Monopolizing Fortunes (7)
Monopolizing Fortunes (7)
'A martial artist? No, sharper than a martial artist.'
Wang Chil sat across the table from the sword and shield.
"I'm Wang Chil, in charge of the Gwanghwa-ro Fixer Office."
"I'm Jang Yu-seom."
"Were you in the military?"
"I thought the smell of blood had faded quite a bit, but apparently not."
"Some things can never be erased, like a tattoo. Like my ignorance. Heh-heh-heh!"
Jang Yu-seom gave a small laugh at Wang Chil's joke.
"How do you know Tong-dal?"
"He came to my house the other day and made me a rather grateful offer."
"You didn't know him before that?"
"No. But it seems you don't know me either, Chief Wang."
"I've only heard about you from Tong-dal."
"And yet you sent five nyang of silver?"
"Tong-dal said he absolutely needed it. Because of that rascal, I even sold land I'd bought for my old age. Oh dear, I've said something I shouldn't have. Heh-heh-heh!"
"To trust a subordinate like that. You must be a good superior."
"He makes me trust him, so Tong-dal is the good subordinate. Though these days he acts like he's the master. So I just went ahead and gave him the squad leader's hat."
At that moment, Do Tong-dal returned.
"You're here."
"I had a lot to think about, so I'm a little late."
Jang Yu-seom showed full courtesy to the young Do Tong-dal.
"I'll return this."
Do Tong-dal was already disappointed as Jang Yu-seom handed over the pouch.
"So you're going to the Haerang Society after all?"
"May I decide in three days?"
"Pardon?"
"On that day, if you spar with me and last ten moves, I will become your sword and shield, Squad Leader. I've delivered the same offer to the Haerang Society."
"Why three days, of all things?"
"I'm giving your sword time to leave its sheath, Squad Leader."
It was a puzzling remark. Jang Yu-seom left behind the words, "Then I'll see you in three days," and vanished.
Wang Chil asked.
"How do you know someone like that?"
"I'm something of a social butterfly myself."
"What a shame. If he became one of us, he'd be a real pillar."
"Why do you think it won't happen?"
Wang Chil spoke as if it were obvious.
"Can you last ten moves against someone like that? I don't know for sure, but he seems stronger than Protector Hwang, who's said to be the Red Tiger Society's greatest master."
"Even ten Protector Hwangs wouldn't be enough against Jang Yu-seom."
"He's that strong?"
"Would I spend a fortune for nothing?"
Wang Chil glanced at the spot where Jang Yu-seom had gone out.
"He's a nasty piece of work. Strong as he is, and he tells you to last ten moves against him. If he didn't want to come, he should just say so."
"If he didn't want to come, he wouldn't have made that offer. I think he was looking for a decent excuse to come to us......"
"So he means to go easy on you?"
"Nah, he's not the type to use tricks."
"If it's neither this nor that, then what? You're saying you can last ten moves? Are you that good at fighting?"
"No."
* * *
Click!
The key impression Jang Baek-dong had given him was accurate, and the lock opened easily. Just in case, he locked the door again and lit the candle he had brought.
The Baekdong Branch was incomparably larger than the Gwanghwa-ro Fixer Office.
'He said the Courtesan Management Register was in Gwang Hae-bong's office.'
He had been to this place about ten times in his previous life, so he knew where Gwang Hae-bong's office was.
True to Gwang Hae-bong's suspicious nature, the office door was locked. But Jang Baek-dong, who was more capable than he looked, had even handed over an impression of the office key.
Only after inserting the key into the hole and jiggling it this way and that did the lock open. The office was crammed with all sorts of ornaments and paintings.
"He's smeared money all over the place."
The wardrobe on the left was bigger than the bed Do Tong-dal slept in. When he moved the candle to the right, a bookshelf came into view.
On the fourth shelf of the seven-shelf bookcase sat a ledger titled Courtesan Management Register.
It was two finger-joints thick.
"How many pleasure houses is he managing?"
The ledger was neatly organized by each pleasure house. As he turned the pages, Do Tong-dal spotted the name Cheonsangru and stopped his hand.
There, the courtesans' names, places of residence, and even the amounts of money lent to them were recorded in detail.
Do Tong-dal dipped his brush in ink and began copying the ledger's contents. There were sixty-seven names, so it took quite a while.
It was when Do Tong-dal was writing the forty-second courtesan's name.
Rattle! Rattle!
The door handle shook from side to side. Someone was trying to open the lock, just as Do Tong-dal had done when he entered.
Nine times out of ten, it would be the office's owner, Gwang Hae-bong. Do Tong-dal quickly shoved the ledger back onto the bookshelf and blew out the candle.
Darkness descended suddenly, but he had memorized the wardrobe's position. Choosing a hiding place in case of emergency was something like instinct.
Just as he squeezed his body into the wardrobe, the door burst open.
"You fucking bastards! How long has it been since I told you to fix the door! There isn't a single one of you worth a damn!"
When Gwang Hae-bong came in carrying a candle, Do Tong-dal closed the wardrobe door. Through a small gap in the wardrobe door, he could track Gwang Hae-bong's movements.
"Is it going to take long?"
The voice from outside the office was a woman's.
"You wench, wait."
The way he answered was definitely not how one spoke to a wife. Gwang Hae-bong grabbed the edge of a painting hanging beside the bookshelf and pulled. The painting then opened inward like a window.
Behind the painting was a safe. Gwang Hae-bong inserted a key into the safe door and let out a laugh.
"Heh-heh-heh...... Elder Han, that bastard, is caught dead to rights. The moment your name goes into my blackmail ledger, you're leashed to me."
Blocked by Gwang Hae-bong, he couldn't see what was inside the safe. When Gwang Hae-bong's hand came back out of the safe, it was holding a single book.
That untitled book was clearly the blackmail ledger Gwang Hae-bong had mentioned. Gwang Hae-bong set the blackmail ledger on the desk and busily wrote something in it.
He was probably organizing Elder Han's dirty secrets.
'To have to just sit and watch that treasure!'
Later, even if he had to bring in a safecracker, he absolutely had to see that blackmail ledger. But unexpectedly, the opportunity came quickly.
Crash!
"Ow!"
Along with the sound of something breaking outside, a woman's sharp scream rang out.
"What? What's going on?"
Startled, Gwang Hae-bong rushed out of the office.
"I broke a vase...... What do I do, I'm bleeding! Sob—!"
"J-just wait a moment. There should be a bandage somewhere here......"
There was no time to hesitate. If that blackmail ledger went back into the safe, he might never see it again.
Do Tong-dal came out of the wardrobe and rolled over to the desk. He didn't need to copy the blackmail ledger; he could simply read it.
In particular, he absolutely had to know the dirt on Elder Han that Gwang Hae-bong had just mentioned. Because Elder Han was the person with the greatest influence on Red Tiger Society personnel management after the Society Leader.
"It...... it hurts! Be gentle!"
"Hold still! Why did you have to touch the vase!"
Gwang Hae-bong didn't seem likely to come back in soon. Do Tong-dal quickly read the open pages of the book.
Elder Han's dirty secret was embezzlement. It was a fairly large sum, and even the uses to which the embezzled money had been put were written down.
If details this specific were true, there was no way to deny them. Do Tong-dal turned a few more pages of the blackmail ledger.
'They say there's no one you can trust.'
Even people who hadn't seemed that way at all were secretly lining their own pockets. The most common offense was embezzlement, and there were even two murders.
"Ah, fuck. Let's go to a physician. Wait a moment."
Startled, Do Tong-dal rolled across the floor and slipped back into the wardrobe. Gwang Hae-bong, returning to the office, put the blackmail ledger into the safe and locked it.
"Ah, damn, I got blood on me. There should be a change of clothes in the wardrobe......"
Gwang Hae-bong approached the wardrobe. As Gwang Hae-bong's face, lit by the candle, drew closer, Do Tong-dal's heart pounded faster.
'I'm caught!'
Trapped in a wardrobe with nowhere to run, this was truly a dead end. What would happen if Gwang Hae-bong discovered him?
At worst, death; if he got off with just one part of his body crippled, he'd be lucky.
'Will my leg be cut off in this life too? Is that why I keep repeating this hellish life? Is that the punishment handed down to me?'
As dark thoughts took over his head, every sense in his body stood on end.
This sensation of fine hairs raising their arms in cheers made him remember a time and a place from his previous life.
It was the jungle of the Southern Barbarians. The humid air clung to his skin like glue, and the suffocating heat felt as if his lungs were burning away.
That day had been the second most terrible day of the three years he had spent crisscrossing battlefields. All twenty-two soldiers who had sortied with him were annihilated, and Do Tong-dal alone survived.
Fleeing the Miao tribesmen of the Southern Barbarians, Do Tong-dal endured for three days inside a hollow log. He drank his own urine and ate insects while waiting for the enemy to disappear.
That day had been closer to death than even the day his leg was cut off. The enclosed space and the approaching death brought back that day from his previous life.
The situation summoned memories, and the memories summoned sensations in turn. Sensations he had forgotten until now broke through his previous life and surged into his present one.
Thump! Thump!
His heart pounded violently, and the veins all over his body throbbed and jumped. The saying that the mind rules the body was not mere rhetoric.
Do Tong-dal clenched his fist, and his breathing grew rough. Right now, he felt as if he could kill Gwang Hae-bong with a single punch. If Gwang Hae-bong opened the wardrobe door, that was what would happen.
Gwang Hae-bong reached out to open the door.
"What are you doing! Take me to a physician, now!"
"I have to change out of these bloodstained clothes!"
"I said I'm dying of pain! Hurry up and come!"
"That wench has no patience."
Gwang Hae-bong let go of the wardrobe door he had grabbed and left the office. Only after the office door clicked shut did Do Tong-dal let out a sigh of relief.
When Do Tong-dal stepped out of the wardrobe, his hand was trembling faintly. It was a memory of his previous life, a body from his previous life.
Yet that ghostlike thing had leaped across time and space and fallen upon Do Tong-dal.
—I'm giving your sword time to leave its sheath, Squad Leader.
The moment Jang Yu-seom's words came to mind, a name surfaced in his memory.
Jeonsalgwi.
The chilling name meaning "ghost of the battlefield" or "ghost that kills them all" was the nickname Do Tong-dal had received while roaming battlefields in penal military service.
Penal military service was a punishment accepted in place of the death penalty or a punishment equivalent to it.
A soldier serving penal military service, whose death would be no loss at all, was invariably thrown into the most dangerous places on the battlefield.
From Hainan Island in the south to Mongolia in the north. From the sea raiders to the horsemen of the steppes. There was no enemy he had not fought.
He fought his way up from the south to the north, then fought his way back down from the north to the south, over and over.
For three years he roamed battlefields more dangerous than fire and more terrible than hell.
Among soldiers serving penal military service, Do Tong-dal was the only one who lasted more than one year, let alone three. He was like an immortal.
So he believed he would complete his five-year penal military sentence under the name Jeonsalgwi. But then his leg was cut off.
Once he became useless as a soldier, the military pardoned Do Tong-dal as if bestowing a favor.
And so Jeonsalgwi, with one leg severed, returned to Hangzhou. Not a single one of the dazzling promises they had made in exchange for him taking the blame was kept.
He was furious, but there was nothing he could do. As the useless man Do Tong-dal drifted through the back alleys of Hangzhou, the name Jeonsalgwi quietly faded away.
And so he grew old.
Do Tong-dal looked at his own arm, where the tendons stood out.
"Is this what it means for the sword to come out of its sheath?"
Perhaps it could be, but it was still a dull, rusted blade. The Jeonsalgwi his mind and body remembered was far, far removed from the Do Tong-dal of now.
"Then I'll have to close the distance. Though there's something I need to do first."
Do Tong-dal took the courtesan register from the bookshelf again and began copying it.
Right now, he needed Do Tong-dal's head more than Jeonsalgwi's body.
* * *
Do Tong-dal repeatedly gripped a dagger with a blade just over a ja long, first in a forward grip, then in a reverse grip.
It was shorter than the weapon he had used in his Jeonsalgwi days, but the dagger was a convenient weapon for a thug to carry.
As he switched it between his left and right hands, the blade grew familiar in his grip. The Jeonsalgwi his head remembered was gradually being engraved into his body.
Do Tong-dal twirled the blade around in his hand as he examined the courtesan register.
"I'd need to see the contracts to know for sure, but it looks like this will cost a fair bit of money."
If it were just a matter of moving positions within the same Red Tiger Society, he could simply change affiliations. From the Baekdong Branch to the Gwanghwa-ro Fixer Office, that is.
But that was only in ordinary cases, and there was no way Gwang Hae-bong would hand over the courtesans he managed without a fight.
According to the information Wang Chil had gathered, Gwang Hae-bong was already working to cut off the supply of courtesans to Cheonsangru.
"There's no time, so I'll have to throw away my pride."
* * *