Enough of Your Crap (1)
Haa… What the hell is that woman even playing at?
In a way, it was thanks to Yoona’s help that Sihyun had managed to escape that impossible situation at all.
Master was the one who went out first, wasn’t he? Heh.
Their eyes had definitely met in that moment. And yet Yoona had pretended not to know him, drawing Yuri and Seonye’s attention even more deliberately toward herself. In that opening, Sihyun slipped out of the officetel and headed for the meeting place.
The thought of facing Yuri and Seonye again later was genuinely terrifying — but for now, he decided to focus on the problem right in front of him.
The place he arrived at was a shabby street-food tent at the mouth of the red-light district, already in the noisy middle of preparing for the evening rush. Inside the red canopy, a familiar bulk of a man sat leaning back in a plastic chair, having already drained a soju glass.
“You’re here.”
Dongchul turned his head and greeted him in a rough, gravelly voice. Sihyun gave a brief nod of greeting and sat down across from him.
On the table sat a steaming pot of oden soup and a bottle of soju. The bottle was still nearly full — he’d only just finished his first glass.
“Damn… you really didn’t sleep right, did ya? Your face looks like hell.”
Dongchul looked him over with the careful concern of a real older brother. Not that he looked much better himself; he clearly hadn’t slept properly either.
“Ah… no. Something just came up, that’s all.”
What he really wanted to say was that being harassed by those three women just now had worn him out far worse than last night’s fight ever had. As if reading straight through him, Dongchul smirked.
“Heh. That young lady tore you a new one, didn’t she?”
“……”
“Hit the mark, did I? Heh! Still, impressive. Somehow you shook her off and made it all the way here!”
“……”
As Dongchul kept snickering, Sihyun said nothing, simply pressed his lips tight and knit his brows slightly.
“Alright, alright! Don’t make that face. I was just messin’ with ya.”
“……To me, that wasn’t a joke.”
“Heh… fine, fine.”
With that, Dongchul slid a soju glass in front of Sihyun and moved to pour. Sihyun shook his head and declined.
“What, you don’t like drinking?”
“That too, but… we’ve still got work to do, don’t we?”
“Heh. True enough. I was only gonna have the one myself.”
At Sihyun’s blunt reply, Dongchul laughed and set the soju bottle down on the neighboring table with a dull thud.
“Alright then. Shall we get moving?”
As Dongchul started to rise, Sihyun looked at him with a puzzled frown.
“……It’s not even dark yet. You’re going after him already?”
There was still a fair stretch of time before the sun would fully set. Whether it was revenge or anything else, it was far too early. Start a fight now and the cops would come swarming in perfect time…
Dongchul seemed to read the look on his face.
“Hah. I may not have much book learnin’, but I ain’t that dumb. If I was gonna go after that bastard Cha Mujin already, I’d have gathered all the boys first.”
He snorted a quiet laugh and sat back down.
“Right. Guess I oughta explain from the start…”
He scooped up a spoonful of oden broth instead of soju, steadied his breath for a moment, then opened his mouth again.
“You know why we got hit so sudden by those Biryong Clan lizard bastards?”
“Because they ambushed you out of nowhere, and that Cha Mujin guy betrayed you, right?”
“Right! Exactly! The ambush, sure — but that wasn’t the whole of it…!”
Apparently the oden wasn’t enough. Dongchul grabbed the soju bottle from the other table again, poured a glass, and knocked it back.
Bam!
He slammed the empty glass down and continued.
“That bastard stabbed us in the back — and that’s how the Boss, how Pildu hyung-nim, went out so damn pointless!”
The memory twisted Dongchul’s face into something ugly and savage.
“That son of a bitch! Said there was a major announcement! Said it was a critical matter for the future of the organization!”
“Said every member had to gather at the club! Then he told the Boss he had something to discuss privately…”
“And he sent only our core fighters to the club first!”
“The moment our strength was split in half — hyung-nim, still back at headquarters, got hit by those lizard bastards and that traitor Cha Mujin!”
Sihyun listened in silence. Only then did it all make sense. The Biryong Clan members he’d fought that night hadn’t been pushovers, but he’d still wondered how Dongchul could have been pushed back so hard. There had been more to it than that.
“And when I looked into it… turns out it wasn’t just one rat.”
“……You’re saying there were more traitors?”
“Yeah… that piss-pants little shit…!”
Dongchul ground his teeth and went on.
“That worm Baek Taesu! He held a grudge and became Cha Mujin’s little errand boy!”
“What…?”
Sihyun’s brow furrowed. He couldn’t make sense of it at all.
That Baek Taesu…?
The man was a pathetic thug with zero fighting skill and nothing but cowardice to his name. There was no way he had any place in the power struggles of real gangs.
Reading the confusion on Sihyun’s face, Dongchul clicked his tongue and began to elaborate.
“See, it went like this…”
On the Boss’s emergency summons, most of the organization’s members were already streaming in around the club. Using the chaos as cover, Baek Taesu and four or five of his underlings loitered near the entrance.
Even after Dongchul had thrown them out of the organization for good, they never gave up, showing up almost every day to beg for forgiveness. Of course, they were turned away every single time.
“Baek Taesu, you can keep this up all you want — you ain’t gettin’ back into the Daeho Clan. Why do you keep comin’ around?”
One of the men guarding the entrance snapped at him, clearly annoyed.
“Hehe… Hyung-nim, if I just keep trying like this, the big hyungs will notice eventually, right? I’ve still got the Daeho inked on my arm!”
Taesu smiled greasily and showed off a cheap-looking tiger tattoo. His underlings bobbed their heads beside him and displayed their own matching ink.
“Hah… well, you gotta admire the spirit on these kids…”
Another member snorted a laugh. Seizing the moment, Taesu slipped forward a shopping bag he’d prepared.
“Don’t be like that, hyung-nims — please take these! Fine liquor, offered with my deepest apologies.”
Inside the bag were bottles of premium foreign whiskey that looked expensive even at a glance.
“Whoa, where’d you get something this pricey?”
“Hehe… me and the boys sweated blood to put these together just for you hyung-nims! Please, if nothing else, accept the sincerity…”
The men’s eyes wavered. High-end liquor like that was hard to come by, and the temptation was difficult to refuse.
“Tch… fine. For the sincerity of it, I’ll take a swig.”
In the end one of them accepted a bottle, and soon the sound of corks popping and glasses being passed filled the air.
Heh… you dogs… that’s right… drink up… you idiots…
Taesu watched them drink with a sneer hidden inside.
That was the exact moment Dongchul arrived at the club entrance with Hyeonsik. His eyes landed on the drinking members — and on Taesu wedged in among them.
“You piss-pants little shit, you know where the hell you are?!”
At Dongchul’s roar, the drinking members went pale and scrambled to hide the bottles.
“Eek!”
Dongchul’s murderous aura made Taesu flinch hard. Dongchul raised an arm high in open threat.
“Get the hell out of here, now!”
“I-I’m sorry! Hyung-nim!”
Taesu and his underlings fled in a blind panic. Watching them go, Dongchul clicked his tongue at the remaining members.
“You idiots not thinkin’ straight? That looked like some shady trick from a mile away — you really okay swallowin’ that shit? Spit it out, now!”
“Haha! Hyung-nim, once it’s already in the stomach— huh? Hic!”
One member tried to joke, then suddenly staggered and started hiccuping. One by one the others clutched their heads and swayed, complaining of dizziness.
“What the hell’s wrong with you lot?”
Dongchul’s brow furrowed the instant he sensed something off.
Clang—!
The club doors burst open hard, and men with blue dragon tattoos on their forearms poured in brandishing weapons.
“That’s how it went down… So first thing when the sun came up, I dug around on my own. Turns out they put somethin’ weird in that liquor…”
Having laid out the whole story, Dongchul pulled a cigarette from his inner pocket and stuck it between his lips.
“If it hadn’t been for the booze that bastard handed out… we might’ve made it in time to save Pildu hyung-nim…”
“……So that’s how you got hit so hard.”
“Yeah. Which means that piss-pants little shit could never have bought that much expensive liquor on his own to hand out to our boys that day. And that means Cha Mujin was behind it.”
Dongchul’s voice was full of certainty.
“So… the one we’re looking for is Baek Taesu?”
“That’s right. Sharp as ever. The second I got word those bastards were walkin’ around with dragon tattoos on their other arms now, I called you.”
“But catching him doesn’t seem like it would help much.”
He’d clearly been used as a pawn by Cha Mujin — but there was no reason to think they’d keep using him. At best he was a one-time discard. Grabbing Taesu and questioning him would almost certainly turn up nothing.
“Yeah. Anyone with half a brain would think that… But Cha Mujin, that bastard… he already knows I’m after him.”
“……What?”
Sihyun couldn’t follow. In that case, wouldn’t the smart move be to cut the tail and clean up Taesu and his crew all the more thoroughly? Even Jinmyeong Construction had been used as a careful buffer so the trail wouldn’t lead back. A man that meticulous wouldn’t be this reckless…
“Heh… hard to wrap your head around, yeah? Still, trust me and come along. When it comes to findin’ Cha Mujin fast, this is the best shot we’ve got.”
With that, Dongchul stood. Sihyun still didn’t understand — but after a beat he rose without a word and followed.
The two of them cut into the back alleys of the red-light district. Before long, loud voices drifted from a corner of the alley.
“Heh heh… those Daeho Clan losers. Why’d they even kick us out? Thanks to them we got to become dragons, right?”
“For real, lol. Now we just gotta follow Cha Mujin hyung-nim and we’re set, yeah?”
It was Taesu and his crew.
“Those worm bastards… ‘just Cha Mujin hyung-nim,’ my ass…”
Hearing their conversation, Dongchul’s face twisted with raw fury. He was about to charge them then and there when Taesu spat on the ground and kept talking.
“Damn right. And next we find Kim Sihyun’s old lady and wreck her… that ajumma’s face is seriously hot as hell, heh heh heh… this time we just go straight and—”
The filthy words never finished.
CRACK—!
“Guh—!”
Taesu screamed and toppled backward. Before he could even process what had happened, a sound like bone splitting rang sickeningly beside his ear.
CRUNCH—!
“AAAAAARGH——!!!”