadn't run far, and my guess was because he was accustomed to marketing to an Asian audience. That increased my confidence that we would eventually find him.

  "He's a Japanese national," Chief Kim said, his eyes scanning the documents. "You plan to track him and make a citizen's arrest."

  I confirmed that. It was the only kind of arrest we were allowed to make on foreign soil, despite being cops ourselves.

  "But you will submit him to my custody," Chief Kim stated.

  "Yes." Maybe the Korean justice system would be more effective at rehabilitation than the Japanese one, and at least keep Mikabe behind bars and away from innocent people.

  Kei's mask beeped. I glanced over and saw the light turn purple. We had thirty minutes before the filter shut down.

  "You picked a hell of a time to track some Japanese pedophile." Chief Kim stacked the papers and set them aside, looking us over. "We're all hands on deck with two hundred thousand young people tromping around out there. Once the younger generation gets off work they go full-time protestor."

  "Ask him about the riot squads," I told Kei.

  Kei speaking Korean was one of the most beautiful things I'd ever heard. My lover's voice was nice in general, but the intelligence on display at having learned a foreign language in college was so impressive, and Kei ha
d learned more than one.

  "It's a corruption scandal," the Chief said simply. "Long story short, our young people are too idealistic. People run for public office because they want power, not because they're perfect. What exactly do the protestors expect to get out of this? A replacement that isn't just as corrupt? Grow up."

  We excused ourselves and were taken deeper into the station, where we were issued the standard grade stun-taser-rubber-lead revolvers, the same kind we used in Tokyo. No new learning curve here at least, though above all we couldn't use lead—our only real stopping power—on a Korean citizen while here. It made things more dangerous for us, but the result of a death during this mission would be a bureaucratic nightmare, since we were Japanese police officers killing on foreign soil, or at least that's how Korean law would view us, and we'd be at the unknown mercy of such laws.

  While we finished out the paperwork for our guns, Kei's mask squawked a righteous warning I had never heard before. We'd never pushed it this far, and I just about pissed myself getting out of there before my partner stopped breathing.

  We rushed out and got on the subway toward our hotel. Kei sat down and doubled over, heaving for air. I stood in front protectively, then when no one else got on the train I sank to the floor.

  "How can I help?" I asked, wiping sweaty bangs out of Kei's face.

  Kei's mask light had turned red while we were still at the police station. That meant only ten minutes before it shut down, and it had taken us that long just to get to the subway.

  "I'm gonna have to transfer it here," Kei said, panting.

  I clenched my jaw, willing Kei to not worry. I grabbed Kei's watch, which had a PM 2.5 sensor that ran constantly. It showed a purple light, which was fine for a regular person, but of a level of concern for asthmatics. The subway train was at ground level right now, with the entrance on the street where cars sat idling in traffic. I had learned to catch the faintest scent of fumes after being with Kei for so many years. We couldn't change the filter here.

  Kei got out the emergency inhaler and held it in one hand, then got out an EpiPen and pressed it into my hands. I gripped it, dismayed. Kei was only issued one of these at a time. They were so hard to get otherwise. If Kei thought we might need this, it meant there was a risk of anaphylaxis. Once I used it on Kei, we'd have to immediately go to the ER. I hadn't even thought through what I would do in Korea if my translator were incapacitated.