She was so miserable that she began bawling, making it impossible to hear the amount clearly.
“Two thousand won?”
“Two million wooooon……. Waaaah!”
Tears as big as chicken feed poured down without pause.
Shin Inyeong wiped away her tears and snot with a handkerchief.
“You were scammed out of twenty million won?”
“Wuuuh……!”
Gru nodded as she blew her nose into the handkerchief.
“Two thousand? Did you say twenty million won?”
After sniffing, Gru took out her phone and opened Onion Market.
The Onion Coin transaction history clearly stated twenty million won—not two thousand won or even twenty thousand won.
“It really was twenty million?!”
“……Waaaah……!”
“No, don’t cry again……. There, there. Can you give me your parents’ contact information?”
*
‘……I thought it was the jeonse deposit.’
Not long ago, there had been quite a stir over an incident in which a child had secretly taken the jeonse deposit from their parents’ bank account and spent it however they pleased. So he had assumed it was something of that sort.
‘But to think it was really just an allowance theft…….’
Shin Inyeong stared at the grandfather and granddaughter sitting side by side before him.
The old man, with the bearing of an underworld boss and dressed in a respectable suit and an expensive-looking coat, was a face one could occasionally see on television.
Chairman On Suhyeong of the Doan Group.
He had never imagined he would meet the chairman of a conglomerate at a neighborhood police substation. And all because his four-year-old granddaughter had been scammed out of her allowance….
When Chairman On’s secretary bowed to Shin Inyeong from beside him, he returned the greeting.
The secretary was contacting someone. From what Inyeong could overhear, it seemed to be a lawyer.
Meanwhile, On Suhyeong was patting Gru and earnestly comforting the child.
“Gru, you don’t need to cry over such pocket change.”
“Sniff! Sob!”
Feeling he had overheard something he shouldn’t have, Shin Inyeong turned his body in the opposite direction.
Just in case, he opened Onion Market on Gru’s phone, tapped the scammer’s profile, and looked around.
Judging from the chat history, the other party seemed like a kid too. He sure had guts.
On the other hand, Gru thought it was a relief that she had called On Suhyeong. The chairman had comforted her warmly—though calling it pocket change had somehow made her feel even more miserable—and said he would take care of reporting it as well.
‘It really was a good thing I called the chairman.’
On Suhyeong had been puzzled that she had called him instead of Jurim, but Gru had her reasons.
“No Onion Market transactions.”
In exchange for entering Hyeonak, Onion had to be prohibited. Unlike other matters, Jurim had confirmed this with her again and again.
“If you keep doing it, the scary police officer will come and take you away.”
He had frightened her with an indifferent expression, even imitating the police siren with a flashy “Bbeoyo-bbeoyo!”
“Gru, then criminal?!”
She was scared. Just before meeting Jurim, she had seen police officers conducting a crackdown.
She had known nothing, but instinctively stepping on the pedals and fleeing without thinking had been the right decision.
As for her previous Onion Market transaction, Jurim had apparently taken care of it somehow.
When Gru blinked, large tears tumbled down.
‘Gru, you idiot.’
Blinded by a momentary temptation, she had broken the prohibition.
If Jurim found out she had broken a promise he had emphasized so many times, he would be terribly disappointed.
‘Maybe he’ll really scold me.’
Jurim was not usually strict with Gru alone, and until now she had managed to smooth over all her accidents and mischief with her charms and coquettishness. But this time, he might truly scold her badly.
“Sniff. Chairman-nim. You mustn’t tell Guild Leader-nim……. Sob.”
Gru nestled tightly into On Suhyeong’s arms and rubbed her tear-streaked face against him.
On Suhyeong hugged her close and patted her back.
“Yes, I’ll keep it a secret. Don’t worry. We can handle it quietly.”
The head of the police substation, who had been thrown into disarray and completely flustered after returning from lunch, finished his call and hurried over to On Suhyeong, bowing deeply.
“For now, the case will be handed over to the cybercrime investigation team. Chairman, I’m sorry to say this, but……. Onion is an anonymous marketplace, so it’s difficult to locate the user……. It would be wonderful if we could catch the thief, but you should be aware that it may prove somewhat difficult….”
Ding-!
Difficult? Gru’s eyes trembled, her face shocked.
On Suhyeong comforted her again and spoke coldly.
“Do the police these days say things like that without even investigating?”
“Oh, no, of course not. How could that be? I only meant that it might be difficult, that’s all….”
While the station chief sweated profusely and made excuses, Shin Inyeong, who had been checking Onion on Gru’s phone, spoke up.
“Chief. I think we can catch him easily. He seems like a beginner.”
“Huh?”
“Look here. There’s a record showing that he had the map open.”
At his words, everyone looked at Inyeong.
“I use Onion too. Since it’s originally a secondhand trading app, you can set your location to make transactions nearby. But look here. This seems to be his home. Probably…?”
Did the scammer really live somewhere this nice?
Shin Inyeong tilted his head. With security this sloppy, it didn’t seem like the man had made a great success of scamming people.
Gru wiped away her tears with her sleeve, rose onto her tiptoes, and looked up. Shin Inyeong lowered the phone and showed her the screen.
Gru checked the dot marked on an upscale apartment complex and asked,
“Sniff, then if we go here, can we catch the bad person?”
“Hmm, probably? We’ll have to check first. He could have set a fake location. But I think this is the place. I have a feeling.”
“……!”
Hope surged at the thought that they could catch him.
Gru clenched both fists, filled with anger.
*
A high-value scammer who had made his inexperience painfully obvious on the Onion Market app.
According to the cybercrime investigators, the address registered with Onion Market was indeed the scammer’s home.
The scammer really was a beginner, and his identity had been uncovered with ease. They had thought the punishment would proceed swiftly, but….
The real obstacle was his identity.
At the headquarters of the law firm Hangang, Gru sat on a tall chair with her little legs bouncing above the floor.
On either side of her sat On Suhyeong and a row of Hangang’s lawyers.
Across the long table, large enough for a conference, a high school student sat with his arms folded and an annoyed expression on his face.
Ham Honggi, eighteen years old.
Although he was seated as a suspect in a fraud case, he spent the entire time scowling, without the slightest hint of remorse.
“Why did it have to be a four-year-old? This is so freaking embarrassing.”
Gru clenched both fists and glared at him.
‘Bad villain.’
They had spoken on the phone a couple of times, but the scammer had behaved like that every time.
At first, he had claimed that he had already spent all the money and couldn’t return it. But once Ham Honggi’s guardian had been contacted, the situation changed.
“We’ll give you whatever you want, so we just hope to settle this.”
The scammer’s side wanted to reach a settlement, no matter how much it cost. Gru, however, wanted him punished.
They had reached an impasse.
And so Gru, On Suhyeong, and Hangang’s lawyers had gathered at the law firm. On the other side sat the scammer, Ham Honggi, his mother, and their lawyers.
Ham Honggi’s mother interlaced her fingers and placed both hands on the table before letting out a sigh.
“I’m truly sorry, Chairman On. We raised our son poorly and caused you trouble. I have no excuse.”
“…….”
On Suhyeong gave no answer, responding only with silence.
“You apologize too.”
She tried to force her son’s head down.
“Ah, why are you doing that! It was only twenty million! It’s because Mom cut off my card. How many times did I tell you I needed money!”
“If I’d known you would turn out like this…!”
She glanced around and cleared her throat.
She was so ashamed that the back of her neck felt stiff. Her son, oblivious to everything, was still grumbling that it was all his mother’s fault.
He was the youngest, born many years after his older brother, and they had spoiled him rotten. As a result, his manners had become truly appalling.
She would have overlooked his rudeness, but he seemed to be going so far as to dabble in drugs, and she could no longer tolerate it. So she had cut off his card.
‘And this happened not long after I cut him off.’
She pressed her throbbing temple.
This was an extremely important time for her husband. They couldn’t allow a family scandal to hold him back.
At first, when she heard that he had scammed someone on some marketplace, she had shaken her head in dismay, but she thought they could simply pay a generous settlement and send them on their way.
The financial circumstances of children who traded on a place like that would be obvious, after all.
But who could have imagined that her son had scammed the granddaughter of Chairman On Suhyeong? And not for some trivial amount, either—the money he had extorted through fraud totaled twenty million won. It was absurd.
And that wasn’t all. If she was Chairman On Suhyeong’s granddaughter, then her father was automatically On Jurim.