Simple Suppression
The back side of the drug factory pressed up against a sheer rock face.
The two men moved along the outer wall of the building, keeping even their breathing as quiet as they could.
Fortunately, the hum of the hood fan swallowed every trace of their presence.
After slipping safely around to the rear, Lee Joo-seok slowly straightened and peered beneath a window.
A single central worktable, wall-mounted shelves, a gas burner, and—most importantly—a tray filled with purple powder were all in view.
There were three people visible at once, and they couldn’t rule out the possibility of more.
"Senior. On the left."
Where Song Tan pointed, there was another old wooden door.
It did have a lock, but it looked awfully flimsy.
Lee Joo-seok took hold of the doorknob, and instead of pushing it open, he lifted it slightly to disperse the force and keep the hinges from squealing.
Creak—
The two men slipped carefully inside.
A nauseating chemical stench stabbed straight into their noses.
The air was sharp with a mixture of ammonia and solvents.
This relatively dark room looked like a storage area for raw materials.
Then they heard a voice from beyond the door.
At once, both men froze in place.
"This batch’s purity turned out damn near perfect… and we’re throwing the whole thing away?"
"What else can we do? It’s not like we can haul it all out with us."
"Shit, do you know how much money this is? And they want to burn it like kindling."
After the rough curse, the man lowered his voice.
"Wouldn’t it be better to wait just a little longer?"
"I’d love to. But Boss said to clean up and move out right away."
"No, think about it. Say the delivery went wrong. What does that have to do with us? Those bastards don’t know a damn thing about us anyway. Right?"
"Yeah, but… Boss said we should be careful just in case…"
"Ah, that old man’s got more fear in him than a damn mouse. How the hell is he supposed to run a drug business with balls that tiny?"
"Watch your mouth, asshole. He might hear you."
"Don’t be scared, asshole. He’s in the workshop right now. Damn it, I need to learn the trade and go independent already. How much longer am I supposed to keep doing grunt work…?"
"Just wait. He’s been looking stretched thin lately, so soon enough, our chance will come."
"Yeah, Pil-gyu. Whether it’s you or me, we’re going together no matter what, got it?"
"What about Jong-gyu?"
"That bastard’s a junkie. How the hell is a guy making drugs supposed to be shooting them up?"
"You do it too, asshole. Think I don’t know?"
There was a brief silence, awkward and tense.
"T-That’s, idiot… I’m just tasting it to see if the batch came out decent."
"Take it easy. You know what happens if you get hooked on that stuff."
"I know, you bastard. Stop worrying about me."
"Let’s just move the raw materials faster. He’ll start bitching again if we’re late."
The sound of their footsteps grew nearer and nearer.
Lee Joo-seok made a hand signal.
He wanted them to take one each and handle them.
Then he pressed his index finger to his lips.
It was a sign to subdue them as quietly as possible.
Song Tan nodded without a word.
A moment later, the two men entered the storage room.
"Ugh, the smell. Shit, my head’s already killing me."
"Hurry up and do them in. We’ve got plenty more to handle."
The moment the two men, frowning, reached for the sacks of raw materials—
Lee Joo-seok, hiding in the dark, coiled around one man’s throat like a snake from behind.
"Ghk!"
The pressure on his carotid artery was so strong the man barely managed a struggle before his body went limp.
Lee Joo-seok had dropped one man instantly and glanced to the side.
The other had already rolled back his eyes and lost consciousness long ago.
It had been the same last time they dealt with the gangsters, but the way this man knocked people out so cleanly was astonishing.
"Tie them up so they can’t move."
Song Tan followed his senior’s order and used the twine lying nearby to bind the unconscious men’s arms and legs neatly.
He did it so naturally and so quickly that Lee Joo-seok began to suspect Song Tan might have once worked for a packaging company.
Shaking his head, Lee Joo-seok lowered his voice and said to Song Tan, "The rest of them won’t be this easy to ambush."
"What should we do?"
"If anything feels off, they might bolt. So we block the retreat first and hit them ourselves."
The two men nodded and moved forward slowly.
Through the crack in the door, the interior of the workshop came into view in a hazy blur.
Unidentified purple powder sat in glass containers, and a row of machines of unclear purpose was lined up along the wall.
"Police! Hands up! Nobody move!"
Lee Joo-seok’s short, hard shout rang through the room.
Three men who had been talking while wearing white masks and goggles stiffened as if struck by lightning.
Then a long-haired man tore off his mask and violently raked his fingers through his hair.
"Ah, shit! I told you we should’ve cleaned up and gotten out earlier! Now look at this, dragging our feet and getting our asses caught by the pigs, you idiots!"
The other two men removed their masks one after the other.
All three looked to be in their early to mid-thirties, but nothing about their faces stood out in particular.
If you saw them on the street, you’d have believed they were ordinary office workers without a second thought.
The long-haired man narrowed his bloodshot eyes at the two detectives.
They were red and inflamed to the point of being almost grotesque.
"What, just the two of you?"
"Two detectives are enough to arrest junkies like you. What else do you need?"
At Lee Joo-seok’s indifferent reply, the long-haired man’s face twisted like paper.
"You son of a bitch, talking to us like that with that mouth of yours…! Whatever. Cops like you should all be beaten to death. Useless, useless trash that doesn’t do a damn thing for this world."
The man’s jaw was trembling at a bizarre speed.
At a glance, he was clearly drowning in drugs.
"Oh, this is even better. We just kill those two bastards and get out."
The long-haired man grinned crookedly and grabbed the kitchen knife lying on the worktable.
The other two also picked up anything nearby that could serve as a weapon.
With his face set, Lee Joo-seok drew the pistol he had checked out just in case and gave Song Tan an order.
"Hey, pull your gun too."
"Will that be all right?"
"What’s the point of sticking to regulations if you die? And that bastard’s holding a syringe. That could be more dangerous than a knife."
Song Tan nodded and drew the Taser from inside his coat.
Lee Joo-seok aimed his gun at the suspects.
"If you don’t want to die, drop what’s in your hands and get on your knees, you bastards!"
The muzzle locked squarely onto their chests.
Under normal circumstances, any human being should have surrendered in fear right then and there.
"Go ahead and shoot."
The long-haired man with the knife took a step forward.
His breathing was ragged, his pupils overexpanded.
Drugged out enough that excitement had overtaken fear.
The other two used the long-haired man as a shield and edged forward little by little.
Lee Joo-seok’s finger twitched on the trigger.
In the deadly silence, with gunfire seeming ready to break out at any second—
Thud.
Song Tan casually tossed the Taser backward.
"Hey, what the hell are you doing?"
Lee Joo-seok asked in alarm.
"If you shock someone who’s already high on drugs, he could go into cardiac arrest."
His tone was so calm it didn’t suit the life-or-death situation at all.
"If you’d permit me, I have a method. Could you cover me a little?"
Ordinary people froze solid the moment they saw a gleaming blade.
It wasn’t merely a matter of fear; it was human instinct.
But Song Tan showed not the slightest sign of wavering.
He looked like a man who had some backing he trusted.
Before he knew it, Lee Joo-seok had nodded.
It wasn’t reason that answered him, but instinct alone.
Trust that strange assistant of his just this once.
"Don’t you dare get hurt. If it looks dangerous, I’ll just shoot right away."
Song Tan nodded and drew in a slow breath.
With that, he recalled the distant past.
Madmen from the evil sects, crazed out of their minds and wildly swinging swords after taking opium.
Even the demonic lords who chewed hallucinogenic herbs and hacked their fellow disciples into pieces.
How many warriors had he faced who stripped away pain and fear before charging into a melee?
Compared to those human-shaped monsters, the three men before him were nothing but three writhing bugs.
"Die, you damn cop!"
The long-haired man lunged first.
A sharp blade flew toward Song Tan’s solar plexus.
Song Tan stepped half a pace to the side and drove his fingertips into the back of the man’s neck.
The man’s hazy vision snapped wide open in an instant.
Unexpected clarity crashed over his nerves, slicing through the drug-induced fog.
"Aagh!"
The long-haired man shuddered violently, stunned by the pain that had suddenly become brutally distinct.
This was the acupoint strike known as Cheonggak Hwanhyeol.
By striking the mastoid bone beneath the ear and the Fengchi point at the back of the neck, one could briefly disrupt a state of overexcitement or delusion.
Then Song Tan went further and opened Tongmaek Gekhyeol.
It was a point-striking method that forcibly reopened blocked pain signals.
"Aaaaaaagh!!"
Clang!
The long-haired man let out a scream so shrill it cracked his voice and finally dropped the knife from his hand.
After that, Song Tan struck his immobilizing points to paralyze his lower body before he could try anything stupid.
Of course, only the muscles stopped moving; the pain itself remained intact.
"S-Save me… nghk!"
Everyone froze at the sight of the long-haired man thrashing on the floor and clawing at it like a seizure patient.
Even Lee Joo-seok, who had seen all manner of hell and high water.
"You want to be arrested quietly? Or should I do the same to you?"
"Ghk!"
As Song Tan’s low voice fell, the long-haired man’s screams spread beneath it like a narration track.
The other two men went pale and dropped the weapons in their hands.
They knelt obediently and placed their hands on their heads to show they were surrendering.
With almost no drugs in their systems anymore, rational judgment was still possible for them.
Song Tan clicked his tongue in disappointment.
"Sa-aaave meee… pleaaase…"
Creek— creek—
The long-haired man, his voice completely shredded, only twitched like an insect and kept repeating the same sound.
Frowning, Lee Joo-seok pointed at him and asked, "That… is he going to be okay?"
Would he have suffered that much even if he’d been shot?
From Lee Joo-seok’s point of view, that was how bad it looked.
"Even if he goes to the hospital, he won’t come away with anything worse than two weeks’ worth of treatment. We didn’t assault him; we simply subdued him."
"Simply subdued… you say?"
Of course, there wasn’t blood splattered everywhere.
Still, could a suspect drooling and writhing on the floor really be called "simply subdued"?
It was a little hard to parse, but he pushed the thought aside for now.
Lee Joo-seok picked up the radio.
Chhhk—
"This is Violent Crimes Team 1, Lee Joo-seok. We judged backup to be unavailable, so we entered the site and have completed the arrest of all five suspects. We’ve secured evidence at the scene, and we’re requesting forensic staff and transport personnel."
After taking the radio from his mouth, Lee Joo-seok leaned against the wall and let out a long breath.
It was the kind of sigh that announced the situation was over.
"Ha! Ridiculous. I just went chasing after one gas delivery guy, and I end up finding a drug manufacturing factory."
He gave a dry laugh and glanced at Song Tan sitting opposite him.
"I’ve been breathing in so much of that drug stink my head’s spinning. My stomach’s nauseous too… not that it is for you?"
"Shouldn’t you get checked at a hospital?"
"What, and be embarrassed enough to go to a hospital? No thanks. Something like this, you just wash it down with a bowl of spicy soup."
"Ah, is that so?"
After a short pause, Lee Joo-seok casually tossed out a line.
"So, how about we head down and have some kimchi stew and soju? I know a place that’s unbelievable."
When Song Tan simply stared at him in silence, Lee Joo-seok muttered with an awkward face, "Ahem, well, if you’re busy, it can’t be helped."
Song Tan rubbed his chin, then smiled faintly and nodded.
"I’d like that."
Lee Joo-seok’s mouth twitched slightly, and he forced himself to stand.
"Let’s go drag the ones tied up in the storage room out too. It looks better if we’ve got all five of them together."
"Yes, Senior."
"Come to think of it, I feel like I forgot something… what was it again…?"
Scratching his head, Lee Joo-seok shook it off and started walking.
At the same time, in the woods near the drug factory—
"Damn it! When the hell are they coming? I’m freezing to death here! Seriously."
Yu Jeong-ho, fused to the tree by handcuffs, shivered like a leaf in the wind.
A short while later, the shrill wail of sirens broke the silence of the lonely hillside.
***
Several days later, the investigation results regarding the drug manufacturing factory were released.
When it became clear the case had been far larger and more dangerous than anyone expected, not only Annam West Station but the entire Southern Gyeonggi Provincial Police Agency was thrown into commotion.
After that, reporters with noses as sharp as hounds began flooding the airwaves with articles.
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