“Today’s training will focus mainly on hand-to-hand drills for subduing an opponent. You’re ready, right?”
“Yes.”
Our team had gathered in the training hall inside the training center.
“First, Donghyeon and Munyong. You two start.”
At the team leader’s words, Assistant Manager Jeong Donghyeon and Park Munyong stood up first.
As if they were used to this sort of practice, the two exchanged a few light attacks.
The attacks were honest, and the defenses were textbook as well.
Watching from the side, it looked almost like a prearranged sparring match.
There were no lethal attacks,
and since there were no real attacks, there was no damage either.
After five minutes, the team leader called a stop.
To me, it had been a sparring match as light as a stroll,
but both their faces were covered in sweat.
Their breathing had grown ragged.
“Next, Inbae and Jibin. You two try.”
The moment my name and Manager An Jibin’s were called, the air in the training hall changed.
It grew sharp and tense.
.
.
.
I don’t like him.
Gong Inbae, was it?
Twenty-four?
Fuck, what was I doing at that age?
I don’t think I’d even been discharged from the army yet.
No, was it right after I got out?
What does that matter?
What matters is that he’s a damn baby.
Some clueless little bastard parachutes in and struts around as vice team leader? It makes me sick to look at him.
Come to think of it, he is a strange one.
He doesn’t even have a house, so he lives in the company dormitory,
and he doesn’t have a car, so he rides the bus.
But he goes around wearing Dior.
What pisses me off even more is that he isn’t wearing those clothes to show off.
He really wore them like work clothes throughout the entire Macau project,
with no reluctance at all about them getting wrinkled or dirty.
And they suited him so damn well that I even thought I should buy a Dior outfit later...
No, that’s not it.
Anyway, the vice team leader position was mine.
I spent four years in Alpha Team alone.
I came into Alpha Team and had defended Alpha Team ever since.
I did all of Alpha Team’s dirty work.
So naturally, when the vice team leader spot opened up, I should have been the one to become vice team leader.
Not that baby.
Maybe the team leader noticed how I felt, because he gave me this chance.
A chance to put that little brat on the floor and grind him into it.
We’re in training.
Don’t blame me if one of your bones breaks.
Unfortunate accidents like that happen during training all the time.
I’m not saying this to brag, but
I’m 180 centimeters tall and weigh 100 kilos.
Meaning my physique isn’t one that loses out anywhere.
This overwhelming physique of mine was already complete back in high school.
That was why nobody picked fights with me.
And the occasional bastards who did got introduced to the asphalt.
Based on my physicality, I went on to a sports college,
and learned MMA and jiu-jitsu as hobbies.
Even within our team, I’m undisputed number one when it comes to fighting.
If I get my hands on you, you’re finished.
The team leader throwing Gong Inbae to me
means he wants me to chew him up nice and slow.
‘Thank you for the meal.’
.
.
.
What is with this bastard?
His eyes have gone funny.
The moment the sparring started, he charged at me with some weird look in his eyes.
It was like he wasn’t looking at me, but at something behind me.
For a second, I thought he was seeing a ghost and got startled.
I almost paid him a fortune-telling fee.
Whatever he wanted to show off, his whole body was full of tension.
That’s not good.
If you put that much strength into your body, you can’t strike hard.
His punches were so honest they were stiff, and I dodged them in textbook fashion, just like I’d seen in the previous round.
Nice.
But Manager An Jibin didn’t seem satisfied.
He attacked even more roughly, recklessly unleashing blows.
He used his fists, then his feet,
and grappling techniques came out too.
There were some attacks that were fresher than I’d expected.
But none of those attacks managed to shock me.
Honest attacks, too much tension,
and visible routes were technical problems.
There was a more fundamental problem.
Intent.
There was no intent in Manager An Jibin’s attacks.
There was no intent that said, ‘I’m going to kill this bastard.’
They were filled only with the bluff of wanting to show something off.
That was why I couldn’t be caught by those attacks.
We are not MMA, UFC, or WWE fighters.
We are bodyguards.
We are people responsible for our clients’ personal safety and security.
If I’m engaged in hand-to-hand combat with someone for a long time, then there’s a high chance our client is trembling in fear for that entire time.
So we have to subdue the opponent as quickly and forcefully as possible.
But An Jibin’s attacks weren’t like that.
He was just trying to show off.
Trying to show how good he was at jiu-jitsu and MMA.
Then I should show something too.
How many rebels I subdued on the battlefield.
The best, fastest, and easiest method would be to pull out a handgun,
but one cannot draw a gun during practice.
An Jibin came in, aiming for my collar.
Since the fists he kept throwing hadn’t landed on me,
it seemed he had switched events from striking to ground fighting.
His hand kept flicking out, lightly, repeatedly, as he tried to grab my collar.
But that hand.
If you failed to grab, weren’t you supposed to bring it back inside your guard?
Was it really okay to leave it hanging there so awkwardly?
Once again, the hand he extended toward my collar missed,
and as it floated in the air,
I instead charged toward An Jibin’s body.
As if he had never expected this action from me at all,
An Jibin panicked.
Don’t just panic, defend yourself.
Or attack.
I trapped An Jibin’s arm, which was hanging in the air, under my right armpit,
and with my forearm, lifted An Jibin’s shoulder joint.
Crack.
His shoulder had probably popped out.
He wouldn’t be able to use his right arm properly.
In that state, I struck An Jibin’s calf, and he fell backward hard.
Thud.
I drove my fist toward An Jibin’s fallen face.
Whack!
I stopped before hitting him.
An Jibin’s face was filled with shock and fear.
With an expression of disbelief, he looked back and forth between my fist stopped in midair and my face.
The team leader looked very surprised as well,
and the other team members watched me with expressions of astonishment.
He had been Alpha Team’s number one fighter.
It seemed they had never imagined he would be subdued this easily.
“Aaaah—”
Only after hearing An Jibin’s groan did An Jibin’s lackeys snap back to their senses
and rush to his side to check his condition.
“Hey, don’t touch me, it hurts.”
“I said it hurts.”
An Jibin couldn’t use his right shoulder.
Of course. His arm was dislocated, so obviously he couldn’t use it.
Everyone was at a loss, simply stamping their feet in panic.
They said he needed to go to the hospital and that they’d start the car, so I said,
“You can’t set an arm back in?”
No one said anything.
I quietly went over beside An Jibin and put his arm back in.
Painfully as hell.
“Aaaaaaaargh~~~~”
Only An Jibin’s scream filled the training center.
*********
Macau The Golden Lotus.
It was the club where Gong Inbae had met Lafei.
Unlike usual, the club was overflowing with tension.
The reason was simple: today was the day of the decisive battle.
“Are you ready?”
“Yes!!!”
“We are the masters of Macau. Not the bastards who came over from Hong Kong, nor the bastards who crawled in from China. Those bastards have no right to become the masters of Macau. Only we, born and raised in Macau, can become the true masters of Macau.”
“That’s right.”
“Today is the day we take Macau. If we succeed today, Macau becomes ours. Don’t get hurt. Let’s see each other alive.”
“Yes!!!!”
Kaihong shouted loudly,
and the owner of The Golden Lotus—
no, the leader of the Golden Lotus Gang, Lafei, watched the scene with a satisfied expression.
.
.
.
The Golden Lotus Gang.
It was one of the largest criminal organizations in Macau.
But its beginning had been ordinary.
It had started as a gathering of Macau people.
Laborers working at the harbor,
cleaners working in casinos,
truck drivers,
self-employed merchants,
and even gangsters who ran gambling dens had joined the Golden Lotus Gang.
They had lived while giving help to one another and receiving it in return.
In truth, aside from the Golden Lotus Gang, there had been dozens of such gatherings.
Those gatherings—organizations—competed and fought among themselves,
but they all shared the common point of being Macau people.
However, after Macau was returned to mainland China in 1999, many things changed.
Large casinos began to enter.
Money began to circulate on the small island of Macau.
And once money began to circulate in Macau, people began to enter from all over.
Especially competitors.
Gangsters backed by the Chinese Communist Party entered Macau from mainland China.
They grew terrifyingly fast with their enormous numbers, vast financial power, and connections to those in power.
Many also came over to Macau from Hong Kong.
They had international smuggling routes.
Their financial power was strong too.
The countless organizations that Macau natives had created vanished in an instant and lost their places.
In order to protect themselves, many gatherings had no choice but to join forces.
The name of that alliance was the Golden Lotus Gang, the Golden Lotus.
The Golden Lotus Gang worked to protect Macau’s interests,
but reality was not easy.
The people from the mainland obstructed the Golden Lotus Gang through public authority,
and the people from Hong Kong wiped out the Golden Lotus Gang’s smuggling routes.
A crisis came.
Many members left the Golden Lotus Gang and crossed over to Hong Kong or the mainland side.
But they could not collapse like this.
They worked to reclaim the interests that had been stolen from them.
Organizations went to war, fought, and inflicted damage on one another.
But the more they did, the greater the Golden Lotus Gang’s losses became.
Even so, they could not stop fighting.
Then one day, they attacked the base of a Hong Kong faction to wage war.
The enemy was holding guns, not knives.
They couldn’t even swing their blades properly once and had no choice but to flee.
After that, the Golden Lotus Gang searched high and low to acquire guns, but every attempt failed.
Strangely, at the final stage of bringing them in, they were caught by customs or some problem arose.
There was clearly a force interfering.
At this rate, the Golden Lotus Gang would have no choice but to disappear.
In front of guns, no courage held any meaning.
When their worries were at their peak, Candyboy came to them.
With guns.
Not just a few handguns.
He handed them rifles.
He also gave them plenty of magazines and bullets.
That amount was difficult to obtain,
and bringing it into Macau was even, even harder.
And yet he sold those guns, which must have been difficult to bring in, at an extremely economical price.
As if he had no lingering attachment to them at all.
Lafei was curious.
Curious about who that man was.
Curious about who Candyboy was.
But digging into someone’s background was something only amateurs did.
If he got caught, it would only sour the relationship.
He had to wait.
He had to get to know him slowly.
Without asking, he had to wait until the man told him himself.
If he waited, the time would come.
He didn’t know what kind of person Candyboy was,
but one thing was certain: he was someone they had to keep close for a very, very long time.
Lafei had a feeling that he was someone absolutely necessary.
That was why he gave him the black card, the highest tier at Golden Lotus.
With the desire to become partners.
From now on, the Golden Lotus Gang would become the greatest organization in Macau.
Not just in Macau, but a global organization.
For that to happen, cooperation with Candyboy was essential.
Today was the day that plan began.
Tonight was the night they would take Macau.
“Let’s go!!!!!!”
*******
“This project has been decided.”
“What? Already?”
“Isn’t it too soon?”
“The last project was short.”
“But we suffered a ton. We had to take drug tests, and we went through emotional stress too.”
“Enough. This project is an idol group...”
“Whoa~~”
“Oho~~”
“We’re finally getting to do idol security too.”
“You’re happy because it’s idol security?”
“Of course. We’re really happy.”
“But idol security is extremely tough. First of all, the fans are not the enemy. You have to be kind to the fans too. But there will be fans who keep crossing the line. If you respond irritably, you’ll be on YouTube’s main page in no time.”
“Don’t worry. Isn’t that our specialty?”
“The schedule will be packed, and there are a lot of members, so it’ll be hard to take care of them all. You still like it?”
“Yes, we do.”
The atmosphere of the team meeting was good.
The team leader gave a brief briefing,
I listened,
and the lackeys cheered.
Only An Jibin glared at me with a displeased expression.