Uninvited Guest (3)
JH Capital was a company founded by the Baeksan Mob, the syndicate that had locked down the Noryangjin Fish Market back in the 1990s — a vast organization whose membership alone ran into the hundreds.
Its businesses stood on three pillars: predatory loan-sharking, illegal gambling, and real estate speculation. Drugs and human trafficking were filth the organization never balked at, but the revenue that actually held it up was, without question, those three.
The reason they had come to Chae Geon-wook lately was the third of them. Real estate. After buying the Guryong-dong redevelopment intel and turning a tidy profit, they got greedy for more. Rather than keep paying a premium for information, they decided to swallow the source whole.
The lobby of the JH Capital building. The revolving door turned, and a man walked in — black cap, black mask, black jacket. Black from head to toe.
A heavyset guard who had been flipping through a magazine at the front desk rose and stepped into his path.
"What brings you here?"
Beneath the brim of the cap, Go Tae-min's eyes curved thin.
"Delivery."
"A delivery? At this hour? We weren't notified of anything."
The guard looked him over, suspicion thick in his eyes. It was past two in the morning, and the man wasn't fool enough to take a pitch-black stranger — barely more than a pair of eyes showing — at his word.
"Who's it addressed to? I'll need to check. Take the mask off first."
He asked it as his hand drifted toward the emergency button under the desk.
Behind the mask, Go Tae-min let out a short, deflating laugh.
"Sixth floor. For Managing Director Jo."
"The managing director?"
"Yes. He ordered quite a lot. Ever heard of a funeral set?"
The guard's brow tightened. A bad feeling crawled through him, and in the instant he put strength into the finger bound for the button—
A brief hiss split the air.
From the throat of the guard reaching for the bell, a vivid line of blood burst upward.
"Khhk— ghak..."
Go Tae-min laid him down with a cut across the throat, then pressed the elevator call button as casually as if he were in his own living room.
"Who the hell is that!"
"Emergency! Emergency in the lobby!"
A moment later the security-room door flew open and organization men spilled out. Every one of them wore a black suit, but what they carried weren't briefcases. They were sashimi knives, edges honed to a cold gleam.
Go Tae-min tipped his head and settled the dagger into a low, angled grip.
"You crazy bastard!"
Six of them charged. His body slid between them like a ghost.
One stroke opened the throat of the man in front. Without a pause he took the chests and flanks of the ones who followed — exactly six swings. A moment later, six corpses lay sprawled across the lobby floor.
Go Tae-min flicked the dagger, blood pattering off the edge, and stepped into the open elevator. Through the narrowing gap of the doors, a shrill alarm began to scream through the whole building.
"God, that's loud. Keep it up and people'll think you threw me a welcome party."
He muttered it with one corner of his mouth cocked.
The sudden intruder threw JH Capital into an uproar.
"What the hell is this guy!"
"The lobby's been breached! Everybody out!"
"Where'd he come from!"
When Go Tae-min appeared, painted in blood, the men pouring into the corridor drew their sashimi knives as one. For them, murder was routine. There was no hesitation in the work of putting a man down and burying him.
Five or six blades thrust toward him at once.
But—
Too slow.
Not one of their attacks reached him. He moved at his ease along the red lines of their swings and brought the dagger around. Thin killing intent and no depth at all — gangster knife-work. To Go Tae-min, they might as well have been standing still.
The result: barely ten minutes after he entered the building, he stood before Baek Jong-hyuk, president of JH Capital and boss of the Baeksan Mob.
Seated in the place of honor, Baek regarded him and spoke slowly.
"So which is it. A grudge, or business?"
Go Tae-min let the dagger hang, blood still dripping from the steel.
"Business, with a personal feeling mixed in. Your boys touched something very expensive."
At that, Baek went blank for a moment — then broke into a hollow, rueful laugh.
"Heh... feeling, in a business deal. Hell of a trade. The books on that one don't come close to adding up."
The laughter stopped. He stared into the intruder's eyes.
The man in front of him was no street thug rolling through the same shadows they did. He was something that worked far deeper, down in the abyss. Only a monster like that could kill dozens without a blink and walk all the way here.
"Tsk... This is why a man ought to look at where he's lying before he stretches out."
Baek muttered it, bitter. He had a fair sense of where the man had come from. Managing Director Jo, blind to his own station, had broken a taboo he should never have touched.
Baek Jong-hyuk set a last cigarette between his lips.
Go Tae-min's blade drew a level line.
A moment later, the clamoring alarm faded, and the whole of the JH Capital building sank into a heavy silence.
In the heart of Seoul, hundreds of people died in a single night. And yet not one line of the tragedy appeared on television, or anywhere on the internet.
The reason was simple. Chae Geon-wook had moved fast and pulled in the Taesung Mob, Baeksan's rival. The terms were the interests Baeksan held in Noryangjin, plus JH Capital's assets, handed over in exchange for cleaning the scene and burying the aftermath.
For the Taesung Mob, it was an offer they could not refuse. Dozens of vans carried the corpses away in secret, and overnight every bloodstain in the JH Capital building was wiped until nothing remained.
Word that the cleanup was finished arrived just before sunrise.
I can finally set this down.
Chae Geon-wook, who had spent the night refreshing the news tab on a portal site, let out a breath of relief. It was Go Tae-min who had come back with blood on his hands in his place. If the man had taken even the smallest wound — or ended up on a legal block there was no walking back from — Chae Geon-wook would never have forgiven himself.
Hell of a long night.
He leaned into the chair and closed his eyes. The moment the tension broke, it felt as if the strength were draining out of his whole body.
Honestly, he hadn't expected Go Tae-min to move this hard. On ordinary days the junior drifted along as if nothing concerned him, doing whatever he pleased. But the instant the kid learned the family was in danger, he picked up a knife without hesitating.
This debt... someday there would be a day to repay it.
Maybe now I can finally rest— huh?
He had started to heave his heavy body up for the trip home when his hand stopped. On the monitor, moments from going dark, a new email notification had arrived.
The sender was the Nova Arena Korea Branch. As of now, there was no reason for them to be in touch. Chae Geon-wook's brow drew tight.
What is this.
Strength went into the fingers on the mouse. The subject was short and plain. What it carried was anything but light.
A notice that the Korea branch meant to come in person. No reason was written down, but the timing could not have been worse.
Why? My paperwork should have been perfect.
The legion had been thrown together for Go Tae-min, but on paper he was confident he hadn't left a single gap. If the Korea branch was moving itself, though, someone had caught a scent.
This is not the time to sit here.
If it came out that the legion had been founded on a lie, everything was over. Suspension of the pro license. A permanent revocation of the right to establish a legion. That would snap the wings of a Go Tae-min who had only just closed his hand around a blade.
"Hey! Hey! Go Tae-min, get up!"
Chae Geon-wook shook the man asleep in the break room.
"...Mm. What is it, hyung."
"Nova Arena says they're coming. The email just landed."
"So let them come..."
"This isn't a social call! If an inspection team is moving in person, something's gone wrong."
Chae Geon-wook forced down the burn in his gut and laid the situation out. Go Tae-min answered in a voice still thick with sleep, as if none of it mattered.
"If they yank the license, we just open a new one. We started anonymous in the first place. What's the rush."
"That only worked before your biometric data was on file. You're fully tied into the system now. Don't you remember unlocking the Waldstein series with your fingerprint when the delivery came?"
"...Ah."
"The second your body data hit Nova's servers, that account became one of a kind. Get kicked out of here and you never set foot in the Arena again."
Go Tae-min stared blankly at the ceiling for a moment, then scratched his head, annoyed.
"Eh, beats me. If it doesn't work, I'll just buy a new body. Get reborn and start over."
"Quit screwing around and get up! This is not the time for jokes."
Under the raw edge in Chae Geon-wook's voice, Go Tae-min had no choice but to grumble and haul himself upright.
Chae Geon-wook stayed in motion after that. First he summoned the other four pro-license holders who had existed only on paper — so-called B-tier mercenaries he usually kept around with pocket-money jobs. He set draft enlistment contracts in front of them and piled hush money on top.
"Nothing you need to get straight. From today, just think of yourselves as part of this legion. In front of the inspectors, pretend you're training. That's it."
Next was the facility. He couldn't raise a dedicated legion center overnight, so he bought the owner of the largest private gym nearby with cash. Over the entrance went a plaque, made in a hurry.
Inside, training equipment of every kind was set in place, and coaches and office staff hired on the spot bustled about until the place wore a reasonably convincing face. Because of that, Chae Geon-wook finished his preparations before anyone from the Nova Arena Korea Branch arrived.
"Tae-min. You just do what you always do. Don't act like you know anything, and don't open your mouth. Got it?"
In the middle of the gym, Go Tae-min — idly tapping the heavy bag — gave a listless nod.
"Don't worry. If it's acting, I've done enough of it to be sick of the whole thing."
A short while later the gym doors opened, and a man and a woman in black suits walked in. Silver Nova Arena logos glinted coldly on their chests.
Chae Geon-wook swallowed dryly and started toward them.
"Hello. I'm Chae Geon-wook, representative of Veil Legion."
He offered his hand with a smile pitched as polite as he could make it, and still at ease. The man at the head of the pair took it. The hair was combed neatly back, and the eyes were sharp in a way that was anything but ordinary.
"So you're the representative. Oh Hyun-seok, Branch Director of Nova Arena Korea."
The moment Chae Geon-wook heard the name, a chill ran down his spine.
...The branch director came himself?
He had expected some working-level staffer. What walked in was a heavyweight. For Oh Hyun-seok — the man who held every authority Nova Arena possessed in Korea — to personally inspect one newborn legion was beyond common sense. But Chae Geon-wook was a veteran. He kept the poker face and let the words follow naturally.
"My. The branch director himself. It's an honor. Right this way."
He led them inside without delay. The facility had been thrown together, but to the eye it was flawless: mercenaries sweating through their training, the latest equipment, management files arranged with systematic care. He walked them through it and poured out the lines he had prepared.
"Veil aims for a small, elite roster. As you can see, we've built a twenty-four-hour training system around five pro-license holders, in close partnership with a nearby gym."
"I see. The facilities are excellent."
"This is where the warriors do their conditioning. We don't pinch pennies on equipment. As you know, without the body to back it up, you don't survive a fight where your life's on the line."
"A very sound point."
And yet something was off. He had been certain Oh Hyun-seok would crawl over the place like a microscope. Instead the man's gaze scattered with startling indifference. He didn't check serial numbers. He didn't dig into the members' histories. He simply made one unhurried circuit of the room, like a visitor in a museum.
"A small elite, I suppose. It does look a little bare."
Where he stopped was the corner where Go Tae-min was hitting the heavy bag. As instructed, Go Tae-min didn't so much as glance over. He just kept throwing punches in silence.
Oh Hyun-seok's eyes rested briefly on his back. Chae Geon-wook's heart started hammering as if it might burst.
What? Don't tell me he noticed.
But Oh looked away and added, short and plain.
"We'll end the inspection here. This should be more than enough."
It was a far thinner conclusion than he had expected. If the branch director himself had come, the man ought to have shaken out every speck of dust looking for a flaw. Instead he behaved like someone who had already marked the file approved, and had only stopped by to add a formal period.
Oh Hyun-seok walked toward the entrance and offered his hand.
"I look forward to working with you, Representative."
"...Likewise, Branch Director."
He left a meaningful smile behind and walked out of the gym with his companion. To Chae Geon-wook, the sight sat badly.
...It'll be fine. Won't it?
"How was it, Branch Director?"
The Nova Arena Korea Branch, Gangnam, Seoul. The secretary put the question to Oh Hyun-seok, back earlier than she had expected.
He didn't answer. On any ordinary day he would already have thrust the paperwork across and said the business plan was a mess, the equipment serials didn't match the ledger, a legion that couldn't manage the basics didn't get approval, schedule a re-inspection. Now he stood rooted in place, as if his soul had stepped out of his body.
A moment later, what broke the quiet was a low mutter.
"I'm losing it. I've actually lost it!"
"...?"
The color drained from the secretary's face. She had served him for nearly ten years and seen every kind of ugliness the job could offer, but she had never heard a reaction that urgent tear out of Oh Hyun-seok.
"Wh-why? What's wrong?"
Leaving the flustered secretary behind him, Oh Hyun-seok yanked his tie loose and snatched the water bottle off the desk. He didn't even spare the time to pour — he drank straight from the bottle, then turned on her with bloodshot eyes.
"It's a jackpot. A real one... this is a jackpot that shouldn't even be possible."
"Sir? What do you—"
His hands trembled as he raked them back through his hair. Then he dropped his voice, and still the words came out with a conviction fierce enough to shake the whole office.