A New Beginning
As the saying "hurry hurry" aptly captures our people's character, the meeting place and time with Baccara Park were set for the very next day. The location was Jangyu Rest Area near Gimhae Airport. I had Eun-seong handle the delivery. I drilled the precautions into him once more: if anything felt suspicious or went wrong, he was to leave immediately without looking back and contact me. I explained that since this was a client we didn't fully trust, anything could happen. I also assured him that I would cover any fallout and that he wouldn't be held responsible.
Suddenly, a sense of déjà vu hit me. This was exactly what the glittery guy used to say when I was running pocket deals. The review was the same. He handed over the paper bag in front of the trot music store, delivered the goods, and came back. Cool as ice. Well, whatever. Thanks for the cool transaction!
I had one hundred million won in cash delivered to Bondam and closed the deal. He'd figure out the Philippines trip on his own. Any delivery mishap wasn't my responsibility. Still, one kilogram seemed awfully conspicuous. I'd have to ask next time we spoke. The last time I tried, the negotiation cut the conversation short. And Upright Man still wasn't answering. Should I reach out? I'd ask about his know-how while I was at it. Just like that, one more client secured, and Upright Man vanished. Same as before.
I checked on the factory production status and Assistant Director Seon's progress building Logistics Team Two, then went to the office like clockwork. I received resumes from Assistant Director Seon. There really was something to that old saying about birds of a feather flocking together. Every single one of them was from the social elite. Well, that was probably true of everyone in his circle. Once things settled, I'd have to promote him to section chief and tell him to diversify the team. From what I'd seen in this line of work, putting all your eggs in one basket meant everything shattered at once.
Sitting at the company, I wrote half a page of political commentary, surfed the internet, and stumbled across an interesting article. Whether it counted as competitor intel or natural enemy news, I wasn't sure.
I hadn't realized this was about Glittery's organization. Before I could even process it, a message arrived.
I couldn't afford to lose my own Zhang Liang like this. The connection cut off. I frantically searched related articles and the internet. I found detailed incident records that could only have come from an insider. Within the organization structure, there was a gap in the security team. Had a traitor emerged from there? From what I'd heard before, he used them like real mercenaries. Looking at the organization's structure and scale, the police had missed the most important parts: the ringleader and the money man. In our terms, they hadn't caught me or the underboss. The core was gone.
With that thought, I fell asleep worrying about the future of the person who had given birth to our organization, like the Holy Mother Mary. A nap. Someone was knocking. I shot up and looked around. I heard giggling, but when I turned with a serious face, it was the president's daughter waking me.
"What's the matter?"
Shit, I'd slipped up. How embarrassing.
"It's quitting time."
Already? I'd done a proper salary thief routine today.
That evening, the day my face was exposed, I heard the underboss's complaints. Or rather, his whining.
The underboss's usual "the thing is" turned out to be concerns about the current state of the organization and its scalability. After Assistant Director Seon went independent, there was some discontent in the logistics department. The complaints were that the elites were being favored, that short educational backgrounds were being looked down on, that the voiceless were guilty. It was serious. The feeling right before a shipboard mutiny? In an organization with such poor communication, if a department head was saying this much, the discontent below must be considerable.
Not knowing what to do, I just stared at the messages. Not knowing what to do.
I suddenly became the underboss myself. This guy was the same small-time citizen who was doing one-gram pocket deals last year. Still, as a reasonably charismatic organization boss, I told him to submit a proposal. Once you received one from Assistant Director Seon, you got addicted. Those clean proposals. Proposals that made you want to spend money. This guy had come prepared.
The next day, it arrived immediately. Was this guy also from the elite? He wrote documents extremely well. But he'd been a nightclub waiter before getting tangled up with me. The organizational restructuring proposal was three pages long. I finally understood why the underboss had made this suggestion. Someone who thoroughly understood the organization's overall situation and the current domestic landscape—market control potential in the capital region and Busan, product expandability, and so on—was under Hamo. Hamo had been inspired by this too. And the timing was perfect. Right when Glittery's territory had been wiped out, this kind of proposal appeared. Who was it? I was curious.
But the restructuring proposal had to be postponed. Suddenly, one entire line had been taken out. That Alpha Team had done their job. Apparently, they'd caught someone at the section chief level. Hearing the full story, it was really unlucky. Unlike the rank-and-file who worked the streets, section chiefs and above handled fixed clients for sales. With Glittery's territory gone, the Bucheon and Incheon markets had become a free-for-all. The organization that had been ordering from us because they had no product turned out to be one already under Alpha Team's investigation net. So what happened? Like minnows caught in a cast net, they were all reeled in one after another. Maybe it was fortunate, but apparently the section chief was being wrapped up as an independent organization. It was annoying. The kids weren't managing risk. Didn't they do customer due diligence? Actually, I hadn't either. I'd have to spread this as a key organizational management point during the next restructuring. No, should I create a risk management team? Even large corporations had them. No, no, I was still just a small citizen. I'd only just started putting food on the table properly.
The underboss brought an alternative. In such a hurry, he asked if he could hire the friends who'd gotten caught up in the war on drugs last time. They'd already been released? But I refused. According to what I'd been taught, once you had a record, if a similar incident occurred, they'd start with the ex-convicts. In other words, when a drug case broke, they'd investigate people with prior records first. I'd heard that for crimes with high recidivism rates, the police sometimes followed that lead. Since the organization had to survive even if people left, I told him to operate with what we had for now. I'd buy time while thinking about restructuring.
Originally, if even one person was missing from a team, the remaining members had to cover their work and got busy. We were in a situation where 30% of the entire organization had been wiped out, so everyone was overwhelmed. I needed to make a decision soon. But Glittery was gone too. Our guy wasn't answering either. There was no one to ask. I felt an inexplicable loneliness. And I started missing the old days. The time when selling one or two grams a day meant happily eating cup ramen with a glass of soju.