A Hero Is Born (7)
In truth, Cha Chi-do was right.
I had never killed anyone in my life.
Maybe he had seen straight through me.
Am I afraid of killing?
“…….”
I couldn’t say for sure.
Was I stabbing that bastard’s thigh over and over just to make him feel the pain he’d inflicted on others? Or had I simply lacked the courage to drive the blade into his neck?
I couldn’t tell, not yet.
There were heroes in comic books who pursued nonviolence.
They held back from using guns and favored ranged weapons like shuriken.
No matter how vile the criminal, they never took a life, striving instead to win justice without crossing that line.
And what about the hero I had admired, Jin Shark?
He stood on the exact opposite side of that creed.
He believed that anyone who had done wrong in the past could never be forgiven.
If even a trace of evil clung to someone, he slaughtered them without hesitation.
I was standing at a crossroads.
The choice was mine.
But whether I killed or spared them, today was not the day for that decision.
Still, someday that day would come.
When it did, I’d have to choose what kind of hero I was going to be.
When I turned my head, Stretch pulled the sashimi knife out of Cha Chi-do’s chest.
Cha Chi-do’s pupils had already gone dull.
It was the miserable end of a gang boss who had spent his life bathing in violence and filth.
Stretch walked toward me, the knife still in his hand.
His face was smeared with blood as he held the blade out to me.
“You used it well.”
He had taken revenge on the man who had killed his subordinates, and yet his expression still looked oddly desolate.
I looked down at the snow-white knife in my hand.
As one of the Demon family’s weapons, Cha Chi-do’s sashimi knife would definitely be useful.
If I took it to Karki, he might even rebirth it as a modern weapon.
I tucked the knife into the thigh pocket of my suit.
“Ugh…….”
The men who had been sprawled on the floor groaned and slowly pushed themselves upright one by one.
They had witnessed their boss’s death and lost all will to fight.
As soon as they saw Stretch, they dropped to their knees and cried out.
“S-sorry, boss!”
“We couldn’t do anything. Big Boss ordered us to, so…….”
“You know how it is, boss. We were scared too…….”
With Stretch’s announcement that he was leaving the organization, the Chi-do faction had split in two after an internal collapse.
One side stayed with Cha Chi-do; the other followed Stretch.
Now that one half had completely crumbled, Stretch looked at me.
“What are we supposed to do? Are you letting us go? Or……”
He swallowed hard.
“Are you going to kill us too?”
Inside the Ilsan Hunter Compound, which was little different from lawless territory, force meant power.
Just as I had done with Cha Chi-do, if I wanted to, I could wipe these people out.
The gang would vanish forever in a single night.
“First.”
But that wasn’t what I wanted.
“Put the ones with their ears cut off in a taxi and send them home.”
If we didn’t miss the golden hour, the severed ears might still be reattached.
The instant I said it, Stretch jerked his chin and issued orders to his men.
Blood was still pouring from Stretch’s thigh, but he remained standing to the very end.
What remained now was Stretch and the rest of his men.
“What should we—”
“Bring me hydrochloric acid.”
At my command, everyone held their breath.
Hydrochloric acid was a common item in the compound.
It was used to clean metal surfaces, prevent corrosion, and neutralize waste.
But when it sat inside a large blue plastic drum, it meant something very different to a gang.
When Cha Chi-do had been arrested, it was revealed that besides collecting elf ears, he had committed another grotesque act.
He had dumped rival gang members’ corpses straight into acid drums and dissolved them whole.
For a gang, bringing out acid had only two meanings.
Either someone was going in.
Or you were.
After confirming that the earless men were moving away, Stretch nodded.
“Understood. I’ll get it.”
* * *
A short while later, several of his men brought out a large blue plastic drum.
At this size, it was big enough to fit one person with room to spare.
Stretch and the others avoided my eyes and waited for judgment.
They had spent their lives under a boss who cut off ears on a whim and killed people before finishing a meal.
No wonder they were terrified.
“Open it.”
When they lifted the lid, a clear liquid sloshed inside.
There wasn’t a single person here who didn’t know how dangerous the substance in that drum was.
Stretch stepped forward as the representative.
“Hey.”
As if he were truly reflecting on everything he’d done, he bowed his head deeply.
“If you don’t mind, could you end this with me? We really are scum, but……”
Stretch bit down hard on his lip.
His eyes were wet as he fought back tears.
“I don’t want to die as a villain for the rest of my life. At least give those bastards a chance. Please.”
That was right.
From the start, I had spared Stretch to give him one last chance.
“Lift your head. A man cries over nothing these days.”
At my words, Stretch slowly looked up.
“Bring that over.”
The finger I pointed toward was not Stretch or his men.
It was the stack of cement sacks.
“Pour it all in here.”
Only then did Stretch understand what I meant.
“……Guys. Let’s hurry.”
“Yes, boss!”
The men hoisted the sacks of cement onto their shoulders and came over.
Just before they opened the mouth of the sack and were about to pour it into the large plastic drum, they all froze at once.
Looking at me nervously, they asked,
“You really want us to dump it in?”
“This stuff is worth how much……”
What was inside those cement sacks was the new drug, Black Pearl.
By value alone, it was worth several hundred billion won.
If they distributed it inside the compound.
If they smuggled it out into the world—
they’d get rich overnight.
At last, they could break free in one blow from the damn poverty that had clung to me like a curse in my previous life.
Not that I had any intention of doing that.
I had seen with my own eyes how the compound workers changed after drinking Black Pearl in my past life.
My resolve had never changed.
“Pour it in. Unless you want me to throw you in with it.”
“Y-yes, sir!”
The black powder was dumped into the acid.
Foam bubbled violently on the surface as the liquid inside the drum swallowed the demon’s powder whole.
Stretch watched the rising smoke in silence.
When the work was done, he pointed at the corpses, Cha Chi-do included.
“Bury these bastards in the back hill later.”
“Got it.”
“You’re quitting the organization?”
“……Yeah. I was planning to quit and go back home to farm in peace. That was before all this went to hell today.”
Cha Chi-do had butchered not only Stretch’s men but also his own subordinates.
It had been a night soaked through with blood and madness.
“So, after quitting, you’re going back to your hometown?”
Stretch straightened his back.
“You’re the one who saved my life, and my brothers’ lives too. I’ll do whatever you tell me to do.”
The eyes of the men behind him were filled with resolve.
Half of them had followed him because they were afraid of Cha Chi-do.
The other half genuinely trusted Stretch.
“Good. You’re staying here. You won’t ever be allowed to leave this place. The compound will be your prison and your grave.”
I had no intention of romanticizing a bastard.
They had to pay for their crimes.
And as for how they would atone—
“From now on, you’ll protect the people who work in the factories. You’re not a gang anymore. You’re the Guard Squad.”
The Guard Squad.
It sounded childish at first glance.
But it was exactly the kind of thing the Ilsan Hunter Compound needed.
Who was the most dangerous force here?
Not the monsters that crawled out of Gates.
Not the other races that hated humanity.
It was the humans—the ones trying to seize the compound for themselves.
Once Cha Chi-do was hauled off by the prosecutors, another force had appeared to fill the vacuum.
In comic books, evil is exterminated by heroes.
Reality doesn’t work that way.
When one evil disappears, another takes its place.
Maybe humanity itself was the true source of evil.
So what was I going to do?
I’d deal with the evil right in front of me, one piece at a time.
At the very least, I would make sure that I and the people around me didn’t have to suffer.
That was my duty, my own way of making the world a little better.
“The Guard Squad? What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Exactly what it sounds like. You train, get stronger, and stay ready to fight at any time. You can recruit smart, strong guys too.”
“But……”
Stretch trailed off.
Build strength and expand your influence.
It was the kind of wild ambition you’d expect to find in a martial arts novel.
I could guess what he wanted to ask.
“Then how are we supposed to live?”
“You’ve been sticking your straws into other people’s backs and living off them all this time, haven’t you? From now on, work honestly.”
There was work everywhere in the Ilsan Hunter Compound, from Factory 1 all the way to Factory 9.
Until now, Cha Chi-do had exploited them through unfair means.
But now the ground had been cleared for a place where everyone could labor on equal footing.
“These guys don’t have any skills. The only thing they know how to do is……”
I lightly kicked the plastic drum beside me.
The liquid inside sloshed, and some of it spilled out.
“If they don’t like it, they can each climb inside one by one.”
“…….”
Coming to terms with your mistakes and living a better life was never easy.
They only had two choices.
Live as trash forever.
Or redeem themselves.
“If you don’t have that much resolve, you’d be better off dying right here.”
At my taunting words, Stretch didn’t argue anymore.
“Understood. We’ll do it.”
“What’s your name?”
“Gi Yeong-cheol.”
“Then call it Yeong-cheol Suho-dae.”
“What? At least change the organization’s name…….”
“Yeong-cheol Suho-dae.”
“…….”
Stretch sighed and turned around.
Then he shouted to his men,
“As of today, the Chi-do Gang is disbanded! As of today, we are Yeong-cheol Suho-dae!”
“Yes, big boss!”
Stretch shook his head.
“No, I’m not the big boss. The man standing here is our boss.”
Under my helmet, I tilted my head.
This bastard was doing things I hadn’t told him to do.
“Hey. Why would I be big boss—”
“That’s just how this world works.”
Stretch buttoned up the shirt he’d left half open.
“The second-in-command of a gang—meaning the brother I serve—becomes the big boss. Everyone!”
Everyone followed Stretch and spread both arms out to the sides.
“Big boss! We greet you!”
With Stretch’s voice leading them, the rest roared after him like a chant.
“Please come by often.”
Stretch muttered as he looked at the ground.
“Just make sure we’re living right. That’s all we need.”
Redemption could mean setting one’s heart right and starting a new life.
But it could also mean coming back from the brink of death.
Stretch and his men had died tonight, only to come back to life.
They had been reborn.
“I’ll be watching.”
I fired a wire from my gauntlet.
Climbing the cable, I rose to the second floor.
Below me, they didn’t lift their heads until I was gone.
When I stepped out through the window, a fresh wind brushed past me.
I took off my helmet, and the cold air touched my face.
Dark clouds drifted across the sky.
Soon, a huge full moon emerged like a painting in the night.
Soft moonlight spilled down over the barren compound.
I dropped to the ground and mounted my Honda XR80.
I started the engine and twisted the handlebars.
Just like before.
I disappeared into the darkness.
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