Chapter 10
Chapter 10
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Translator: Vine
Chapter: 10
Chapter Title: Deep, Deep Night (1)
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Thud!
On a beach where the sunset was beginning to spread, Kanghyeok opened the trunk.
Caw! Caw!
Beneath a sky where gulls drifted like ghosts, Leila, who had gone to inspect the boat floating on the sea, discovered the body of a middle-aged white man in the wheelhouse.
It was the scene of a deal between a gang and smugglers.
Judging by the clear drag marks and tire tracks in the beach sand, they hadn't been gone for long.
(They've eliminated the smuggler. They must have been quite angry.)
Listening to Leila's voice, Kanghyeok looked at the bags inside the trunk.
He didn't look at them head-on.
He looked down at them.
The entire trunk had been modified, and the bags were packed tightly into its floor.
Kanghyeok picked up one of the bags.
However, realizing from its weight that it wasn't his gun, he returned the bag to its original spot.
“Which one is my gun?”
(The two on the far left.)
The transmission came back, along with the sound of footsteps approaching.
Kanghyeok took out the leftmost bag and placed it on top of another.
Click.
The moment he unfastened the lock, a faint thrill ran down his spine. Although he hadn't recovered the laptop, he had gotten his gun back.
And it was a gun he thought he would never see again.
Was this what it felt like to meet a former lover you thought was dead?
Kanghyeok couldn't bring himself to open the bag right away. Only after taking a deep breath did he manage to open it.
“Are you pleased with it?”
As Leila, who had approached unnoticed, spoke from behind him, Kanghyeok silently lifted the gun resting between the black foam padding.
A thick, abnormally angular design.
It was a jet-black automatic rifle, shaped as if it were wearing a suit.
“The scratches were so bad we had to repaint it, but you should recognize it.”
Of course he did.
The feel and the weight.
The custom parts and the urethane-coated grip.
The agent code, a mix of letters and numbers where the serial number should have been, proved that this was the gun he had used during his active duty.
Clack.
Kanghyeok assumed a stance and pulled back the bolt.
It moved smoothly and slickly, a testament to how well it had been maintained.
Click, clack.
From moving the fire selector to removing the magazine, there wasn't the slightest hitch.
Kanghyeok put the rifle down and took out the second bag from the left.
Click.
This time, it was an automatic pistol.
It looked similar to the gun he was currently using.
But the resemblance was only superficial; in its internal mechanics, finish, craftsmanship, and durability, it was a pistol beyond comparison.
Sliiiide.
As he slowly pulled back the slide, it made a sharp sound, like a longsword being drawn from its sheath. When he let go, it chambered a round without even the common spring noise.
“I'll use it well and return it.”
Leila remained silent.
Though he was trying to act composed, she could tell from his eyes that Kanghyeok was in a very emotional state. She felt an urge to just tell him to keep it.
However, the guns were company property, and Leila had no authority to hand them over to Kanghyeok.
Leila bit her lip and cast her gaze toward the sunset.
“I'm sorry about before.”
“For what?”
“My comment crossed a line. I apologize.”
Leila, who had spoken sharply to Kanghyeok for not telling her why he had quit, said this in a voice that, for once, held a hint of sincerity.
Clack, clack.
Kanghyeok spoke as he put the empty cases back into the trunk.
“Forget it.”
What would you know?
Just as Leila frowned at his gaze, which seemed to say as much, Kanghyeok continued.
“Now they're going to get even more desperate.”
Leila exhaled through her nose and replied with her arms crossed.
“I think so, too.”
They're just a gang, after all.
That was the thought written on Leila's face.
“The guys around here have no lines, no class.”
Perhaps it was thanks to living in this foul-smelling place for a year.
Kanghyeok could understand, at least a little, the thought processes of the scum living in this neighborhood.
Since the company had pulled some strings, the smugglers would no longer deal with the gang.
They must feel the fire at their feet, and a beast-like gang would act like a beast with its tail on fire.
‘They'll tenaciously try to find out why their deals were cut off.’
And what if they find out about the Bitcoin?
Wouldn't they try to make it all theirs?
It's like finding a winning lottery ticket on the street. Even if you weren't a gangster, you'd be tempted to swallow it whole.
“That's not like you. Being so cautious about a gang.”
“Because there's something I have to get back.”
Leila was silent for a moment before stating her thoughts honestly.
“You don't seem that desperate, though.”
“It's not for you to judge.”
Leila looked at Kanghyeok silently, and he continued in a lower voice than usual.
“I will get it back. No matter what.”
The sincerity in his voice was palpable.
There was the desire to recover the Bitcoin, a massive asset, but also the desire to retrieve what was stolen from him, and the feeling that he couldn't let the bastards who stole his property get away with it.
“We've already identified their hideouts, but they're scattered like a cell network. Where would you like to go?”
The fence's building, which they had already cleared out, wasn't the only place Johannes's gang managed.
They also had a drug manufacturing facility and a club they ran on the border with another neighborhood.
They were a sizable crew, big enough to wage war with other gangs.
With as many as 120 members.
Guys like that wouldn't just hole up cozily in a single motel room. They had nests set up in various places, fitting for their scale.
The laptop is in one of them.
The problem is, which one?
The choice was Kanghyeok's: to poke around blindly without any intel, or to gather information and head to where the laptop was likely to be.
“The biggest one.”
Leila's gaze fell involuntarily to the two guns in Kanghyeok's hands.
She thought it might be reckless.
But she had already seen Kanghyeok wipe out the gangsters at the pub, and now he even had his old guns in his hands.
“Understood. I'll guide you.”
And so, Leila did as Kanghyeok wanted.
Thump!
The pot-bellied man, thrown to the floor, lifted his pale, terrified face.
It was the pot-bellied bartender from the pub Kanghyeok had attacked, the one who had been told to leave town if he wanted to live.
“Hoo!”
Johannes, sitting in front of him, exhaled a cloud of smoke like a sigh. The pot-bellied man trembled like a leaf and clasped his hands together as if in prayer.
“S-Spare me...”
Before the pot-bellied man, who couldn't even finish his sentence, Johannes turned his gaze to the subordinate who had dragged him in.
“Why this bastard?”
“We caught him trying to run.”
“Running?”
“We went to Hancock the fence's place. His was the only body that wasn't there.”
Johannes's eyes narrowed.
“What are you talking about?”
The subordinate sucked in his lips, then approached Johannes with a determined look. He took out his phone and showed him photos taken at the pub.
A wall riddled with bullet holes.
Broken tables.
A floor soaked in blood.
Corpses with their heads shot through.
It looked like an army had swept through the place.
With each photo he swiped through, Johannes's expression hardened dramatically.
There weren't many who would dare pull something like this in a place Johannes controlled.
“That bastard dares...”
“No. It wasn't the rival gang.”
The subordinate spoke quickly, before Johannes's venomous gaze could fully settle on him.
“It would be better if you heard it from him directly.”
All eyes then turned to the pot-bellied man.
“Speak.”
Johannes said in a low, beastly voice, and the pot-bellied man began to speak with great difficulty, his body trembling.
“I-It was an Asian man.”
“An Asian?”
A race rarely seen around here.
As far as Johannes knew, there were no gangs led by an Asian.
‘Could it be a new power?’
His head throbbed.
He was already in the middle of a war with another gang.
On top of that, his deals with the smugglers had been cut off, and he was at the end of his rope. And now, a new problem.
Ssshhh.
As Johannes exhaled a hot breath through his teeth, the skin beneath his eyes twitched fiercely.
“Is he the boss?”
“B-Boss? No. He was alone.”
As Johannes's eyes twitched, the pot-bellied man insisted even more strongly that Kanghyeok had killed everyone in the pub by himself.
Somehow, it felt like he had to.
An instinct screamed that lying would be dangerous, so the pot-bellied man spoke only the truth.
“It's true. It's true! A black SUV blocked the entrance, but it was Kanghyeok who killed everyone!”
“Kanghyeok?”
A subordinate next to him leaned toward Johannes and explained about Kanghyeok in a low voice.
“He's the Asian guy from the neighborhood who everyone treated like a nobody.”
A moment of silence.
“Ha, haha.”
Then Johannes laughed as if in disbelief.
But no one laughed with him, and seeing everyone's serious expressions, a vein bulged on Johannes's neck.
“Are you motherfuckers all high? You expect me to believe that bullshit!”
It was a story that was impossible to believe.
There were over thirty people. In the pub!
And they were armed, yet they were all killed by one person?
And by a guy who was treated like a nobody?
“It's true! Please, please believe me.”
The pot-bellied man, the sole witness, begged, pressing his forehead to the floor.
With a look of disgust, Johannes turned to his subordinate, who bit his dry lips and began to speak.
“I don't know if it was that Asian guy's doing, but it does seem to be the work of one person.”
“What?”
“Most of the dead were shot through the head. As if they were all taken down by one guy.”
“Through the head...”
“One thing's for sure, it's not the work of a gang.”
Johannes's expression slackened.
“Fuck.”
Have these bastards gone collectively insane?
But what if everything they were saying was true?
Johannes was lost in thought for a long time without a word. It was an unbelievable story, but it strangely tickled his mind.
Johannes had also seen the photos of the dead men from the pub.
It was true that most of them had been killed by shots to the head; it almost looked as if bodies killed by a sniper had been moved inside the pub.
“Alright, let's say it was his doing. Then there must be a reason he did something like that.”
Kanghyeok wasn't an outsider.
A guy like that couldn't possibly be unaware of Johannes's gang, nor could he be ignorant of the local ecosystem.
And yet, he attacked the gang.
There had to be a good reason for it. That was Johannes's conclusion.
“It's the laptop. He came looking for the laptop.”
At that moment, the pot-bellied man's words captured everyone's attention.
“A laptop?”
The pot-bellied man nodded, his cheeks jiggling.
“Yes, yes! He demanded the return of his stolen laptop, that's what he said. He asked Hancock for the laptop, too!”
“A laptop...”
Johannes looked at his subordinate again, and one of them nodded and replied.
“There was a laptop among the recent stolen goods.”
“We couldn't sell it, right?”
“Yes, the smugglers refused it, so we couldn't.”
Johannes rolled his tongue in his mouth as if he were sucking on a piece of candy. He felt as if the pieces of a puzzle were clicking into place in his head.
What if this guy Kanghyeok had been hiding his true identity all this time?
And what if, whatever his identity was, he was influential enough to control the smugglers and skilled enough to wipe out the guys at the pub?
There must be something on that stolen laptop.
“Bring me the laptop. Now.”
“The boys are looking into it right now.”
“What have they found?”
“There's a record of periodic searches for something called Bitcoin.”
“Bitcoin? Fuck, what the hell is that?”
“There are some articles about virtual currency or something. They're checking.”
Virtual currency?
Currency is currency, what's this 'virtual' crap?
Is it money you can use online?
One thing was for sure: it was something valuable.
Valuable enough for Kanghyeok, who had hidden his identity, to reveal himself. Valuable enough for him to fight armed gang members all by himself.
Smelling money in this incident, the corners of Johannes's mouth curled into a predatory grin.
Only then could the other gang members finally relax.
It was the first genuine smile Johannes had shown since their deals with the smugglers were cut off.