Chapter 9
Chapter 9
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Translator: Vine
Chapter: 9
Chapter Title: Severed Ties
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Chapter 8, Section 3. What in the world did you bring! What! (2)
“How's the merchandise?”
A middle-aged white man, having inspected the goods laid out at the port, broke into a grin. Wrinkles formed on his sunburnt, ruddy skin, revealing a row of tightly packed, rotting teeth.
“This'll do.”
“Then let's settle up.”
A gang member offered a cigarette to the smuggler, who took it and leisurely lit it.
“It’s a real mystery.”
“What is?”
The smuggler replied in a voice thick with the familiarity built over a long history of dealings.
“How this goddamn town always manages to produce goods of this quality.”
“What’s the big deal? We just steal it from other places.”
“You guys are something else.”
“Well, nobody wants to end up dead, so they find a way.”
“Khahaha!”
The smuggler took a drag from his cigarette, his eyes on the stolen goods laid out on the tarp.
Digital cameras, cell phones, valuables like rings and necklaces.
This time, there was even a laptop.
“Ah, I need to pay up.”
The smuggler stuck a hand in his pocket, and the gang member waited, a smirk playing on his lips, for him to pull out his wallet.
It was then.
Bzzzzzt!
“What the…”
The smuggler pulled a cell phone from his other pocket.
A text message had arrived. He checked it with an indifferent expression, which instantly hardened as if he’d just witnessed the end of the world.
“What? What is it?”
“Fuck, fuck.”
Bzzzzzt!
Another text arrived.
The smuggler frantically tapped his thumb on the screen, checking all the messages that were flooding in.
Account frozen.
Unilateral termination of deals from his partners.
When he tried calling them, no one answered. The only replies he got were texts telling him never to contact them again.
“Is it serious?”
The smuggler's complexion had turned so pale that the gang member began to worry.
The smuggler ran a hand over his face, then clamped it over his mouth.
A text from an unknown sender had arrived, containing his ID, details of his illicit distribution of stolen goods, and a complete record of all his petty crimes.
It even included a family photo and his home address.
There were no other words, but the message conveyed by the texts was clear.
“Hey.”
The gang member, observing the smuggler's face, placed a hand on his shoulder. The smuggler flinched violently and shook it off.
Then, turning his back on the bewildered gang member, he waddled quickly back toward his boat.
“Hey! We need to settle up! What are you doing!”
“F-find someone else! I’m out!”
Feeling not only socially dead but also that his life was in danger, the smuggler hastily returned to his boat. A glint appeared in the gang member's eyes.
“That son of a…”
He didn't know why the man was acting this way, but the gang member had an obligation to sell these stolen goods and deliver the money to his superiors.
Click.
The gang member pulled a pistol from his coat and chased after the smuggler, leaping onto the boat.
A moment later, heated shouts were exchanged, followed by the sound of a gunshot.
Bzzzt.
Leila looked at her phone and raised a corner of her mouth.
It wasn’t a sneer.
It was a gentle smile, one born of relief.
“It's been resolved. They've completely blocked any possibility of the laptop being taken out of the country.”
Kanghyeok responded with a silent nod.
‘Of course…’
The company had used its power.
Their opponent was a street gang.
Not a politically connected organization, not mercenaries or an army, and not some notorious group like ISIS or the Taliban.
120 members?
Could 120 ants defeat an elephant?
The gap between the company and the gang was just as vast.
They had probably contacted not just this one smuggler, but all the others, cutting off the gang's financial lifelines.
Kanghyeok knew this would happen the moment Leila made the call.
“What about the gun and ammo?”
“Will you be using that pistol?”
Kanghyeok looked at Leila with a glimmer of hope in his eyes.
“Is there another option?”
“I’ve brought the gun you used to use.”
For words spoken so casually, they resonated deeply within Kanghyeok.
When he’d quit a year ago, Kanghyeok had left behind more than just his life as an agent.
He’d left his suit, his gun, everything.
He could hold the gun he used back then again?
Kanghyeok’s eyes widened. Leila, watching him in the rearview mirror, rubbed the corner of her mouth to hide the smile that threatened to form.
‘He still has it in him.’
At first, Leila had denied and doubted Kanghyeok.
But after seeing him in action, her perception had shifted slightly. She was beginning to understand why William wanted him back.
And Leila wanted to see it for herself.
The rumors surrounding Kanghyeok.
She wanted to witness the moment the rumors—that he would have become an unprecedented, legendary agent had he not quit—came true.
“May I ask you a question?”
“Go ahead.”
“Why did you decide to quit?”
She remembered that the terms and treatment Kanghyeok received weren't bad. As the most promising agent, the company had compensated him accordingly.
She couldn’t understand why he had suddenly decided to quit, only to live like a recluse obsessed with Bitcoin.
“I should mention, there were some rumors going around. One of them was a joke that you’d won the Powerball.”
“That kind of chump change.”
Kanghyeok scoffed, and Leila asked him with an inquisitive look.
“It’s a personal question, so you don’t have to answer, but I would like to know.”
A brief silence followed.
But Kanghyeok didn't answer.
He simply opened the window a crack, took out a cigarette, and sank deeper into his seat.
‘You wouldn't understand even if I told you.’
Click, fwoosh!
Kanghyeok lit the cigarette and took a deep drag.
What if a person's life were a book, and you'd already read the ending?
What if you saw that it was a bad ending?
How would you feel, having to read that book again from the middle?
You wouldn't be able to read it with the same feeling as before.
Reading the book would be exhausting and difficult.
Because there would be nothing to hold on to as hope.
And cruelly enough, without hope, a human cannot live.
“You’re not going to tell me.”
“What year is it?”
“Are you being serious?”
Leila asked, bewildered. Kanghyeok checked the year on his phone.
The year still felt unfamiliar.
It was a past he had already lived through.
Kanghyeok had already experienced this year.
It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say he was living his second life.
No, he was literally living his second life.
Because he had died once in the future.
But he had been revived, and in the process, he’d had a supernatural experience.
Even after a year, he still didn't know the reason or cause for his revival. But one thing he knew for certain was how wretched the world had been before he died.
“Kanghyeok?”
Leila cast a questioning glance at Kanghyeok, who was so lost in thought he didn't even notice the ash from the cigarette between his fingers falling. Snapping back to his senses, Kanghyeok took one last drag from the shortened cigarette and flicked it out the window.
“Leila.”
“Yes.”
“I’ll tell you one thing.”
“Okay.”
Leila replied instantly, a flicker of hope rising that he might finally tell her why he quit. Kanghyeok’s lips twisted at the bitter taste of tobacco lingering in his mouth as he spoke.
“You should enjoy your life.”
Twelve years from now.
The hell that Kanghyeok had witnessed would unfold upon the world.
“Live your life doing what you truly want. And buy some Bitcoin.”
Leila’s eyes narrowed.
She felt as if her hope had been tossed into the gutter, as if she were listening to the ramblings of a drunk.
Leila tightened her grip on the steering wheel and clicked her tongue softly.
“That’s not something I’d expect to hear from someone who quit like they were running away.”
For a moment, Kanghyeok's eyes widened, and he felt something hot surge within him.
But he couldn't say a word, his lips clamped shut.
It was something Leila, who knew nothing, had blurted out, but one goddamn word had struck him right in the heart.
‘Running away?’
Somehow, the thought that she wasn't wrong suddenly hit him.
Kanghyeok leaned his head against the window and bit his lower lip until it turned white.
Honestly, the year he had spent staring at crypto charts hadn't been satisfying at all.
***
The atmosphere in the car Kanghyeok was in was tense, but not as tense as it was for the gang run by Johannes Brahms.
“What do you mean?”
(I already told you. I can't work with you.)
Johannes barely suppressed the urge to throw his phone and spat out his words.
“What’s the reason? What damn reason do you have for pulling this shit?”
(That’s what I’d like to ask you.)
“What?”
(What the hell did you people do to cause this mess? Because of you, now…)
The person on the other end of the line took a breath filled with rage before continuing with difficulty.
(Anyway, there’s nothing more to say. I’m hanging up.)
The call ended abruptly. Johannes’s hand, clutching the phone, trembled before he violently hurled it to the floor.
Crack!
The phone shattered and skittered across the floor, and a dead silence swallowed the room.
The place, littered with tools for manufacturing cheap drugs, was under Johannes's control. His subordinates were gathered against one wall, warily watching his every move.
Not a single smuggler would do business with Johannes’s gang anymore.
Smugglers didn’t just deal in stolen goods.
They also distributed drugs.
It was the gang's biggest source of income, and the loss from being unable to move stolen goods and drugs was devastating.
Especially now, while they were at war with another gang.
A gang was violence, power, and a business.
And of course, running a business required money.
Guns and bullets didn't just appear out of thin air because you wished for them, and no one was going to offer unconditional support.
“Fuck!”
Unable to contain his fury, Johannes cursed and glared at his men with savage eyes.
“Who was it that went to the deal!”
“That was me.”
A gang member with a shaved head stepped forward and stood before Johannes. Like a proper gangster, he clenched his jaw and put on a tough face, but his lips were trembling slightly.
“Tell me what happened there.”
The gang member answered, his eyes fixed on Johannes’s fingers, which were twitching like the legs of an overturned spider, writhing with anxiety and impatience.
“Nothing unusual happened. I mean, until the smuggler looked at the goods, everything was the same as always…”
“Just get to the point, you son of a bitch!”
The gang member took a breath through flared nostrils and spoke again.
“The smuggler got a text message.”
“What kind of text?”
“I-I don’t know. Anyway, after he got the text, his face suddenly changed, and he said he was calling off the deal and leaving.”
The gang member finished, the words tumbling out in a rush.
“And him?”
“The smuggler… I killed him.”
The skin under Johannes’s eye twitched. The gang member hastily pulled the smuggler’s wallet from his pocket.
“I figured we should at least get paid for the goods, so I took care of it on my own. I couldn't give it to you before, so now…”
Johannes stared blankly at the gang member, then a laugh escaped his parted lips.
Thinking Johannes’s mood had improved slightly now that he'd been paid, the gang member forced an awkward laugh to match the atmosphere. The other gang members followed suit, squeezing out forced laughs of their own.
It happened in the next instant.
“Fucking idiot.”
Johannes pulled a gun from his pocket and shot the gang member in the head in one smooth motion.
Thump.
Johannes, his face a mask of demonic fury, fired again into the gang member’s corpse.
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
Still enraged, Johannes bared his teeth at his frozen subordinates.
“Get out there and find the reason. Find out why those smuggler fucks won't take our goods!”
The gang members fled as if escaping.
To appease Johannes, and for the survival of the gang, they had to find out the reason for this crisis.