The outskirts of Zurich.
Eduardo, having returned to the winery,
carefully headed underground.
When he opened the thick iron door and stepped inside,
Rodrigo was sitting on the sofa.
He held a cigar in one hand,
seeming deep in thought about something.
The moment Eduardo saw Rodrigo,
it felt as if his breath stopped, but he soon walked inside naturally, as if nothing was wrong.
“Did the meeting go well?”
Rodrigo, having noticed Eduardo, asked lightly.
“What? ...Yes. Yes, yes. It went well.”
A brief silence.
Rodrigo’s brow narrowed.
Something was strange.
Given Eduardo’s personality,
if the negotiations had gone well, he would already be babbling on and on.
Smiling,
embellishing every detail,
boasting as if he had accomplished something incredible.
But right now...
He was quiet.
And he was hiding something.
Rodrigo slowly straightened his back from the sofa.
“Come here. Sit down.”
A low voice.
Eduardo sat in the seat across from him.
Rodrigo flicked ash into the ashtray and said,
“Tell me everything. Not a single thing left out—what happened there, what expressions he made.”
Under Rodrigo’s sharp gaze,
Eduardo swallowed dryly.
“It was nothing much. First of all... he was incredibly rude.”
Eduardo spoke while avoiding his eyes.
Rodrigo said nothing and simply stared at Eduardo.
That silence pressured Eduardo even more.
Unable to withstand that gaze, Eduardo continued.
“Ahem. As soon as he arrived, he asked why I’d called him, said he’d go home if I had nothing to say. So I said we’d be working together, and I’d called him to at least have a meal. Wouldn’t it be good to get closer? Then he snapped back, asking why personal ties were needed for work.”
“And?”
“I responded appropriately. I said personal ties weren’t necessary for work. But the food there was good, so he should at least eat before leaving. Then I casually brought up the new business.”
“His reaction?”
“He was cautious, but he showed interest.”
“And?”
“I kept tempting him. I told him that if he worked with our side, things would move much faster and more stably than working with Mateo. And I said we would personally reward the agent as well. That if there was anything he wanted, we’d accommodate him.”
“Mm...”
Having heard that much, Rodrigo nodded.
It was not as bad as he had expected.
Rather, it had gone well.
The agent had no choice but to react sharply,
and Eduardo had handled it decently enough.
If he showed interest,
then they had planted a favorable image.
That alone was excellent.
“Was there anything else?”
He asked, just in case.
At that moment.
Eduardo’s eyes wavered.
“He asked a few things.”
“What did he ask?”
“Numbers. He said he needed to know how many of ours were inside so he could report to his superiors. He asked for those numbers.”
Silence.
“And what did you say?”
Rodrigo’s voice dropped.
“I said roughly ten among the executives are on our side. That we’re currently recruiting more, so it could go up to fifteen... That the security team, operations team, logistics, and intelligence team are on our side, so carrying out the operation would be... no... problem...”
Eduardo’s words grew slower and fainter.
Thud.
Rodrigo crushed the cigar in his hand into the ashtray.
Rodrigo’s hand stopped.
Only then did Rodrigo understand exactly what had been bothering him.
‘He got cleaned out.’
It had not been a negotiation, but an interrogation.
Eduardo, who had not been prepared,
had given up everything without the slightest resistance.
Eduardo could not raise his head.
He knew it too.
He knew he had crossed the line.
But Rodrigo did not get angry.
He was burning inside, but he barely held it back.
For Eduardo, there had probably been no helping it.
Eduardo was the one who had suggested the meeting, who had set the stage.
He would never have imagined that the other side would turn the tables on him.
Eduardo had been caught completely defenseless.
Rodrigo’s mind worked quickly.
‘There’s nothing to gain from berating Eduardo here and now.’
Eduardo was a colleague who had been with him for a long time.
And he was one of Parallax’s executives.
There was nothing good about shaking up someone on his own side here.
Right now, they were in a situation where they needed every hand they could get.
They needed even one more person on their side.
There was no need to get angry and drive him out.
Cutting him loose would only be a greater loss.
It was frustrating, but there was no choice.
He had to accept it.
He asked in case anything had been left out.
“Is that all? Did you mention the executives’ names too?”
“No. I didn’t give any names. What I told you is everything.”
That was at least a relief.
He did not know how the Alex Group would use this information,
whether they had truly asked because they intended to side with Rodrigo,
or whether they meant to pass it on to Mateo,
or whether they had simply been probing for information, just as it seemed.
But if no names had come out,
there was still room to maneuver.
What had already been leaked was leaked.
There was no point dwelling on it.
What mattered was what came next.
“Anything else unusual?”
“No.”
Eduardo answered shortly.
Eduardo did not mention that Alex’s agent had told him to call him “Alex.”
It was not that he was trying to hide it.
He simply thought it was unimportant.
He had brushed it off as a joke.
After briefly organizing his thoughts, Rodrigo gave an order.
“We speed things up.”
“What?”
“They may notice. There’s no time to hesitate. Call Carlos. And get the boys in South America ready.”
Perhaps flustered by the sudden turn of events,
Eduardo merely stared at Rodrigo.
But Rodrigo seemed to have already made up his mind.
“From now on, whoever strikes first wins.”
*******
Zamboanga.
Unity Town.
It was already night when I arrived.
It was too late, so I had planned to go straight to my lodging,
but on the way, I saw that the lights were still on in Sin Junggi’s lab.
I hesitated for a moment, then turned my steps.
I felt that, at the very least, I had to tell Sin Junggi the situation in person.
Knock, knock.
I knocked and opened the door.
Sin Junggi was sitting in the same spot as always.
A simulation was running on the monitor,
and on the desk, blueprints, shell casings, and disassembled parts lay scattered in a mess.
His hands were busily moving.
Sin Junggi turned his head with slow, unfocused eyes and recognized me.
“You’re here?”
“Yeah. Have you been well?”
A dry and awkward greeting passed between us.
I steadied my breathing once and spoke to Sin Junggi.
“Adrian is dead. Somewhere underground in Luxembourg.”
Sin Junggi’s hands, which had been moving nonstop, came to a halt.
The room fell silent.
Only the sound of a fan turning, whether from the refrigerator or the computer, could be heard.
Sin Junggi said nothing,
but his mind seemed to be interpreting the information he had just received.
And soon, his hands began moving again.
“...So?”
“It means it’s over. You can let it go.”
I spoke as gently as I could.
As if comforting Sin Junggi.
But.
Sin Junggi seemed to think differently.
“Was revenge complete as long as Adrian died?”
His voice was low.
My consolation did not seem to help Sin Junggi much.
“Wouldn’t that be enough? At least we found and killed the bastard who gave the order. And we’re going to take over Parallax too. There’s nothing left for Parallax.”
Sin Junggi looked at me once.
His gaze was far too fierce.
“I guess our thoughts are very different. I don’t think that way.”
“What?”
“I don’t think Dennis will be able to rest in peace with just that.”
“What are you talking about?”
My voice rose.
Honestly, it was a reaction I had never expected.
“I mean exactly what I said. Dennis’s revenge won’t be complete just because Adrian is dead.”
“Adrian is dead, and we’re taking Parallax with our own hands. What revenge could be more perfect than that?”
I spoke as if pressing him.
This much was enough.
“......”
But Sin Junggi said nothing.
“Let’s wrap this matter up here. I think it’s right to end it here.”
A brief silence continued.
I thought the conversation was over.
I thought Sin Junggi had accepted it.
So I was about to leave, when I heard Sin Junggi’s voice.
“Over? You’re ending it like this? Like this? Like it was nothing?”
Sin Junggi, who had only been sitting there, stood up.
The sound of the chair scraping against the floor grated irritably.
Sin Junggi walked toward me.
He looked straight into my eyes and spoke.
“Dennis... Was Dennis someone so insignificant to you that it would all be over if you killed one Adrian?”
Sin Junggi growled into my ear.
It was not anger.
It was longing.
I pretended not to know that Sin Junggi.
I forced myself to come up with an excuse.
“This is enough revenge. If we keep going, there will only be greater damage. So it’s right to stop here.”
“Enough? Who says it’s enough?”
Sin Junggi shouted.
I thought Sin Junggi was too agitated.
To calm him down, I called his name.
“Sin Junggi!!”
But he did not calm down at all.
“We should kill them all. The bastards under him. The bastards beside him, behind him, even the bastards who so much as met his face—we should kill every last one of them. We should make sure nothing remains in any place those bastards stayed. That’s revenge. You killed one Adrian, and now you want to end it? Does that make any sense? At this rate, I won’t even be able to face Dennis after I die.”
Sin Junggi howled.
He was pouring out emotions that had been knotted inside him.
Sin Junggi was not wrong.
It was just that his direction was a little different from mine.
Sin Junggi wanted to erase everything about Parallax.
He did not want its name, its traces, or even its smell to remain.
To Sin Junggi, that was revenge.
But my thoughts were also different from Sin Junggi’s.
If we continued taking revenge, it was only natural that there would be casualties,
and all the plans we had made to swallow Parallax would come to nothing.
It did not matter if we did not take Parallax.
But the reason we were trying to take Parallax was not because we needed Parallax’s funds or influence.
It was to eliminate a potential danger.
If Parallax remained, it would threaten us at any time.
It would covet Fandom Grid and attack us to devour the Asian market.
I was trying to take control of Parallax to avoid needless conflict
and block off risks.
If we became one company, at the very least, there would be no reason to point guns at each other.
But Sin Junggi did not seem to like that.
He seemed to believe that erasing everything bearing the name Parallax was revenge.
“We have to bring Parallax under us. Only then can we prevent greater damage. That’s all.”
“You mean it’ll bring in money, not prevent damage.”
Sin Junggi spoke mockingly.
“I’m telling you, that’s not it. If Parallax remains, they’ll attack again someday. I just want to stop that.”
“Is that revenge? ...That isn’t revenge. That’s business.”
At Sin Junggi’s words, I could not deny it.
Whether I had wanted it or not,
in the end, this was becoming business.
“It has become business, but this isn’t for making money. What Dennis wanted was for us to survive. Not war.”
Sin Junggi glared at me.
His gaze was too sharp.
It felt as if his eyes had become blades, cutting me apart.
“How do you know what Dennis wanted?”
I could not answer.
Sin Junggi roughly pulled the USB out of the computer.
And holding it, he said,
“What Dennis wants is for Parallax to disappear.”
“...Then it won’t end. The war will keep going.”
“Then we keep going.”
“If we keep going... more people will die.”
“I don’t care.”
“I just want to prevent greater damage.”
“And I just want to avenge Dennis.”
Our conversation had no end.
We were merely running endlessly in different directions.
“Please... don’t do this.”
“...Is that an order?”
I did not answer.
No, I could not answer.
“I’ll take care of Dennis’s revenge myself. Don’t concern yourself with it. This is my war.”
Sin Junggi gripped the USB tightly in his hand.
Sin Junggi walked toward the door.
Before opening it, he stopped for a moment.
“Thank you for everything until now. I mean that sincerely.”
Sin Junggi spoke without looking back.
Bang.
And then he opened the door and left.