You're Really Something
Seo Jin-woo was pouring whiskey in his office.
He was in a good mood.
Days like this were rare. No—this was the first in twenty years. Watching the amber liquor fill the glass in his hand, Seo Jin-woo allowed the corners of his mouth to lift for the first time in a long while.
On the monitor atop his desk, the footage from earlier that day sat frozen.
Han Daewong's debut fight. The moment Jang Tae-seok went flying from a single punch. He had no idea how many times he had rewound it. Every viewing sent a tingle through his fingertips, and he loved that tingle.
"……You're really something."
Seo Jin-woo raised his glass and gave the monitor a light tip, as if toasting it.
The whole picture was already painted in his head.
Next fight, match him against someone mid-tier. One-punch finish. Word spreads. After that, someone bigger. Another one-punch finish. The betting pools swell, the closed-channel footage draws a flood of inquiries, and the big players start salivating.
Slowly. Very slowly.
The more expensive the product, the slower you sell it.
Seo Jin-woo took a sip of whiskey. It went down smooth. Even the liquor tasted better today.
Then.
Thud.
"……?"
Seo Jin-woo's brow furrowed slightly.
It was noisy outside.
The underground arena was always noisy—cheers, shouts, curses, the rustle of cash being waved around. But this was not that kind of noise.
It was closer to screaming.
Seo Jin-woo set his glass down.
"……What now. Some drunk causing a scene again?"
Common enough. Guys who got wasted and lost their betting money sometimes raised hell. Whenever it happened, the security detail just dragged them out. Twenty years in this business, that kind of thing barely even registered as work.
Seo Jin-woo picked up his glass again.
Then.
BOOM!
Louder this time.
Something slamming into a wall. The sound of a body being thrown and buried into concrete.
The screams multiplied.
"Gyaaaah!"
"Stop him! I said stop him——"
"What the fuck is this guy!! Why won't he go down——"
Seo Jin-woo's hand froze.
Those were the security guards' voices.
The men who handled security for this arena.
Men who had taken knife wounds.
Men whose job was beating people.
And those were the screams they were making.
……What the hell.
Seo Jin-woo reached for the monitor on his desk. He cut off the frozen footage of Han Daewong and switched to the CCTV feeds.
Split screens showing every corner of the underground arena lit up.
"……."
Seo Jin-woo nearly dropped his glass.
On the screens.
Blood was flying.
One guard lifted into the air as if he'd been hit by a truck, sailed across the frame, and slammed into a wall. Another charged in and went tumbling sideways from a single casual motion of a hand. Someone even had a weapon—a sashimi knife, swinging hard. But before it could connect, that one went flying too.
Right in the middle of the screens.
A massive shadow.
The figure moved as if he were out for a stroll, never once hurrying.
He crushed anyone who got in his way and walked at a steady, unhurried pace.
……Han Daewong?
Seo Jin-woo's mouth went dry.
Why was he here.
He should have finished his debut and gone home that afternoon.
They had paid him his fight money. Sent him off in good spirits.
And now that beast was.
Trampling the security detail and coming this way.
The CCTV screens flipped one after another.
Corridor 1. Three guards down.
Corridor 2. The shadow passed through.
Corridor 3. Closer now.
Thud.
Thud.
Thud.
Footsteps began to carry. Not through the CCTV—vibrations climbing the hallway itself.
Seo Jin-woo stood up from his chair.
Decades.
He had rolled through this world for decades. He had been stabbed. Had a gun barrel pressed to his temple. Survived gang wars. Been betrayed. Watched people die and killed people himself.
Through all of it, he had stayed calm.
It was not that he never felt fear. He simply crushed that fear under calculation every time. Calculated the escape route. Calculated the bargaining chips. Calculated the worst-case scenario. That was how Seo Jin-woo had survived.
But right now.
The calculations would not come.
How the hell was he supposed to stop that beast?
Security? Already scattered. Negotiate? Negotiate what. What could he even offer.
Thud.
The footsteps reached right outside the office door.
Seo Jin-woo's hands were shaking.
……They're shaking again.
They had shaken that afternoon too.
Watching the debut fight.
But that had been joy. The tremor of a man who had just closed his fingers around a hand that came around maybe once in a lifetime.
This was different.
This was just fear.
Pure fear.
Seo Jin-woo looked down at his trembling hands. Hands that had not shaken in decades. Hands that did not shake even when a knife came in. Those hands were fluttering now like paper.
……I called him my most expensive beast, didn't I.
His own words came back to him.
You'll be the best investment of my life. I'll raise you slow and careful.
But that beast was now.
Baring its teeth at him.
The animal he meant to raise had come to maul its owner.
……No.
Seo Jin-woo bit down on his lip.
That thing had never been an animal that took an owner. He had been the one who misread it. It was not something you could tame. Not something you could pen.
It was—
CRASH——!!
The door exploded.
The hinges tore free and the entire steel door flew inward, slamming into the floor in a cloud of dust.
In the opening.
A massive shadow stood.
When I smashed through the door, Seo Jin-woo was there.
Standing behind the desk. Whiskey glass still in his shaking hand.
Must have been drinking something expensive. The office was clean, warm, filled with costly furniture.
Leather sofa. Big monitor. Rows of bottles.
While people bled and fought down below, this bastard had been up here enjoying all of this.
On the money Seo-yeon had been paying back all this time.
……So that's how it is.
My head went colder still.
I was not angry. Whatever had gone cold and still at the meat restaurant earlier was still exactly the same here.
"You……."
Seo Jin-woo opened his mouth. His voice cracked.
"What the hell are you doing. The guards……."
I did not answer.
Instead I walked over slowly and stopped in front of his desk.
Up close it was a nice desk. Thick, heavy, expensive-looking solid wood. The surface had a deep polish.
I set my right hand on top of it.
Seo Jin-woo's eyes followed my hand. A hand the size of a manhole cover settling onto the wood.
And then.
Wham!
I brought it down lightly.
Not to destroy it. Just like resting a fist there, casual.
Seo Jin-woo flinched.
I looked straight at him. At the trembling eyes. The dry lips. The bloodless face.
"……From now on. Listen carefully to what I say."
The moment Seo Jin-woo swallowed.
Crrrack.
A sound came from the desk.
His gaze dropped back to the wood.
Under my hand, a crack was spreading across the surface of the solid wood. One line. Two lines. Slowly, like a spiderweb, branching out.
Crrrrrack——
I had not even put real force into it. Just set my hand there and tapped it once, lightly.
The fractures raced across the entire desk.
Seo Jin-woo watched it happen. Watched his desk—his expensive solid wood—split open like paper. He had forgotten how to swallow.
Snap!
At last the desk split clean in two.
Boom——!!
The halved desk collapsed outward on both sides. The liquor bottles on top shattered. The monitor crashed to the floor.
The office went quiet.
While the dust settled.
Seo Jin-woo stood in front of the broken desk and could not take a single step.
"……I'll keep it short."
I said.
"Kang Seo-yeon. The debt."
"……."
"Clear it."
Seo Jin-woo's eyes wavered.
A short silence.
In that silence I could see the man's head spinning at high speed. Something I had learned when I was a bear. When a beast is cornered, it does one of two things. It bares its teeth, or it shows its belly.
Seo Jin-woo chose the second.
"……Even if I wanted to clear it."
His voice cracked.
"I can't."
"Can't?"
"It's not in my authority."
I stared at him.
I wondered if it was a lie. Men begging for their lives will say anything. But this man's eyes were not the eyes of someone lying.
"What are you talking about."
"Seo-yeon…… isn't my product."
Seo Jin-woo swallowed.
"She fights here, so it looks like she belongs to me, but she doesn't. She came over from somewhere else. The debt is over there too."
"Somewhere else."
"Park Sang-do."
——Park Sang-do.
The moment I heard that name.
Somewhere in my head, something flashed.
Park Sang-do.
Where had I heard that.
I had definitely heard it. With these ears. No—not these ears. Back then I had not been human.
When I was a bear.
The ones who put me down with a tranquilizer dart where I lay collapsed in the mountains, and loaded me into a container. In the darkness inside the iron cage, the things they had been yapping into their radios.
'Start with recovery of the Kodiak bear.'
'One casualty. Handle it later.'
And the voice directing them.
The name the underlings had called him.
——Park Sang-do.
……That Park Sang-do?
My heart gave one heavy beat.
The bastard who had dragged me out of the mountains and stuffed me into a container. The bastard who had tried to recover and dispose of me. The bastard who had treated me as neither beast nor human—just merchandise.
That same bastard had… bound Seo-yeon too.
The same man.
The one who had made me into a product had made Seo-yeon into a product as well.
…….
My already cold head went colder.
But I did not let any of it show on the outside.
Seo Jin-woo had no idea I knew Park Sang-do. He did not need to know. Who I had been, where I had come from—better that this man never found out, forever.
So I acted like it was a name I was hearing for the first time.
"……Who's Park Sang-do."
"Someone who…… works this side of things with me."
Seo Jin-woo chose his words carefully.
"I run the arena. He supplies the merchandise. That kind of relationship. Fellow bosses, more or less."
Supplies the merchandise.
The phrasing grated.
Calling Seo-yeon "merchandise." Saying he "supplied" her. That way of treating people like logistics was exactly the same as the day they had loaded me into a container.
"So what I'm saying is."
Seo Jin-woo added in a hurry.
"Even if I wanted to let her go, Seo-yeon's debt belongs to Park Sang-do's side…… so there's nothing I can do on my own. I'm serious."
I looked at him for a moment.
Whether the words were true or not, one thing was clear.
Park Sang-do.
I had to meet that bastard.
To free Seo-yeon, I just had to break him. And he was also someone I had a separate debt to collect from.
The debt of dragging me out of the mountains and trying to sell me off.
"……Fine."
I opened my mouth slowly.
"Then you've only got one job."
Seo Jin-woo looked up at me.
"Tell Park Sang-do. Kang Seo-yeon's debt—we're calling it even. If he doesn't——"
I jerked my chin at the desk split cleanly in half.
"He ends up like this desk."
Seo Jin-woo's face went white.
"……Got it. I'll tell him. I'll tell him."
"You'd better mean it when you do."
I turned my body.
"If it's just more empty words out of your mouth, like that apology just now."
As I walked toward the door, I left one more line behind.
"I'll go find him myself. Park Sang-do, or you."
Seo Jin-woo could not answer.
I stepped out through the wrecked doorway.
Guards were sprawled all over the corridor. None of them were dead. All of them still breathing. Broken and burst open, sure—but I had not killed them. I had kept that line.
…For now.
Walking out down the hall, I looked down at my own hand.
I blinked.
A bear's forepaw.
I blinked again.
A human hand.
Park Sang-do.
The name was lodged in my head and would not come out.
……Wait for me. I'll be coming to see you soon.