Private Audience
"In a way, those are rather grandiose words. All because of my existence, you say..."
Kang Jung-gil wore a wry smile.
But Jeon Dok-jin, seated across from Executive Im Seong-woo, could not accept those words with any kind of smile.
This man is serious.
Jeon Dok-jin had never forgotten that day — the overwhelming aura that had crushed him with presence alone. Among the five hundred Awakeners belonging to the National Safety Group, the strongest was Jeon Dok-jin himself. To pin him down and pressure him with nothing but aura was impossible for anyone of merely intermediate strength. It required truly overwhelming power.
And this man — Im Seong-woo — had demonstrated exactly that.
Which was why those words could not simply be dismissed as arrogance.
"How do my words sound to you, Director?"
"I've heard that of the more than three hundred guilds operating domestically, roughly ten percent — some thirty of them — follow the Cheonseong Guild. I've also heard that Cheonseong calls those subordinate guilds Line Guilds, and that the term has by now entered common usage as if it were a proper noun. On top of that, I understand the number of Awakeners belonging to Cheonseong Guild itself has surpassed one thousand."
One thousand.
That figure crossed a critical threshold. The National Safety Group fielded five hundred Awakeners in total; any guild that exceeded that number was, by definition, an organization capable of exerting significant influence over the nation.
At present, only three such guilds existed in the country.
One was the syndicate guilds centered on the Jungang Guild. Another, among the neutral guilds that belonged to neither of the two great powers, was the Taeseong Guild. Taeseong, too, had recently surpassed five hundred members — and its parent organization was none other than the Taeseong Group, one of the ten major conglomerates.
Among the chaebol groups that maintained Awakener guilds as subsidiaries, Cheonseong Group was naturally the frontrunner, with Taeseong Group's Taeseong Guild trailing behind. There were others, of course, but these two had clearly pulled ahead of the pack — and of the two, Cheonseong Guild stood firmly first. Taeseong Guild had been building its own position in its own way, yet the difference was plain: rather than flaunting its power outwardly and expanding its influence the way Cheonseong did, Taeseong had chosen to grow while maintaining neutrality.
The Jungang Guild itself numbered a little over six hundred in practical terms.
Looked at that way, Cheonseong Guild alone already exceeded a thousand, and once its Line Guilds were factored in, the total swelled into the thousands. By that measure, even the Jungang Guild — one half of the so-called dual powers — seemed outmatched.
But when speaking of the Jungang Guild, one could not discuss the guild alone.
The Jungang Guild's parent body was the Joongang-hoe, a historic organization that had unified the nation's underworld syndicates. And among the Joongang-hoe's core executives were four men: the chairmen of the Haewang-hoe, Sugwang-hoe, Gangil-hoe, and Gangwon-hoe. The guilds belonging to those four regional organizations had to be regarded as one body with the Jungang Guild.
In practical terms, then, the total number of Awakeners under the Joongang-hoe — the so-called syndicate guilds — already exceeded a thousand. Factor in the Awakeners active in the various minor branch-organization guilds, and the number climbed higher still. Things had seemed chaotic at first, but the heir to the Joongang-hoe was Kang Jung-gil.
It was precisely because Kang Jung-gil had taken the directorship of the National Safety Group and established the present order that the underworld's hierarchy had been restructured as well. The rapid founding of the guilds and the construction of the current system had all been driven from behind the scenes by Kang Jung-gil himself.
Just as he had once leveraged the renown of becoming Jeoldaeja — The Absolute — to unify the underworld a second time, he had drawn everything together once more.
As a result, the Awakeners belonging to the branch-organization guilds under the Jungang Guild's umbrella had, much like the old underworld structure, fallen into the lines subordinate to their regional Haewang Guild, Sugwang Guild, Gangil Guild, or Gangwon Guild — and those four regional stronghold guilds, in turn, answered to the Jungang Guild, forming a single organized body.
All of this was possible because the heir to the Joongang-hoe was none other than the Director of the National Safety Group. Ultimately, the true head of the syndicate guilds was Kang Jung-gil.
That was why they could be called one of the two great powers — one of the two great guilds.
And the man sitting before him was the other.
So for Im Seong-woo to speak such grandiose words in front of Kang Jung-gil was not, in truth, so strange.
More than that — even without the backing of the Cheonseong Guild, Im Seong-woo possessed the ability to justify them.
"Looked at that way, I can see how one might feel entitled to say such things."
"Director."
"Go ahead."
"I would like a private audience — just the two of us. Would that be acceptable?"
At the words private audience, Jeon Dok-jin's expression hardened further.
Kang Jung-gil regarded Im Seong-woo for a moment.
Composed. Not a single flicker of disorder in the eyes that met his own.
"Well, fine by me."
"Vice Guild Master."
"Yes, Executive."
"Step outside for a moment, if you would."
"Understood."
Park Chang-jun rose from his seat, and Seo Gang-jae and Lee Seok-pil stood with him. Seo Gang-jae's face was uneasy — he was convinced his own blunder had somehow brought harm upon Im Seong-woo.
"Since a private audience has been requested, Deputy Director, Administrative Director — you two step out as well."
Jeon Dok-jin rose, offered a formal bow toward Kang Jung-gil, and left the Director's office. Administrative Director Jeong In-su likewise paid his respects and followed the Deputy Director out. And just like that, only the two of them remained.
Kang Jung-gil reached out and lifted his teacup. He took a comfortable sip of the steaming hot americano, then set it back down.
"If you've gone so far as to request a private audience with me, I assume there's something that needs saying between just the two of us."
"Indeed. There are times when a conversation must be held by two people alone, wouldn't you agree?"
"I suppose there are."
When the subject was sensitive, fewer people were better than more. On that point, Kang Jung-gil agreed. He raised his gaze again and looked at Executive Im Seong-woo.
"Well then. Now that it's just us, let's get to the point."
At Kang Jung-gil's words, Im Seong-woo's eyes sharpened.
"Since it's just the two of us, I'll speak frankly. Director — your honest wish is to maintain your interests in the Monster Holes exactly as they stand now, is it not?"
"To be frank, maintaining the current order is advantageous to me, yes."
"And do you believe you possess the power to uphold that order?"
"Does it look to you as though I don't?"
"......"
Executive Im Seong-woo said nothing.
"Everyone thinks that way and looks at me that way. Those eyes of yours — that look Executive Im Seong-woo is giving me right now — is the same look worn by those who harbor a general distrust of me."
Kang Jung-gil drew a cigarette case from his coat, placed one between his lips, and lit it with a lighter.
"Hooo..."
He exhaled a long stream of smoke.
"Do you smoke?"
"I do not."
"Then I'll smoke alone."
In front of an Executive Im Seong-woo who did not smoke, Kang Jung-gil smoked with complete unconcern.
"I've heard the full account. They say that when Executive Im Seong-woo visited the base camp that day, he crushed that fellow Jeon Dok-jin with aura alone. Hearing it, I thought it genuinely impressive. That friend of mine is the strongest we have within the National Safety Group."
"'The strongest' meaning excluding yourself, Director, I presume?"
"I'm not an Awakener, after all."
Strongest by the standards of Awakeners, then.
"In any case — suppressing Jeon Dok-jin with aura alone means you possess the corresponding ability and power. That's why I granted the meeting the moment I took the call. Hooo..."
He tapped ash from the spent tip into the ashtray.
"And ordinarily, anyone with that degree of power and ability ends up nursing ambition. Executive Im Seong-woo has been remarkably diligent about acting on his. You've raised a force capable of shaking the present order itself."
Im Seong-woo caught something in the way Kang Jung-gil was speaking.
"Director — you speak as though you already knew a situation like this would arise."
Listening to him now, it almost sounded as if he had known all along that Im Seong-woo would come at him this way.
"Is it so hard to guess? Looking at what you did to Jeon Dok-jin, I mean."
And with that, Kang Jung-gil confirmed that Im Seong-woo's impression was not wrong.
"Is that so...?"
The corner of Im Seong-woo's mouth twisted slightly. Hearing those words stung his pride — as if he had been moving all this time beneath the man's foresight.
"The truth is, I've always been curious. Whether an ordinary person who isn't even an Awakener could truly be that strong. I figure you must be strong to some degree — even in the early days, you single-handedly subdued and hauled in every notorious bastard who made a name for himself. But there is a line. The idea that an ordinary person who isn't an Awakener could cross that line..."
A soft rush of air.
From Executive Im Seong-woo, a blue mist of energy began to rise. Light flashed in both of his eyes.
And the mouth that had closed opened once more.
"I don't believe it."
In an instant, a razor-sharp force enveloped Kang Jung-gil and pressed down upon him. It was an aura that would have stopped an ordinary person's heart on the spot — the kind of force that could kill by shock alone, with no one left to complain. It was the same power that had once pinned Jeon Dok-jin so thoroughly he could not so much as twitch.
"Hooo..."
"......?!"
For a moment, bewilderment flooded the eyes that had been flashing with light. The Kang Jung-gil who should have been crushed beneath his aura was sitting there as if nothing at all had happened — calmly smoking his cigarette.