Who Sent You?
They were covered in tattoos — but these weren't some wet-behind-the-ears kids in their early twenties. These were men in their late twenties and early thirties, the kind who'd put in enough years to know the work.
In those few seconds, Yoo Kang-soo swept his eyes over their faces, cataloguing everything. Two of the weaker-looking ones had drifted toward the back and were pulling knives from their jackets. They weren't holding them like they knew how to use them. It was theater.
Back in the military, the ones who committed violent crimes were, more often than not, the same types who'd already been doing dirty work on the outside. Kang-soo had seen men like these more times than he could count.
"Someone sent you, didn't they? Haha... just figured that out, did you? Who was it? Who put you up to this?"
Working insurance fraud investigations, Kang-soo knew he had no shortage of people who'd hold a grudge. But someone with enough of a vendetta to hire street thugs? He ran through the possibilities again and came up empty. No face sprang to mind.
Kang-soo switched on the GoPro clipped to his bag. In this line of work you ran into gangsters, street punks, lunatics, and every kind of nightmare customer, so he'd taken to keeping a high-end action cam mounted on his bag at all times — a bare-minimum recording device, just in case a confrontation turned violent.
"I don't particularly want to fight. But you boys didn't come here just to pick a quarrel. You've got some special business with me—"
"Shut the fuck up, you son of a bitch. Why the hell are you talking so much?"
The thug who'd approached him at the sundae-gukbap restaurant earlier was at the front of the pack, cutting Kang-soo off with a shout.
Kang-soo pulled a telescopic baton from inside his bag and set the bag down on the ground, positioning it so the camera would have a clear shot. Then he hit the button and snapped the baton open in one fluid motion.
A few of the thugs laughed at the sight.
"Whoa... the old bastard even brought a weapon."
The gang snickered, their voices dripping with mockery.
Kang-soo found himself remembering something his Hapkido instructor had always told him, back when he was still a student. No matter how hard you trained, a man's fists and feet would never be stronger than a weapon. Fists and feet could only strike from a limited number of angles. But a club, a rock — those were harder than flesh and bone, and they could do far more damage with far less force. That was why, if an opponent came at you with a weapon, you didn't stand and fight. You ran first, then found a weapon of your own that could match theirs.
A simple lesson: never face an armed man with empty hands. And Kang-soo had lived by that teaching his entire life. A club was stronger than a fist. A knife was stronger than a club. And a gun was far stronger than a knife. He'd carried that simple principle with him through every day of his military service.
Facing a pack that outnumbered him this badly, Kang-soo had never intended to go in bare-handed from the start. They'd already drawn knives to set the mood. He was alone, with no way out. Subduing them was the only option he had.
The thug who'd shoved Kang-soo's shoulder at the sundae-gukbap place earlier charged first, throwing a punch. Kang-soo didn't swing the baton. He slipped the incoming fist and drove a vicious kick into the man's ankle. The thug went down, and Kang-soo immediately followed with a soccer kick to the fallen body.
In an instant, one man was down. The others flinched at the lightning speed of Kang-soo's technique.
"If you're gonna hire out a beating, at least send some guys with brains. Who the hell sent me a bunch of useless shovel-handles?"
Kang-soo said it with a laugh.
This time two of them rushed him. Kang-soo brought the baton down on one man's thigh without mercy. The other was pulling a knife from his jacket, and Kang-soo smashed the baton across his wrist.
The reason he'd drawn the baton in the first place was the knives. If they hadn't pulled blades, he could have handled them bare-handed. But the moment he saw steel, he'd gone for the baton. Facing a knife empty-handed was a risk even a martial arts master couldn't afford to take lightly. His late instructor's warning had been absolute: never do it. So Kang-soo preferred not to meet knife-wielding opponents with empty hands.
That didn't mean he lacked the confidence. He was fairly sure he could pull it off if he had to. He just chose not to.
The two small-fry in the back who'd been waving knives for show turned and ran.
Kang-soo closed in fast on the one who'd filmed him on his knees with a phone. The man was already backing away, crushed by Kang-soo's presence. But Kang-soo closed the gap like lightning and drove a liver blow into him.
The liver blow was Kang-soo's go-to attack. The man crumpled to the ground. Kang-soo pulled the phone from his pocket, bent the man's arm, and pressed his fingerprint against the sensor to unlock it. He deleted the photo of himself on his knees, then opened the recent call log and photographed it with his own phone.
"Looking at you, you seem to be the leader. I'll find out exactly what you bastards are and tear through every last one of you."
Kang-soo said it with the expression of a beast that had just finished a hunt. He photographed every record stored on the thug's phone.
Ji Hye-in's fingernails and toenails were painted a glossy black. She wore a black thong beneath a miniskirt so short it barely cleared the tops of her thighs, and a sleeveless blouse that left her shoulders completely bare. Her lips were painted a vivid red, her eye makeup applied with a light hand.
Today she would be serving three cafe members in a single day. The association had client visits scheduled for both Thursday and Friday, which meant she couldn't take daytime appointments tomorrow or the day after. So on this Wednesday, Hye-in had been booked for a grueling three-member marathon.
That was why she'd dressed more provocatively than usual — clothes that were easy to take off and put back on, with plenty of skin on display.
At ten in the morning, Hye-in met the first cafe member in a motel room.
"Hello. I'm Hye-in, the cafe's public sub. It's an honor to serve you again."
"Hye-in... I heard you'll take it in your mouth now — and swallow?"
"Yes... I've just started."
A faint flush rose to Hye-in's cheeks as she answered.
"It wasn't allowed before, was it? That's great..."
Hye-in took the member's cock into her mouth and began sucking with devoted, unhurried care. The man slowly stroked her hair.
Over the past ten days, she had swallowed the semen of more than ten members. Once the official notice had gone up that the cafe's public sub would now swallow after a finish in her mouth, every member who booked her made a point of coming on her tongue and watching her drink it down.
Ever since she had begun swallowing under Hwang Jeong-geon's instruction, Hye-in had taken a considerable number of loads. But one thing had become unmistakably clear to her: every man's semen tasted slightly, distinctly different.
A typical session ran about two hours, and the members came twice on average. Sometimes once in her mouth and once inside her. Other times, a member would be thrusting away, and the moment he was about to finish he would pull out, shove himself between her lips, and come there — watching her swallow with a look of deep, satisfied pleasure.
That morning alone, Hye-in had already swallowed one member's semen twice. After lunch she met a second man and swallowed twice more. The moment that session ended, she went straight to a third — she had already swallowed once, and they were now in the middle of their second round.
Her body was beginning to ache, but she was giving everything she had to her work.
The third member didn't come in her mouth. He came inside her. Hye-in closed her eyes at the heat blooming in her lower belly, savoring the pleasure.