Chapter 64. Coin King
Chapter 64. Coin King
A twenty-story building in Jongno 3-ga.
Lauren took the elevator and got off at the penthouse.
It was a spacious place, but as if revealing the owner’s frugal nature, the interior was simple.
“Did you come?”
Cheolmin, the owner of the place, was waiting in front of the elevator.
“Yes. I found the monsters’ location again today!”
Lauren was helping Cheolmin by tracking the Blood Fiends’ movements through surveillance resources scattered across the Republic of Korea.
The monsters didn’t seem to have any intention of avoiding people’s eyes and were rampaging everywhere.
And their numbers were increasing.
Before, they dealt with one or two cases a week, but these days it was almost every day.
“So I won’t be able to have dinner with the Masters again today.”
Cheolmin smacked his lips as he spoke.
If nothing happened, Cheolmin’s routine was to return to the motel before dinner and eat with his two Masters, but lately, the number of days he couldn’t do that was increasing. His younger brothers’ abilities improved by leaps and bounds after their rebirth, but given what they were up against, he couldn’t relax.
“But there’s a bit of a problem.”
At Lauren’s words, Cheolmin looked puzzled.
“A problem?”
“One of our motel people is at the place where the Blood Fiends are right now. Lee Chanhyeok. Chief Lee.”
At Lauren’s words, Cheolmin’s face hardened.
“I’ll go.”
He took the wooden sword-like blade hanging on the wall in one hand and left the building.
“How much are we collecting for dues today? You picked a place like this?”
They expected a decent pork belly place, but they were thrown off when the first venue was a beef restaurant.
But one friend who had successfully gotten a job snickered and said,
“Instead of eating that stuff every day where you can’t tell if it’s meat or paper, aren’t we adults now? It’s time we eat something like this. Everyone just pay 50,000 won each. If we’re short, I’ll cover it!”
For the ones job-hunting or still students, it was a burden.
Fifty thousand won was a big amount to some people.
“By the way, Chanhyeok is coming today?”
“Yeah. I talked to him yesterday.”
“Is it ten years? Back then he stole his parents’ money to buy coins and ran away, right?”
“Heh… back then we cursed him out, called him a lunatic. But looking at it now, I should’ve followed Chanhyeok and bought coins somehow, no matter what!”
“Back then Chanhyeok bought Bitcoin when it was one million won each. Does he still have it?”
“No way. He must’ve sold it ages ago. Would you still be holding it?”
As the classmates talked, a red sports car pulled into the beef restaurant’s parking lot, and Chanhyeok got out.
A man getting out of a sports car in a black suit and wearing sunglasses at night drew the attention of the people inside. Through the floor-to-ceiling glass, Chanhyeok’s friends recognized him.
“That’s Chanhyeok!”
“What the hell? That car is over 100 million won! Did he hit it big with coins back then?”
Enjoying the surprised, envious, and jealous looks, Chanhyeok walked into the meeting spot.
Some looked like sloppy office workers who came straight from work, and some still wore jeans and T-shirts.
In that group, Chanhyeok—dressed sharp in a suit and with his hair styled—looked out of place.
“Oh my, oh my.”
He could feel the interested gazes from his female classmates.
It was the first time in his life that Chanhyeok, who had no presence during school, ever received looks like that.
“You all doing good? Long time no see.”
Chanhyeok flashed the fresh smile he always practiced, sat down, mixed a glass of soju-and-beer, and knocked it back.
“Ah! Refreshing. Who booked this place? You picked well!”
Eating a bite of meat, he greeted each classmate one by one. Anyone could see he was a seasoned adult in society.
“How’ve you been? You look like you’re doing really well. What are you doing these days?”
A friend he was fairly close with in school poured him a drink and asked.
“Me? Same old, same old. I’m so busy I can’t even breathe. I barely made time today. I just work at a small place.”
Chanhyeok tried to sound as humble as possible, but his friends’ faces were full of curiosity.
No wonder. Even used, the car he drove in was over 100 million won. It wasn’t a car a fresh worker could drive.
“Good to see you, buddy. Long time no see!”
Miju, who had coldly rejected Chanhyeok’s confession back in school, came over and offered him a drink. She was so pretty back then, but looking now, she was lacking a lot.
A man who didn’t hang his neck on someone was naturally cool and at ease.
Chanhyeok took Miju’s glass and drained it in one go, then winked and poured her a drink. The way he confidently held out the glass he drank from carried a maturity different from men his age.
Miju’s cheeks reddened slightly, and she also drained the glass he offered in one go.
“Long time no see, Miju. Hey! You dumped me so coldly back then—how’ve you been since?”
When Chanhyeok laughed and brought up the past like a joke, everyone got curious.
“Chanhyeok, you confessed to Miju?”
One girl asked.
“Of course. I liked her so much. Back then Miju was totally a goddess, right? Super popular. So I tried my shot, and I got cleanly rejected. How could I forget that? It’s coming back to me today!”
The group laughed at his joking tone.
“Chanhyeok, good to see you. I work here these days. Can you give me your business card too?”
Hyeongcheol, the friend who was most successful out of them, held out his business card and asked.
Chanhyeok flinched.
A business card.
He didn’t think of that.
“I don’t have one on me right now. I’ll give it to you next time.”
A sneer spread across Hyeongcheol’s face. Chanhyeok thought he definitely noticed his bluff.
Just then, a commotion broke out at the next table.
“What’s wrong with the taste of this meat? Why does it stink like this?”
When Chanhyeok turned, three men at the other table were grilling meat. They were built enough that you could believe they were on a wrestling team.
That type of people were familiar to Chanhyeok.
Even this morning, he dealt with that kind of people when one bullied him.
They shouted now, throwing the plate the server had just brought.
It was a deliberate attempt to cause trouble.
With public safety weakening in Korea, people like that showed up often.
“I’ll bring it again.”
The server didn’t panic and picked up the meat and the plate from the floor. Chanhyeok envied that calmness.
“What, you bastard? You think we’re funny?”
When the server stayed calm like it was nothing, one gangster at the table sprang up and grabbed the server by the collar.
Skkk.
Along with the sound of paper being cut, the man’s neck—who was gripping the server—was cut about halfway through.
The server’s nails had extended long like blades, and he started laughing as blood sprayed from the man’s neck onto him.
“Kyaaaak!”
“What is this! Murder?”
People in the restaurant were shocked and thrown into confusion, and Chanhyeok’s table was the same.
“Uh, uh, uh…”
The gangsters who were trying to start a fight were just as shocked.
Their specialty was using brute force to intimidate others, but the other side was using violence on a higher level.
“As expected. Men’s blood tastes bad.”
The restaurant server licked the blood smeared all over his palm as he spoke, and his tongue stretched out long like a monster’s tongue as his mouth split open.
“Run!”
The customers near the door fled in shock, but Chanhyeok and his friends were deeper inside and couldn’t escape.
To run, they had to pass right by that killing monster.
Then the head cook came out from the kitchen and said,
“Ah… I told you not to cause an incident. Seriously—kids can’t control their impulses, that’s the problem!”
At that, the restaurant owner at the counter ran out in shock, and the cook’s mouth split long as well. He ripped the owner’s head off, shoved his face into the cross-section, and drank the blood.
Chanhyeok saw scenes like that in animation, but seeing it in reality made bile rise in his throat.
With the tragedy happening in an instant, many customers inside couldn’t even think to run and instead collapsed where they were.
Then Chanhyeok saw a familiar face.
It was Cheolmin, in a black suit, holding a sword in one hand.
“Boss!”
Finding a dependable figure in an unexpected place, Chanhyeok called Cheolmin “Boss.”
The moment Cheolmin entered the dining hall, he split the upper body of the server monster standing in the center in half. The monster turned into black ash and vanished.
“Eek!”
The cook monster in the back tried to flee in shock.
But Cheolmin leapt in front of the cook in a single step and cut his neck down as well.
The cook monster also turned into a handful of ash and disappeared.
“You okay?”
As Cheolmin sheathed his sword and approached Chanhyeok, Chanhyeok’s friends backed away in fear.
The monsters were scary, but the handsome man who just swung a blade was scary too.
But Cheolmin’s looks—like he had stepped out of a pure romance comic—pounded Chanhyeok’s female classmates’ hearts mercilessly.
They stared at Cheolmin approaching with dazzled eyes, to the point they almost fainted.
“Yes, Boss! Thank you for saving us.”
Chanhyeok bowed his head ninety degrees like he was a gangster, and the friends watching him made strange faces.
Their classmate Chanhyeok, who didn’t look like a gangster at all, was acting like one.
“Monsters like that are crawling around everywhere these days, so be especially careful.”
Cheolmin patted Chanhyeok’s shoulder a few times, then disappeared.
And shortly after, the police and U.S. soldiers entered together and started asking the people inside various questions, while paramedics collected the bodies of the restaurant owner and the gangster who started the trouble and removed them.
“What the hell was that! Chanhyeok, who was that guy just now!”
Until a moment ago, only Miju showed interest in him, but once Cheolmin left, the female classmates rushed in from all sides and asked.
“Ah… he’s someone I serve as hyungnim. Our boss.”
“Boss? You’re in a gang?”
At a female classmate’s question, Chanhyeok lightly furrowed his brow.
“Watch your words. A gang? Just know it as the Isu Gang. If you ask around, quite a few people will know. It’s famous.”
The classmate who tried to pick a fight with Chanhyeok earlier over not having a business card lost his nerve and slipped away. After the brief police questioning ended, they kept firing off endless questions.
But Chanhyeok warned them not to casually ask about a world ordinary people weren’t supposed to know, and to his friends, Chanhyeok became even more mysterious.
“Hi, Kang Chan!”
Chanhyeok hyung came in with a bright face after parking the growling sports car in the lot.
He looked in a good mood.
The time was 9:30.
“Yes, hello.”
I forced a smile as I greeted him, but my mood was the worst.
Just earlier, Bella came out to the counter again dressed like a professional woman with a day job and was trading coins.
She said the coin she bought before was at the timing to sell now, sold it, and her balance was a bit over 2 billion won.
After receiving my greeting, Chanhyeok hyung looked at Bella’s laptop screen and was startled.
“Bella! You invest in coins?”
“Shut up! Don’t talk to me, I need to focus right now.”
Bella didn’t even look at Chanhyeok hyung and just stared at the screen.
“Ah… it reminds me of the old days. Back then, ten years ago, I had twenty Bitcoin… If I’d just held that, my life would’ve turned around.”
“Excuse me? Twenty Bitcoin?”
I stared at Chanhyeok hyung in shock.
“In high school, someone online said a time would come when Bitcoin would go over 100 million won, even 1 billion won. Back then one Bitcoin was 1 million won, and I snapped up twenty with 20 million won my mom set aside to raise our jeonse deposit. Then I left a letter and came up to Seoul…”
“Chanhyeok hyung, your life has been turbulent too.”
Most people who worked in motels had stories like that, but Chanhyeok hyung saying he bought coins ten years ago was pretty interesting.
“Turbulent, my ass. It was a childish stunt.”
“Then what price did you sell those coins at?”
“They kept showing it on the news, like Bitcoin finally passed one million won, and then a few months later it dropped to 300,000 won. But back then, one friend I met in Seoul got hurt at a construction site and had no hospital money, so I sold it and helped him.”
Chanhyeok hyung looked new to me, sitting there with a mix coffee and sinking into some hazy memories.
“You bought at 20 million and sold at 6 million! If you’d held until now, it’d be about 3.5 billion won.”
“Heh… with my personality, you think I would’ve held that until now? If I sold when it went up a bit, that would’ve been doing really well.”
This side of Chanhyeok, whom I honestly thought had a lot of pathetic parts, felt new.
If it were me, it would be a bitter memory I couldn’t forget to my death out of frustration, but he talked about it like it was someone else’s business, with ease.
And the reason—helping someone else—was also hard to understand.
“Then that friend must see you as a huge benefactor. Is he grateful? Did he pay you back?”
“After treatment, we stayed in touch for a while, then he disappeared. I can’t contact him now.”
Chanhyeok sipped his coffee again.
He really was lacking.
You should chase him to the ends of hell and demand your 3.5 billion, and he was calmly drinking coffee? It made my blood boil.
Then Bella, who had been watching Chanhyeok in silence for who knows how long, spoke.
“I didn’t know, but Chanhyeok is kind.”
“Huh? Me? I’m kind.”
At Bella’s praise, Chanhyeok hyung grinned widely.
“Then Bella will help you a little. How much do you have right now? Hand over everything you’ve got.”
Chanhyeok hyung opened his bank app on his phone and checked.
“Ten million won came in today. I’ve got exactly ten million one thousand five hundred ninety won in my bank balance.”
“You have a coin app, right? Put all of that in there.”
Under Bella’s pressure as she barked orders, Chanhyeok hyung deposited it like he was being dragged along.
Then while Bella snatched his phone and bought and sold coins like crazy, he stood there going “uh, uh, uh.”
It was pathetic enough to kill me.
Letting someone take your stuff that easily.
“Alright! I multiplied it fifteen times for now. And the one I just bought—sell it all tomorrow morning when you get off work. You have to sell everything before exactly 10 o’clock. If not, it’ll totally blow up.”
“Ugh!”
Chanhyeok hyung and I stared at the returned phone in horror. The balance that was 10.04 million won a moment ago had changed to 150 million.
Money duplication.
That was Bella’s ability.
For a moment, I thought being a motel owner and working three jobs were all meaningless, and that becoming Bella’s husband might be a better future.