"I SAID, GET THE fuck out of the car right now," he repeated loudly and impatiently, but never any less furious. "I need your car."
The cab driver scoffed in utter disbelief. "What makes you think I will do as you say? Man, you've gone bonkers."
Kyunghee had to agree with the driver but judging from the look on the man's face, she was also worried for the cab driver's life.
The wild man ignored the cab driver and instead, grabbed the driver's shirt collar through the opened window, bringing the cab driver's face closer to his until their noses were nearly touching. The foreboding look in his eyes told everyone that he had ran out of patience.
A shudder ran down Kyunghee's spine. An unsettling feeling stirred in her stomach. Kyunghee knew this wasn't going to turn out well. Was he some psycho who escaped the mental asylum? She swallowed past the lump in her throat, refraining herself from saying anything that might further provoke the situation, the psycho.
Unconsciously, she edged closer to the door. Her hands twitched and moved down to the buckle, preparing to flee if it was going to escalate out of control.
"N—No, this is my car for work. I can't give you company property," the cab driver stammered uncontrollably. He was trying hard to put up a brave front, but Kyunghee could tell he was shaking in fear from the back of his head.
The wild man's nostril flared as he closed his eyes for a long second, sucking in a deep breath. All around, people were still honking their horns and shouting obscenities as clear as a summer's day.
The wild man released the cab driver and looked over his shoulder. "Shut the fuck up all of you!!" he roared across the intersection with intensity. It didn't shut anyone up.
Kyunghee's jaw dropped, astounded. She couldn't believe her eyes and ears.
The wild man averted his eyes back to the cab driver and reached inside his jacket for something.
Kyunghee held her breath. Was he going to pull out some kind of a dangerous weapon? To her relief, he didn't pull out a dangerous weapon but a badge. Silently she let out the breath she had been holding.
The man flashed his badge in front of the cab driver's face with a manifested temper. "I'm the police. Now, get out."
A part of Kyunghee was relieved when she saw the official emblem of the Seoul Metropolitan Police on his badge, knowing that he was not a psycho but a legitimate officer of the law. Sadly, her relief was short-lived. On second thought, a cop acting like a psycho might not necessarily amount to anything good either.
The cop didn't wait for the cab driver to respond. He pulled open the door and wrestled the cab driver out of the seat, pushing him onto the ground then took control of the steering wheel like a tyrant of dystopian world. The cab driver screamed expletives and pounded against the cab door vehemently, but the cop didn't give him light of day.
Her survival instincts kicked in.
Immediately she grabbed the door handle but, at the exact moment, the cop locked it to keep the cab driver from gaining access on the outside.
Panic rippled through her in waves. A gasp escaped her mouth when the cop suddenly slammed down on the gas pedal and the car lurched forward, speeding recklessly away from the scene.
Kyunghee freaked out in the back seat. In her mind, she was screaming and kicking and shouting to get out, but in reality, she was sitting in stunned silence like a lost puppet.
She looked over her shoulder and saw the cab driver chasing after them, but the car was moving at a much too monstrous speed. She wanted to say something, but her throat had closed off due in part to the unbelievable speed they were going at and the absurdity of the entire situation. She clenched her hands and pressed it tightly against her thighs, fear and dread coursing through her as she tried to stay calm.
"Fuck," the cop hissed as the car swerved to the right dangerously, repeatedly honking at other cars to move out of the way. "Where did you come from? I didn't see you back there."
She caught his accusatory gaze through the rear-view mirror.
Kyunghee was annoyed. It wasn't as if she wanted to be here. She was simply caught at the wrong time and place.
"I—I need to get out," she managed to find her voice. Bless that it still worked, despite how panicky it sounded.
He was focused on the road. "You can't get out unless you want to die. I'm not stopping the car for you either."
Her lips twisted into a frown, horrified by what she was hearing from the police. He was a prime example of why she didn't get along with the legal system. People like her, who came from the wrong side of the tracks, they didn't go hand-in-hand with the law.
"Excuse me, Mister—"
"Detective," he abruptly interrupted her.
"What?"
"It's Detective for you," he corrected firmly.
Kyunghee held back the stupefaction, or the urge to strangle him.
"Detective," Kyunghee repeated after him like the dutiful civilian that she was not, because let's face it, the man was still the police. As much as she didn't like cops, she hated getting into shit with them even more. The best thing to do was to stay away from them altogether. "Could you please pull over and let me out? I'm supposed to be on my way to work and I'm—I'm just a citizen. I really don't want to get involved in this, whatever this is."
She wanted to gag at how sweet and polite she sounded—the customer service voice when she wanted to kiss some ass.
"Didn't you hear a thing I just said? I'm not stopping the car. I've been looking for that suspect for two years. There's no way in fucking hell I'm letting him go when he's right in front of my eyes. Definitely not this time," he said through gritted teeth, pushing harder on the gas pedal as the car jumped forward. Her hands flew to grab the door, armrest—anything—for stability. "Sit tight and I'll make sure you'll be safe by the end of the night." He paused, glancing at her through the rear-view mirror. "Wear your seatbelt. You won't die."
Kyunghee highly doubted it.
He spoke breezily as if wearing a seatbelt would actually make her feel any better. She was stuck in a car with a crazy, tenacious cop and God-knows-where his craziness would take him next. The speed he was driving at made her stomach flipped and flopped every which direction, making her sick to the toes and turning an ugly shade of green.
"Son of a bitch, you're not getting away from me," he muttered vengefully under his breath, intent on the road ahead, hands gripping tightly on the steering wheel. "Bet I'll catch you if that's the last thing I do."
Kyunghee blanched like a ghost. She swore she could hear an arrogant smirk across his face when he made the declaration. He looked as if he was in control of the situation and maybe he was, but he had lost control of his mind.
"Detective—" she tried again, but he must have known where she was headed, because he swerved to the right in annoyance. Startled by it, Kyunghee gasped as her shoulders bumped against the door and her head collided against the glass window, hard.
Pain shot down the side of her arm and into her head. She rubbed the spot where she had collided with the window. At the same time, she caught the warning glare he gave her through the rear-view mirror. Kyunghee's jaw clenched in quiet fury. She was pretty sure he did it on purpose to shut her up.
"I told you to sit tight and don't talk."
You insensitive jackass! Who gave you the gun to be a cop when you're going around threatening and hurting civilians? The thought raged in her head, but she held her tongue from lashing out. Be good, Kyunghee. He's the police.
If she was blessed with the golden opportunity though, she would love to reach over and sock him in the eye, that way his vision would be impaired and he'd lose the guy he was chasing. What could be worst for a cop than losing the criminal he was chasing, right? Of course, she was never going to actually do it because she could be charged for assaulting a police officer on duty.
So she swallowed the unhappiness. The cop had a rotten temper and she was not going to push it.
As prayers clouded her mind, Detective Hothead was busy tailgating the targeted red Corolla.
BEEP—BEEEEEP
SCREEECH
BEEP—BEEP—BEEP—BEEPPP
There was a commotion wherever he went.
Her body was thrown from side-to-side, back-and-forth, as he drove aggressively down the road. Her head began to spin. She was dizzy, sick and claustrophobic. She wanted to roll the window down to get some fresh air, but it was impossible because of his fast-and-furious driving. All she could do was punch her fists into the leather seat as tightly as she could to control her heart rate and pray to herself that she would make it out of this horror in one piece. Even though he reassured her that she would be safe by the end of the night, Kyunghee couldn't find it in her to trust the hotheaded cop in the slightest.
The car sped through red lights and cut into people's lanes, garnering more in obnoxious honks and dirty curses. Detective Hothead didn't seem to care in the least bit. Rather, he was completely focused on the red Corolla in front, which was weaving its way in and out of lanes, trying to escape the man's wrath.
"You can run but you can't hide."
God, please have mercy on me. I don't want to die with such a mean person, Kyunghee pleaded the Almighty.
Soon, their car merged onto a freeway.
The Corolla was still running away and the cop was still relentlessly attached to its bumper. If she thought things couldn't get worse from here, then she was terribly wrong. The cop chase got even more intense. Right at the start of the freeway, sirens crept up on them and, when Kyunghee looked through the back window, she saw two marked, white-and-light blue police cars with cherry red sirens sitting on the roofs. They chased after them, wailing ferociously into the night.
Back-ups, she realized but it was not a source of comfort.
"Finally," Detective Hothead grumbled under his breath, but he didn't seem very satisfied with the slow response from his colleagues. Two police cars passed by on the right and left side respectively. Their sirens becoming louder because of the close distance.
The red Corolla was surrounded with a police car on the right, the left and the cab behind it, but it wouldn't stop either. It was a ride-or-die type of situation. The Corolla accelerated, speeding at its limit, as clouds of smoke spew at the cab. Detective Hothead cursed again when the police car on the right purposely drove right into the Corolla's right bumper.
The Corolla swerved to the left to avoid the attack, but the police car on the left performed the same stunt. The Corolla avoided again and then this time, it retaliated by bumping aggressively into the left police car then the right one. Both police cars spun out of control, falling out of the game, and screeched to a halt leaving the cab the only one in the race. Another mouthful of profanity left the frustrated cop. He could give a sailor run for the money.
Detective Hothead rolled down his window. With one hand on the steering wheel, the other hand retrieved something from inside his jacket. Then he stuck his head and left side of his body out the window while keeping control of the car with his right hand.
BANG BANG
Before she was prepared for what happened next, Detective Hothead had fired two rounds. Kyunghee jumped from the loud gunshots and automatically covered her ears in fear. Her heart pumped blood rapidly, buzzing in her ears.
He had a fucking gun.
The realization was a nightmare-and-a-half. She hadn't been prepared to see one tonight. In fact, everything that's happened so far had been completely unsuspecting and out of her control. But this wasn't one of those good surprises like winning a lottery. This was the kind of surprises that made her never want to step into a vehicle for as long as she lived.
She hoped she lived a short life.
"Fuck!" Another barbaric sound.
BANG BANG
Kyunghee jerked and cowered in her seat.
Peeking one eye open, she saw the red Corolla lose its control, its tire squealing and screeching against the gravel as if something was wrong with it. She could only assume the cop had fired all four rounds at the two back tires. The cop readjusted himself in the driver's seat and slammed the gas pedal to maximum speed—as if he wasn't already driving at that speed—and switched to the left lane. He caught up with the red Corolla that had slowed down tremendously until they were front bumper to front bumper. Then the cop sped up even more and bypassed the Corolla.
What the hell is he doing? Where is he going? The Corolla's back there, so why is he driving…
Before she could finish the thought, the cab made a sharp J-turn. Kyunghee swallowed back the nausea before she did anything she regretted like throwing up all over the car seat.
The cab suddenly braked hard and she fell forward but got snapped back by the seatbelt. The back of her head slammed into the headrest and, for a minute, her head spun with the entire solar system dancing in front of her eyes. Her body was aching all over from the treacherous car ride.
She has done a lot of things in life she wasn't proud of, but did she really deserve this trauma? This was fucking, moving Hell on earth and somehow she had landed the cursed ticket. All these years she knew she would go to Hell sooner or later. She just didn't realize Hell could be so nauseating.
Her eyes squinted from a bright light, and she realized the cab was now parked right in front of the red Corolla as it was driving toward them, head-on. Her eyes dilated and fear rippled through her in a second episode. She darted her eyes over to him, but Detective Hothead didn't move. Instead he was waiting, biding his time. Kyunghee trembled from head-to-toe with dread and trepidation.
"Detective! He's heading towards us! Drive! Why aren't you driving?!" She managed to find her voice, yelling at him loudly in a frantic state of mind. This time she was definitely not using her customer service voice.
Detective Hothead grimaced from the screaming. His eyes hooded with a sharp gaze and he grumbled incoherently, but he still didn't move the car out of the way.
There was something dangerously determined in his persona.
The light kept getting brighter and brighter, and she thought to herself, Of all the ways I thought I would die, being killed by a reckless cop was the last of it.
Finally, he moved. But instead of heeding to her sensible advice, the detective decided to press down on the gas pedal and drive straight-on, toward the oncoming red Corolla, right smack into danger and death. Either he misunderstood her or he was just psychotic because when she said drive, she did not mean drive to death with an innocent bystander in the backseat.
Her heart dropped with a raw sense of panic and terror.
"AaaaahhHHHH!!!"
A lot of things happened next but her mind was in a whirlwind, her emotions were heightened and logics were scattered about, so she had no clue of what really happened. Her eyes were closed—not daring to look—but she did hear one, frighteningly loud sound that made her forget how to breathe, forget she was mortal.
CRAAAAAASH
The impact of the two cars crashing into each other could be felt everywhere.