‘This isn’t right.’
The moment he received the report that all ten million units of D-Sand sent from the factory had been returned—
Jang Cheon’s breath stopped for a moment.
It was cold.
This wasn’t a simple loss.
It felt like there was something more behind it.
An inexplicable anxiety seemed to wrap itself around his entire body.
It was a sensation difficult to explain.
Rather than anxiety, it felt like a warning.
One thing was certain: something had gone wrong.
Honestly, if he wanted excuses, he could come up with more than a hundred.
A factory contracted in haste.
Inexperienced personnel.
A production process recklessly altered to lower costs.
It wouldn’t have been strange for a problem to have erupted anywhere.
But the unease Jang Cheon felt was not of that sort.
Jang Cheon opened the copy of the contract Mao Qin had sent him once more.
The main contract was only two pages.
But the supplementary agreement attached behind it amounted to 138 pages.
Jang Cheon flipped through a few pages, then set the contract down.
‘...What on earth did I trust, to sign a contract like this so readily?’
The legal terminology seemed deliberately twisted,
and the clauses on inspection, returns, delays, and liability were cunningly repeated, each time shifting direction.
The more he read, the more it led to a single conclusion.
This was not a normal transaction contract.
It was not a contract prepared to receive goods, but one prepared so the goods could be returned at any time.
He had been had.
The problem was not money.
Money could be earned again.
It would be difficult for a while, but they could somehow endure.
If only this damned contract didn’t exist.
If they failed to deliver the goods on the appointed date, there were damages and penalties attached as well.
He had already made a choice he could not take back.
The Triad—Jang Cheon—had staked everything on the sale of D-Sand.
Funds, distribution lines, connections—he had poured them all in.
For a moment, he had lost his head over the figure of ten million units a month, eighty million yuan (17 billion won).
Blinded by greed, thinking that with just that he could rebuild the Triad, he had failed to check properly.
Pressed by the deadline, he had been in a hurry.
And this was not the only problem.
...The bigger problem was that he had already set Heukhyang in motion.
Trusting in the sale of D-Sand,
trusting in the eighty million yuan that would come in every month, he had eliminated the branch chiefs.
He had thought that if this deal went through, there would be no need for the old structure.
So on the day he signed the contract, he had given the order for the operation.
And now that was strangling Jang Cheon.
Heukhyang had already completed the mission and was on the way back.
He could not cancel it, nor could he undo it.
Jang Cheon slowly exhaled the breath he had been holding.
The situation was clear.
The goods he had sent had been returned,
the existing pipelines were gone,
and he had even destroyed the regional lines.
It felt as if the other side had calculated all of this.
As if they had handed him an exam question and were watching how he solved it.
As if they were observing just how far the Triad could collapse.
Jang Cheon leaned back in his chair.
For the first time, he thought the Triad might truly be shaken.
This was not some crisis.
It was the fear that it might collapse.
The actions he had taken to protect his position had instead endangered it.
But he could not simply sink down here.
He had to stop it.
No matter what, he had to turn it back.
One way or another, he had to find a solution.
It was too late to sit here and devise countermeasures.
He had to meet them in person and talk.
Jang Cheon boarded a plane bound for Incheon.
*******
Assistant Manager Hwang Onyu.
No, now Team Leader Hwang Onyu came home after work.
These days, the atmosphere at the NIS could not be called good even as empty courtesy.
After the last news report, a special investigation team had been formed, and a full-scale audit of the entire NIS had begun.
Not only the corporate card records of every employee, but also special activity funds,
as well as the bank accounts of individuals and their families, were all dug up.
It was the first complete investigation of this kind since the founding of the NIS.
The atmosphere at the NIS hit rock bottom.
Through the media, people complained that it was “an act of slowly strangling the organization to death,”
but once the investigation actually began, it became harder to find someone clean.
Dismissal from post.
Standby assignment.
Transfers.
Salary cuts and reprimands.
Many people were disciplined, left the NIS, or moved to other positions.
On top of that, the former team leader, Team Leader Park Dojin, disappeared in a single day without a word.
Hwang Onyu took his seat.
Hwang Onyu’s feelings were complicated as well.
She had wanted to become team leader, but she had never wanted to become one on top of her colleagues’ misfortune.
The atmosphere at work was not good either.
Even so, she had to go to work and do her job.
That was the fate of an office worker.
After work, she came home and opened the refrigerator without even turning on the light.
She felt like she needed at least one beer to settle herself down.
But there was no beer.
The refrigerator was empty.
‘Ah, the beer I had yesterday was the last one.’
She was wondering whether she should go buy some beer.
Then a voice came from the direction of the sofa.
“Looking for beer? It’s here.”
Huh?
She had been extremely startled the first time, but perhaps because this was the second time, she wasn’t that surprised.
“I’m not the type to drink for free, so I bought some beer.”
There was a convenience store bag on the table.
Four cans of beer for twelve thousand won were inside the plastic bag.
Hwang Onyu looked at me with a flustered expression.
“Aren’t you barging into someone else’s house a little too casually?”
Hwang Onyu grumbled as she sat down on the sofa.
“Then give me your passcode. It’s not like I came because I missed you.”
“Then why did you come?”
“I told you. I’m not the type to drink for free. I came to pay you back for the beer. And I have something to say.”
“Something to say?”
“Mind if I have a beer?”
I naturally picked up a can of beer.
Watching me, Hwang Onyu grumbled again.
“You bought it and you’re going to drink it yourself, so what exactly are you paying back...”
“I only had one last time. But I bought four. One should be fine, shouldn’t it?”
At my shamelessness, Hwang Onyu spoke as if she couldn’t be bothered.
“Drink it, drink it.”
“By the way, don’t you have something to snack on? I need something to eat when I drink beer.”
At my words, Hwang Onyu looked slightly annoyed.
“No. Just talk.”
“Hehehe. Now that you’re Team Leader, you’ve gotten impatient, haven’t you? Maybe I should’ve left you as an assistant manager.”
Hearing that, Hwang Onyu asked in a voice that suggested I was talking nonsense.
“Hahaha. You make it sound like you were the one who made me team leader.”
“I thought I helped a bit in my own way. No?”
Hwang Onyu looked at me as if she found it absurd.
“You may not know this, but... this was according to the results of the special investigation team’s inquiry. Don’t tell me...”
As she spoke, Hwang Onyu suddenly stared at me in shock.
“The NIS is a little slow, huh. Maybe it isn’t what it used to be?”
I took a sip of beer with a slight swagger.
“Is that true?”
“I only meant to cut out Park Dojin, but I didn’t know the whole NIS was that rotten.”
It was true.
I really had only intended to give him a bit of grief.
I wanted Park Dojin to have a hard time.
But I hadn’t imagined that the entire NIS would be shaken by that.
“Hehehe. Well, it’s my workplace, but it is pretty bad. Anyway, what was it you wanted to say?”
“Mm...”
I paused for a moment, then spoke again.
“I realized both of us are wasting too much energy on pointless things. I came to say we should stop.”
“Say it so I can understand.”
“I have no intention of making the NIS my enemy. I haven’t done anything wrong, either. If anything, I’ve helped the NIS, not harmed it, so I don’t know why you keep trying to chase after me. So stop marking me from now on.”
I spoke quietly.
“That already stopped. When Team Leader Park Dojin disappeared.”
“I know. But the materials you made are still there. I’m telling you to delete those too.”
“That... that’s...”
“We’re even doing your work for you... Can’t you at least do that much?”
“You’re doing our work for us?”
Team Leader Hwang Onyu asked back as if she didn’t understand what I meant.
“Do you know the Triad is entering Korea?”
“The Triad?”
Hwang Onyu’s eyes lit up.
It was the Triad that Overseas Team Two had been chasing for a long time.
But there were no clues.
No identifiable actions either.
They had even been starting to suspect that the tip about them entering the country might have been false.
“You know the Triad is in a fucked-up situation right now, right? So they’ve set our country as a new market and are pushing in a ridiculous amount of drugs. But we’re the ones stopping that right now. If the NIS can’t give me an award, the least you can do is not go around trying to catch me. That’s what I’m saying.”
“How am I supposed to believe that?”
Hwang Onyu could not hide the suspicion in her eyes.
“Hey. If the NIS can’t even verify that much, you should quit. I set the table for you, and now you want me to chew it too?”
“That’s not it...”
Hwang Onyu waved her hands as if embarrassed.
“Anyway, we’re doing a shitload of work too. You know Daehun and I are doing all kinds of things to stop the drugs, right?”
“That... I heard that from the police.”
That was one of the reasons Daehun had become a big shot.
The fact that he was stopping drugs.
That fact had been acknowledged by the police, the prosecution, and the government.
They could not officially acknowledge it, but everyone involved knew.
That the Daehun Faction was stopping it on the ground.
That was why they left the Daehun Faction alone.
No, if anything, when a problem occurred, they actively helped.
So it could be resolved well.
There was only one reason.
If the Daehun Faction disappeared, far larger, more complicated, and more numerous problems would arise.
Right now, the Daehun Faction was managing and controlling the dark world of the Republic of Korea.
Without the Daehun Faction, dozens, hundreds of organizations would fight among themselves and run wild.
The government would have to stop and control that.
There was no way to predict how much manpower, time, and capital it would take.
But if they left it to the Daehun Faction, things resolved themselves smoothly.
They did not know what they did or how they did it, but it was quiet.
They did not know what happened inside, but at the very least, it did not become a problem.
For government officials, that much was enough.
So they left it to the Daehun Faction.
They delegated a certain degree of authority.
To other gangsters, the Daehun Faction had become the administration, the prosecution, and the judiciary.
They had become the dictator of the gangster world.
“Anyway, that’s why, when the Triad tried to come into our country and mess around, I set up a little counterplay.”
“Counterplay?”
“Yeah. The Triad is probably on the verge of being smashed right now. Our dilemma is whether to take over the Triad, or just destroy it.”
Hwang Onyu’s eyes went round.
“Take over the Triad, or destroy it? You can do that?”
“Yeah. They’re probably about to go insane right now.”
“H-how? How can you do that?”
“What? You want me to write you a report?”
I glared at Hwang Onyu, who still hadn’t properly grasped the situation.
“No... Still, how could you possibly deal with the Triad...”
Hwang Onyu was still shocked.
“It wasn’t anything special. For now, I’m leaning toward getting rid of the Triad. Even if we tried to take it over, it’s just disgustingly huge with nothing much to show for it.”
At my words, Hwang Onyu urgently cut in.
“No. Don’t get rid of it.”
“What?”
“I said don’t get rid of it. If possible.”
“Why?”
“The Triad is a paradise of information. If you hold the Triad, it becomes easy to collect information on Southeast Asia. It would be too much of a waste to get rid of a place like that.”
“For free? Just like that? After I did all the work?”
At my question, Hwang Onyu answered timidly.
“Mmm... I’ll delete the materials on you. Deal?”
“That’s nowhere near enough. It wouldn’t even cover the maintenance costs.”
After thinking for a moment, I presented Team Leader Hwang Onyu with another condition.
“Let’s share all NIS information from now on. In return, I’ll share the Triad’s information with you.”
“Hahaha. That won’t do.”
“Man, you’re making yourself so damn expensive. Then I’ll also tell you news from the Philippines and China.”
“China?”
“I have quite a few people I’m close with over there.”
“......”
Hearing that, Hwang Onyu’s eyes gleamed.
“Then, by any chance, do you know about the ‘Bae Jeonghun’ case?”
Hwang Onyu asked urgently.
“Who’s Bae Jeonghun?”
“He... It seems he was arrested by the Chinese side not long ago, but there’s no information at all. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs says they don’t know, and the Public Security Bureau says it’s not under their jurisdiction... We have absolutely no idea where he went or what happened to him.”
“Really? Something like that happened?”
“Mhm...”
Hwang Onyu answered, looking somewhat embarrassed.
I picked up my phone and called the MSS director.
“It’s been a while.”
“I’ve been doing fine. You’ve been well too, Director?”
“Ahaha. I just had something I wanted to ask.”
“Do you know someone named Bae Jeong-hun? He’s a South Korean citizen, and I heard he was arrested in China?”
“It wasn’t an arrest? You just had something to ask him, so you called him in for questioning?”
“You were planning to send him home tomorrow?”
“Ah—really? Then it was nothing serious?”
“No, it’s nothing much. A friend at the NIS was curious.”
“That’s right. Yes, yes. Let’s have a meal together with the Chairman sometime.”
“Yes. Take care.”
After hanging up, I looked at Hwang On-yu.
Hwang On-yu’s face was colored with shock and disbelief, as if she had heard the call.
“May… may I ask who that was?”
“Who was it again? Guo Qingtao, was it? He’s the MSS minister, but that position’s been changing so often lately. I get the names mixed up.”
“Huh. You’re talking directly to the MSS minister right now?”
“What’s the big deal about making a phone call that you’re making such a fuss? And you heard what he said, didn’t you? They’re sending him home tomorrow. They just called him in for questioning.”
“Is that really true?”
“How would I know? At the very least, that’s what the MSS minister said.”
“Mm…”
“Then can I take it that our deal is settled?”
I asked.
“For now, I’ll cooperate.”
Team Leader Hwang On-yu held out her hand.
.
.
.
Team Leader Hwang On-yu hurriedly finished the rest of her beer, then watched the man’s back as he slowly left.
As she watched him, Team Leader Hwang On-yu thought.
Just who on earth is that man?
No matter how much she thought about it, she couldn’t come up with an answer.
She truly couldn’t figure it out.
Team Leader Hwang On-yu knew.
The MSS was not an organization that kind.
Questioning? Sending someone home? The MSS was not a place that used words like that.
This was undoubtedly a result that man had created.
She found herself curious about his identity all over again.
A guide?
Pfft. Was she supposed to believe a lie like that?
A guide who talked to the MSS minister?
A guide with a security team attached to him?
A guide whom the Daehoon faction revered?
A guide who smashed the Triads?
She knew it was a disguise, a deception.
But she couldn’t discern his true form.
She couldn’t tell what on earth he did.
But one thing was certain.
That person was far more extraordinary than Team Leader Hwang On-yu had imagined.
There were things one could feel even if he didn’t bother to show them.
Team Leader Hwang On-yu reached a conclusion.
This person was not someone to be suspected, but someone who absolutely had to be secured.
He was not someone to be managed, but someone to cooperate with.
She must not let him go.
She had to hold on to him.
Team Leader Hwang On-yu made that vow once again.
.
.
.
When I came out of the studio apartment, Scott was waiting.
Scott, who had been leaning against the wall, held out a bottle of water.
“Good work.”
I rinsed my mouth, left stale by the beer, with the bottled water.
There had been a reason I visited Team Leader Hwang On-yu today.
It had to look like a transaction.
In exchange for receiving information from the NIS, I had said I would hand over information on China and the Philippines.
It was clearly a deal fit for a sucker.
But that wasn’t what I truly wanted.
The first was deleting the records.
I didn’t like the idea that my name remained somewhere in the NIS database,
left there with tags like person of interest or requires observation.
I didn’t want to become a key figure,
and I didn’t want to leave evidence of it behind either.
Records become knives.
I didn’t want to put the handle in their hands.
The second was that I needed continuous observation of the NIS.
Would they reach out to me, to Daehoon, or to Sin Jung-gi in the Philippines? I needed to keep observing them.
I had to keep checking what the NIS was doing.
I needed to know what information they were gathering,
how much they knew,
and where they were trying to extend their reach.
To confirm that information, I had said I would provide my own.
That was why I needed a connection.
Someone whose face I knew, and with whom I could share judgments.
I needed someone like that.
That was Hwang On-yu.
She was clean enough to survive an audit of the entire staff,
and she seemed like someone in whom justice was still alive, more so than ambition.
She wasn’t perfect, but at the very least, she was predictable.
This didn’t solve every problem,
but at least it felt like I had wrapped up what I’d set out to do.
For today, that was enough.