“Yes. The same place as last time.”
“See you in a bit.”
After arriving in Gimpo, I called Team Leader Hwang Onyu and made an appointment.
I felt I should at least share the situation with Team Leader Hwang Onyu.
I had no way of knowing what measures the National Intelligence Service, the Ministry of National Defense, the Agency for Defense Development, or the Ministry of Foreign Affairs were preparing internally, or how they were responding.
But I thought there needed to be at least one person I could pass the situation on to.
There needed to be someone who could tell them that we had a weapon in our hands too.
Only with proper information could they make a proper weapon.
I absolutely hated being dragged around for no reason.
The only person I could have do that was Team Leader Hwang Onyu.
So I set up a meeting with Hwang Onyu.
Kwon Jua stayed in the Philippines.
I told her to come back with me, but Kwon Jua shook her head.
She said she would stay in the Philippines.
She said that when she was in Unity Town, her heart felt at ease,
and that she would come back after she sorted herself out a little more.
She said treating patients there was new to her, and that she was learning a lot.
She said it felt like a new life had opened up for her as a doctor, and that she wanted to stay a little longer.
I respected her choice.
Come back when your heart is settled.
That was all I said.
.
.
.
“Aren’t we meeting a little too often these days? Do you like me or something?”
Team Leader Hwang Onyu started spouting bullshit the moment he saw me.
Last time, he had been sitting there looking half-dead.
Now it seemed he had recovered enough to live a little.
Seeing as he was cracking jokes.
“You’ve never dated anyone, have you? If you’re that far off the mark, it’s an illness. Go to a hospital. You should get treated before it’s too late.”
Maybe I had hit the mark, because Hwang Onyu looked flustered for a moment, then let out a small laugh.
“Is it that obvious?”
“Yeah. Extremely. It’s impossible not to know.”
Hwang Onyu was smiling, but his eyes were crying.
Feeling sorry for him, I got straight to the point.
“Anyway, what happened with that? Mangwol.”
Hwang Onyu took a sip of the whiskey in front of him before answering.
“That? Same as before. There haven’t been any special issues since then. Japan’s quiet, we have no countermeasure, and we tried to restore the server, but in the meantime the server got changed once. There’s no answer. Now we just have to take whatever Japan dishes out.”
Hwang Onyu answered in a self-deprecating voice.
He must have been completely groggy.
Server restoration had been the last hope.
But even that was gone.
It seemed there was no countermeasure at all regarding Mangwol.
I tossed a bit of bait to Hwang Onyu, who looked as if he had given up on everything.
“What… what would happen if there was a development log?”
Hwang Onyu glanced at me once.
Then he answered indifferently.
“We could refute Japan’s claims.”
“…And?”
“What do you mean, and? That’s it. And do you know how incredible that is? That alone would be huge.”
Hwang Onyu answered.
But I couldn’t understand his answer.
“No, Japan attacked us. And you’re just going to let it go?”
“Then what are we supposed to do? Trade blows and fight?”
Hwang Onyu asked as if it were absurd.
“Why are you asking me that?”
“What?”
“Think about it. Some bastard tried to punch me. But I dodged, right? Then do we say, since none of us got hurt, let’s end it nice and clean right here? Would you do that? I wouldn’t. I’d beat him half to death. I’d make sure he could never raise his head a second time. That’s the only way he won’t dare lift his damn head again.”
“Hahahaha. Are you in high school?”
Hearing my words, Hwang Onyu burst into a hearty laugh.
Enough to make me feel embarrassed.
“What?”
Hwang Onyu spoke calmly, as if he were teaching me.
“That’s something you do when you’re a hot-blooded high schooler. Countries don’t act that way with each other.”
Hwang Onyu paused briefly, then continued.
“In diplomacy, there are conventions. You don’t get to do whatever you want just because you want to. Diplomacy is a place where tremendous meaning is attached to a single remark, one word, even one gift. I’m saying you can’t act according to your temper just because you feel offended. If everyone refuted and attacked every time they were upset, the whole world would be at war every day.”
“So you just endure it?”
I don’t know anything about diplomacy.
But I know this isn’t right.
“It’s not enduring it. It’s adjusting appropriately. Finding balance.”
I was disappointed by Hwang Onyu’s answer.
Honestly, I was very disappointed.
Extremely.
To think I had gone all the way to the Philippines to help a guy like this.
I felt pathetic.
Honestly, I had convinced myself that I wasn’t helping Team Leader Hwang Onyu,
but the Republic of Korea.
Even so, it made me think once again about whether there was another way.
I didn’t know if there was,
but at the very least, it was clear that the method Hwang Onyu had in mind didn’t match mine.
So I asked again.
“The Japanese bastards do whatever they want, though? They keep poking at us when we did nothing wrong. Japan can do it, but we can’t?”
“…That’s…”
Hwang Onyu couldn’t answer.
“Forget it.”
When I spoke as if I had given up,
as if none of it mattered anymore, Hwang Onyu tried to appease me.
“What now? And stop taking this out on me. I’m not the Minister of Foreign Affairs. How am I supposed to decide something like that? I’m just a low-level civil servant. I don’t have decision-making authority. I’m telling you, I’m just a low-level guy who gathers data.”
Hwang Onyu started making excuses.
“Got it. I understand.”
I decided to understand Hwang Onyu’s excuses.
If that was the extent of his capacity, what could I do?
“Thanks for understanding.”
“A low-level civil servant wouldn’t need something like this, then.”
I took a memory card out of my pocket and showed it to Team Leader Hwang Onyu.
Team Leader Hwang Onyu looked at the memory card with an expression that said, What is that?
Not knowing what I had taken out, he just stared blankly.
“If you’re going to respond like that, you won’t need this. I think it’d be better to just get your ass beaten.”
“What is that?”
“This? The thing you were looking for so desperately.”
In that instant, Hwang Onyu’s eyes changed.
It seemed he had realized what was inside the memory card.
“No… no way.”
“That’s right. The development log for Project Mangwol.”
Hwang Onyu’s eyes widened.
“How do you have that?”
“Is that important? What’s important is that I have it.”
“As expected. You’re the best. Thank you.”
“For what?”
Hwang Onyu’s face brightened.
He looked as if every problem had been solved.
“With this, we can cleanly resolve the radar issue…”
As he spoke, Hwang Onyu saw the expression on Inbae’s face across from him and stopped mid-sentence.
His expression was extremely bad.
Hwang Onyu quickly replayed the conversation in his head.
Only then did he realize what he himself had said.
He remembered saying that they would use the development log to resolve only this situation and end it there.
That even though the other side had attacked, they would merely dodge.
Inbae had not liked that.
He had wanted to fight.
Since they had been hit once,
he had said they should hit back at least once too.
Emotionally, Hwang Onyu understood,
but he couldn’t agree.
Issues between nations were not something you could handle however you pleased.
On top of that, Hwang Onyu was a team leader at the NIS.
He was not in a position to decide such things.
He had only explained the general direction of the government,
but Inbae seemed to have been deeply disappointed by that answer.
If he followed his heart, Hwang Onyu wanted to clash head-on like Inbae too,
but then they would lose more than they gained.
Resolving it with as little trouble as possible was best.
That was what he had been taught.
Hwang Onyu decided to try persuading Inbae.
“I understand that you’re angry, but leave that to me. I’ll try to resolve it properly.”
“I don’t trust you.”
“What?”
“I said I’m not giving it to you. I can’t, because I don’t trust you.”
“What’s all this talk about trust? The country is in crisis. We need to resolve it quickly.”
“You said you were just going to use this to handle the radar matter and end it, didn’t you? I can’t let such valuable material be used like that, can I?”
“Then?”
“I don’t know! I said I don’t know. But I still don’t think that’s it.”
“Haa. Isn’t that unreasonable? You don’t even know what should be done, and yet you’re digging your heels in like this?”
“Fuck, why do I have to know that? Am I the civil servant? You’re the civil servant. Isn’t this the kind of thing you get paid with tax money to do?”
I had been holding it in, but I exploded.
I didn’t know whether I was frustrated with Hwang Onyu or with the Republic of Korea, but in any case, I didn’t like it.
“Nothing’s changed from last time, has it? With Shin Junggi too, after I found him for you, you talked like it was only natural that I’d bring him in. This time is the same. I went through all sorts of channels to get this material with great difficulty, and now you’re telling me to hand it over? Does that make any damn sense? Is this all the NIS amounts to?”
Before I knew it, my voice had grown louder.
I was worked up.
“Calm down a little. Fine, first of all, I’m sorry. It’s because I don’t have the authority. If you give me the material, I’ll appeal as strongly as I can. I mean it.”
“Get lost.”
Hwang Onyu looked at me.
I took a breath to steady myself.
“I don’t know. I don’t know how diplomacy works, what meaning a gift carries, or what nuance a word contains. But I’m not good-natured enough to send off a bastard who picks a fight with me by talking nicely to him. At the very least, if a bastard throws a punch, I throw one back. That’s my way.”
Hwang Onyu spoke in a gentle voice, as if trying to persuade me.
“Still… shouldn’t we resolve the problem first?”
That pissed me off even more.
What had he been listening to all this time?
“I’m asking if that’s my problem. Huh? Tell me. Stop pushing your problem onto me. I’m holding myself back a lot even now.”
Hwang Onyu’s mouth clamped shut.
“When you’ve decided how to use this material, come back then.”
“……”
“Team Leader Hwang. Don’t cling here. Go and make a proper plan. If you bring me some half-baked plan, I won’t give you the material. Figure out how to attack Japan with this, how to wound them, and come back with a good operation. I’ll decide after seeing that. Team Leader.”
Hwang Onyu seemed to have a lot to say, but couldn’t say it.
“For reference, if you hit half-heartedly with something like this, you’ll get hit back several times harder. Bring me something strong enough to knock them out in one blow. Otherwise, it’d be better to pretend there is no material and just get beaten.”
Hwang Onyu lowered his head and said nothing.
“Then I’ll see you then.”
I got up from my seat without any lingering attachment.
I put the memory card safely into my inventory.
******
“Daehun, what are you doing this weekend?”
“I’m going to catch up on webtoons. I’ve been busy lately, so I haven’t been able to properly read the ones that came out.”
Daehun’s answer left me dumbfounded.
Every time I came to the office, he had been sitting on the sofa reading webtoons.
And yet he still needed to binge-read webtoons over the weekend?
Was that something a guy who was the chairman of a group should be saying?
Daehun, at least you should be keeping your head on straight.
If everyone else is playing around and you play along too…
No, now that I thought about it, Daehun had been playing around consistently from beginning to end.
He said patting people on the butt was his job.
But what was strange was,
even when Daehun played around, Daeyeon Development continued to soar.
For starters, it was bringing in enormous money from the Philippines.
With Patrick’s help, they had won almost every construction project in Zamboanga,
and now they were expanding that range to the entire Philippines.
The liquor business and establishments they had been running since the days of the Daehun faction generated cash.
The entertainment business wasn’t bad either.
Every business was cruising along smoothly.
On top of that, unlike other organizations, the loyalty of the members was extraordinary.
Part of it was probably because employee benefits were good,
but I think the training center played a big role.
Whenever the guys came back from there, they all changed.
Their loyalty maxed out.
Anyway.
I was going to ask Daehun to do a new job with me?
No, to help me out a bit, but I wasn’t sure if it would work.
Once I was actually standing in front of Daehun, I hesitated.
“What is it? Why are you hesitating like this, unlike you, Alex?”
“No… I just didn’t want to interrupt you while you were reading webtoons.”
“Haa… What is it? Tell me.”
Daehun sighed and put down his phone.
I thought about it for a moment, then spoke.
“No, I was just going to say that if you don’t have anything special going on this weekend, let’s go to Japan.”
“Japan?”
His reaction said it was unexpected.
“Yeah. Japan.”
“Why are you hesitating so much over something like that? If you just say it, we’ll go.”
“Thanks.”
“But why Japan? To eat udon? Sushi? Or is there something else?”
Daehun looked at me with curious eyes as he asked.
“No. To meet yakuza.”
“Cough. What?”
Daehun was startled and—
.
.
.
Tap tap tap tap tap tap.
Daehun, sitting in the private jet, kept shaking his leg.
“Stop shaking your leg.”
“Aren’t you nervous?”
“I’m not. Not at all.”
“…How can you not be nervous? All the Japanese yakuza are gathering.”
“If the yakuza are gathering, why are you the one getting nervous? The yakuza should be nervous.”
“When all those yakuza are gathered, how rough do you think the atmosphere will be? If something goes wrong, we’ll get stabbed.”
“The roughest-looking thing here is your face. Don’t worry. I’ll protect you.”
“Heh heh heh. Really?”
At the words that I would protect him, Daehun seemed pleased and grinned.
After a brief silence, Daehun asked.
“But will it work?”
“Well. We’ve got nothing to lose, don’t we? We have to try.”
.
.
.
And so we arrived at the appointed place.
It was an old building standing in the middle of Tokyo.
Even its exterior gave off a menacing air.
The entrance was already packed with people.
One glance and you could tell they were yakuza.
Black suits, harsh faces.
Without a word, they were scanning the surroundings.
At their waists hung objects that looked like sashimi knives.
We headed straight toward the building the yakuza were guarding.
We weren’t intimidated.
We, too, had a considerable number of people.
The Obsidian Unit had come with us.
A few men from the Daehun faction had accompanied us as well.
When we appeared, the yakuza grew noisy.
With such a large group suddenly appearing, they had no choice but to be surprised.
As we tried to enter the building as we were,
a yakuza tried to block our path.
But the man who seemed to be the highest-ranking shook his head.
Then he approached us.
“Are you the people who came from Korea?”
“That’s right.”
“I will escort you.”
He guided us politely.
Pretending to be calm, we followed his guidance into the building.
Only Daehun and I were allowed inside.
The rest had to stay outside the building like the other yakuza.
I understood why there were so many yakuza at the entrance.
We took the elevator up to the top floor of the building.
As the numbers on the elevator changed and we climbed higher and higher,
my heart seemed to pound along with them.
Honestly, I was a little scared.
Ding.
The elevator stopped, and when the doors opened, a short hallway appeared.
At the end of that hallway was a single door.
The door opened.
Inside, all the bosses of Japan’s yakuza had gathered.