Chapter 100
Translator : M.N 1391
Chapter: 100
Kyung-wan felt a strange sense of satisfaction at the fact that his flying kick skills hadn’t dulled, and with a smile, he turned back to look at those sitting behind him.
To the people who shrank back under his gaze, Kyung-wan said,
“Let’s take a look at your backs. You can stand, lie face down, or sit, I don’t care. Just show me those pretty erector muscles wrapped around your spine.”
“N-No! I, I’m getting out of here!”
Only then did the parents realize that Kyung-wan wasn’t joking. They panicked and began scattering in all directions like startled mice.
“Don’t make this difficult.”
Kyung-wan’s throwing skills were put to use once again.
A saw flew through the air and lodged itself in an ankle, a wooden beam shot like a spear and struck the back of a head, and a sharp surgical knife sank deep like a dagger into a shin or a thigh.
In the end, not a single person managed to escape.
At the sight, the gangsters who had been looking for a chance to run froze, their minds turning blank.
If they didn’t run, they’d end up half-paralyzed like the sobbing middle-aged woman sprawled over there. But could they really escape from that monster?
“Huuuugh!”
“Ooooh!”
With the groans and sobs of the parents of the rapist youths, now all suffering spinal nerve damage, as background noise, Kyung-wan shrugged his shoulders left and right and covered his nose and mouth with both hands.
And then came the beatbox sounds spilling out.
Pshh-tk! Pshh-tk! Pshh-psh! Chrr-chk!
With high-level beatboxing, Kyung-wan danced and stepped around the kneeling gangsters.
And the suited thugs and their lackeys watching him felt exactly what it must be like for someone stranded in the middle of the open sea to see shark fins break the surface and circle around them.
Pshh-psh-psh-pa, ah!
After cheerfully finishing a whole beatbox track, Kyung-wan tilted his head gracefully and looked down at the suited thug.
The suited thug didn’t dare meet Kyung-wan’s eyes, lowering his head and sweating profusely.
He knew the guy was crazy, but he hadn’t realized just how crazy he was. A lunatic with monstrous superhuman strength! Everyone in the world had been fooled by this bastard all along!
Thinking about it while kneeling there, the suited thug couldn’t come to any other conclusion. Without that monstrous strength, there was no way Kyung-wan could have broken free from the handcuffs he’d prepared.
“Sir.”
Flinch!
“Yes, you, the suited geeentle~man who just flinched. Can you hear me? You didn’t pass out or lose your mind from seeing something ugly, did you? If you’re not out of it, lift your head.”
Wishing he’d just pass out instead, the suited thug slowly raised his head, forcing a greasy smile so as not to irritate the madman. After all, people say you don’t spit in a smiling face, right?
Smack!
“Ghk!”
But what flew at him wasn’t spit, it was a slap.
“I can tell you’re trying, but your smile was disgusting. Fix your expression and lift your face again.”
When the suited thug slowly raised his head, instead of a smile that looked ready to sell his soul, there was a terrified, tear-soaked face.
Kyung-wan nodded in satisfaction.
“Yeah, that’s better. People should be honest like that. If you put on an act, it just confuses the other person.”
“L-Look here, sir. I was wrong, so can’t you just let me go? I-I’ll give you all the money I got.”
Summoning all his courage, the thug tried to negotiate, but Kyung-wan shook his head.
“Oh come on. You’re going to need a lot of money for medical bills and nursing care. You shouldn’t give up your money so easily. Do I look like some lunatic who’d be tempted by cash?”
“P-Please!”
As the thug begged with tears streaming down his face, Kyung-wan placed a hand on his shoulder and said,
“Sir. It’s confession tiii~me. Okay?”
The suited thug had never seen such a terrifying smile in his life.
= = = = =
By the time the police and the FBI arrived to rescue Kyung-wan, everything was already over. That was inevitable, since Kyung-wan himself had called the police after finishing his business.
In the end, not a single one of the people who had come there to kidnap and harm him could stand on their own two feet.
“Wasn’t that a bit much?”
When a police officer muttered that while watching the kidnapping suspects, now also assault victims, being loaded into ambulances with faces like they’d lost everything, Kyung-wan shot back,
“Someone who pays for a hit, and someone who takes money to do it, they’re the same kind of trash. If it hadn’t been me, they wouldn’t even have found the body and it would’ve been ruled a disappearance. They should be grateful I didn’t kill them.”
When a person is consumed by vengeance, their rationality is half-paralyzed. An American hero who caught terrorists? FBI protection? Murder? To parents looking at their ruined child, that stuff meant absolutely nothing.
Understanding that state of mind, Kyung-wan didn’t kill them, didn’t turn them completely paralyzed, and instead stopped at half-paralysis, at least enough so they could still feed themselves with their own hands.
As for the hired thugs? What happened to them? Luckily(?) for them, they also only ended up half-paralyzed. No matter how bad the crime, it wouldn’t look right for accomplices to receive a harsher punishment than the instigators.
“...”
Anyway, the police officer who’d given a little and received a lot shut his mouth, and agents from Letto Security arrived in front of Kyung-wan. The bodyguard named Park Haejin was nowhere to be seen.
Kyung-wan asked them,
“What about the people who were riding with me?”
“They’re all in the hospital.”
“Bad?”
“Both have bruises and fractures.”
So I’m the only one fine? Kyung-wan replayed the accident in his head.
Since he’d been lying down in the car planning to take a nap until they reached the prison, the impact from the side had been absorbed first by his sturdy legs, which must be why he hadn’t suffered any fractures.
“Then let’s go.”
“Where to?”
“Obviously, to prison.”
The attitude that wouldn’t tolerate any escape annoyed Kyung-wan, and he grabbed the back of his neck.
“Ahhh! I suddenly feel woozy and foggy. Hospital, hospital, hospital, hospital.”
“What?”
When Kyung-wan suddenly started acting up, they panicked.
But Kyung-wan raised his voice, asking what they were dawdling for.
“Let’s go to the hospital first!”
“...”
“What are you doing? Someone’s injured!”
The bodyguard’s sigh seemed to say this:
‘The ones injured are the people whose backs you broke and who are being carried out right now!’
But there was no one who could stop Kyung-wan’s stubbornness. And it was true that he’d been in a traffic accident aimed at killing him.
As unbelievable as it was, they had no grounds to ignore his claim of being in pain (what if it turned out to be real and they got a complaint later?), so Kyung-wan was taken to the hospital.
“Hey, Jeffrey. How’s your body?”
“...”
Jeffrey stared blankly at Kyung-wan, who had come to visit him wearing a patient gown.
“What’s wrong? Are you half-paralyzed or something?”
“Ha...”
“Ha?”
“The installments aren’t even paid off yet...”
It seemed the totaled car hurt him more than his broken arm.
“Don’t you make good money? You’re a national agency, after all.”
“A civil servant’s salary is the same everywhere.”
Kyung-wan nodded at that. Jeffrey wasn’t a permit-granting official, just an investigator, how much could he skim even if he tried?
“Won’t they process it as expenses? Jeffrey bought a solid car and lived properly.”
“I hope so.”
“It’s fine if they don’t. Tell me, I'll chip in when you buy a new one.”
At Kyung-wan’s words, Jeffrey looked at him with moved eyes.
But considering it had been a vehicle attack targeting Kyung-wan, it wasn’t strange for Kyung-wan to bear some moral responsibility. In fact, it would be strange if Jeffrey’s workplace didn’t compensate his loss. Even if it was a food tour, Jeffrey hadn’t accompanied Kyung-wan for personal reasons, it had been official duty under orders from above.
“What about them?”
When Jeffrey asked as if just remembering, Kyung-wan replied with a smile,
“I wrecked them.”
“.. How?”
“They’ll be in wheelchairs for the rest of their lives.”
“...”
Jeffrey’s eyes trembled from side to side, reflecting his complicated feelings.
He was grateful for the revenge, but the brutality went so far as to throw the law into the gutter. As a law enforcement officer, Jeffrey couldn’t help feeling conflicted toward Kyung-wan.
Especially since, from what he’d seen so far, Kyung-wan was usually a perfectly normal(?) young man.
“Then I’ll head back to my room.”
“Yes... take care.”
Leaving Jeffrey’s farewell behind, Kyung-wan also visited Park Haejin’s room, then went back to his own and lay down.
Because he was a top-tier criminal unprecedented in the nation’s history, they couldn’t put him in a shared room with other patients, so he stayed alone in a luxury room.
But he couldn’t stay there long. As news of Kyung-wan causing trouble again began to leak to the media, they hurriedly contacted the hospital to speed up his examination so they could bring him back to prison.
The hospital gladly accepted the request from higher-ups. Why wouldn’t they? A patient who brought in no money while occupying a luxury room was nothing but a nuisance, quickly examining and discharging him was beneficial for everyone.
So they rushed through the tests and concluded he was perfectly fine. For Kyung-wan, who’d planned to sponge off the hospital for a couple of days, it was unfortunate.
And when he returned to prison, Director Hong predictably yelled at him.
“I told you! Not! To cause! Trouble!”
“Whoa, my ears. You’re still so energetic.”
“Please, just help me out here!”
For someone asking for help, his face sure was full of anger, but Kyung-wan didn’t poke at that and instead claimed his innocence.
“I was just sitting there.”
“Just sitting there?! You turned thirteen people into cripples and you call that just sitting there?!”
“Now that I’ve set an example, no one will try anything like that again, right?”
At the sight of Kyung-wan smiling brightly and giving a thumbs-up, Director Hong grabbed the back of his neck.
This is driving me insane, seriously.
“Do you think you’ll ever get another furlough approval?”
Hoping Kyung-wan would come to his senses, Director Hong launched into a lecture, but Kyung-wan just shrugged.
“If it doesn’t happen, it doesn’t happen.”
At his ‘you can’t do anything to me over that’ attitude, Director Hong shook his head.
= = = = =
Whether the prosecution added twelve more years to Kyung-wan’s sentence for assault or not, Kyung-wan focused on grinding game titles.
There were more fun games out there, but that didn’t mean less fun ones weren’t enjoyable.
In the middle of that, Kim Jun came to visit.
“Long time no see, Mr. Jun. What did you decide about Jeffrey’s car?”
“They’re processing it as expenses.”
“That’s good.”
He wasn’t short on money, but as an inmate, transfer procedures were a hassle.
Kyung-wan chatted with Kim Jun about recent events, and one topic caught his interest.
“A hero company will be entering Korea.”
“A hero company... so it finally happened.”
Kyung-wan recalled Kang Woobin once mentioning the situation in Detroit. Had hero companies already become nothing unusual in the United States?
Kim Jun replied,
“Honestly, once the National Superhuman Association was established, it was only a matter of time.”
On top of that, given the situation in the United States, the privatization of public safety was an inevitable step. Extreme wealth gaps, the awakening of superpowers, the rise in superpowered crimes, the emergence of villains, and finally, capitalism.
Combine all of that, and it meant that the privatization of public safety was, in the end, a profitable business.