He stumbled out of the bar, fresh out of money and pride. The world was spinning--he was sure it wasn't the liquor. That's when they get you, he thought, as he stumbled around his jacket pockets for a smoke. The night was still vibrant; people all around him just blurs on an unsentimental spectroscope. He lit his cigarette and for a minute, he held a light brighter than the moon. He whistled an old tune he learned on the radio, something about how wolves were more apt to come out during rainy nights to hunt for their prey. They had real acumen--perceived as merciless but only come out when no one else was around. As he was about to walk away, the bartender came out and spoke to him in Japanese. He never knew why the bartender always insisted on speaking to him in Japanese when it was clear that he didn't know any. He just turned and smiled and listened as the bartender let out a stream of unfamiliar sounds. Then he said in Korean,
"Joon-suk, you forgot your briefcase."
"You know I don't know what you're saying to me"
"But you do."
With that he handed the briefcase to Joon-suk and went back into the bar. Joon-suk chortled as he held the familiar briefcase in his hand. It was heavier than it could ever be. It wasn't the contents of the briefcase, but the fustian meaning of what those contents had. Nothing is irrelevant; there couldn't be or meanings would cease to exist.
Joon-suk worked for an anti-corruption agency in the city, the largest and most respected, in fact. That was easily to explain though: the firm was so well funded that they could afford to handle every case of corruption with a top-notch attorney. He had gone to school for ten years, wanting to become a legislator for something that mattered, but he ended up in a position that had him revealing legal loopholes in contracts and transactions drawn out by overeager corporations, essentially revealing specific people for doing what anyone probably would've done in a similar situation: opportunities to earn more money. It was a popularity contest, and he was on the panel to decide who would make the biggest news. He could easily list five or six names of people who were much more worthy of putting in jail, but they were too expensive to reveal. They were either too small to bother bringing to the public eye, or they were far too high up, basically shedding money everywhere they went, consequently leaving everybody bowing as they passed.
Nonetheless, he had recently swept up what could be the biggest case of scandal and bribery of the decade, having caught a military general taking hefty bribes for excusing the sons of big mobs from going into compulsory military service, thereby preventing any government spotlighting on the shady shiftings of the underworld. He just had to submit his report and it would be finished. The associated mobs would go to jail not for bribery, but the countless actions they've been committing under the thick veil of currency. Hundreds of kids who couldn't do anything else but work for mobsters would end up on the street, probably pushed into committing petty crimes so that they could feed themselves--terrorizing for a living. Gone would be the structured, organized crime of this mafia ringleaders, and then would dawn more banditry. He would be the blade that would cut up a swelling wound, revealing the far uglier, much more festering problem underneath the inflammation. The truth was that it was society that was sick. The society had become gilded and obsessed with wealth, essentially replacing humanity-based morality into a fiscal one.
Dozens of contracts signed and stamped by this general were photocopied and carefully archived in manila envelopes that would provide enough evidence to successfully litigate these mobsters. It was all very sub rosa as well--he would submit his report through an intricate internet system that guaranteed his anonymity. There was virtually no way he could be caught in this act.
But it wasn't about being caught and threatened that Joon-suk was concerned that evening. It wasn't why he was as drunk as he was at that moment. It was something more philosophical: how limited was his perspective? One of the first classes that he took in law school was that anything that could be interpreted as "worth fighting for" were battles that were too complex to assign the trivial descriptions of good or bad.
It was something like a triangle placed on a flat surface, or a prism. The tip, the topmost point, could represent the "event," though that was somewhat philosophically noxious as well. In any case, if that apex was construed as the event, every part of the prism, the numerous strands that led to that apex, were the different elements that were somehow associated to how that event occurred. Innumerable intentions were all set off at once like fireworks, lit by some indeterminate force, and thus resulted an event that these associated elements would understand and interpret in their own way. Everybody thought that what they did was somehow right, each and every one of the equipped with a meticulously designed justification. Ultimately, it was he who would decide the recipients of the punishment. Ultimately, it was someone who was completely unassociated and irrelevant who put to rest all those other contentions.
He lost his breath just thinking about the precarious ground he stood on. Who was he to do any of this? He had to imitate objectivity, neutrality, and the loss of identity en route the foolproof internet submission system made sure that there was no humanity, thus subjectivity, in this whole procedure. It wasn't he, but his labor that was valued.
There was no humanity in his work, though that's why he wanted to go into law in the first place, and then dozens of misguided kids would rampage the street, since they now think that they've been wronged by society, which more or less may have wronged them, resulting in people who are just walking around, minding their own business, to be more at risk of being mugged, robbed, or even murdered.
This societal existence that we lead, he thought, was something that was unfathomable. It was sublime. It was terrifying. Any and everything that he did caused some rippled in this system that affects others for better or worse. He could study his moral standards and try to perfect them, but his inevitable consequentiality was beyond the realms of any powers of rumination. It couldn't be understood, because the nature of a single individual in society was the society itself, so to understand the whole, which produces the one, led to dead-ends that he could neither fully conceive, thus precluding rectification, nor prevented in any way. All roads led to the same destination:
I have no idea.
He smoked his cigarette as he waited in a taxi queue. There were four others in front of him, maybe a dozen behind him. Those who were too drunk to be orderly kept cutting in line in front of him, but what could he really do? Would they even listen? If they did listen, to what effect would his talking to them really have?
He removed a glass jar from his briefcase that was filled with cigarette butts. He unwound the the top and threw his lit cigarette inside. He let out a sigh and the smoke rose far, far above him.
