A Rusted Secret in Hong Kong
On the flight to Hong Kong, first class felt less like a seat and more like a private room.
The sides, front, and rear were sealed off completely by partitions, and with the touch of a button, the seat could be flattened into a bed.
There was even a personal minibar and a wardrobe.
Is this really inside an airplane?
Compared with the economy seats he had flown in until now, there was no point in making the comparison.
The price was just as absurd, of course.
If he had to pay for it himself, it was the kind of fare he’d never even consider.
Since this kind of chance might never come again, he might as well enjoy it as much as he could.
He let himself sink into the soft leather seat.
Not long ago, I was crammed into the corner of some absurdly narrow economy seat...
He remembered stuffing himself into a budget airline seat to save on travel expenses, sitting hunched for hours with barely enough room to breathe.
Back then, first-class passengers had seemed like people from another world.
And now he was the one sitting there.
"Mr. Si-woo, is the seat comfortable?"
Shin A-young’s voice came from the other side of the partition beside him.
"Yes. Life’s really making up for itself now, isn’t it?"
"I’m glad. You’ll have some time to rest after we arrive in Hong Kong, so please get as much sleep as you can."
Her voice carried an easy composure.
Si-woo looked over the panel beside his seat.
There were buttons for everything.
Why were there so many buttons?
He found the one that switched the seat into bed mode and pressed it.
With a soft whir, the backrest reclined and the leg rest lifted.
The seat lay perfectly flat, no different from a plush bed.
Before he knew it, he had drifted off to sleep.
How much time had passed?
Ding-dong.
A clear chime rang out, followed by the captain’s announcement.
"Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. We are now preparing to land at Hong Kong International Airport, Chek Lap Kok. We expect to touch down in approximately thirty minutes. The weather in Hong Kong is clear, with a temperature of 28 degrees Celsius. Please make sure your seat belts are fastened, and we hope you enjoy the remainder of your flight. Thank you."
He opened his eyes to the voice flowing through the cabin speakers.
I fell asleep without even noticing.
He checked the time and saw that he had slept for more than three hours already.
It was the first time a four-hour flight had felt this short.
If he had been in economy, he probably would have been stuck there the whole time without managing to sleep at all, unable to find a single comfortable position.
I’m not going to adapt well if I have to go back to economy.
So this was what people meant when they said once you experienced something good, it was hard to return to the way things were before.
He could feel the truth of that now.
Through the clear window, the islands of Hong Kong began to come into view.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
Hong Kong International Airport, Chek Lap Kok.
Once he stepped off the plane, a private corridor reserved for first-class passengers was waiting.
Instead of the long, crowded passage packed with ordinary travelers, he was led through a quiet VIP lounge and toward immigration.
As soon as they passed through the arrival gate, two Showderby staff members in suits were already waiting.
"Mr. Kim Si-woo, Ms. Shin A-young, it’s a pleasure to meet you. I’m Park Seong-jun, a manager with Showderby’s Hong Kong branch, and I’ll be taking care of your stay here."
He looked to be a man in his mid-thirties.
"I wasn’t expecting someone from Korea to be the one greeting us."
At Si-woo’s words, Park Seong-jun answered with a friendly smile.
"I’ve been assigned to make sure both of you have no trouble communicating in Korean. This is my partner, Manager Li Ming."
The staff member standing beside him bowed politely and greeted them in fluent Korean.
"It’s a pleasure to meet you. I’m Li Ming. Please feel free to let us know anytime if there’s anything you need."
Once they fully cleared the airport gates, Hong Kong’s distinct humidity and heat rushed over them.
It was a sticky heat unlike the summer in Korea.
"The vehicles are waiting over there. Please follow me."
Following Park Seong-jun, they reached the VIP parking area, where two black Rolls-Royce Phantoms stood side by side.
They were there for Si-woo, Shin A-young, and the Nutflix filming team.
Park Seong-jun opened the rear door with practiced courtesy.
"Your accommodation will be The Peninsula Hong Kong. It’s the finest hotel in Hong Kong, located in Tsim Sha Tsui on the Kowloon Peninsula. It was established in 1928, and the drive there will take about forty minutes."
As soon as they got inside the car, the noise of the outside world vanished.
The air conditioning was so perfect that the heat outside might as well not have existed.
As the car picked up speed smoothly, the scenery of a foreign city slid past the window.
Before long, a massive bridge stretched across the sea and filled his view.
"What we’re crossing now is the Tsing Ma Bridge. It’s one of the longest suspension bridges in the world."
After they crossed it, the full shape of the city came into view.
Towering skyscrapers packed tightly together.
A unique city where East and West were woven together.
The hub of Asian finance and art, where desire seemed to boil in the air.
At last, it felt real. He was in Hong Kong.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
In the back alleys of To Kwa Wan on the Kowloon Peninsula, Hong Kong.
Unlike Hong Kong Island, where glittering skyscrapers stood shoulder to shoulder, this place seemed as if time itself had stopped.
An aging residential complex, fenced off and designated for redevelopment, had been left to rot for nearly a decade.
At the center of it stood a six-story villa built in the 1940s, reduced to a bare skeleton.
Buildings were packed so close together there was no room for an elevator.
The moisture-soaked exterior walls had long since lost their original color beneath black moss and mold.
All around them were buildings marked with large red characters for demolition.
Outside, giant cranes and excavators stood by, though they had yet to roar to life.
Before the real demolition began, the workers were busy with soft strip work, removing the valuable materials from inside.
"Hey, A-Chang! The corner room on the fourth floor. Are you done yet?"
A-Chang irritably readjusted his industrial dust mask.
The thick, subtropical humidity hit him like a slap.
The inside of the abandoned old building was a furnace.
"The copper pipes are buried deep into the wall! This one’s pretty thick, too, so it ought to be worth some money. Give me ten more minutes!"
He spat a string of curses inwardly as he answered the foreman’s pressure.
To pull out the copper pipe intact, he had to break the surrounding concrete carefully.
Damn useless pipe.
He raised the hammer high.
Bang!
With a heavy crash, the rotten cement wall collapsed, exposing the piping beneath it.
At the same moment, gray dust that had been trapped for ten years burst upward like an explosion.
Crack.
The final rotten plywood that had been holding the pipe in place tore free.
Between the underside of the sink and the wall, a cleverly hidden double space was revealed, and something was inside.
"Huh? What’s this now? It’s not copper..."
It was about the size of a fist.
It was wrapped in a decayed piece of cloth.
When he lifted it, it was heavier than he’d expected.
Did someone hide this here?
A-Chang’s eyes gleamed.
Sometimes this happened at demolition sites.
People who had lived there long ago had hidden money or valuables in walls or floors.
If luck was on your side, you might find a gold ring, old currency, or even jewelry.
He glanced around subtly.
Fortunately, the other laborers were working on different floors.
No one was watching.
He quickly stuffed the lump into his work pants pocket.
I’ll check it myself later.
He went back to work as if nothing had happened.
Time passed.
The siren signaling the end of the shift blared.
"Good work, everyone! Be back early again tomorrow, by 6 a.m.!"
The site supervisor shouted out.
One by one, the workers broke into groups of familiar faces and dispersed.
A-Chang headed to a faucet in a corner of the site without taking off his work clothes.
He turned on the rusted tap and washed his face off carelessly.
Jeez, even the water’s lukewarm.
As he washed, he checked his surroundings again.
Carefully, he took the heavy lump from his pocket.
The outside was covered in rotten scraps of cloth, cement dust, and hard-packed mud.
There was no way to tell what color it had originally been.
"What the hell is this?"
Back home, A-Chang began scraping at the surface.
As the thick grime came away, a dull metal face gradually emerged.
It wasn’t just a lump at all, but a rectangular metal case.
Maybe it’s a jewelry box hidden in the floor by the people who lived here long ago!
His heart pounded.
If there were expensive jewels inside, calling it a jackpot would still be an understatement.
He fetched a flathead screwdriver from home that would let him open the jewelry box.
He shoved the tip into the seam of the box.
"Hngh."
He put force into it and twisted, but the box didn’t budge.
Over the long years, moisture and rust had fused the seam shut like concrete.
Should I smash it open with a hammer?
But what if whatever was inside got broken?
No, no point in forcing it.
A-Chang set the hammer down.
If it were a truly valuable box for precious metals, it would have been made of gold or silver.
Judging by the rust, it was clearly copper or brass.
Rather than force it open and ruin it, he’d be better off taking it to a junk dealer he knew and getting it checked there.
He slipped the box into his pocket and stepped outside.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
Cat Street at sunset.
Located below Hollywood Road, this place was lined with all kinds of odds and ends, antiques, and tourist goods.
Stalls packed both sides of the narrow alley.
A-Chang walked into the alley with familiar steps.
On the first floor of an old building stood a shabby shop.
Only a sign that read Lee Antiques hung over the entrance.
In truth, it was closer to a junk shop than an antique dealer.
"Old Man Lee! Are you there?"
As A-Chang stepped inside, an elderly man who looked to be in his seventies lifted his head from the newspaper he had been reading.
"Oh, it’s you, A-Chang. What is it?"
"I’ve got something here. Could you take a look?"
He took the lump from his pocket and set it on the counter.
Old Man Lee folded up the newspaper and put on his magnifying glasses.
It was a rusted clump of metal caked in dirt.
"What is this? Did you drag some trash over from a construction site?"
"No, Old Man Lee. Listen, it’s pretty heavy. It must be copper or brass."
With an air of annoyance, Old Man Lee took the object in his hand.
The moment he held it, his white eyebrows shot up.
It was surprisingly heavy for its size.
He turned it over in his hands and examined it from every angle.
"Where did you get this?"
"A demolition site on the outskirts of Kowloon. I dug it out of a hidden spot under the floor of an old villa."
"Hmm..."
Old Man Lee turned the rusted metal box back and forth.
The part that looked like a hinge had been completely fused together with cement and rust.
Its surface was so corroded that not even a pattern could be made out anymore.
He tried prying at the seam and twisting it, but it wouldn’t budge.
"Tsk. It won’t open."
He gave it a light shake in the air, but all it did was make a dull thud.
He couldn’t even hear anything rattling inside.
Old Man Lee clicked his tongue.
"It’s completely gone to rot. Even if you opened it, the inside would probably be useless from rust, too. It’s just scrap metal. Take it and go."
"Come on, Old Man Lee. It looks old at least... then give me scrap price for it."
A-Chang pressed him hopefully, but Old Man Lee shook his head.
"Does old automatically mean valuable? At the very least, it has to look halfway decent. Scraping the rust off and restoring this thing would cost more in chemicals than it’s worth."
Old Man Lee tossed the box into a plastic basket filled with odds and ends at one corner of the counter.
"Then sell it for 400 dollars."
"What? 400 dollars? Are you kidding me? Do you know how much trouble I went through digging this thing out?"
A-Chang nearly jumped out of his skin.
"If you don’t like it, take it somewhere else and sell it as scrap. At a place like that, you might get 100 dollars after they weigh it, and that’s if you’re lucky."
As if he had lost all interest, Old Man Lee picked up his newspaper again.
A-Chang bit his lip.
He didn’t have a good place to sell it anywhere else, either.
"Damn it, seriously."
Grumbling, A-Chang held out his hand.
"Fine. Give me 400 dollars, then. I’ll use it for cigarettes or something."
Old Man Lee pulled a crumpled stack of bills from the drawer and handed them over.
A-Chang snatched the money up, turned, and left the shop without so much as a goodbye.
"That temper of his... tsk tsk."
Watching him go, Old Man Lee clicked his tongue.