A Gangster's Creed
There was a short-rib restaurant near Gangnam Station.
It was called a rib place, but inside it was as neat and spotless as a famous traditional Korean restaurant, and both the food and the meat were excellent.
Under ordinary circumstances, it would have been the kind of place where families came out for dinner after a long time, or businessmen sat down for a modest meal.
“For our big brother!”
“For our big brother!”
Glasses clinked, and in the raucous din, a heat and noise that could have put a hunting bar to shame filled the place to the brim.
The difference from a hunting bar was that not a single woman was among the people who had occupied the entire restaurant.
“All right, this time let’s toast to our Chairman Do Jaehyun!”
“For Chairman Do~!”
“Drink up!”
“Yes, sir, hyung.”
He had already made toasts more than ten times.
Was this how gangsters normally were?
Chairman. An organization has a hierarchy. It’s customary to rank people by age, but unless it’s Hwangyeol or Taeseong, how could any of those younger brothers ever sit at the same table as the Chairman? Absolutely not.
Back when he’d ordered food to be delivered to Kim Museong’s office, Kim Museong had said exactly that and carefully separated the table where Jaehyun and he ate from the one where the lower-ranking guys sat.
But looking at Jeong Taeyang’s Taeyang Faction now, the atmosphere didn’t feel all that different from an ordinary company dinner.
Was the Red Dog Faction strange, or was the Taeyang Faction strange?
Or did each organization simply have its own atmosphere?
“Still not used to it?”
Jeong Taeyang, who had been clinking glasses with his men and drinking soju like water, came over to Jaehyun.
“It just feels like a company dinner.”
“You punk, you’re dropping the formality the second it’s just the two of us?”
“You said I was like your real younger brother.”
“You’re a dead ringer for your insolent half-brother, that’s what you are.”
“I’m not nearly as bad as Taeseong.”
“At least you can talk. Still, you do look better now.”
“How so?”
“Did you already forget the advice your big brother just gave you?”
“Ah… that?”
He understood what Taeyang meant when he said he looked better.
You’re too bright for no reason. Sometimes you joke in a way that doesn’t fit the mood, and sometimes you make black-comedy remarks. Pick one.
Pick one?
I don’t know whether the version of you that tore through the Baekho Faction and the Kim Hasa Faction is the real you, or whether this version of you—cracking cheap jokes and acting like an idiot—is the real one. But right now, from where I’m standing, it feels like neither. Someday, you’ll...
The answer had been in the words Taeyang had spoken to him earlier today, on the way to meet Executive Director Cheon Subeom and Executive Director Kang Inmuk. Yes, of all things, Taeyang was right about this. After going through such a massive event as regression and living with the coexistence of an old man who had seen the twilight of his life and the young Do Jaehyun, perhaps the “personality” that was supposed to be him had never properly taken shape.
There was a famous neuroscientist who once said this on television:
The brain grows old, too.
When the body is young, so are the thoughts.
Everyone, live young.
Back then, he had just laughed it off and thought it was nonsense, but now it sounded painfully true.
“Oh? Looks like you’ve finally taken that advice to heart. But if you start getting all serious and stiff like that, what am I supposed to do? What I mean is, do whatever you want, take responsibility for what needs taking, and live however the hell you feel like. Got it?”
“Ah, like you?”
“No, I’m a little different.”
“Right, I’ve never exactly seen a gangster cause trouble and then take responsibility for it.”
“I’m not fond of taking responsibility, either. So if one of the jobs I ordered goes wrong, one of those younger brothers will go to school in my place and take the hit for me... there’s a lot more besides that, but the important thing is this.”
Jeong Taeyang filled Jaehyun’s glass to the brim with soju and handed him the bottle.
“Even a guy like me still takes responsibility somehow. It’s just not direct responsibility, more like indirect responsibility. I cause the trouble, and sure, I’m the one who should apologize, but instead of me, I send somebody else to do the apologizing for me. Something like that.”
“Now that I think about it, even gangsters can say something right once in a while.”
Jaehyun drained his glass and handed it back to Taeyang.
“When the Chairman of Johwa Group causes trouble, the risk management people go in front of the press and apologize for him. Come to think of it, when the President screws up, the Blue House chief of staff apologizes for him instead.”
“Heh, right? From now on, just follow this gangster of a big brother, all right?”
Taeyang downed his soju in one clean swallow.
“Aren’t you a gangster too? If you’re telling me to trust and follow you, the star among gangsters, then why aren’t you answering?”
“I’m not a gangster.”
“Oh, come on. Who was the guy who just a little while ago drove a teaspoon through someone’s wrist? If you’re not a gangster, are you just a fight-happy sponsor? Or are you a half-assed gangster?”
“I’m a businessman.”
“Oh-ho~. Someone might think you were some upright young entrepreneur.”
“Exactly.”
“Words just fail me sometimes...”
Jeong Taeyang poured himself another drink, emptied the glass, and then sprang to his feet.
“Let’s go outside and smoke a cigarette.”
“Really? I thought you’d smoke inside.”
“Tch. I could, but... not here.”
“Why not?”
In this era, businesses that drew lots of adult men—billiard halls, PC bangs, bars—generally allowed indoor smoking. But even if this place looked like a polished traditional Korean restaurant, it was still basically a beef place where people drank. And they couldn’t smoke indoors?
“...Because this is my place. Let’s go, punk.”
With a reason that was hard to argue with and yet completely valid, Taeyang rose from his seat.
...I see.
Of course. There was no way this man would care about something as trivial as indoor smoking.
“When I was in school, see...”
“What school?”
“Ah... heh heh. You little shit, not prison, school. I mean back when I was in school.”
“So what school?”
“...Fine, I didn’t go to college, all right...”
“Then what school? Elementary school?”
“Hey, Do Jaehyun.”
Taeyang stopped halfway through taking out a cigarette and frowned.
“I’m not that stupid. Among gangsters, I’m highly educated.”
“Middle school graduate, then?”
“Which son of a bitch spread that kind of bullshit? Middle school graduate, my ass. I’m a high school graduate.”
“...I heard you took the GED.”
“Anyway, if you pass the GED, you’re a high school graduate.”
“I also heard someone took that test for you.”
“?!”
The cigarette that had been just about to catch fell from Taeyang’s mouth.
“How the hell do you know that? Even Taeseong doesn’t know about that.”
“Ah...”
That was a mistake.
Whether later on it became public knowledge or not, at this point Taeyang’s GED incident was something neither Jaehyun nor Jeong Taeseong should have known about.
Not yet.
It was only much, much later, when Jeong Taeyang ran for a National Assembly seat and his opponent attacked him publicly over his educational fraud, that the story came to light.
“I was just kidding. So you really did pass the GED by proxy, then?”
“...Damn it.”
“Tsk tsk. Big brother, you’d better treat me well from now on.”
“...”
“Answer me. I’ll go tell Taeseong.”
“...You bastard.”
“Ah, all right, all right. I won’t say anything. Men get sulky too, huh?”
“...Damn it, I don’t even have cigarettes.”
“Smoke mine.”
As they blew smoke together and made little donut rings in the air, Jaehyun sorted through everything that had happened today and discussed what would come next.
“Today really drove it home for me, Jaehyun.”
“What did?”
“That there isn’t a single thing our elders used to say that was wrong.”
“Yeah?”
“There are all kinds of codes among gangsters, but you know what the most important one is?”
“Gangsters have codes?”
A thick vein bulged on Taeyang’s forehead.
“Hmmm... there’s nothing more dangerous or more terrifying than a fool with convictions, and a gangster who even has a code on top of that is really enough to make your head spin...”
“You punk. Heh heh. Cough, fine, that’s true enough.”
Taeyang must have found Jaehyun’s words funny, because he burst out laughing, choking on cigarette smoke as he coughed.
“When I first started living this life, our big brother told me something.”
“Is that big brother still alive?”
“Ah, he got laid low. To be precise, I’m the one who laid him low...”
Laid low. Laid someone low.
The first meant that among gangsters, when a man got tired of the life—when the gangster game stopped paying and only got harder, and he used whatever excuse or escape he could find to get out—that was called laying low and leaving the life behind.
The second, by contrast, was underworld slang for slowly and quietly pushing the senior brother or junior brother you served out of the gangster world, like clothes soaking through one drop of rain at a time.
“Don’t look at me like that. He’s doing well in Busan now, running a barbecue place.”
Jeong Taeyang grinned and jerked his chin toward the sign of the restaurant where they had been drinking.
Eunwol Myeongga.
It had seemed like a somewhat unusual name for a beef restaurant, but it looked like there was some story behind it with that big brother Taeyang had laid low.
“Anyway, what this big brother wanted to say was this: a gangster shouldn’t be pathetic and pile on a group beating, but he also shouldn’t get beaten by one. You know that famous guy, Lee Jeongjae?”
“The movie actor?”
“No, you idiot. The political thug.”
“You mean political gangster...”
“Anyway, there was the Dongdaemun Seven Brothers Faction. The reason that Lee Jeongjae big brother was able to catch the famous Sirasoni was because of this kind of thing.”
“Didn’t you just say you shouldn’t pile on a group beating?”
“Exactly. Lee Jeongjae piled on group beatings, but we don’t. We just don’t let ourselves get beaten up by them. That was the idea.”
“What a proud legacy, seriously. Tch...”
“Heh heh, burn it into your head. Kid, if I hadn’t had the boys get ready in advance after hearing what you said today, I probably would’ve been kneeling in front of Kang Inmuk and begging him to spare me.”
“I doubt you would’ve gone that far.”
“True. I’d have kept provoking him until I got beaten so badly I was almost dead, then woken up in the ICU of some hospital.”
For a while, he and Taeyang traded cheap, useless banter. Then, just as they were about to head back inside, Jaehyun suddenly stopped.
“Oh, wait.”
An extremely familiar shadow came into view.
“What is it all of a sudden?”
“That’s Gilwoo.”
“Huh?”
On the other side, under the streetlights, three men stood with their shadows stretched long, and in the center of them was Gilwoo.
“Huh? Hyung?”
Just then, Shin Gilwoo spotted him too, stopped in his tracks, and walked over.
Shin Gilwoo was with Choi Hwangyeol and Jang Junha.
“Good evening, Chairman.”
Choi Hwangyeol and Jang Junha bowed ninety degrees.
“What brings the three of you here?”
“What do you mean, what brings us here? This is in front of our company. You’re the one who’s out here with Taeyang... hyung.”
“Hey, Gilwoo, little brother. You should be the one explaining the situation to your older brothers first.”
Jeong Taeyang grinned as he hooked an arm around Shin Gilwoo’s shoulder.
“Looks like I’ve got one more older brother I never asked for. Damn it, when Executive Director Choi said we should go have a drink somewhere else, I should’ve just gone home...”
“What did you say?”
“Ah, I was just talking to myself. Did you hear me, hyung?”
“You punk, the way you talk... you’re just like Do Jaehyun.”
“I’m better than Jaehyun hyung.”
“You’re neck and neck, you two.”
“That’s what I’m saying, you bastards.”
It worked out perfectly.
Jaehyun needed Taeyang’s help with WH Entertainment’s business anyway. At some point, even if he had to make time separately, he had planned to introduce Jang Junha and Choi Hwangyeol properly to Taeyang and propose a collaboration, so to think Shin Gilwoo would show up here with Choi Hwangyeol and Jang Junha at exactly the right moment.
And besides...
Watching Taeyang hand out business cards and exchange greetings with Choi Hwangyeol and Jang Junha without the slightest awkwardness, it was clear he felt he had received a huge favor from Jaehyun today.
“Gilwoo.”
“Yeah?”
“Come inside with us and have a drink.”
“No, we were planning to drink on our own, actually... We were just about to see Executive Director Choi and Director Jang drinking together after work and happened to join them, so why force it now...?”
Shin Gilwoo tried to inch backward, slipping away from Taeyang’s reach, but...
“Come on, little Gilwoo.”
Jeong Taeyang was not the kind of man to let that chance slip away.
“Damn it... I should’ve gone home.”