A Bug That Didn't Know Its Place
In a space of pure, unrelenting white—where the ceiling, the walls, and even the boundaries of the room itself blurred into seamless blankness—Jeong Uk had opened his eyes only moments earlier.
“Is anyone there? Hey! Hey!! Come out! What do you want? Who are you? Where am I? Why the hell did you lock me up? Hey!!”
Why? How? Who? What?
Jeong Uk couldn’t answer a single one of the basic questions. Because he genuinely didn’t know anything.
“Let me out right now! Hurry up and figure out who I am! I’m Jeong Uk! A member of the National Assembly! Can’t you see this gold badge? If you don’t want to die, release me immediately! Now!!”
He shouted until his throat burned, but no answer came back.
Maybe it was the enclosed space, the kind that could birth claustrophobia in someone who never had it before. Overwhelmed by a crushing sense of helplessness, Jeong Uk collapsed to the floor with a thud.
What the hell is going on?
In his confusion, he decided to retrace his steps.
It had started that morning when he woke up in a hotel bed.
After a rare night of passionate romance that left his body refreshed, he remembered leaving the hotel lobby in high spirits.
He even recalled slipping the bellboy a hundred thousand won as a warning to keep his mouth shut.
Next was the office…
He had arranged a golf meeting to clear up some misunderstandings with senior assemblymen he’d grown distant from. He’d practiced his putting in the office beforehand.
He hadn’t forgotten to load the trunk with a box of Bacchus drinks stuffed full of crisp fifty-thousand-won bills either.
For lunch… the sauna.
As always, he’d soaked in the scalding hot bath until his body felt thoroughly cooked, then stepped out for a cigarette paired with red ginseng extract. The lighter in the smoking room had been broken, so he’d asked to borrow a light…
“!!”
It came back to him.
The fire.
The moment he lit the lighter.
His memory had cut off right there—complete blackout.
A wave of terror washed over him.
Shiver.
The sauna Jeong Uk frequented was no ordinary establishment. It was an ultra-exclusive members-only club where celebrities came for fame, businessmen for money, and politicians for power. Anyone with a name in Yeouido eventually showed up there.
Naturally, security was airtight—sometimes to the point of being downright annoying.
Yet he had been kidnapped from that very place in broad daylight, so cleanly that even he hadn’t noticed.
Who would dare?
This was no ordinary kidnapper. It was someone highly organized, meticulous, and possessing enormous power—whether financial, political, or both.
Jeong Uk naturally began thinking about who he might have crossed when—
“!!”
He finally remembered.
The one person bold enough to abduct someone in broad daylight from a sauna frequented by the rich and powerful.
No way. It couldn’t be. Surely not that incident.
He prayed. Begged. Pleaded desperately.
But sad premonitions are rarely wrong.
The door he had been screaming at suddenly opened.
Creeeak—.
The person who stepped inside.
“It can’t be… Lee Shin…?!”
“Heh, so you do recognize me. Nice to meet you. I’m Lee Shin.”
Indeed, the man who entered the room was Lee Shin.
From that moment on, Jeong Uk’s pupils darted wildly in every direction.
Lee Shin casually sat down, resting his elbows on the back of the chair he had brought with him.
By now Jeong Uk had fixed his expression, feigning composure. It was a politician’s talent for controlling one’s face.
“Listen, Mr. Lee Shin. Why exactly have you locked me up here? Do you realize this is kidnapping? This is an extremely serious crime. Release me at once.”
“Go on, keep talking.”
“…Ahem! Do you not know who I am? I’m Jeong Uk, Assemblyman Jeong Uk. The Yeongdo district where your Mir Guild is located falls under my jurisdiction!”
“……”
“It seems there’s been a misunderstanding between us, so I’ll overlook today’s events. Just let me out first, and then we can schedule dinner—”
“This is entertaining.”
Lee Shin cut him off cleanly.
“You said Jeong Uk, right?”
“…Assemblyman! I am Assemblyman Jeong Uk.”
“Yes, I know you’re an assemblyman. The one who represents our district.”
“Exactly, so if you would just let me out of here—”
“I’m trying to talk here. Could you please shut up and stop interrupting?”
“……”
“Man, I was surprised too when I got the call in the middle of the night. ‘I caught a bug that doesn’t know its place, so handle it.’ What am I, some kind of pest control service?”
Lee Shin grumbled as he circled round and round Jeong Uk.
The more he spoke, the more confused Jeong Uk became.
One thing was certain, though. He had to sweet-talk this crazy bastard somehow and get out of here.
“A-anyway, like I said earlier, it seems we’ve both misunderstood each other. If we just talk it out, we can clear things up. So first, if you could release me—”
“Misunderstanding… yeah, that’s a convenient word. But you know what? It doesn’t matter. Fine! Misunderstanding it is.”
Lee Shin, who had been spinning in circles, suddenly stopped right in front of him with a sharp tap of his foot. He flashed a bright smile.
“Good. We’re both busy people, so let’s just say what we need to say. First, the message I want to deliver to you, Assemblyman, is ‘thank you.’”
“Thank… you?”
“Yes, thank you. You’ve taken a huge weight off my shoulders.”
A pure, genuinely pure smile spread across the handsome man’s face.
Lee Shin was expressing sincere gratitude to the so-called “bug who didn’t know its place”—the one who had lingered around his still-angry grandfather, unable to read the room and ended up taking the heat.
And for good reason. The stadium Lee Shin was building this time was a massive one-hundred-thousand-seat arena.
The largest in Korea and one of the top five in the world. But did such a massive project end with simply constructing the stadium itself?
Not even close. That was only the beginning.
Roads had to be built to accommodate a hundred thousand people. Parking spaces were needed for their vehicles.
And that wasn’t all. Food, entertainment, restrooms, lodging—nothing could be overlooked.
On top of that, department stores, hotels, theme parks… To create the ideal SimCity Lee Shin envisioned, an enormous amount of land was required.
Yes. Land.
“And it turns out our assemblyman here bought up a ton of it. The land around my stadium. A whole lot of it, actually.”
“!!”
The real estate recovered from the Palgakhoe was far larger than expected.
Enough to complete the first phase of Lee Shin’s SimCity and still have plenty left over.
It made sense. Jeong Uk had poured in not only his entire fortune but his family’s assets and even his in-laws’ mid-sized company holdings.
And now Lee Shin was declaring he would swallow it all in one gulp.
“Thank you.”
With just those two words.
Jeong Uk’s face flushed crimson then turned pale.
His entire life savings were about to vanish. What was there left to see? He finally exploded and lunged for Lee Shin’s collar.
But Lee Shin hopped lightly aside.
Jeong Uk, with his clumsy body, could only tumble to the floor.
As he groaned, an irritating voice floated over his head.
“That’s why you should exercise regularly. Don’t you know modern people need to work out? You’ll get adult diseases at this rate. Adult diseases.”
“Shut up with that nonsense! How is that yours? It’s mine! My money! My land!!”
“Aha! But it’s already in my hands, isn’t it? It’s spoils of war I earned by crushing idiots who pointed knives at me. So doesn’t that make it mine?”
“You crazy bastard! I’m a member of the National Assembly! An elected official sitting in the legislature on the people’s votes! You dare steal my property? No matter how much of a chaebol heir from the Lee Do Group you are, if I set my mind to it, you think I can’t put you away?”
Jeong Uk screamed with a face ready to burst.
But.
“Nope. You can’t.”
“W-what…?”
“I said, you can’t put me away.”
Lee Shin crouched down lightly, then gave a casual push to Jeong Uk’s forehead as the man struggled to get up. Jeong Uk toppled backward again. Lee Shin grinned.
“To catch someone, don’t you need to report it first?”
“……!!”
Just then, footsteps echoed from beyond the open door.
Thud. Thud. Instinctively, Jeong Uk felt those steps tightening around his heart.
“This is advice I’m giving you out of gratitude, so listen well. Soon an old man will come through that door. The moment you see him, kneel immediately. Our old man Yu is extremely angry with you, Assemblyman.”
The person who had already warned Jeong Uk about overstepping his bounds and even given him a chance.
The one who had accepted the chairman’s anger on behalf of this bug who didn’t know when to stop.
The one who had caught the bug and brought him here.
And finally, the one Lee Shin—exhausted after a late-night teabagging session and tired of everything—would entrust with finishing the job.
The man who would handle the subcontract of the subcontract.
Lee Sang-byeok’s right-hand man, Yu Cheol-ong, stepped into the room.
“Young master.”
“Yes, Chief Secretary Yu Cheol-ong.”
“I apologize for troubling you with this matter. The recovered assets will be processed on our end and sent to you through Miss Cho-a.”
“It’s fine. I got quite a nice haul myself. Well then, I’ll leave it to you. I’m getting a bit tired.”
“I will handle everything from here.”
“Right. Oh, and… what are you doing? Kneel already.”
With that dismissal, Lee Shin whispered one last thing into the ear of a devastated Jeong Uk before leaving the room.
After that day, the man named Jeong Uk never appeared in Lee Shin’s life again.
Assemblyman Jeong Uk “Drunk Driving Accident”—Crashes Into Roadside Wall.
In a container being used as a temporary office at the construction site, Lee Shin sat with his legs crossed, reading the newspaper.
“Wow, this is art. So this is how you can completely destroy a person.”
Everything connected to Jeong Uk—relatives, university, high school, even the mere mention of his name—was being erased. Cleanly. Thoroughly.
When even the cleanup was done with artistic precision, the sheer thoroughness became performance art in itself.
Soon his secretary, Yun Cho-a, opened the door and entered.
“Good morning, sis.”
“……”
Yun Cho-a silently bowed at Lee Shin’s greeting before handing over some documents.
“Hm? What’s this, sis?”
“It’s the list of assets related to this case.”
“Whoa! Already?”
Lee Shin tossed the newspaper aside and excitedly opened the envelope.
So this was what people called “laundered” assets.
House contracts, land contracts, and various speculative properties related to Yeongdo. He really had gone all out, as expected from someone who came from money.
Sigh. They say food tastes best when someone else pays for it. Sweet. So sweet.
I’ll enjoy this thoroughly. Burp.
“Sis, could you bring me that map?”
The map was placed before him. Lee Shin picked up a marker and began drawing lines.
It was the same map he had been carrying since the stadium’s planning phase.
One might call it his ‘SimCity blueprint.’
Countless X marks and checkmarks covered the map. Lee Shin checked the documents and drew more lines across it.
Perhaps the sight was unusual. Yun Cho-a, who rarely spoke, opened her mouth.
“Director, are you planning to build the related facilities as well?”
“Yeah. We got a huge haul this time. There’s an old saying that free money should be spent quickly. We should pour it all in while we can.”
“All of it?”
“Yep. All of it.”
Yun Cho-a’s eyes widened slightly.
She had delivered the list herself. The amount was far too large to speak of so casually.
Moreover, it was perfectly laundered money. Honestly, he could have skimmed a considerable amount for personal slush funds without any repercussions.
Any other young master or lady would have pocketed at least half for their future. Half? They would have taken it all.
Yet he wasn’t touching a single won and was investing everything into the guild? Was he truly that devoted to the guild?
Yun Cho-a found Lee Shin impossible to understand.
“Hm? Why are you suddenly so quiet? Don’t tell me you thought I’d stash some of this away for myself?”
“……”
“Kk, looks like I was right. Sis, I’m hurt. Do I really look that small to you?”
“…Don’t we already have sufficient funds? Leaving some in reserve is also an option.”
“You have a point, but what I need right now isn’t money. It’s time. Here, take a look.”
“……??”
“Expanding the construction at this scale should be fine, right?”
“!!”
The plan had grown nearly one and a half times larger than before.
“I already told you, I’m going all in at once. What do you think? Can it be done?”
“I’ll need to check, but the construction itself seems feasible. However…”
“The manpower is the problem, isn’t it?”
“…The personnel already committed to the stadium construction is four times that of a similar-scale site. I do not recommend increasing the scope any further.”
“Mm, an excellent observation.”
In truth, the stadium was aiming for the opening match of League 2. Even with heavy equipment and Awakener labor, pouring in labor costs had its limits.
But.
“That’s exactly why I had something to ask you, sis.”
Follow me for a moment.
Lee Shin and Yun Cho-a crossed the construction site.
“We don’t just need ordinary workers, do we? We need Awakener labor. But Awakeners aren’t exactly common enough to throw around.”
“We’ve already hired all the special construction companies in Busan.”
“Exactly. So I had an idea. These aren’t core stadium facilities. They don’t require cutting-edge techniques. I figured as long as we have guys who can use mana and exert some strength, it should be enough.”
So I prepared this!
Yun Cho-a’s eyes widened in shock as she followed Lee Shin into the clearing.
“Four hundred slaves who can use moderate mana and exert some strength. What do you think?”
Lined up in neat rows were the Palgakhoe organization members, still wrapped in bandages here and there.