Chapter 5. A Distant Clock-Out Time
Chapter 5. A Distant Clock-Out Time
Monday, 9 a.m.
Chanhyeok yawned over and over, wiping away tears.
Yesterday, the motel hadn’t been full, so he didn’t have to clean until he wanted to die.
But spending the whole night half-asleep in an uncomfortable counter chair was its own kind of torture. Tears kept streaming from all the yawning, and the corners of his eyes stung.
If he endured for about fifty more minutes, Kang Chan would come in.
Kang Chan always made it ten minutes early.
When Chanhyeok first met him, Kang Chan looked soft and harmless, like an easy mark. But the more he watched him, the more something felt off. The way he smiled unpleasantly while saying, “At worst, it’s just suicide,” had been genuinely chilling. But yesterday, when he said the guest had committed suicide with a blank face, Chanhyeok had nearly been scared to death.
Kang Chan’s faint, constant smile was creepy, but his expressionless face was terrifying.
He probably needed to quit this motel soon.
But where else could he earn this much?
To make this kind of money, the only real alternative was parcel loading and unloading.
And that job sounded several times more brutal than this… He worried he’d regret it if he went there.
While he was caught in those thoughts, a luxury sedan and two vans drove into the parking lot.
Then a bunch of rough-looking men poured out of the vehicles.
Chanhyeok thought of the man who had died in Room 310. Kang Chan had said people who knew the man had come looking for him…
What had he said yesterday?
That they’d just left?
He’d assumed it was nothing, but seeing them storm in with that kind of swagger made fear slam into him.
They were definitely gangsters.
Not some local punks who swaggered around the neighborhood—these guys looked like they’d swing sashimi knives or steel pipes without hesitation.
More than ten thugs lined up in the parking lot. Then a man who looked like the boss and four huge men entered and stopped in front of the counter.
Any sleepiness Chanhyeok had left vanished. He sprang up from the chair.
“Welcome.”
The boss stared at him silently, then lit a cigarette.
“You an employee? Owner here?”
Relieved that it didn’t seem like they had business with him personally, Chanhyeok answered politely.
“He hasn’t come in yet. He usually shows up around eleven.”
The counter area was non-smoking, but the man didn’t care. He took a drag and exhaled smoke into the air.
“Call him now and tell him to get his ass here. And tell him I hate waiting—so the longer he takes, the more trouble it’ll be.”
He said it casually, but his low voice made it even more frightening.
Chanhyeok’s whole body trembled.
In movies, gangsters are common, but in real life, facing them was pure terror.
He hurriedly called the manager.
His hand shook so badly he could barely tap the screen, but he managed.
Normally, the shift leads didn’t contact the owner directly. Everything was supposed to go through the manager. But the manager wouldn’t answer. The manager had clocked out early last night, saying he was going drinking with friends.
With no other option, Chanhyeok pulled up the owner’s number and dialed.
“Yeah, Chanhyeok. What is it?”
The owner picked up before the phone even rang three times.
“Uh… there are… people here at the motel. They say they need to see you.”
His voice shook.
There was a brief silence.
“I’m overseas right now. I’ll be back in Korea the day after tomorrow. Who are they?”
At the owner’s question, Chanhyeok asked the boss in a crawling voice.
“Um… he’s asking who you are…”
The boss didn’t answer. He just smiled thinly and exhaled smoke, his face full of killing intent. Chanhyeok’s knees felt like they were going to give out.
“He won’t say… but you need to come quickly. They look like gangsters…”
He kept that last part as quiet as he could, but the man across from him definitely heard it.
“Call the manager and tell him to be there.”
“Sir… the manager isn’t answering, so I called you directly.”
“……”
After a pause, the owner said he’d try contacting him and ended the call.
As soon as the call ended, the boss of Isu Gang, Cheolmin, blew cigarette smoke toward the motel employee and spoke.
“So when’s your owner bastard coming to see me? If you called him, you should tell me the result.”
His tone grew rougher, like his mood was souring by the second.
“The owner is overseas. He says he’ll be back in a few days. The manager should come, but I haven’t reached him yet.”
Just then, the motel phone rang. The caller ID showed the manager.
The manager, with a voice that sounded like he’d just woken up, snapped and asked what the hell this was. But Chanhyeok raised his voice on purpose so the boss could hear, demanding he come immediately, then hung up.
“The manager lives ten minutes from here. He’ll probably be here soon.”
It was only 9:05.
Kang Chan wouldn’t arrive for another forty-five minutes. Chanhyeok wanted to dump this nightmare onto Kang Chan and run.
“You know the guy who killed himself here? What room did he stay in?”
So it really was about the suicide.
“Yes… he stayed in Room 310.”
“While he was there, did anyone go in and out?”
“No… after he went in, he stayed alone for thirty-six hours without even eating. The door never opened even once, except when I went up at noon on Friday to collect the room fee.”
Answering the boss at attention, Chanhyeok felt like he’d become one of the gang’s own men.
“No food delivery or anything during those thirty hours?”
“No.”
Cheolmin’s head ached as he listened.
The police would have torn the suicide room apart, and apparently the money and drugs still hadn’t been found.
If they were hidden somewhere in the room, that would be best… But if they were hidden elsewhere, it was a real nightmare. Where the hell would he even look?
First, he needed to search the room where Yoonseop had stayed.
“Open Room 310.”
“What? There’s a guest in there right now.”
The idiot motel worker blinked with a dumb expression, and it irritated him.
Cheolmin wanted to smack him, but he didn’t touch ordinary people unless he had business with them.
“Go up, throw them out, and search it. Check the ceiling, the toilet tank—look carefully. Under the bed too.”
After Cheolmin ordered the subordinate behind him, three men took the master key from Chanhyeok and went up to the third floor.
On the screen, they didn’t even ring the bell. They opened the door without hesitation.
A moment later, loud commotion reached the first-floor counter. The middle-aged couple inside fled in shock without even getting fully dressed.
The man looked like he had a temper, but with gangsters behaving that violently, he couldn’t even speak up and just left.
Chanhyeok worried whether he had to refund the room fee, but he didn’t have time to think.
At that moment, the manager came in, colliding with the fleeing couple from Room 310, and approached Chanhyeok with a stunned expression.
Then, without making a sound, he mouthed at Chanhyeok, asking what was going on.
The boss looked at the manager and spoke.
“So you’re the manager. Bring me the entry and exit records for Room 310 from Thursday evening until now.”
“Huh? Who are you people—”
Before the manager could finish, a thug standing behind kicked him in the shin.
“Urgh!”
The manager clutched his shin and crouched in pain. The thug grabbed him by the collar, yanked him up, and slapped him.
“Do what you’re told. We’re in a very bad mood right now.”
After slapping him three or four times to scare him, Cheolmin stopped him.
“That’s enough. Hey, Manager. Bring me every single entry record for Room 310. Everything.”
The manager, stunned by the sudden violence, stammered yes, yes and rummaged through the counter POS system, writing down Room 310’s entry records in a notebook.
After the body was removed on Saturday, the cleaning team cleaned the room, and there had been three short-stay sales and two overnight sales recorded.
“All those guests paid by card, right? Bring the card receipts.”
The manager couldn’t even think of refusing and pulled the relevant receipts from the stored bundles. He couldn’t even bring himself to mention privacy laws.
Cheolmin examined the payment records for the five couples who had used the room where Yoonseop died.
To identify them, he’d need connections inside the card companies. It wouldn’t be easy, but even if it took time, he had to know. He handed the slips to one subordinate and told him to find out who those people were.
Then he told the manager to call in the cleaning women.
“Um… the aunties all went out to eat. They’ll be back before ten.”
Chanhyeok answered in the manager’s place.
But before he even finished speaking, Chanhyeok saw stars burst in his vision.
The same thug who had slapped the manager had slapped him too.
“Hey, you bastard. You don’t know how to read the room? So you’re saying we should wait while they eat? Bring them here right now!”
“Yes… yes.”
With his cheek burning and tears threatening to spill from humiliation, Chanhyeok called the cleaning team.
“Auntie, come back to the motel right now. All of you. Hurry.”
“What? Chief, we’re eating right now.”
“Food isn’t the issue. Come back now.”
Chanhyeok shouted and slammed the phone down just as the thugs who had gone up to Room 310 came back down.
It was only 9:40.
Chanhyeok desperately wanted to pass this whole situation to Kang Chan and run.
“Boss. We searched every inch. There was nothing.”
Cheolmin had still been clinging to a shred of hope, but now he swallowed a groan and closed his eyes.
In truth, the probability that the cleaners or the guests who had used the room stole the cash and drugs was low.
Of course he would keep tracking the goods no matter what, but as the organization’s boss, he now had to prepare for the worst case—never finding them.
He couldn’t afford to repay around 6 billion won. And there was nowhere to borrow that kind of money.
The only answer was to lie down and declare “screw it,” then go to war with the ruthless Incheon faction.
Those bastards were tied to overseas organizations. They didn’t hesitate to do dirty work—drugs, organ trafficking, murder-for-hire. They were dangerous. His own organization, which was basically a bunch of softies whose limit was swinging steel pipes, would have a hard time dealing with them.
But he couldn’t lose face as a gangster.
In this world, face was everything. If they pulled sashimi knives, his side had to pull sashimi knives too if they wanted to survive.
Cheolmin went up to Room 310 himself.
Inside, the furniture had been flipped over. The guys really had searched it thoroughly. As he smoked and organized his thoughts, he noticed a ceiling inspection panel near the room entrance. He dragged a chair over and opened it, but there was nothing inside.
If only something had been found in a place like this…
On the outside, he looked cold and expressionless, but inside, Cheolmin was panicking hard as he walked back down to the first floor.
When he reached the first floor, the elevator doors opened and a man in his twenties, wearing the standard motel staff outfit, stepped out.
With a strange smile, he gave Cheolmin a slight nod and walked straight behind the counter. Several subordinates over 100 kilograms were blocking the counter area, but the man slipped through them and approached the counter computer.
“Hello. Chanhyeok older brother, good job staying up all night. Manager, you’re here early too.”
In the fear-filled atmosphere Cheolmin’s Isu Gang had created, Kang Chan’s oddly bright morning greeting sounded out of place.
Kang Chan looked at Chanhyeok, who was rubbing his still-swollen cheek, and spoke.
“Did anything happen? You can clock out.”
Cheolmin saw red at the nerve of this brat who was acting like they didn’t exist.