A tale of human infallibility

Aplistía

11 May 2020, 3.13 pm

After Kim Namjoon had left the room, the officer had given his coworkers the order to let the next sin wait. His and the world's whole ideology would be proven wrong if he adjudged to believe the seven men. He was clueless, he never had been before, but these men had accomplished where others had failed. He wanted to recollect himself. It had taken him longer than he had imagined, nearly half an hour he sat there, not knowing what to think. Finally, he decided it would be time for the next interrogation.

As Jung Hoseok entered the room, he found himself unable to breathe. He would never dare to call his look exaggeratedly pompous, but that was exactly what he had thought, as soon as he had seen him. Countless golden chains had been put over his yellow fluffy coat which he had combined with black boots and pants. There was no way he seemed to want to take it off and the office surely did not have the intention to force him to do so, because somehow, the man was amazed by the sight of him. It looked ridiculous, but extremely aesthetic at the same time. He reminded him of a frog, disguised as a bee with the intention to pretend to be another insect which he considered his food. He did not know where this thought came from, now he had it discovered, he was not able to unsee it. No, he could not describe it another way, it was too factitiously fitting.

It felt like an eternity, in truth it must have been a few seconds until the man began walking towards the police officer. As he did so, he found himself breathless. He felt small, he would go as far as describing himself as poor in the view of Hoseok. The moment he sat down with a kind of confidence that seemed out of place considering the room and situation he found himself in, the officer did realize why exactly he had been experiencing these feelings. Jung Hoseok looked as he would own this place, his person, the entire world to be exact and he knew he did. He smiled wildly of which the officer would have thought it would be impossible for any human to do. The man in front of him was in fact not human, the officer had to remind himself. Perhaps the honesty in his smile reminded him of this. Yes, he did check twice, his smile was honest, something he had never expected to see in here. He had gained experience long enough to say that he had never come across such a phenomenon. Some criminals had put on a smile, but there was no kindness in them and he could tell with ease whose smiles were fake and whose were real. Hoseoks was real for sure and that was what had surprised him most today. He thought to himself that if he had seen him out in the streets, he would have liked him at first sight. His personal opinion on him did not matter, he reminded himself. In this room, he was a person of the public, an officer, not a stranger and by god not his friend.

That reminder gave him the final push to eventually begin with the interrogation. "Do I need to take care to not insult your boyfriend in order to not being threatened?", he joked. He did not plan to make a joke, but in his presence, he could not help himself to do so. He had the urgent desire to make Smalltalk with the man. "No.", Hoseok chuckled, "I am the only one not finding himself in a relationship with another member of our team.", he answered. The officer added nothing besides a nod to this.

"Correct me if I'm mistaken, but I bet I'm not here to talk about my current relationship state, am I right?", Hoseok picked up the conversation again. "You are right indeed. You know exactly why you are here, I can tell by your expression and you heard the two men to whom I listened to before. I am going to tell you how this will go anyways. You will hold your monologue of why you are no real sin and I will listen to it. So come on, try to convince me as the ones before you did.".

Hoseok could only laugh at the officer's comment. "You have some great deducting skills officer, I indeed am going to convince you, but you are mistaken, I won't hold a monologue. See. I want to communicate with you. I'll be a dialogue instead. I fear you have to talk to me.". The officer had not expected this kind of answer. Had he not yet learned that this man was predictable in no way? It seems as he had not until now. Curious about the following conversation, he began to speak again. "A dialogue? Sounds more pleasant than the two stories I had to listen to.". "No need to insult my friends.", he smiled, "But I understand that they can be a bit, well wordy, sometimes.", he avoided the word 'boring' with all means, "So what officer, don't you want to ask me about my perspective?"

Taking the challenge, the man answered: "Of course I do. Go ahead then if you want me to hear it so badly."

And Hoseok did not wait to be told this twice. "Good then prepare yourself for the truth and only the truth.", a dramatic pause followed before he continued. "You would probably call me Greed nowadays. I had many names given to me by humans like you. The Romans called me Avaritia, the greek named me Aplistía. But I am Jung Hoseok, I always was and always will be, no matters what you want my name to be. I know who I am and only I know my true purpose. It is quite sad. The whole world should've known about it, but Dante did decide to put me and my friends in a bad light". "And what exactly is your true purpose as you stated?", the officer interrupted, followed by an instant answer. "I'm glad you asked. I am considered selfish, consuming more than I need, stealing and taking anything I want from anyone I feel like doing so. That is not right. Do you wanna know how I see myself?". "You already know the answer.", the officer replied. "True, but I wanted to keep this a dialogue. Anyways, I see myself as the original Robin Hood. Let me explain why I think so highly of myself. 'Though there is madness, yet there is method in't' as Shakespeare properly wrote down in one of his greatest works 'Hamlet, Prince of Denmark', I borrowed it from him to tell you that I have a reason to call me so, even if it sounds mad at first. I take whatever I can get. But I'm only taking from those who do not deserve to have it or who wouldn't miss it if I took it from them. Before you ask, yes I am able to judge those people. I have been living here long enough to know how people work. I take as much as I can. I store everything in order to give it away again to those who are in need of something. I lend or give it to people who might make use of it."

"Ok I get it, but what is a claim worth without proof or an example at least?", the officer could not help but questioning. He graved to hear more. And he got more. "How could I forget that? Of course, I can give you an example. If I took this pencil of yours, you probably would not notice at all. It is none of your personal belongings, you do not seem to care about it or haven't noticed it until now that I mentioned it. Your eyes did not wander to it even once since I stepped into this room. It probably is part of a collection of pencils your job offers you. You have more than just this one pencil and it would definitely not hurt you or any other person working here if I took it. Imagine I would own this pencil now that I 'stole' it from you. I would keep it as long as someone else would need it. Let's say, I am outside, walking down the street and there would be a man who had damaged the car of another person, that of a nice woman he really liked for instance, and he does not want to leave without writing down his contact information in order to pay for his furnish. But he doesn't have a pen to write it down, nor does he have any kind of paper. That's when I become important. I can now give him the pencil I took earlier from you and I sure can provide a piece of paper as well, that's my job after all. I helped this man leaving his address to compensate for his mistake. I know this example does not seem like a big deal to you, but I do this with everything and eventually, it becomes important.".

"Did you once save a life with this behavior of yours?". "I sure did, more than once. I stopped counting, I live way too long on this planet to remember the exact number. Once I carried a fist aid kid around I took from a snobby, rich doctor. And it happened that I run into a bleeding child that had been beaten up and fell badly. It would have bled to death the time the ambulance would have arrived, so I took things into my own hands and put on a pressure bandage. I saved the kid's life that day. I'm still kinda proud of it.".

"So you only take things in order to give them to someone else who needs them more than their previous owner?".

"Yes and no. Mainly I do so, but some things I only take for my own purpose. I am honest here, I love wearing expressive clothes and jewelry, but those things I buy legally, so it's not that big of a deal.", after taking a deep breath he added: "Do you have any questions left?".

"No, not really. I think I got what you explained. You may go now.". "I really hope you did get it and I hope I could change your mind about us. It was a pleasure meeting you, officer.", he ended their conversation and headed out of the room, after giving him a smile for the last time. It would be the last one he would see in the next few hours, the last honest one at least. But that the officer did not know yet, so all he did was smiling back and responding to Hoseok long after he had left the room: "Likewise, it truly was a pleasure.". Of course, there was no way the man could have heard it, but he somehow had the feeling he already knew.

Current time: 3.55 pm