So You Got Caught Too
At that familiar word, Leon startled and asked again.
"Guris?"
"Yes. In the ancient tongue, Guris means wind."
"Ah. Never mind, then."
Tool, the second branch manager of Guris, asked,
"What information do you require?"
"Listen carefully."
"I'm all ears."
"In the capital."
Leon began to recite.
"The Gonghyeol Group, the Reconnaissance Bureau, Black Sand, Sahyang, the Seven Seats, Count Wendel, Baron Rasel, Baron Chirmoyne, Baron Olamo, the Borsha family, the Anvers family, the Noble Assembly, assassin collectives, fixers, gangs, underworld factions, violent organizations, black magic circles, black markets, fighting pits, dueling arenas, gambling dens, auction houses…"
"…"
The longer the list went on, the more cold sweat poured down Tool's face.
A long while later—
"…everything on all of the above."
Tool pulled out a handkerchief and mopped his face.
"I'll prepare as much as I can."
"Do I just sit here?"
"Yes. It will be delivered shortly."
Leon nodded and tossed a heavy pouch of gold coins to Tool.
Tool glanced inside and said,
"This is too much."
"There's one more thing."
"Go ahead."
Tool snapped to full attention.
"I want tickets to the Full Moon Auction."
"Mmm…"
Tool wanted to dunk his head in the river. His skull was burning. His brain was overheating from the furious calculations spinning through it.
After a stretch of silence, he said,
"I believe it's possible."
"Oh? Really? Could you get two?"
"Two… Yes. I'll have them ready before the auction opens."
"Good. And don't forget to find the bastard who came up with my moniker."
"…Yes."
A shadow drifted over their heads. A ferry was passing beneath the bridge.
Before long, a small skiff drew unusually close. Neither Tool nor Leon nor even the boatman showed any alarm.
The moment the skiff brushed past the ferry, the man aboard it flicked a bundle of documents across. His hands moved as fast as a gambler dealing cards.
The process repeated two or three more times. Only then did the ferry emerge from under the bridge and leave the darkness behind.
"Even summarized, it's quite a volume."
Tool handed Leon a stack of papers nearly two handspans thick.
Leon nodded.
"See you next time, then."
"Safe travels."
Tool bowed his head. When he looked up, Leon was already gone from the ferry—vanished as if he had never been there.
An exit like the wind itself.
Stinging lights. Flashing gold. Cheers and screams.
A raucous floor where roulette wheels, card hands, and chips never stopped circulating.
Arriving at a casino in the 5th District, Leon whistled as he wandered through the place.
"Hmm."
A subtle madness hung over everything here—an atmosphere stretched taut as a drawn bowstring.
Excitement had soaked into the marrow of the people thronging the floor, the kind of crowd that looked ready to explode at a single touch.
"Wooooaaaaah!!!"
Right beside Leon as he walked, a man shot to his feet with a howl. On a gambling machine similar to a pachinko cabinet, four matching pictures had lined up.
"Jesus—crazy bastard."
Leon reflexively chopped the man across the back of the neck with the edge of his hand. The man slumped forward, forehead cracking against the machine, and blacked out.
A person had collapsed in a faint, yet no one around so much as glanced his way. They just kept hammering at their own machines with bloodshot eyes.
Leon paid it no mind either and walked deeper inside.
Soon he reached a stretch of tables—the section for poker, hold'em, and the like.
Leon scanned the room.
A dealer wearing a red badge… There he is.
Having found his target, he sat down at a table where poker was in progress and set out a few silver coins. The dealer exchanged them for chips.
The game resumed. The dealer dealt the cards.
Three people sat mixed around the table—men and a woman. They sipped whiskey or smoked, studying their cards with indifferent faces.
Leon deliberately left his cards untouched. He simply placed a single chip on top of the two face-down cards.
Raise thirty, check, raise a hundred—that was the sequence.
He repeated the order silently to himself, and every time his turn came around, he followed it exactly.
"Raise."
On the final turn he tossed a black chip—a hundred-raise—and spoke the word.
Then—
"…"
The woman in the fur coat, the man tilting his glass, and the dealer—all three shifted their gazes, just slightly.
The change was so minute and trivial that even Leon would have missed it if he hadn't kept his senses carefully open.
Okay. Those three, for starters.
Leon gave them a thin smile. The man chewing on a cigarette, the one left out of the three, seemed to be a genuine civilian who knew nothing.
All five community cards hit the table. No one had folded. Everyone revealed their hands.
"Haha! That's what I'm talking about!"
By pure chance, the cigarette man's hand was the highest. The pot had been sizable, so he scooped up the chips in high spirits. No one else so much as looked at him. Everyone wore expressions of genuine indifference.
A new game began. The dealer dealt again.
This time Leon watched the dealer's hands with quiet intensity. He saw it clearly—the dealer attaching something to a card.
It was a swift sleight of hand performed with mana, but it couldn't fool Leon's eyes. Even with his usual vision, Extreme Flow not opened even a fraction, he saw it. That was the refined perception he'd gained after consuming the Kwaeinsokhaengdan.
With a flick, Leon checked his cards this time. Shielding them with his hand, he lifted them just enough to look—
Bingo.
Three flat black pills were stuck to the face of the card.
"…"
Leon met the eyes of each of the three he'd marked, one by one, and smiled.
Watson, a Reconnaissance Bureau agent currently posing as a dealer in a capital casino.
"Shift change?"
"Yeah. Good work."
When the time came, Watson handed the table over to a fellow dealer who'd arrived and left.
Heading for the break room, he thought,
Twenty in just half a day… It's spreading fast.
Following orders from above, he'd been distributing the drug primarily among the wealthy of the 5th District. Word of mouth had spread quickly; now even middle-class citizens were occasionally coming by to pick some up.
Like that red-eyed bastard earlier. That son of a bitch. Why the hell did he keep grinning like that? Creeped me out.
Watson muttered a string of curses as he recalled the boy's unpleasant stare.
How long am I supposed to keep doing this, anyway? The atmosphere's been bad lately. Isn't it about time to pull out?
The orders handed down to Watson—bottom of the bottom rung—were simple.
Distribute the drug at the 5th District casino, one of countless secret outposts seeded throughout the capital.
He didn't know exactly what the drug was, or why they had to push it so relentlessly.
All he did was slip the pills his superiors provided into the hands of customers who came looking for them.
From Watson's perspective, it was no different from the drug operations he'd always run.
Fuck. Like scattering a little dope is going to bring the capital down. If that worked, it would've collapsed ages ago. Idiots upstairs.
Still cursing the Reconnaissance Bureau under his breath, Watson opened the break room door. It was a lounge used only by agents posted to the casino—and a secret meeting place.
Click.
"I'm ba—"
Watson's memory cut off there.
…
Blink. Blink.
What the hell?
Watson squeezed his eyes shut and opened them again and again. He couldn't make sense of the situation.
The back of his neck throbbed. His head pounded as if it would split, and his vision was weirdly inverted.
He couldn't control his body properly either. When he tried to move his mana, it wouldn't so much as stir in his dantian.
…What is this. What the hell.
Finally losing his composure, Watson tried to speak—
"Mph…! Mmph…!"
His lips wouldn't open. Something was clamped firmly over his mouth.
Then, abruptly—
"Oh, you're up? Hang on a second."
A pair of red eyes suddenly filled his vision. Watson's heart nearly stopped from the shock.
"Yes, sir. Yes, yes. That's right. There."
"…"
The voice continued. Watson rolled his eyes around.
Tall and lean. Dark hair swept back. A red-eyed boy was holding a communicator, talking to someone.
That bastard from earlier?!
Watson was startled all over again. It was the same unpleasant red-eyed kid he'd seen just a short while ago.
Shit. Was he from the Intelligence Division? Did we get made?
Watson tried to assess the situation the way a trained Reconnaissance Bureau agent should. He wriggled his body little by little, hoping the bindings might loosen. The rough rope scraped his ankles raw.
He thought,
My comrades. Where are my comrades?
He still didn't know. He worked at the casino with two fellow agents.
Luckily, they had left the tables earlier to handle other business. If they came back and noticed something was wrong, they might be able to help.
Just then—
His thrashing paid off. With a creaking sound, his body spun around.
And—
"…"
"…"
"…"
Watson found himself staring straight into the miserable eyes of his comrades.
Gags bound their mouths. Their ankles were hooked to ceiling rings, hanging upside down like bats.
Huh.
Watson smiled faintly.
Yeah. So you got caught too.
Creak.
Watson twisted himself back the other way. He didn't want to look at his comrades' eyes any longer.
This fucking…