Monopolizing Fortunes (50)
Monopolizing Fortunes (50)
Do Tong-dal was about to speak when Yang Su-pan immediately opened his mouth.
"How can you ask that? It's impressive. Isn't it?"
Do Tong-dal laid out the evidence he had received from Go Seong-cheol in front of Yang Su-pan, piece by piece.
"Please take care of this."
"Huh?"
"You asked what you could do for me."
"No, that was just something I said while talking......"
"Anyway, please take care of it."
At Yang Su-pan's short sigh, the papers fluttered.
"What is this?"
"You know the three major underworld societies of Hangzhou, right? This is evidence that two of them, the Black Dragon Society and the Haerang Society, conspired to kill me."
"Huh? You're going to hand underworld business over to the authorities? Isn't that something you shouldn't do?"
"If they hadn't used an assassin from the martial world, I wouldn't have dragged the authorities into it either."
"They used an assassin from the martial world?"
"A first-rate one at that. This is evidence and testimony that the two underworld societies paid the assassin three hundred nyang of silver. That should be enough grounds to arrest and interrogate them, don't you think?"
Yang Su-pan, who had been examining the evidence, nodded.
"For hauling them in and crushing them, even half of this would be plenty. Shall I arrest the heads of the two underworld societies?"
"Cut off the snake's head in one stroke. As for the constables and runners, send whoever I tell you to send."
"Why?"
"You need to send officials who haven't taken money from the two underworld societies. If word gets to them, they'll run."
Yang Su-pan took the mention of officials taking bribes in stride. In a world where an official who didn't take bribes was the strange one, that was only natural.
"Understood. I'll have it handled by tomorrow morning."
"Let's set aside business for now and drink to our heart's content today, shall we?"
Yeon Ja-yeon, who had been attending to the drinks beside them, spoke.
"Since it's an auspicious day for the magistrate, Sagiju is unlimited today."
"Hahaha! My mouth will be happy and my purse will get lighter!"
"You'll be well-lined once you go to Beijing, so spend plenty here in Hangzhou before you leave."
"I will! Hey, Coordinator Do! Let's bathe in Sagiju today! Su-yeong, call Ja Su-yeong and have her play the zither! I don't like holding her, but I do like looking at a pretty face!"
The lively night, with even Ja Su-yeong called over, reached its peak. Yang Su-pan drank Sagiju until he could barely stay upright, then went to his room first.
Do Tong-dal, who did not enjoy drinking, also drank until his face turned red. Still, his posture did not waver.
"Proprietress, let's go too."
Yeon Ja-yeon, who had risen to follow Do Tong-dal, asked.
"You'll go with me?"
Her gaze traveled back and forth between Ja Su-yeong, whose eyes were full of expectation, and Namgung Seol-rin, who stood off to one side like a statue.
Namgung Seol-rin had insisted on coming along and had endured this uncomfortable gathering to the very end.
"The better the occasion, the more it should be shared with the wife who shared your hard days."
"The wife who shared your hard days? Hohoho! I never knew that could sound so sweet until today."
Yeon Ja-yeon silently mouthed "the wife who shared your hard days" to the two women remaining in the room, then went with Do Tong-dal to the room across the corridor.
Ja Su-yeong let out a soft sigh and asked Namgung Seol-rin.
"Aren't you going?"
Startled by the sudden question, Namgung Seol-rin answered.
"I have to guard Coordinator Do. What about you, miss?"
"Me, there are plenty of places calling for me but nowhere to go."
Just then, a servant's voice came from outside.
"Miss Su-yeong, a guest is asking for you."
Now there was somewhere to go.
"Tell them I've gone into another room and can't come."
Ja Su-yeong smiled brightly.
"I can't leave a guest alone."
"I'm fine......"
"Your face doesn't look fine."
Ja Su-yeong plopped down at the table, where plenty of liquor and food remained.
"Shall we just drink here?"
"I have to guard Coordinator Do. And I've never tried alcohol."
"What? You've really never had a drink? How old are you?"
"Twenty."
"Then I can call you sis. There's a first time for everything, so have a drink today. Come on, sit here."
Ja Su-yeong forcibly sat Namgung Seol-rin down beside her.
"If it's your first time, you should start with good liquor."
She poured Sagiju into two cups.
"There's nothing like alcohol for chasing away a gloomy mood."
"I'm not that gloomy......"
"Come on, your face has 'depressed as fuck' written all over it."
Once Ja Su-yeong said that, Namgung Seol-rin did feel a little gloomy. Ja Su-yeong clinked her cup against Namgung Seol-rin's and emptied hers in one gulp.
Namgung Seol-rin also wet her lips, but it only tasted bitter; she felt no pleasant flavor.
"I don't understand why people drink this."
"Everyone says that at first, and in the end they all get addicted."
Ja Su-yeong propped her chin on the table and gazed at Namgung Seol-rin.
"Sis, you're really pretty."
"What? If the greatest beauty in Hangzhou says that, it's an insult."
"It's true that I'm pretty. Heh heh...... But you're pretty in a different way from me, sis. How should I put it...... dignified and beautiful? You're the type Coordinator Do would like."
"That's not true."
Namgung Seol-rin tasted the Sagiju once more. She held a little in her mouth, and beyond the bitterness, a subtle fragrance came through.
"This is why they say you have to express your feelings when you like someone."
"If Coordinator Do liked me, would he go off to bed with the proprietress so openly?"
"Yes."
Ja Su-yeong said it as if it were obvious.
"Coordinator Do went to bed with me even though he likes the proprietress."
"That was unavoidable......"
"Come on, there's no man who sleeps with a woman unavoidably. Even if you can't call it love, at the very least there's affection."
The servant came looking for Ja Su-yeong again, but she refused this time too.
"Are you sure you don't have to go?"
"I've paid off all my debts, so it's fine. And I'm not in the mood to perform today."
"You pretend you don't care, but it bothers you that Coordinator Do and the proprietress went to bed together, doesn't it?"
"No. What bothers me more is Coordinator Do calling her 'the wife who shared his hard days.'"
"Doesn't 'the wife who shared his hard days' mean an old woman?"
"What?"
"Most wives who shared all those hard years are older women, aren't they?"
"Pfft! Hohoho! You're right, sis!"
Ja Su-yeong, who had been drinking one cup after another, spoke.
"I like you, sis. What about you?"
Before, Namgung Seol-rin had felt nothing in particular, but today Ja Su-yeong's behavior was endearing.
"I like you too."
"Then you can't hate me from now on."
"Why would I hate you, miss?"
"What's with 'miss'? Just call me Su-yeong, sis."
"Shall I?"
That day, Namgung Seol-rin and Ja Su-yeong's drinking continued late into the night.
"Next up are me and the proprietress."
"Huh?"
"If you go to bed with Coordinator Do, sis, then the people drinking in this room will be me and the proprietress. Heh heh!"
"Th-that's absurd!"
* * *
Wang Chil flung open the door to Do Tong-dal's office.
"Was that you?"
"What?"
"So Tae-sang and Yang Sang-jin getting hauled off to the government office on charges of soliciting murder!"
"Yes."
"How can the underworld borrow the authorities' power to deal with another underworld society's head?"
"They broke the unwritten rule first. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth."
"Well, that's true, but......"
"Brother, have the boys spread word about why So Tae-sang and Yang Sang-jin were arrested."
If it became known that they had hired the Baekeum Assassin, their honor as underworld society heads would clearly hit rock bottom.
"That kind of rumor will get out somehow even if I don't spread it. They broke the unwritten rule first, but still, we're the underworld......"
Wang Chil did not like having borrowed the authorities' power.
"Brother, we had to choose one of three options. First, we could simply let it go whether they tried to kill me or not. I suppose we'd earn a reputation as a soft-hearted underworld group."
"That's out of the question."
"Then the second option was to punish them by force. Of course, we have enough strength. The two underworld societies far outnumber us, but we have Protector Jang, Namgung Seol-rin, and me, so there's no way we'd lose. Our people would still bleed, though. The three of us can't fight alone."
"Better that our people don't get hurt."
"So the method I chose was the third. If you don't like it, I'll withdraw it."
"W-withdraw it?"
"If I tell the magistrate to release them, he'll release them right away."
"Forget it. Since it's come to this, let's go down this road once."
"Brother, justice and loyalty are for people worth showing them to. If the enemy becomes a wolf, we have to become jackals too."
"So now all we have to do is go take over?"
"It won't be that simple. They'll have made their own preparations in the meantime. So first I'm going to go see So Tae-sang and Yang Sang-jin."
"If you so much as scratch at them, those bastards will burst their guts and die."
"Let's decide how to proceed after I meet them."
* * *
"You're the one who drove us into this corner! And now you're even using the authorities! You son of a bitch!"
So Tae-sang shouted until the veins stood out on his neck. If he had any confidence he could beat Do Tong-dal, he would have lunged at him on the spot.
"Guard?"
The guard keeping watch outside the door poked his head in.
"Yes."
"Soliciting murder is a serious crime. Shouldn't he be wearing a cangue or something?"
Thanks to the bribes So Tae-sang had scattered here and there, the guards had been granting him favors.
"I'll go to the magistrate and......"
"W-we'll put it on right away!"
"You vicious bastard!"
Not only So Tae-sang but also Yang Sang-jin, locked in the next cell, had cangues put around their necks.
"Feel anything? I can put three cangues like this around your neck, or I can give you not a single meal for three days straight. Soliciting murder is second only to murder itself, so who's going to care if a prisoner like that dies?"
So Tae-sang ground his teeth, but Do Tong-dal was right. At this moment, he was nothing more than a bug to Do Tong-dal.
The venom in So Tae-sang's eyes vanished as if it had never been there.
"What do you want?"
Once you break someone, reading their expression becomes much easier.
"What did you promise them?"
"Th-them?"
"Shall I call the guard and have another cangue put on you?"
It had only been instinctive defiance, and it had no staying power.
"In exchange for protecting us from the Red Tiger Society, we agreed to give them fifty percent of our income."
"To the Red Wind Sword Sect?"
It had been a guess, but So Tae-sang's head dipped in a small nod.
"What about the Haerang Society?"
"They made the same contract with the Black River Blade Sect. We had no choice."
They had made the realistic choice to keep at least half rather than lose everything to the Red Tiger Society's seizure of their territory.
"No matter how hard the fight, you shouldn't have dragged martial sects into it. People with no pride in the underworld."
Do Tong-dal said as he left the jail.
"Still, how does he not miss a single step of the prediction? That's something remarkable."
* * *
Hwang Chan-seok found this meeting more than a little uncomfortable. The situation itself was bad enough, and Do Tong-dal was always an uncomfortable opponent.
"I don't know why you asked to meet me."
Do Tong-dal, who had moistened his lips with tea, spoke.
"I'm on my way back from visiting your Society Leader in jail."
"The jail Coordinator Do sent him to, you mean."
"The jail he went to because he used an assassin from the martial world to try to kill me."
"I still don't know why you asked to meet me."
"Is Hall Master Hwang going to just watch while the Black Dragon Society is reduced to the Red Wind Sword Sect's money vault?"
Hwang Chan-seok bit down on his molars. The word "money vault" grated on him badly, but he could not exactly refute it.
"The Red Tiger Society made us that way. To be precise, you did, Coordinator Do."
"Do you know how many years of history the city of Hangzhou has?"
"Do I look like a historian to you?"
"To be honest, I don't know either. A thousand years, two thousand? Maybe longer. Then how many years has the Haerang Society, the oldest underworld society in Hangzhou, been around?"
"About eighty years."
"Was there no underworld eighty years ago?"
Hwang Chan-seok understood what Do Tong-dal was getting at.
"The underworld has its own laws. Are you really saying you'll ignore those laws and stuff Hangzhou's nights into the mouths of two sects?"
"But this isn't my decision."
"You're in a position where you now have to make a decision."
"What can a mere hall master like me do?"
"If you don't want to hand the underworld over to the Red Wind Sword Sect, come over to our Red Tiger Society. You can't be the only one who thinks handing the underworld to a martial sect is wrong."
When So Tae-sang first joined hands with the Red Wind Sword Sect, there had been internal opposition. Quite a few officers argued that even if they fought the Red Tiger Society to the death and were ruined, they still could not hand the Black Dragon Society over to a martial sect.
But the Society Leader was So Tae-sang, so in the end they had no choice but to follow his orders.
Now, however, the situation had changed. The Black Dragon Society, having lost its leader, did not know what to do, and if things went on like this, it would be swallowed whole by the Red Wind Sword Sect.
* * *