The Chairman Who Does It All Alone, Chapter 8
Everyone’s eyes fixed on the check Han Suyeong had tossed aside.
“Nothing’s changed. You’re exactly as I remembered.”
Without a word, I rose from my seat and picked up the metal chopsticks from the snack dish.
“Have we met somewhere before? This is the first time I’ve seen you.”
“Same here. And it’ll be the first and last time.”
As I stood and walked toward Han Suyeong, his eyes flickered with unease.
Han Suyeong knew it. In South Korea, there were almost no people who could dare lay a hand on him. If there were any, they were either his half-brothers, who stood to gain a fortune from his death, or worthless lowlifes living like there was no tomorrow.
Above all, Han Suyeong had already been dragged through the mud in the chaebol social circles over various scandals, including women, and his own father, Chairman Han, had issued him a final warning not to make any more trouble.
So just being in a place where someone might end up a corpse was already a massive risk for him.
“I like the nerve. The rest, I’ll leave to you. Manager Kim.”
“...I’m sorry, Director Han.”
Han Suyeong patted Manager Kim lightly on the shoulder and tried to head outside, but Shin Gilwoo did not get out of the way.
“You’re writing your own script all by yourself, Han Suyeong.”
“What?”
Han Suyeong turned to face me.
“You’re a witness. You saw it clearly, didn’t you?”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m telling you not to say something different when you get to the police station later. Testify properly. You saw that Baekho pulled out a knife first, right?”
“So what?”
Han Suyeong gave a sneer and threw the words back at me. Instead of answering, I regripped the chopsticks I was holding as if I were throwing a throwing dart, then hurled them with all my strength.
“Agh!”
The improvised dart sank cleanly into Kim Baekho’s wrist, the one holding the knife, and Baekho screamed as he clutched at it.
“It’s self-defense, you chaebol brat. Think carefully. Are you going to give up here and save your own life, or are you going to end up in the sea off Yangyang, like you rich bastards love so much?”
“Manager Kim, what the hell is going on here?”
Han Suyeong, unable to talk sense into me, shifted his ire toward Kim Baekho instead.
“I thought even gangsters knew how to keep up appearances at the very least, so how am I supposed to do big business with a man like you? If Father hears about this, he’s going to be deeply disappointed. Isn’t that right, Manager Kim?”
Kim Baekho’s face went white.
“I’ll handle it. I’ll make sure nothing at all comes back on Director Han.”
“How?”
“Th-that...”
Kim Baekho’s mind raced.
To be honest, Han Suyeong himself wasn’t frightening at all once you stripped away the Johwa Group backing him. But the chairman behind him, Han Gangho, was truly terrifying.
As a businessman, and as a man.
“Red Dog will be here soon. So if you could wait just a little longer...”
“Hoo~ I don’t know about any of that. I just want out of here now.”
“...I’ll do my best.”
At Han Suyeong’s irritation, Kim Baekho took his hurt hand away and grabbed the knife again with his left.
“Gilwoo.”
“Yes, Hyung-nim.”
“Break the other arm of that thug, too. And bring Han Suyeong over here.”
“Yes.”
At the same instant he answered, Gilwoo moved. He clenched his left hand in a cobra grip, with the middle finger slightly extended so the sharp knuckles jutted forward, and struck Kim Baekho’s philtrum with a fast, clean blow.
Reeling from a crushing impact and pain he had never experienced in his life, Baekho’s upper body folded forward, and Shin Gilwoo drove a heavy right body blow deep into his solar plexus.
“?!”
Kim Baekho didn’t even manage a dying scream before he collapsed. Two of the three vital points that could bring down a healthy grown man had been hit dead on. There was no way he could endure it.
“Stop the bleeding now. Otherwise he’ll die of blood loss within thirty minutes.”
“W-what are you—”
Gilwoo snatched Kim Baekho’s dagger away and slashed at the tendons in his wrist, then made a shallow cut in the artery running along that path.
That would never kill him from blood loss in thirty minutes.
That was Gilwoo’s specialty.
He planted fear by using just the right amount of pain and injury, then the situation itself, to gaslight his target and crush the will to resist entirely.
“Aaaaaagh!”
Kim Baekho’s scream echoed out as the tendon in his wrist was severed, and blood soaked Gilwoo’s hand as well.
“Let go, you bastard, let go of me, damn it?! Cough... Do you even know who I am... Agh!”
With his bloodied hand, Gilwoo roughly seized Han Suyeong by the hair and dragged him toward me. Each time Han Suyeong struggled against being dragged, I had Gilwoo beat him into submission exactly as instructed.
One punch for every word.
“Ugh...”
It had only taken three blows, but Han Suyeong, dragged before me and forced to his knees, had eyes swimming with fear.
“P-please... spare me...”
There was no way a nightclub like this had CCTV.
And even if it did, it would be almost useless. The lighting was so dim that even with cameras, they would not be able to identify faces clearly.
Which meant that, however annoying it might be, I could wipe out everyone here who might one day become my enemy, someone who would threaten me and my people in the future.
“Why?”
“What...?”
“What reason do I have to let you live?”
“Hah, what the hell is this, how ridiculous.”
Han Suyeong finally showed his true colors.
“Hah, let’s be honest. Whether it’s a turf war between organizations or some other pretext, what you want is money in the end, isn’t it? I don’t care who paid you and how much to pull this stunt.”
Han Suyeong straightened his knees and stood, then pointed at Kim Baekho.
“Cut that bastard’s throat, burn this place down, do whatever the hell you want. I’ll give you double, no, triple what you were paid. Cash, right now. One phone call, and it’s done.”
“...”
“Why wouldn’t you believe me? You came after me knowing exactly who I was, didn’t you? I’m Han Suyeong, the youngest son of Chairman Han Gangho of Johwa Group. Han Suyeong, the representative of Johwa Mutual Credit Fund! Do I look like I’m short on money?”
Perhaps he took my silence for hesitation, or maybe approval, because strength began creeping into Han Suyeong’s voice.
“Anyway.”
“Yeah?”
“You don’t look like the type to live long.”
That was true.
In my previous life, the Mutual Savings Banks Act would soon go into effect, and mutual credit finance companies across the country would all change their names to savings banks at once. Han Suyeong, who would become the representative of Johwa Savings Bank, would end up dead by my hand five years from now.
And right up until the moment he died, he never stopped strangling the businesses I built and tormenting the people under me.
“Crazy bastard. Do what you want. I gave you more than enough chances. And I stalled long enough, right, Manager Kim?”
“...Yes, Representative. They’ll be here soon.”
With a thunderous crash, the nightclub entrance was smashed open and about twenty gangsters surged inside.
They were the Red Dog Faction members Kim Museong had brought with him.
What was interesting was that roughly half the gangsters who came in, including Kim Museong and the vice-boss level man known as Bulgom, had large and small injuries on their faces, and looked considerably worse for wear.
“Looks like the situation’s changed? Now I’ll be asking the questions.”
Han Suyeong straightened his back and stood tall. Then, with his hands clasped behind him, he slowly circled around me as he spoke.
“Answer carefully. If you do, I might even let you live.”
“Well, damn...”
Before I knew it, a sigh slipped out of me.
Johwa Group was unquestionably a powerful corporation.
Johwa Group’s Chairman Han Gangho?
A great businessman. Though he had clearly raised his children wrong.
But the great and the powerful were Johwa Group and Chairman Han, not Han Suyeong himself.
He wasn’t even from the main line, just a collateral branch. Coincidentally, his mother happened to be a Han as well, so he had been given the name Han Suyeong, but he was an outsider among outsiders, unable even to inherit Chairman Han Gangho’s surname properly.
No matter how many times I was reborn, I could never understand the mindset of a man like Han Suyeong.
“Who are you? Who sent you?”
“Gilwoo.”
“Yes.”
“Looks like he didn’t get enough owl training. You were discharged only a few hours ago, and you’ve already lost your edge?”
“?!”
At my words, Gilwoo’s face turned red as though he had been grievously insulted.
With a heavy sound like someone smashing a thick sandbag with all their strength, Gilwoo’s brutal right blow slammed deep into Han Suyeong’s stomach.
“Ugh... Uwaaaagh!”
The impact was so violent that Han Suyeong vomited up the food he had eaten for lunch, and his regurgitated mess splattered onto Gilwoo’s clothes and hands.
“...Damn it, because some idiot can’t tell front from back, Tiger Trainer Shin Gilwoo is ruining his style for nothing.”
Shin Gilwoo wiped the filth on his hand off on Han Suyeong’s shirt, then grabbed him by the collar and hauled him upright.
“Bite down. If you don’t, you’ll swallow broken teeth.”
“W-wait...”
Thud, thud, thud, thud—!
Han Suyeong tried to say something, but Gilwoo ignored him completely and wordlessly smashed his face several times.
With each crisp impact, Han Suyeong’s head jerked violently back and forth, and before even thirty seconds had passed, his body went limp as he lost consciousness.
After tossing Han Suyeong to the floor, where he spat out a mouthful of blood as though a martial arts hero vomiting blood from his mouth, Gilwoo used the toe of his military boot to shove him over and turn him face-down.
“And you are?”
“...”
Kim Museong couldn’t even answer back and avoided Shin Gilwoo’s eyes.
“I even put up a sign saying we’re closed, and you break the door down and walk in? Wait a second. I’m just going to finish with this bastard and then I’m out of here.”
With nothing but his glare and his presence, Gilwoo had already pinned down Kim Museong and the Red Dog Faction underlings. Then he pried open Han Suyeong’s mouth, which had fallen open while he was unconscious.
“I told the bastard to keep his mouth shut, but he wouldn’t listen, so his tongue got torn up.”
With practiced hands, Gilwoo pulled three or four large fragments of teeth out of Han Suyeong’s mouth, flicked them off clean, and straightened his knees.
“Next?”
Gilwoo taunted the Red Dog Faction thugs, but no one stepped forward.
As expected of Shin Gilwoo.
He handled things without any clutter at all, clean and efficient.
He had suppressed the Red Dog Faction through sheer force of presence alone, while also preventing Han Suyeong from getting hurt any further.
If Han Suyeong had been left as he was, the blood flowing from his torn tongue could have mingled with his broken teeth and blocked his airway, which might have killed him.
“Huh? Uh, uh... T-that... Is that... okay...?”
Kim Baekho, having watched Han Suyeong turned into a rag in an instant, looked completely dazed.
“Red Dog! What the hell are you doing right now? Manager Han and Director Han have both ended up like that, so hurry up and wipe those bastards out. I’ll take full responsibility for whatever comes after. Don’t worry about it, just bury them!”
Kim Baekho howled at the top of his lungs, loud enough to shake the nightclub. Reality had finally come crashing down on him. But it was fine. Now was the time to take Kim Baekho’s most cherished subordinate, Red Dog, and make him one of my pieces.
“Representative Kim Museong. Have you thought about my offer?”