7. Why Did You Come Looking for Me?
“Uuunngh….”
How long had he been unconscious?
Jang Wanghyeong, waking up with a low groan, scrunched his face at the terrible pain throbbing throughout his entire body.
The pain radiating from his broken right arm in particular was nearly unbearable.
“Hyung-nim. Are you alright?”
When he turned his head at the voice beside him, he saw Lee Chungil and three subordinates sitting on the cold cement floor in a wretched state.
Their arms, wrenched behind their backs, were bound tightly with cable ties so they couldn’t break free no matter how hard they struggled.
Broken windows and dilapidated desks.
With cobwebs hanging here and there and piles of abandoned trash, it looked like an old rural school that had been abandoned and unused for a very long time.
“Where is this?”
“I think it’s somewhere in Gyeonggi-do, but that bastard drugged us with some strange medicine and knocked us out, so I don’t know exactly where,” answered Lee Chungil, his face covered in bruises.
Because the beaten areas were swollen and puffy, his pronunciation was as unclear as if he were speaking with a ball in his mouth.
“Drugs?”
No wonder he had thought he’d been unconscious for too long. As expected, the bastard had done something strange.
The fighting skill to subdue his men in an instant.
And the way he handled the aftermath without hesitation—it was clear he was no ordinary man.
Moreover, Jang Wanghyeong himself was not someone who would lose a fistfight anywhere, yet he had been helplessly beaten.
“I thought he was some nobody without any background, but that wasn’t the case.”
He had laughed at the kids at CEO Jeong’s office, calling them retards for being beaten by one guy, but there had actually been good reason for that.
Just then, he heard footsteps thudding down the hallway.
“It must be him.”
When Lee Chungil spoke in a tense voice, Jang Wanghyeong looked toward the door with a stiff face.
The moment the air grew taut with tension, Minseong revealed himself.
Still wearing the same tracksuit he’d had on in the parking lot, Minseong slightly raised his eyebrows at Jang Wanghyeong’s fiercely glaring gaze.
“Looks like you’re awake now.”
“What the hell is your identity?”
“That’s what I’d like to know.”
Unlike Jang Wanghyeong, who was hunched over with tension, Minseong was perfectly composed.
He even wore a relaxed smile at the corners of his mouth, so much so that his attitude—so ill-suited to the place and situation—sent chills down one’s spine.
“Do you know who I am!”
Jang Wanghyeong deliberately raised his voice, as if trying to erase the chilling feeling he had felt for a fleeting instant.
“You’re making a big mistake right now.”
He bared his teeth and issued a threatening warning, but Minseong looked at him indifferently.
“Oh, so scary.”
Then, walking right up, Minseong suddenly struck his cheek hard.
“Ugh!”
“It seems you still haven’t grasped the situation….”
Minseong grabbed Jang Wanghyeong’s hair with one hand and looked down at him with cold eyes.
“You lot are the ones who should be worried. Know why? Because I’m going to make you pay dearly for messing with me.”
He hadn’t shouted; he had merely spoken calmly, yet an indescribable sense of pressure hung in the air.
Those were the eyes of a savage predator facing its prey.
Seeing the flames flickering within that silence, Jang Wanghyeong unknowingly swallowed his dry saliva with a gulp.
*He’s dangerous.*
An instinctive sense of crisis was sending out urgent warnings.
Jang Wanghyeong trembled with an ominous premonition that he might have laid a hand on someone he absolutely should not have touched.
“Before that, answer my questions honestly. Speak in a way that makes me feel a little merciful.”
Perhaps because of the last shred of pride he had left.
Jang Wanghyeong spat out blood-stained saliva and contorted his face.
“Fuck. Eat shit.”
Then Minseong, as if he had been waiting, raised one foot and firmly stomped on Jang Wanghyeong’s broken right arm.
“Kuaaaack!”
Jang Wanghyeong let out a scream so loud it seemed the classroom would shake from the extreme pain.
Slowly lifting his foot, Minseong fetched a long sledgehammer that had been leaning against one of the walls.
The heavily rusted sledgehammer scraped against the cement floor, producing a rough metallic sound.
The metallic sound echoing eerily in the empty classroom had the effect of further stoking the men’s fear.
With each step Minseong took, fear gradually seeped into the expressions of Jang Wanghyeong and the subordinates behind him.
“Well, I suppose you don’t necessarily have to answer.”
Minseong looked down at Jang Wanghyeong, drenched in cold sweat, with an expressionless face.
“But you’ll have to spend the rest of your life as a disabled person, I suppose.”
*Surely you were prepared for that much?*
Minseong tapped Jang Wanghyeong’s leg with the sledgehammer.
“Why did you try to take me?”
Jang Wanghyeong looked up at Minseong with bloodshot eyes.
“You think I’ll surrender to such threats!”
“So you have no intention of answering?”
“That’s right, you bastard!”
“You’ve got some loyalty for someone like you.”
Speaking dryly, Minseong forcibly stood Jang Wanghyeong up, his arms still bound.
“W-what. What are you trying to do, you bastard!”
“Didn’t I tell you? If you don’t want to answer, you’ll have to live as a disabled person.”
Minseong put his arm around Jang Wanghyeong’s neck and dragged him along.
The sledgehammer in his other hand continued to scrape the floor with a spine-chilling sound.
“Let go of me!”
Jang Wanghyeong struggled violently in desperation, but with his body bound, he couldn’t match Minseong’s strength.
“H-hyung-nim!”
“You bastard! Stop!”
Lee Chungil and the subordinates shouted wildly, but Minseong didn’t even pretend to listen.
When Minseong finally dragged Jang Wanghyeong out of the classroom, anxiety settled on the faces of those who remained.
“Is he really going to smash Hyung-nim’s knees?”
“H-he’s crazy, isn’t he?”
Unable to hide his anxious expression, Lee Chungil kept glancing toward the door.
*Thud!!*
“Aaaaack!!”
Along with the sound of the sledgehammer coming down, a terrible scream was heard.
“Uaaack! Aaack!!”
The scream did not end with just one blow.
Screams mixed with sobs, as if he were being tortured, shook the air several times.
“H-hiik.”
“N-no way, he really….”
The blood drained from Lee Chungil and the men’s faces.
They looked at each other with pale faces, convinced that the crazy bastard had smashed Jang Wanghyeong’s knees to pieces.
And not long after, Minseong returned to the classroom.
Thick blood was stuck to the sledgehammer he dragged in one hand.
Seeing that, Lee Chungil and the men all stared at Minseong with frozen bodies and terror-stricken faces.
When Minseong glanced around as if looking for his next prey, they all had their spirits broken and lowered their heads to avoid meeting his eyes.
As Minseong walked up and stood before him, Lee Chungil’s pupils shook violently.
*Why me of all people!*
He wanted nothing to do with the crazy bastard.
While Lee Chungil was inwardly cursing “fuck” over and over, Minseong held the blood-stained sledgehammer in one hand and asked.
“What’s the reason you came looking for me?”
“……”
When Lee Chungil kept his mouth firmly shut without any answer, Minseong struck his face with a fist.
*Thwack!*
“Kuek.”
Minseong grabbed the hair of Lee Chungil, who had fallen to the side, with one hand and straightened his upper body.
“It’s not going to end just because you avoid answering entirely.”
“Ugh….”
“If you don’t want to answer, you’ll have to go to that room.”
Even as his eyes trembled incessantly, Lee Chungil couldn’t readily open his mouth.
He was hesitant because, although Minseong was terrifying now, the aftermath was frightening as well.
Well, it wasn’t going to last long anyway.
Minseong laughed scoffingly.
“There are three more people I can ask besides you, so do as you please.”
Then he grabbed Lee Chungil by the scruff of his neck as if to drag him to the next classroom like Jang Wanghyeong.
“Huaack! I-I’ll talk!”
Lee Chungil shouted in fright.
Perhaps thinking he would end up just like Jang Wanghyeong if dragged away like this, he trembled like an aspen tree.
The blood on the sledgehammer, the abandoned school with no one around, and the desperate screams that had echoed out.
They were the optimal elements for escalating fear to the extreme.
Moreover, because they hadn’t seen it with their own eyes, it would be even scarier.
Their wild imaginations would be creating the most horrifying and cruel scenes in their heads.
Minseong’s eyes glinted with a strange light, which he immediately erased.
“Really?”
“Y-yes!”
Lee Chungil nodded his head quickly.
The gang members with him, far from being angry at Lee Chungil’s betrayal, rather looked relieved.
It was only natural, since if he hadn’t, they would have had to become the next victims of the blood-stained sledgehammer.
“Fine. Speak.”
Minseong sat Lee Chungil back down on the floor and waited.
“Well, that’s….”
Although he had said he would talk, when it actually came time to speak, Lee Chungil hesitated, unable to get the words out easily.
Seeing that, Minseong struck Lee Chungil’s cheek hard, sending his face turning to the side.
“I don’t have that much patience.”
Blood flowed from one side of his mouth, likely because his lip had burst, and his face swelled up red.
Completely broken in spirit, Lee Chungil nodded as if resigned.
“I’ll ask one last time. Why did you come looking for me?”
“W-we were trying to recover the money and goods taken from Jeong Gapbae.”
“Jeong Gapbae?”
He had expected it was somewhat related to breaking into the loan shark office.
Otherwise, why would gangsters attack him out of nowhere?
“Did that bastard hire you?”
“No.”
“Then what?”
Lee Chungil couldn’t answer right away and gauged the situation.
Minseong, frowning, banged the sledgehammer threateningly against the cement floor.
“I-it was an order from our CEO!”
Cowering, Lee Chungil immediately bowed his head and answered.
“Who is your CEO?”
“It’s CEO Sun Chunran.”
The beginning was the hard part; once he started spilling, Lee Chungil’s mouth opened freely.
“In our organization, Jeong Gapsu was the one in charge of distributing goods and laundering illegal funds, but he lost the money and goods, so we were trying to recover them.”
“What are these goods?”
“Drugs and shell account passbooks used for laundering the profits.”
The puzzle more or less came together in his mind about the situation.
“Haa.”
No wonder there had been so much cash, strangely enough.
Lee Chungil repeatedly bowed his head toward Minseong, who furrowed his brow, realizing things had gotten tangled.
“I don’t know any more than that. We were just doing as we were told from above, so please spare me!”
“Tch.”
Minseong clicked his tongue, turned around with the sledgehammer, and went outside.
“Huu.”
It seemed he wasn’t going to kill them right away, after all.
Just as Lee Chungil let out a sigh of relief, Minseong returned.
But he wasn’t alone; Jang Wanghyeong, whom he had dragged out first, was with him.
“Uh. Uhh?”
“No. How……”
Wasn’t Jang Wanghyeong, who should have been a bloody mess or had his knees destroyed, walking perfectly fine on two feet?
Everyone’s eyes widened in astonishment.
“Damn it!”
Among them, Lee Chungil was the fastest to figure out the situation.
Realizing he had fallen for Minseong’s trick, Lee Chungil made an expression of utter chagrin.
But the cat was already out of the bag.
Lee Chungion contorted his face and inwardly screamed “damn it.”
***
Late at night.
Having returned to Seoul, Minseong immediately went down to the hotel’s underground parking lot.
Unlike in the morning, it was filled with cars to the point that almost no empty spots could be seen.
Approaching his parked X6 SUV, Minseong pressed the wireless remote button to open the trunk.
After looking around, he lifted the trunk floor.
A hidden, spacious compartment appeared.
It was originally meant for the spare tire, but with a puncture repair kit in there instead, the space had become empty.
It was perfect for hiding something without drawing attention.
From there, Minseong took out a Boston bag.
He had put it inside on the day he destroyed the loan shark office and hadn’t taken it out until now.
When he opened the zipper and turned the Boston bag upside down, bundles of 50,000-won bills poured out with a rustling sound.
There were so many that the trunk floor was filled to overflowing.
After shaking it out thoroughly, a black leather clutch bag and six palm-sized plastic bags fell out with soft thuds.
They were filled with white powder that would look suspicious to anyone.
Minseong, his face hardening, picked up one of the plastic bags containing the white powder.
Then he took out a Swiss Army knife from his inner pocket and tore one side of the plastic bag with the blade.
After examining the white powder, placing just a bit on the blade, he narrowed his brows and spoke.
“It’s cocaine.”
This amount of cocaine would easily exceed at least one billion won.
Then, opening the clutch bag, he found five bundles of passbooks tied with rubber bands, dozens in each, and one black diary.
Opening the diary, he saw detailed records of the passbook passwords and deposit and withdrawal histories from money laundering.
Taking out the passbooks tied separately with blue rubber bands from among the over one hundred shell accounts, Minseong checked the balance and furrowed his brow.
Transaction Date…… Description…… Balance
20170211 Transfer…… 4,306,400,000
Checking the other shell accounts tied with blue rubber bands, he found amounts ranging from several hundred million to several billion won.
All together, it was an enormous sum exceeding 40 billion won by a wide margin.
And since the cash alone looked to be about 100 to 200 million won, it was well worth trying to recover with such desperate urgency.