The Wolf's Smile
The press conference hall fell silent as Lee Shin, the representative of Mir Guild, stepped up to the podium.
― “This is incredible news. Just yesterday, Mir Guild announced plans to build South Korea’s largest stadium. The guild that has written legends in the league is now spreading its wings with this stadium construction…”
― “And now, we bring you the story that has shocked the citizens of Busan. Last night, during Representative Lee Shin’s press conference, the detailed plans for the new stadium were revealed…”
― “A league stadium that can influence everything from citizens’ daily lifestyles and tastes to the broader cultural and economic development of the city. Mir Guild is leading the way with cutting-edge construction techniques to build a venue with a capacity of 100,000 seats…”
The Yongwanggung Project was entering its final phase on Yeongdo in Busan.
The site, currently undergoing intensive leveling work, had already become a pleasant walking path.
Quite a few people could be seen jogging while enjoying the sea view. Amid them, a man wearing a flower-patterned short-sleeve shirt lowered his sunglasses slightly and surveyed the area.
“Whew, it really is insanely huge when you see it in person.”
A sharp scar cut beneath his right eye.
That’s right. The man’s identity was Jang Chen, boss of the Yanbian gang Palgakhoe based in Incheon.
At the request of Assemblyman Jeong Uk, he had come to prepare for a dirty, muddy fight against Mir Guild.
His original plan had been simple.
First, he would strike lightly at Mir Guild’s business—the Rare something-or-other cafés. Franchises are all about image. Building one up is hard, but tearing it down is easy.
Take a few photos of bugs, station some of his good-looking subordinates in the cafés, and there were countless ways to ruin them.
After testing the waters like that, he planned to move on to the stadium.
Incidentally, that stadium referred to the existing tiny one. When he first drew up the plan, there had been no other news, so that made sense.
Anyway, after smashing up a few corners and posting photos of cracked walls with titles like “Popular Busan Guild’s Stadium is Falling Apart!” or “Who’s Responsible for Fan Safety?” on YouTube, the videos would spread like wildfire. A very smart opening move.
Besides that, as a professional in this field, Jang Chen had come up with hundreds of ways to make Mir Guild’s life miserable.
But to cut to the chase, all of Jang Chen’s plans had become meaningless.
Last night, the news of “Mir Guild Stadium Construction” had broken.
The moment he heard about the cutting-edge, largest-scale, strongest stadium in the world, Jang Chen had ditched all his schemes and headed straight for Busan.
After driving past the site several times, he parked nearby and stood in front of a particular plot of land.
Among the areas he had driven by, this was the one with the least landscaping done.
Calling it landscaping felt embarrassing. It was practically abandoned. The ground, stripped of its cement covering, had been left untouched for so long that nameless weeds had taken over.
While every other section was in the final stages of leveling, this plot remained completely untouched, its surface uneven and ugly to look at.
But.
In Jang Chen’s eyes, this shabby plot of land looked like pure gold.
“No matter how I look at it, this is where they’re gonna build it, right?”
This was a judgment based on experience rather than mere intuition.
Had Jang Chen visited that many construction sites?
Redevelopment projects, large-scale complexes, regional housing cooperatives.
As the saying goes, you have to lie down where you see a spot. Places like this were perfect for Jang Chen to throw himself down and demand a cut. In a way, construction sites like these were his true battlefield.
That was why he had canceled all his previous plans and come down here. To check out the new field.
However.
“Whoa!”
After roaming around places like this so often, it was impossible not to develop an eye for land.
“Great location, excellent transportation, fantastic view, and nicely separated from the residential areas.”
Build a parking lot over there, develop commercial districts here… The picture was perfect. Dangerously perfect.
Yet the more clearly the blueprint formed in his mind, the more serious Jang Chen’s expression became.
The answer was simple: it was drawn too well.
“This isn’t the work of an amateur, is it?”
He had said he’d seen a lot of construction sites, after all.
Large-scale projects like this were often filled with “dreams” and “hopes.”
What that meant was that when hundreds or thousands of families’ futures were on the line, people would get drunk on dreams and hopes, skip all the proper calculations, and just start digging without thinking.
Surely not? But it was true.
What about the structure? What about the location? Those questions came after the building went up.
Once construction started, the only questions were: How much will we make if we build this? How much will property values rise around here? That kind of thinking was everywhere.
Dreams become greed, and when blinded by greed, humans become shockingly irrational. And when that greed is about land? They become extremely, profoundly irrational.
Jang Chen and Palgakhoe, who fed on the ugliest parts of that greed, knew this better than anyone.
Anyway, back to the main point. The problem was that on this site, there were no such dreams or hopes to be seen.
What remained here was only cold calculation and an eerily perfect vision.
It felt like… someone who had already done this before had gone back in time, erased all their past mistakes, and was now sprinting down the fastest possible shortcut.
Of course, since such a person couldn’t possibly exist, the answer was obvious.
See one thing and you understand ten. Whoever planned this was no ordinary person.
“I have to admit it. I really underestimated them.”
To confess, when Jang Chen had first headed down to Busan, he had been grinning from ear to ear.
The bigger the scale and the more attention it drew, the easier their job became.
On a construction site, time is literally money.
Every minute, every second, stacks of bills melt away. If you really threw yourself in front of a truck and delayed the site for ten minutes or an hour, the losses would be enormous.
And if the scale grew larger? The losses would snowball even more.
So he had thought it would be easy…
“This is going to be fun.”
Jang Chen’s lips curled up, twisting his scarred face into something hideous for a moment. Then he ran his palm down his face, and his features changed.
His nose changed. His mouth changed. Even the scar on his face vanished cleanly.
A smile appeared on his face.
It was the smile of a wolf that had just caught a big prey.
“Then shall we take on the request?”
He pulled a business card from his wallet.
Sae Development Real Estate – Jin Jeong-han.
Yeongdo wasn’t exactly a neighborhood with high property values.
Rapid aging, almost no children’s laughter, and a population cliff. It had gone beyond outdated and was now full of empty houses. It wasn’t for nothing that people called it Busan’s countryside.
But recently, a strange current had begun to flow.
“My goodness, one, ten, hundred, thousand, ten thousand, a hundred million! You’re really buying at this price?”
When the old man was shocked by the number on the contract, the real estate agent in a suit smiled warmly.
“Would I lie to you with the contract right in front of us, sir?”
It wasn’t strange that real estate agents were swarming in.
They had already been sniffing around since the Yongwanggung Project began clearing industrial land, looking for anything to eat.
It was around then that the news broke that Lee Shin was building a stadium.
It was only natural that surrounding property values began to fluctuate wildly. The agents who used to come once in a while now rang doorbells three times a week like clockwork.
But with their arrival, the real estate market in Yeongdo underwent a complete shift.
The business card placed in the old man’s hand belonged to Sae Development Real Estate.
These Seoul suits went from senior centers to bathhouses, restaurants, and parks, buying up houses left and right. They distorted the existing real estate market so thoroughly it was almost unrecognizable.
“I’ll be honest with you. The value of houses here will definitely rise. Even higher than what we’re buying them for now. If that weren’t the case, why would we buy them? We’re not running a charity.”
However.
“The issue is time. It will rise, but we can’t guarantee exactly when or by how much.”
“Hmm… then maybe I should leave it to my children…”
“That would only benefit your children. You need to think carefully, sir. This is a hundred-year life. You’re only eighty. You still have twenty years left. The kids are the kids, but you should enjoy life too, sir.”
Time.
The thing most desperately needed by elderly people in their twilight years.
Young people often mistakenly believe that as one ages, they become detached from life and lose their desires.
But that’s not true. Just go to a hospital. Old people who used to say “It’s about time” or “I’ve lived long enough” will grab the doctor’s hand and beg, “Please save me,” the moment death approaches.
Everyone is the same. They have desires and regrets.
They simply have more things to protect and more experiences, which suppress those feelings.
Jin Jeong-han of Sae Development Real Estate had targeted this perfectly. The various efforts laid out before and after were incredibly effective in Yeongdo, where the elderly population was high.
The result.
“Another successful deal.”
Jin Jeong-han—no, Jang Chen—whistled as he waved the signed contract.
“Boss. Ah, I mean, Director!”
“Be careful with that. How did it go?”
“I finished the contract. Here’s the paperwork.”
“Me too. It was easy. When I offered five times the price, they signed right away.”
With the stadium announcement inflating prices, offering five times was an offer no one could refuse. Only a fool would turn it down.
The contracts were going so smoothly that his subordinates were starting to worry.
“Hyung-nim, but…”
“Hey, watch the dialect.”
“Ahem. Weren’t we supposed to come here to mess with Mir Guild’s project? So… why are we going around in circles like this?”
“What are you trying to say?”
“Instead of making our heads hurt with all this, shouldn’t we just lie down and smash things? That’s our style. Let’s do it our way.”
“That’s right! These suits are so uncomfortable I can barely wear them. Just a few days ago we were digging with shovels. Let’s go break some stuff, take a piss, it’ll feel great.”
“I’m ready!”
They were itching for action.
War! It had to be war!
Watching his subordinates twist and turn, Jang Chen let out a long sigh.
“Ha… You idiots, please use your brains for once. Are we here alone? Is this Incheon? Did we come to collect operating funds? We took a request! This is a job. When you take a request, you do the work! Right? Or am I wrong?”
“Ah…!”
“That’s true…”
“That’s true? You’re all full of shit, seriously.”
The reason Palgakhoe was currently buying up every building and house around the expected stadium site was ultimately because of Jeong Uk’s request.
They could make money through price differences, or later demand an insane premium from Mir Guild when they tried to develop the area around the stadium.
What Jang Chen wanted to say was that even the client was trying to make money by using his enemies, yet these brainless idiots who had taken the request were complaining that they were bored and just wanted to start a fight.
They always talked about how they had no roots, but sometimes Jang Chen felt depressed that the only people around him were these brainless fools.
“Hey, you dumbass. Do you think this kind of job can be solved by just lying down for a day or two?”
“No, it can’t.”
“Because the scale is so big…”
“You get it. Look, if we own these houses, first of all, it becomes easier for us to operate. We can even use them as lodgings right away.”
“Ah…”
“Is that all? There are so many more ways to lie down and cause trouble. ‘The noise makes it unlivable!’ ‘There’s too much dust!’ You get it now?”
“Ooh…!!”
“Besides that, on this real estate purchase deal, we need to get our cut too.”
Jang Chen lit a cigarette and stared down at the land below the slope.
It had been ten days since he came down to Busan. Where there had once been empty ground, steel rebar was now being driven in.
“What do you guys think when you see that?”
“It’s wide…? It’s big…? Must be expensive?”
“I don’t really know the rest. They’ve prepared the ground well? Once it’s built it’ll look pretty good?”
“See? Even you brainless idiots can tell. That means it’s obvious. This place cannot fail. It will succeed no matter what.”
“R-really?”
“It’s land where success is guaranteed. You think we’re just going to mess around and leave with pocket change? We need to take our share too. How long are we going to keep cleaning up after other people?”
“Aah!!”
“H-hyung-nim!!”
As expected of the boss of Palgakhoe! He had a plan all along!
Seeing his subordinates’ dumbstruck eyes, Jang Chen smirked.
“Anyway, enough about this. How are things going on the other side? Recruiting site workers.”
“We got a call earlier. They said there weren’t enough people so they got in without any problems. They can be deployed immediately.”
“That’s it? What about ground compaction? I told you to absorb all the local thugs.”
“That side is taking a bit longer. They said they’re dealing with the leader.”
“Tell them to handle it cleanly. We don’t want any noise before the big job.”
“Yes!”
“We’ll take care of it!”
The groundwork was perfect.
They had created the request, earned some pocket money, planted a spy, and bought off the local gang.
Looking down at the site, Jang Chen flicked away his cigarette butt and spoke.
“Like you said, we’ve held back long enough. Tell the combat team to come down.”
He had been just as itchy for action as they were.
Two days later.
Seven tour buses pulled up in front of the construction site and spat out Palgakhoe gang members.
Men in flower-patterned shirts and tank tops, covered in dizzying tattoos, with crude bodies, holding wooden sticks and baseball bats.
“Just a simple greeting, got it?”
Alright, let’s go!
Woooooo―!!
They charged forward, kicking down the fence as if they were about to smash everything in sight.
They entered.
They entered, but…
“What the hell?”
“Huh…?”
“Who the fuck are you guys?”
Why were these massive white Slavic-looking men here?