Lim Hwa-soo
May thirteenth. A week remained until the vote.
Lim Hwa-soo, second-in-command of the Dongdaemun Gang and a man who lived for the movies, was just stepping out of Danseongsa in Jongno 3-ga after a film.
Since the lynching of Sirasoni, the Dongdaemun Gang had been at odds with both the Jongno Faction and the Myeongdong gang, though with Jongno, at least, things were still tolerable. And so he often came over to Jongno, where better pictures played than at the theaters in Dongdaemun.
He and his lover came out of the cinema well satisfied, and there in front of the theater he caught sight of Kim Doo-han's crowd, out on the stump. He nearly walked on. Then he thought he might as well offer Kim Doo-han a greeting before he went. Unlike the stiff-necked Lee Hwa-ryong, Kim Doo-han had a certain give to him. However much he disliked a man, if that man kept the proprieties and bowed with proper respect, Kim Doo-han returned the courtesy. Lim Hwa-soo, adept at the old worldly art of cringing before the strong and trampling the weak, had always been courteous to him, and the two were on decent terms.
"You wait right here a moment."
He said it to his lover and strode toward Kim Doo-han. He had closed to about four meters when a giant of a man appeared out of nowhere and barred his way.
"Don't come any closer."
What? This bastard?
Lim Hwa-soo could hardly believe it. The man looked like Jongno muscle—and he didn't know the number two of the Dongdaemun outfit? A prickle of irritation rose at the upstart blocking him. He looked the Jongno newcomer slowly up and down, and Moon Yeong-cheol came to mind. Moon Yeong-cheol had been a towering fist in the Jongno Faction back under the Japanese—a hundred and eighty-eight centimeters tall, eighty-one kilograms, a real fighter. This new face in his path looked three or four centimeters taller still, and his weight would clear a hundred kilograms without any trouble.
Honestly... Jongno and their love of tall men.
Lim Hwa-soo grinned. But what did height and weight amount to? The order of the world of fists was not made of strength alone. Lee Jeong-jae had climbed on his head more than his hands, and Lim Hwa-soo himself had risen to the rank of a boss on money and nerve. The underworld was a society of station as strict as any other. A general, however mighty, could not lay a hand on the king, and a small fry, however strong, could not lay a hand on a boss. Not unless he was ready to offer up his own life.
"Let me through."
He fixed the giant with a glare and spoke with all the weight he could put into a single line. Years of playing the boss had given Lim Hwa-soo a certain presence. Even the wildest, most empty-headed brats took one look at his manner and his eyes, saw a man of consequence, and lost their nerve.
He took one step toward Kim Doo-han, who was drifting off amid the campaigning—and a palm like a cauldron lid shoved him roughly back.
Huh?
In an instant he had been driven several steps backward. A few Jongno men who knew his face had seen it, and behind him his lover was watching too.
Ha... damn it. How humiliating.
Lim Hwa-soo drew a sharp breath in through his teeth. Several of the Jongno men who had witnessed the thing came over.
So they're going to tell the new blood who I am.
His ease returned. Once the newcomer understood and begged pardon, he would smile like a magnanimous man. He decided to treat it as a perfect chance to show the lover he had only lately taken up with what a man looked like.
But the Jongno boys neither scolded the newcomer nor held him back. They only looked at Lim Hwa-soo and the new man with worried eyes.
Did he have to step in himself?
All he needed was to greet Kim Doo-han and go on his way with his lover. He had no wish to make a great matter of it here. Smiling, he put the question to the man.
"You. Do you know who I am?"
The other stared straight back at him with a face that said he hadn't the faintest idea.
Did he really have to go so far as to give his name? Well, perhaps. The man had never seen him. Even so, the moment he heard the name he would know what a mistake he had made.
Lim Hwa-soo was on the point of telling him when the man spoke.
"Why are you asking me who you are? If you can't tell, go ask your mother. She'll know better than anyone whose house you crawled out of..."
The filth about his mother came so fast that for a moment Lim Hwa-soo's head swam.
This bastard...
Fire leapt in his eyes. The Jongno men nearby who had heard it went white.
Seeing red, Lim Hwa-soo no longer cared about the Jongno Faction, or whether Kim Doo-han was standing right there. His hand slid into the breast pocket of his suit. He had to draw the hidden pistol and shoot the Hamgyong bastard who had cursed his mother. Even if he could not kill him, he had to threaten him with the gun—drop him to his knees at the very least, and make him beg for his life. Only then would the face of Dongdaemun's number two survive. Fists who styled themselves carefree men of leisure had cheap mouths. Swallow an insult to your parents delivered to your face, and the story would spread in an instant. In an instant you became a man with no guts at all.
The moment he drew the pistol and tried to set it on the man's forehead, the man vanished from before his eyes.
He thought the fellow had already run—and then, with a dull thud of impact, the world turned over.
What was this?
Lim Hwa-soo, not yet even aware that he had already gone down, tried to pull the trigger with the finger still hooked on it. In that instant a massive leather shoe came flying at his face.
And suddenly the world went black.
Before his eyes stood his father, dead since his childhood. From far off, his father was beckoning.
His father, calling him by the name he had borne as a boy. Lim Hwa-soo felt tears coming. How he had longed to see this man.
Hwa-soo walked slowly toward his father. Then, from behind him, his mother's voice came.
When he came to himself, his body was half sunk in black water.
Have I been crossing the River of Three Crossings?
The river was warm. Why was the water warm? Because it was a river of the underworld? Why was his dead father standing before his eyes, and why could he hear the voice of his mother, who was still alive?
This was in front of Danseongsa, in Jongno... wasn't it?
The men of the Jongno Faction started in shock at the sight of Jang Ma-ryang kicking the fallen Lim Hwa-soo. Even the men who had been guarding Kim Doo-han came running and tore Ma-ryang off him.
"Boss! Stop! Keep this up and Boss Hwa-soo is going to die!"
"Aigoo... what do we do. Boss Hwa-soo's pissed himself..."
"Boss Ma-ryang! If Boss Hwa-soo dies from this, it's war! War!"
Like ants swarming a rhinoceros beetle, the Jongno men clung to Ma-ryang and barely managed to stop the kicking.
Kim Doo-han, lost in greetings and handshakes with passersby, saw the mess late and came running in a fluster. The first thing he checked was whether Lim Hwa-soo was still breathing.
A wet, rattling gurgle. Lim Hwa-soo's breath sounded anything but right.
"Hey! Quick! Get Hwa-soo to a hospital!"
Two of the men hoisted him onto their backs, bracing him from behind, and ran for the hospital.
Kim Doo-han's eye caught the pistol lying on the ground. He reached for it without thinking, then flinched and backed away from the gun. He could not have it said that a candidate for the National Assembly had picked up a pistol in broad daylight in front of a Jongno theater.
"That—that thing!"
At his shout, Kim Yeong-tae—the Jongno Faction's only high-school graduate, its man of learning—understood at once and moved. He snatched up the pistol, hid it against his chest, and vanished somewhere.
Pandemonium in front of Danseongsa. The onlookers stared at Jang Ma-ryang, who had beaten the man with the gun into pulp. A few, seeing it was the front of a theater, wondered if they were shooting a film.
Kim Doo-han took Jang Ma-ryang into the alley behind Danseongsa. Once his men had sealed both ends of the alley, he spoke.
"Ma-ryang. Go stay with Boss Hwa-ryong. I'll see to whatever comes after."
He had beaten Lim Hwa-soo of the Dongdaemun Gang; retaliation would come for Ma-ryang. Kim Doo-han judged it best to place him in the keeping of the Myeongdong gang and settle the matter by talking with Lee Jeong-jae. Myeongdong had Lee Hwa-ryong standing behind it—the ferocious hardliner Lee Jeong-jae feared above all others—and its membership was the finest in Seoul. There was even a saying that school toughs who dreamed of becoming fists, if they failed to get into Myeongdong, went looking for Dongdaemun because they had no other choice.
Had there been no election, he would have protected the man himself and negotiated at the same time. This was not that moment.
But Ma-ryang refused the order.
"Why should I go stay with the Myeongdong gang? I am Jongno. I cannot do such a thing."
For the first time, Ma-ryang talked back to him.
The defiance itself was startling, but what stifled Doo-han more was that Ma-ryang did not seem to understand the situation at all.
"Little brother. It's true you're Jongno. That much is true, but..."
Kim Doo-han broke off, told a man nearby to go to the Cheongsan Development office and fetch President Lee Ki-jo, then went on.
"Little brother. Are you asking because you don't see what's happened?"
"I only put down the man who drew a pistol near the Assemblyman."
"Ah, yes. I'm grateful. Truly grateful for that, but..."
Doo-han thought of the pistol that had lain on the ground. He did not know what had happened, but it did seem Lim Hwa-soo had drawn a gun. And yet what kind of man was Lim Hwa-soo? Sly as he was, he might put someone else up to a thing like that—but he would never stand in the middle of Seoul himself, gun in hand, and take a shot at Kim Doo-han.
No matter how I look at it, Lim Hwa-soo wasn't trying to shoot me. There's no way. None.
Ma-ryang's reading of the situation worried him badly.
"Brother Ma-ryang. Do you know who it was you nearly killed?"
"I don't know."
He doesn't know? That can't be.
Doo-han had told him about the Dongdaemun Gang. They sat closest to Jongno on the map and stood against them; he had warned Ma-ryang sternly, lest he start a clash. If someone out of the ordinary picked a fight, confirm the affiliation first—he had said it plainly. And still Ma-ryang had brought on this disaster. Disappointment flooded him.
"That man is the underboss of the Dongdaemun Gang."
"He was a man meaning to do you harm, Boss."
Doo-han's head began to pound.
"Ma-ryang. I don't know what happened. But you've crossed a line. This business could start a war between Jongno and Dongdaemun. With election day almost on us..."
"If a war comes, then we win it. I'll take the charge of it and sweep the Dongdaemun Gang away."
The answer was far too simple.
If a gang fight broke out between the two organizations with a week left before the vote, Kim Doo-han's dream of entering the National Assembly would shatter to pieces. To say he would simply win if a fight started, without even that elementary grasp of where they stood...
Flaws he had never known came spilling out of the Ma-ryang who had seemed perfect until now. He had meant to raise the man as his second, hand the organization over, and take the role of elder from behind the scenes. His heart sank.
He had heard, besides, that every night Ma-ryang gathered the men for drink and gambling. At first he had taken it for an effort to grow close to them. Turning it over now, he was no longer sure that was it. What reached his ears was that the man lost money every time, then made a scene at the subordinates who had won, until those men were left in an awkward corner.
Over Ma-ryang's face he saw Lü Bu from the Romance of the Three Kingdoms laid across the man he knew. Supreme in strength of arm, wanting in the head. Doo-han's heart went bitter.
"Ma-ryang. For my sake, hide out in Myeongdong. Do you truly not understand what I'm saying?"
"I don't know."
"I'm telling you to pretend you aren't Jongno, at least until the election is over. Man..."
"What is it you are saying?"
"You exasperating man. If you don't understand any of it, then at least save your own life! If word gets out that you beat Lim Hwa-soo, Boss Hwa-ryong will be glad to protect you. I'm in no position to watch over you now, am I!"
"I can keep this one body of mine. I will not go and stay in Myeongdong."
Doo-han thought he would go mad.
Had he misread Jang Ma-ryang all this time? The man had seemed weighty and steady. Had that only been dullness?
Every kind of thought came to him. The mood in the Jongno-eul district was good, and election was within reach—and there had never been a blow this bad.
Kim Doo-han set his teeth and made a hard decision.
"Brother Ma-ryang. Grant me one request."
"Speak."
It pained him, the look on Ma-ryang's face—the look of a man who did not know what he had done wrong.
"I'm going to rebuke you here, and strike you a few times. And..."
He went on with the heart of the old commander who weeps as he cuts down his own man.
"I will cast you out of the Jongno Faction."
Ma-ryang looked at Kim Doo-han with eyes that could not comprehend. The eyes of a calf watching the mother cow led off to be sold.
When Ma-ryang, usually a tiger, changed into a man who had lost his country, Kim Doo-han's heart felt ready to tear. But winning a seat in the National Assembly was his foremost task. Here, he had to cut the tail off.
"I'll take it that you grant my request."
The moment the words ended, Kim Doo-han struck Ma-ryang across the face.
The crack of it rang down the alley, and the Jongno men blocking both ends turned as one to look at Doo-han and Ma-ryang.
"You stupid bastard! Why did you beat Lim Hwa-soo black and blue! What wrong did Hwa-soo ever do our Jongno Faction, that you thrash him on your own say-so—that's what I'm asking!"
The words were barely out before he struck Ma-ryang's cheek again.
Another crack. When Ma-ryang took the second blow, the men's hearts hurt.
Since coming into the Jongno Faction, Ma-ryang had been sharing money out to members in hard straits, telling them to put it toward the household. The men figured he was too awkward to simply hand it over, so he would call for a round of hwatu—the old flower-card game—and then lose on purpose, and that was how he passed the money along. No one who was not trying to lose could play hwatu that badly. True, on the nights they played he lost his temper and gave the winner a tongue-lashing, but the next day there was never any grudge left over. And even after losing a heap the night before, he always brought a great deal of money back, lost it again at the mat, and donated it to the men.
The money Ma-ryang had parceled out among them came to some three hundred thousand hwan all told. Close to three hundred million won. A rumor went around that a game of hwatu with Ma-ryang meant you made money, and every night the men had to settle the order of who would sit down with him.
They could not understand why a boss as good as Ma-ryang—good to the very bone—was taking slaps from Boss Doo-han. And besides, hadn't Lim Hwa-soo drawn the gun first? All he had done was knock the man down to protect their boss.
"You're not Jongno anymore!"
Kim Doo-han's cry rang down the alley, and in the same instant his fist flew at Ma-ryang.
Ah... so this was the end of Boss Ma-ryang too.
Some of the men squeezed their eyes shut, unable to bear the sight.
A heavy thud rolled out to both ends of the alley. It was the fist of Kim Doo-han, the man they called ippon—one blow, and you were gone.
Doo-han and the men were sure Ma-ryang would go down at once. Struck by Kim Doo-han's fist, his jaw turned, and his body was driven half a step back. Now he would fall—and then what was this?
Ma-ryang, perfectly intact, bent politely at the waist and apologized.
"I was greatly lacking. I am sorry."
Everyone who saw it was aghast.
He had taken Kim Doo-han's one-punch flush, and he was still like that?
Was the man even human?
Doo-han was no less shaken. He had put his weight into it properly and planted the fist exactly on Ma-ryang's jaw. His plan had been to knock the man senseless in front of the men, drive him out of the Jongno Faction, then contact Lee Jeong-jae and soothe him—tell him they had already handed down their own discipline, so he should hold off on retaliation. That would salvage a measure of face for Lee Jeong-jae and for Lim Hwa-soo, and lower the pitch of any revenge that might fall on Ma-ryang.
But nothing went as he had thought.
While everyone stood blankly watching, a jeep pulled up in front of Danseongsa. It was a jeep from Cheongsan Development, driven by Ki-jo, who had come the moment the news reached him.