Elective Major
Looking at Song Tan stepping forward, the five gangsters who had gathered let out derisive snorts.
"Never seen your face before. Who the hell are you?"
"Song Tan, Violent Crimes Team 1 at Annam Police Station. You’ll be seeing me often, so remember it."
"Whoa, that’s some swagger. But how old are you, Detective Hotshot? You look awfully young."
"Twenty-four."
"Huh?"
The gangsters exchanged looks and burst into laughter again.
"Puhaha, what the hell? You’re just a cute little rookie detective."
"No wonder he seems so clueless about the real world."
One of the gangsters leaned in as if to whisper to Song Tan.
"Hey, Detective. You think we’re supposed to start shaking just because you’re police? What’s this now? We’re a little different."
The gangster, patting the shoulders of the men beside him, gave a snicker.
"Our rookie detective here’s still got blood on his head, so he’s got no fear, but our boys are the same. Police? We figure they’re just bookish types who did nothing but cram in Noryangjin. That’s how kids are these days. Tsk tsk—no idea how hard our detectives work day and night."
As the atmosphere grew more vicious, Lee Joo-seok frowned.
"Hey, Song Tan. Step back. You can’t handle this alone."
When Lee Joo-seok moved to step forward, the gangster sneered.
"Those guys of ours you sent to the hospital after beating them up last time? They still complain that their joints ache every time it rains. No matter how you slice it, how do you even bludgeon people that brutally? You’re a cop, for chrissake."
"Shut up, you bastard. Unless you want to end up the same."
The gangster flashed a thin, ugly grin.
Like he had something to rely on.
"Think you can handle it? I hear you’ve been disciplined plenty for going around beating people up. Push it any further, and won’t you have to hang up your police uniform?"
Lee Joo-seok’s eyes narrowed as he glared at the gangster.
If it had been up to him, he would have rushed over and smashed the bastard’s face in right then and there. But this time, things were truly dangerous.
If anyone brought up abusive violence one more time, he’d be exiled without mercy to some rural police substation.
The chief’s icy final warning was all that kept the last thread of reason from snapping.
Perhaps sensing Lee Joo-seok’s conflicted thoughts, the gangster only laughed harder.
"So let’s not make each other’s lives more troublesome. Just quietly get lost today······."
Thud—
Mid-sentence, one of the gangsters suddenly rolled his eyes back and collapsed.
"........?"
Everyone stared at the gangster sprawled on the floor, dumbfounded.
"What the hell?"
It was a natural reaction.
At first glance, it looked like he had simply fainted while talking.
But when they noticed Song Tan’s raised right arm, they could finally guess what had happened.
He had done something.
"You fucking bastard! How dare you lay hands on the boss!?"
The enraged underlings surged toward Song Tan, their irezumi tattoos flashing.
The man with twin snake tattoos on his forearm swung a fist.
Song Tan twisted his body half a beat faster and tapped the inside of the man’s elbow.
The contact was so light it might have been a speck of dust being brushed away.
"Ugh!?"
In an instant, the man’s arm lost all strength and went limp.
Sensation vanished from shoulder to fingertips, leaving a strange, alien feeling—like the arm was no longer his own.
Ordinarily, a maeol—a pressure point—meant a point where nerves, blood vessels, and tendons intersected.
If internal force struck that seam just right, it could cause numbness, weakness, and loss of sensation.
"You bastard!"
The second and third brutes charged in like madmen.
Lowering his stance, Song Tan braced a hand against the floor and touched somewhere just below their knees with the tips of his toes.
Less like a kick, more like precisely stabbing a point with his foot.
"Agh!"
The two gangsters’ bodies locked stiff, and they toppled over, tangled together as if leaning on each other for support.
"M-my legs!?"
The two men could not stand, as though they had suddenly become cripples.
The brain was telling their bodies to rise, but the body refused to obey.
"Song Tan! Behind you!"
Lee Joo-seok shouted in alarm.
The fourth thug had rushed up behind him and hooked his arm around Song Tan’s chest.
As though he had expected it, Song Tan drove a fingertip into the inside of the man’s arm, just beneath the armpit.
"Hk!"
The gangster’s eyes went wide as he gasped in a ragged breath and dropped to his knees.
Then, as the pain apparently worsened, he began thrashing and screaming like a madman.
"Aaaagh! It hurts! Shit!!"
Song Tan walked up to the writhing man and lightly pressed just beneath the collarbone.
Thud—
The man’s eyes rolled back and he fell flat onto his back.
The arcade, which had been filled with shouting and obscenity, fell silent.
All of this had happened in barely twenty seconds.
"You···."
Lee Joo-seok stared at Song Tan in disbelief.
You couldn’t compare five ordinary men to five gangsters.
Even he, despite years of training in martial arts, honestly would not have found five easy.
That sort of thing only worked in movies; in reality, numbers mattered.
And yet those gangsters were now strewn across the floor like dried peppers left out on the street.
All thanks to a handful of casual flicks from his junior partner’s hand, as if he were merely playing around.
"We don’t have time for this. We need to go after him and catch him now."
"Huh?"
Lee Joo-seok shut his mouth, then flashed a fierce look.
Song Tan was right; what mattered now was arresting the suspect.
"Let’s go."
"Yes, sir."
Lee Joo-seok carelessly stomped over the gangsters sleeping so peacefully on the floor and moved on ahead.
***
As they descended another level, the arcade’s signature noise gradually faded into the distance.
Walking through the corridor where a chilly silence had settled, Lee Joo-seok raised a hand to signal Song Tan.
They were standing before a door from which multiple presences could be felt.
The moment Lee Joo-seok set a hand on the metal handle, laughter leaked from inside.
“Haha. A way for both sides to win······.”
Bang!
The door flew open with a crash, and silence descended at once.
The room, arranged like an office, held two long sofas and a low table. The suspect sat at the far end, while a man lounging in the seat of honor with his legs spread had three burly men standing behind him and a cigarette between his lips.
The man recognized Lee Joo-seok, frowned, and tossed the cigarette aside.
He was An Sang-gyu, the enforcer of the Annam Family Gang.
"Detective Lee, what brings you here? No notice at all?"
"Long time no see, Sang-gyu. But do I need your permission to come here?"
"Not exactly, but there’s such a thing as manners, isn’t there?"
"Manners, my ass. Coming from a pack of thugs."
The harsh curse instantly soured the air in the room.
"Why are you acting like this? We’ve been keeping our noses clean lately, living quietly like a new bride."
"I’m not here for you guys. I’m here to catch that weasel over there. So don’t get in the way."
The startled weasel-faced man pointed at himself.
"M-me?"
"Yeah, you. If you knew how much hell I’ve gone through trying to catch you, then you’d know why I’m exhaling like this···."
Lee Joo-seok ran a hand through his hair once and let the handcuffs dangle from his fingers.
"You coming quietly, or do you want to come after getting nicely pounded into shape?"
An Sang-gyu rose from his seat and glared at Lee Joo-seok with open menace.
"Shit, sometimes I can’t even tell who’s the gangster and who’s the cop. Hey, Detective. This guy’s our guest. Seems like you don’t have a warrant, so you were planning to take him on a voluntary escort, huh? I’m guessing he can refuse that, right? Once we’re done talking business, I’ll send him to the station myself, so how about you head back for today?"
"Who gave you permission to use a voluntary escort?"
Pushing through the line of gangsters, Song Tan stepped forward and stopped in front of the suspect.
"W-what are you doing?"
Song Tan’s gaze swept over the man’s body once.
The left side of the suit jacket. Between the chest and the ribs, there was a strange, awkward line.
Not a pocket, not an inner pocket, and yet the fabric there had gone oddly dead.
Song Tan’s eyes narrowed.
The side seam of the suit—the point where outer cloth and lining had subtly shifted out of alignment.
Without hesitation, Song Tan grabbed and pulled.
Rip—
With the sound of fabric tearing, a thinly sealed plastic packet popped out.
Song Tan opened the packet, checked the contents, and gave a nod.
The weasel-faced man’s complexion turned ashen, and Song Tan snapped handcuffs onto his wrists.
"You’re being arrested on the spot for violation of the Narcotics Control Act, on the grounds that you were found in possession of narcotics as a flagrant offender. You have the right to an attorney, and you have the right to remain silent. Anything you say may be used as evidence in court."
Lee Joo-seok shrugged at An Sang-gyu.
"That’s how it is."
"Haah··· shit."
An Sang-gyu let out a long sigh and scowled furiously.
It was the look of a man who knew everything had gone to hell.
"But hold on. You didn’t, by any chance, team up with this guy to run drugs, did you?"
An Sang-gyu stiffened and shook his head firmly.
"No way. I only met that bastard today because he said he had a business item that would make a lot of money. I never imagined it was drugs. If I’d been unlucky, I could’ve been dragged into something filthy, but thanks to you, Detective···. I’m getting out clean."
"Don’t bullshit me. You got lucky. You know one bad move with drugs doesn’t end with just you, right?"
An Sang-gyu ground his teeth.
"Of course. With Detective Lee staring at us like that, how could we possibly be stupid enough to touch drugs?"
The weasel-faced man, led out by Song Tan, lowered his head in utter defeat.
"We’re busy today, so I’m off. See you again soon, Sang-gyu."
As Lee Joo-seok sneered and closed the door—
"You fucking idiots!! How many of you are there, and you still can’t stop just two!?"
"Keugh!!"
Through the door came the sounds of blows and coarse profanity.
***
Interrogation Room, Criminal Investigation Division, Annam Police Station.
Yoo Jeong-ho, arrested on the spot for possession of narcotics, kept biting his nails with visible anxiety.
He had confessed to his crime rather obediently, with far less resistance than expected.
"So? You just received the goods and sold them using a simple dead-drop method? And got paid in cryptocurrency? Is that right?"
"Yes, that’s right."
"How much per pill?"
"Forty thousand won."
"Forty thousand?"
Hearing the price, Lee Joo-seok tilted his head.
It was far too cheap compared to market value.
"Were they dumping old stock or something?"
Scratching his chin, Lee Joo-seok continued the interrogation.
"What about the guys supplying the stuff? Their names, ages—tell me everything you know."
"I don’t know."
Lee Joo-seok’s eyes sharpened, and Yoo Jeong-ho hurriedly added,
"I-I really don’t know. When I transfer the cryptocurrency, those guys bury the stuff in the mountains. They only tell me the location."
"How exactly?"
Yoo Jeong-ho showed him the screen of his phone.
It was a conversation on Telegram with someone, and the message contained nothing but strange numbers.
37.412683
127.198451
"Those are latitude and longitude. Every time, they send the location of the buried goods like this."
"What a load of crap. What is this, the National Intelligence Service coming to pay a visit?"
After asking a few more questions, Lee Joo-seok shook his head and left the interrogation room.
"He’s just a nobody who knows nothing. If we want to wipe them out completely, we need to catch the head bringing the drugs in···. Damn, that’s a pain."
Glancing at Song Tan, Lee Joo-seok asked,
"What do you think? If we shake him down, you think anything more will come out?"
"No. It seems he told us everything he knows."
"You think so too, huh? Hoo, now what do we do···."
Watching Lee Joo-seok exhale in irritation, Song Tan lifted his phone.
"I marked every place where Yoo Jeong-ho had retrieved the goods so far on a map."
Lee Joo-seok’s eyes narrowed.
"The locations are···. More clustered than I expected?"
At a glance, they looked scattered without rhyme or reason, but a closer look showed they were dispersed around a single low mountain.
"For now, how about we go check the place where Yoo Jeong-ho said he received the goods?"
"Of course we should. But so much time has passed that I don’t know whether anything will still be left."
Lee Joo-seok sounded rather skeptical.
Which was only natural.
But Song Tan, on the other hand, was confident.
Finding and tracking someone’s traces in a mountain where no human foot had ever properly wandered was one of the few things he did better than torture.