The Masked Man and the Clue
“A business card, huh.”
At that moment, the drug addict thrashing in agony slipped off the sofa and began to crawl away.
“Mmm-mmm! Ughhhh!”
Suhyeok pressed a foot down on the writhing man’s back as though he were pinning down a bug, holding him in place while the fool thrashed forward with a rag clenched in his mouth.
“Where do you think you’re going, you fucking bastard?”
He rummaged through the man’s pockets until he found a wallet, then checked the business cards inside.
“Ughhh!”
At his feet, the bastard was still flailing and crying out in pain.
[XX Club, Waiter ChickenGangjeong]
Looking at the card, the corners of Suhyeok’s mouth lifted on their own.
He’d found it at last.
The first thread leading to Cheolsu-pa.
“Looks like I don’t need you anymore. Go rot in hell.”
He snapped his fingers and silently recited the judgment and punishment. The man’s struggles turned even more desperate, more pitiful, before gradually growing weak and quiet.
And then, just as with the tattooed punk before him, black dust scattered through the air, and every trace of his existence was wiped clean from the world.
You have judged a sinner.
As judgment reward, you have gained 10 Hell Points.
Unlike before, no other message appeared.
Only the notice about the 10 Hell Points.
So that was the first bonus.
He didn’t care either way.
He planned to keep judging people from now on.
Suhyeok took a handkerchief from his pocket, wiped the phone clean of any fingerprints he might have left behind, and tossed it onto the sofa.
Then he quietly opened the front door and drew in a breath of fresh air, as if trying to wash away the rotting stench that had soaked into the addict’s apartment.
After returning to the alley where he’d parked his scooter, Suhyeok took off the Grim Reaper’s Robe and stowed it in his delivery bag before heading off at an easy pace.
Let’s go to XX Club.
He wasn’t going straight home; instead, he was heading to the club.
There was no chance they’d let him in wearing his delivery outfit, of course, but Suhyeok had a cheat-item in the form of the Grim Reaper’s Robe.
Too bad the Grim Reaper’s Robe can’t be summoned the way the Grim Reaper’s Scythe can.
It was already an absurdly overpowered item, a ridiculous bargain bought for only 10 Hell Points, and yet Suhyeok could feel greed quietly crawling up inside him and couldn’t quite suppress it.
There’s definitely a higher-tier version of this somewhere, so I need to keep gathering Hell Points and leveling up fast.
Human greed had no end, and Suhyeok was no exception.
Soon, he arrived near XX Club.
It was the most famous club near the neighborhood where he lived, so he already knew the location and had come without getting lost.
He parked the scooter in a suitable alley, took out the Grim Reaper’s Robe, and put it on.
Vanishing into the alley’s darkness, Suhyeok walked straight toward the front of XX Club.
Even though it was past two in the morning, there was still a long line stretching out in front of the place, and he clicked his tongue at the sight.
At the entrance stood a guard and a staff member handling entry and exit, and just as Suhyeok was about to pass them by, a gaunt waiter was coming up the stairs from belowground.
And on the name tag pinned to that waiter’s chest was the word Suhyeok had been looking for: ChickenGangjeong.
A smile tugged naturally at his lips.
He’d been saved the trouble of going inside that noisy club to find the bastard.
As soon as ChickenGangjeong reached the top of the stairs, he kicked the staff member managing the entrance hard in the shin.
“Hey, you bastard. Did I tell you to let them in while keeping the place under control, or didn’t I?”
“Ghk. S-sorry, hyung.”
“You let in trash, and now the waters getting muddy, damn it. VIPs are coming in here!”
The people standing in line looked like regulars, because they seemed perfectly used to this kind of thing; even while ChickenGangjeong was snapping at the staff member like a dog with a rat, they didn’t seem the least bit surprised.
“Damn it. Get it right. If this gets screwed up again because of you, I’ll kill you. Seriously, watch yourself.”
Then he tapped the guard’s chest, lit a cigarette, clamped it between his teeth, and headed into the alleyway.
It looked like a blind spot connected to the back door of XX Club.
Following him, Suhyeok summoned the Grim Reaper’s Scythe in his right hand.
He could kill the bastard with judgment and punishment, but there were too many things he wanted to hear for sure.
The deeper part of the alley had no CCTV and no people.
I’m not killing him easily.
As anger began to simmer up inside him, Suhyeok drew in a deep breath and forced himself back to calm.
Then, from behind the bastard as he took a long drag on his cigarette and exhaled, Suhyeok clamped a hand over his mouth.
“If you scream or move, you die.”
He brought the invisible scythe, hidden by the Grim Reaper’s Robe, to the man’s throat and pricked him lightly with the tip.
ChickenGangjeong jolted in shock, then froze rigidly at attention when the sharp edge and pain at his throat made themselves known.
He lowered his eyes, trying to see the hand covering his mouth, but nothing was visible. He couldn’t even see whatever was pressing against his throat.
And yet he could clearly feel a human presence there, and the voice was chilling.
ChickenGangjeong trembled hard, gripped by an unknown fear, and asked, “W-why are you doing this? You’re an Awaker, right...? I’ll give you everything I have if it’s money. Please, just spare my life.”
His desperate plea to survive.
But Suhyeok heard none of it.
-Meth
-Meth distribution
-Assault
-Sexual assault
-Rape
-Prostitution
-Murder for hire
The many sins floating above the man’s head.
The stench was so foul it felt like it was numbing his nose.
“Answer the question. You’re Cheolsu-pa, aren’t you?”
The faint tremor in the man’s shoulders from sheer tension traveled straight through the arm wrapped around his throat.
“Y-yes, yes. That’s right. Cheolsu-pa...”
ChickenGangjeong’s voice shook slightly.
It was blatant fear, and yet Suhyeok caught something strangely off beneath it.
It felt like the flicker of hope that crossed a condemned prisoner’s eyes right before an execution.
Even with death’s blade aimed at his throat, the bastard was showing a hidden trace of relief.
He’s got some kind of backing.
There was no time to think it through.
Suhyeok tightened his grip on the wrist holding the scythe and said coldly, “I’m asking you three things. If you’re slow, you die. First: who’s above you?”
ChickenGangjeong’s Adam’s apple bobbed violently.
As the sharp tip of the scythe dug into his flesh, the man blurted out the answer as if he’d been waiting for the question.
“Cheol-gamen... It’s Cheol-gamen hyung! He’s the owner of this XX Club!”
“Is that Cheol-gamen the boss of Cheolsu-pa?”
“N-no. There’s one more person above Cheol-gamen hyung, but... I’ve never met him.”
“Is Cheol-gamen inside the club?”
“N-no. He doesn’t come in often... I don’t even know where he lives!”
Suhyeok’s brows furrowed.
So the search led over one hill only to reveal another.
“Second. Explain how Cheolsu-pa distributes the stuff. How does it move?”
“Th-that’s... waiters like us just find buyers here and do sales! There are tons of people who come to clubs looking for meth. But we never handle the product directly!”
It was a lie.
That sin of meth was hanging over this bastard’s head, after all.
He was lying through his teeth about only doing sales.
Even with the shadow of death right in front of him.
Suhyeok wanted to sever the man’s throat on the spot, but there was still more to hear.
It wasn’t information he could trust completely, but finding the clues hidden inside it was Suhyeok’s job.
“Who moves the product?”
“When the product comes out of the factory, special ‘runners’ move it. They toss the goods into the designated ‘drop zones,’ and then the buyers go pick them up themselves. We just take the money and tell them the location. That’s why guys like me, we’d never know where the factory is even if we died and came back!”
ChickenGangjeong was practically howling now, his voice growing louder and louder.
Sales are handled by waiters, delivery by runners. They don’t know the factory’s location... and they make the buyers retrieve the product themselves to minimize the risk of a crackdown. It’s a cell structure.
Turning over the structure the bastard had described, Suhyeok spoke again.
“What about informants? Who manages that?”
“That’s managed directly by Cheol-gamen hyung! There are rumors he’s got a line into the police... and if information comes down, they send a knife right away. They absolutely don’t tolerate delivery accidents or tips-offs.”
The structure of their distribution network and their intelligence network. They weren’t just street punks; they were a system, one with sales and information gathering carved up with ruthless efficiency.
At the word “knife,” Suhyeok remembered the sensation of the moment a hole had opened in his stomach.
“Last question. Where are the boss of Cheolsu-pa and Cheol-gamen?”
At Suhyeok’s final question, ChickenGangjeong clamped his mouth shut.
No—more precisely, he fidgeted as though measuring the timing of his answer.
He was stalling. Evidence enough.
“I’m going to count to three. If you don’t talk, you die. One.”
At that instant, the obsequious look in ChickenGangjeong’s eyes shifted all at once into something vicious.
“I don’t know what the hell you think you’re doing to us, but even if you’re an Awaker, you can’t just come charging in here so openly.”
The words had barely left his mouth when heavy footsteps sounded at the mouth of the alley.
It was the big guard from the entrance.
The man in a suit was slipping on brass knuckles gleaming with metallic sheen, approaching with the aura of a predator.
“What are you doing all alone, hyung?”
A smirk curled at the corner of the man’s mouth.
ChickenGangjeong, standing unnaturally straight with his throat bleeding into thin lines, must have looked downright ridiculous.
“Hey, Jongchan! Hurry up and deal with this bastard. I can’t see him now, but he’s definitely got a knife on my throat!”
“Oh? I can’t see him either, hyung. Looks to me like you’re just making your own little horror movie, haha.”
The guard, the man called Kim Jongchan, looked utterly relaxed.
But unlike his mouth, his eyes flickered like a snake’s, scanning the space where Suhyeok might be hiding.
“I really can’t see him. Still, I can faintly feel him. Hmm, some kind of stealth type?”
The Grim Reaper’s Robe had erased his shape, but it seemed it couldn’t fully fool the heightened senses of an Awaker.
As expected, he’s on a different level from ordinary people.
In fact, Suhyeok deliberately pushed the scythe deeper, as though issuing a declaration of war right in front of the bastard’s eyes.
Thud.
“Didn’t I say you’d die if you didn’t answer?”
“Ghk! Ughh—!”
The blood surging back up into his throat swallowed ChickenGangjeong’s scream whole.