"Now Get Lost"
"The real thing was three cards."
"Me too!"
Su-ji was showing three cards as well.
When had he swapped them?
"Maybe the bond between the three brothers is that strong, because even the cards come in threes."
Jeong-ho’s competitive streak flared.
"Let’s do it again."
I really only took one card.
If the cards had been stacked on top of one another, there was no way he wouldn’t have noticed.
"Then this time, try it on your own."
James laid the cards out again and waited. Jeong-ho picked up one card, even checked that the edge wasn’t glued together or anything, then slipped it into his pocket and spread both hands open.
"There’s no way it’ll work this time."
James gathered up the cards he had laid out, tucked them into his pocket, and did the same with both hands raised.
"Greedy."
"Huh?"
"You took all the cards this time. Your father did the same thing once before, and you’re his son through and through."
At James’s words, Jeong-ho reached into his pocket in disbelief and felt something heavy inside.
"!"
"My cards, please?"
When Jeong-ho pulled out the bundle of cards, Ju-ho asked with a suspicious look.
"Hyung. Are you already teaming up with him to fool us?"
"What are you talking about, fooling you?"
Jeong-ho was just indignant.
"All right, all right. No fighting. Watch the next trick."
James cleared away the cards and slid the beer in front of him to the center of the table.
"This one’s a brand-new trick I haven’t even shown in a performance yet."
"I haven’t seen it either?"
At Su-ji’s question, James nodded.
"I developed it recently."
James moved his hands around the beer glass as though he were doing something mysterious.
"Suri suri masuri..."
"Tch. Isn’t that a painfully old incantation?"
"Hey. I’m concentrating, so be quiet."
As James’s hands moved faster and faster around the glass, the beer inside began to whirl.
"Huh!"
"How the hell are you doing that?"
James still looked as though he wasn’t finished.
Then, with a pop, the beer formed into a neat sphere and burst out of the glass. The transparent liquid still sent up tiny bubbles, and it continued to spin in place as if it had only just finished turning.
"Whoa!"
James held the floating sphere of beer steady between his palms and asked,
"Anyone want a taste?"
Su-ji, who had already become immune to James’s magic, was just as stunned as the others, but she wasn’t about to miss the chance.
"Me!"
The little sphere vanished into her open mouth as if sucked in.
She swallowed.
"Wow. That’s so refreshing."
James had made the beer even colder than before.
"Then here comes an extra one!"
Pop. Pop!
Two more spheres burst out and flew toward Jeong-ho and Ju-ho.
Is this for real?
How?
They were full of questions, but first they hurriedly swallowed the beer that had flown to their mouths.
"Khh."
"Amazing."
James, satisfied with the reaction he wanted, drew out the cards again.
"But my signature trick is still cards in the end."
He pulled two cards from the deck and slipped them between his fingers. Then, under everyone’s fixed gaze, he tossed them into the air.
Flutter.
The cards did not fall to the floor. Instead, they fluttered above the table like a pair of wings.
"......"
"......"
Flap, flap.
It was happening right in front of them, and yet it still felt impossible to believe. After drifting through the air for a moment, the cards fluttered down to James’s fingertips like living butterflies.
I’m James Kane.
That was James’s proud introduction of himself, right there.
"That trick is always mysterious and dreamlike, no matter how many times I see it."
Su-ji had seen it more than once, but James’s magic still amazed her.
"That wraps up the surprise show. Now, shall we drink comfortably?"
Jeong-ho and Ju-ho applauded at once.
Clap, clap, clap.
"That was incredible."
"I never thought I’d get to see a trick I’d only ever watched on Tootube with my own eyes."
Because there were videos on Tootube that showed magical-looking tricks enhanced with computer graphics and editing, James wasn’t suspected either, but this was a trick of an entirely different order.
"Thank you."
"Now speak casually. Even if you’re dating Su-ji... you’re still our hyung."
James asked without hesitation, speaking casually as well.
"That okay?"
He had been feeling uncomfortable with all the polite speech toward younger guys anyway.
"Of course!"
"That’s fine with me too."
"Right. Dad’s not here, so it doesn’t matter."
"What are you waiting for? Drink."
"Hyung, you really did deserve the name of a Las Vegas magician."
"Yeah. I’ve never seen a trick like that before."
James enjoyed the good mood his magic had created and mingled with them for a while. But as evening came, the once-quiet bar began to fill with people, and an unexpected problem was creeping toward the ST Group brothers.
"...This was a good day to come. Glad we got here early."
A woman was peering inside from outside the bar. She had heard that the eldest and second sons of ST Group came here often, so she had waited several days for this. Then she said to the man who had come with her,
"Make sure you do the job properly."
"As long as the money’s good..."
"You’ll get paid after the job is done."
"...You want me to work with no advance? No thanks."
"I’ll give you five hundred thousand first."
"You should’ve said so sooner."
The man, now paid, ran a hand over his closely cropped hair and stepped into the bar. He took a seat near James’s group and ordered drinks and snacks like any other customer. He was waiting for the right moment, and the cheerful atmosphere around James’s table was handing it to him without a fight.
"Hahaha."
"Hyung bought Su-ji’s car?"
"I thought it was her father who bought it..."
"Su-ji said she wanted to match as a couple."
"Wow."
The bar was noisy, so their voices were loud too, and the man said, as though his chance had arrived,
"Did you rent out the whole place? Why are you so loud? Huh?"
"......"
"......"
"......"
"......"
James and the others turned to look at him.
"Is it just the four of you here? You people don’t even know basic manners. You want to die? Huh?"
He picked a fight out of nowhere. But his opponent was James.
"Let’s see..."
Normally, James never got dragged into this sort of nonsense. He always kept the area under surveillance with magic, and he maintained a defensive barrier so strangers couldn’t just start talking to him. But today, he had met two new people and lowered that barrier.
Still, this doesn’t make sense.
There were plenty of other customers making noise, so there was no reason to single out James’s table.
Then there must be another reason.
James ignored the man shouting at them and scanned the surroundings instead. He figured there had to be someone behind this somewhere.
There?
The person James found was standing outside the bar with a camera.
A reporter?
And once he saw Jeong-ho and Ju-ho seated at the table, he understood the situation.
A regular beer joint they always come to. If it’s a bar where conglomerate heirs come and go, then a rumor could spread.
It was good prey for a reporter: the misconduct of the children of a big corporation. If they hit the man who was picking a fight, the reporter’s camera would capture the assault in full.
"Hyung."
"Don’t get involved. I’ll call the police."
"Oppa. Just let it go."
James raised a hand as if to reassure them and asked,
"Let me ask you one thing."
Even while James spoke, the man was cursing under his breath from behind, trying to needle them.
"You bastard sons of bitches think you can just look down on people? You deaf or something? Are my words not getting through to you?"
James ignored him and said in a low voice,
"Let’s say there’s someone who wants to lure in a guy like that and trap you. What would Chairman Kim do?"
"!"
"!"
The two of them understood James immediately.
"Really?"
"Let’s say there is."
Jeong-ho’s expression hardened as he explained Chairman Kim Seong-oh’s philosophy.
"He said kindness must always be repaid, and enemies must be paid back twice over. He said you have to deal with them thoroughly and perfectly so they can never try anything like that again, and there won’t be any trouble later."
"As expected, Chairman Kim’s philosophy is exceptionally sound."
"Then this guy was sent by someone else?"
"There’s a reporter outside with a camera. Don’t turn around."
Jeong-ho and Ju-ho almost turned on instinct, but at James’s warning they awkwardly shifted their bodies instead.
"......"
"......"
"You two seem to come here a little too often."
"That’s true."
While they were talking, the man came closer and grabbed James by the shoulder.
"Hey! Can’t you hear me?"
"I can. But you..."
...I don’t think you’ll be able to talk much longer.
James casually cast a spell.
Silent. Action.
"......"
The man only mouthed the words. Then panic spread across his face when he realized his voice was gone.
"You find out who’s behind it, and we’ll leave the rest to you?"
"Yes, hyung."
"We won’t let him get away with it."
James rested an arm on the man’s shoulder as he flailed and touched at his mouth.
"Shall we go outside and talk?"
"......"
With no choice at all, the man had to let James drag him outside.
"Aren’t you worried about James hyung?"
Ju-ho asked Su-ji. But Su-ji only sipped her beer and said as if it were nothing,
"He’s not the kind of man who’d go out and get beaten up somewhere."
Having watched Colt and James spar before, Su-ji knew exactly how strong James was. She had already guessed, even before hearing the explanation, that the report about Choi Yeong-jin hitting him had been an act.
* * *
When James brought the man outside, the woman pointed her camera at them. But instead of fighting, the two of them walked toward her, and she quickly tried to slip away.
Damn it. It’s all gone to hell...
But her feet wouldn’t move.
"Ugh. Why won’t my feet budge?"
By then, James and the man had arrived in front of her.
"......"
"From this point on, your statements will be recorded with your mutual consent. What is your name?"
She tried to refuse the recording and avoid giving her name, but her mouth opened on its own.
True Marionette. Action.
There was no way for her to escape James’s magic.
"...I consent. My name is Kang Jeong-yun."
"Your occupation and affiliation?"
"Reporter. I’m a reporter with the SBC News Bureau."
"Was this planned on your own?"
He asked, assuming that a major media reporter must have had orders from above. But her collaborator existed outside the company.
"...I have a former reporter who works with me, a famous Tootube creator. This was a plan we discussed in advance."
"So you were planning to expose a manipulated scandal involving ST Group’s sons through him?"
"That would have been the fallback if things went wrong. The first plan was to secure a settlement payment with the photos we got..."
"I see. So if they didn’t pay the settlement, you would threaten to post it on Tootube?"
It was a plan well within James’s expectations.
"Yes."
"How much were you planning to ask for?"
"At least one hundred million won, and up to one billion."
"You usually come up with schemes like this, don’t you?"
He figured that if she was executing something this systematic, it wasn’t her first time.
"...Yes. Public reaction has been intense lately to the trouble the children of chaebol families cause in society. They’re easy targets for extortion. It also guarantees cooperation for future coverage."
"Then the material you’d recorded for blackmail until now was destroyed after you got the settlement money?"
"No. Everything is stored on an external server."
"Could you share the related materials? Of course, please understand that those materials can be used in the legal proceedings of everyone involved with you."
It was evidence that proved her own guilt, but she obediently sent all the data to James.
"...I’ve sent everything just now."
James pushed the man aside and lifted the Silent spell from him.
"Cough."
"How much did they pay you to stir trouble with the ST Group sons?"
"They gave me five hundred thousand won upfront, and promised another one and a half million if the job went well."
"Okay. I don’t have anything else I need to know. We can stop recording, right?"
"Yes."
James took his phone from his breast pocket and pressed the stop-recording button. The spell on her was lifted at the same moment.
Ping.
The moment the recording ended, James’s voice turned cold.
"Now get lost."
---