The Disappearing Account, the Disappearing Man
The wind sweeping across the rooftop of the high-rise rushed straight ahead before smashing into empty air and scattering apart. Somewhere in the void, cloth fluttered with a soft rustle.
James had come to keep an eye on the man he’d once again marked as an enemy.
From their last conversation, he’d only been able to guess what that offhand word, “cleaning,” actually meant. Today, however, they’d gone so far as to discuss the method in detail.
Traffic accidents... Korea really does have a lot of traffic accidents.
Just as people in the United States died in shootings, people in Korea died in car crashes. Day after day, the news was full of fatalities caused by drunk driving.
Still... I’m starting to wonder whether this bastard is even human.
It was hard enough to believe he was human; it was even harder to believe he was James’s biological father.
I inherited this bastard’s genes? Seriously?
And yet James couldn’t deny it. Their personalities might have been different, but their faces looked strikingly alike.
“Haaah.”
James let out a long breath and added another task to his list.
Maybe I should start light this time and just drain his accounts? Hong Kong, Switzerland, Bermuda, right?
No matter how carefully they were hidden, it didn’t matter. There was no information a mage couldn’t uncover. A mage had the ability to become anyone.
And his secretary would’ve organized all the account details neatly, along with every password.
Choi Jeong-san’s overseas secret accounts now belonged to the mage.
Sometimes it’s good to learn what it feels like to lose.
It was a small lesson for a man who had spent his life coveting what belonged to others.
Choi Jeong-san. You won’t have anything left.
Not his slush fund. Not TY Telecom. Nothing at all.
A man walked into the HBS Bank branch in Hong Kong. It took him only thirty minutes to close every one of his accounts and step back out through the bank’s doors. The next day, he appeared at a branch of Bermuda Bank. After that came Swiss Credit Bank, and he left each place amid the warm, deferential attention of the staff.
“We hope to see you again, sir.”
“Of course.”
It was all the result of the mind magic James had cast, a spell that stirred the other party’s goodwill until it became almost fawning.
Done.
After finishing the account cleanup at Swiss Credit Bank, James slipped into an alley.
A burst of dust drifted at the dead end, and then nothing remained but emptiness.
For a mage, theft was far too easy.
“...All the accounts have been closed?”
Choi Jeong-san was so stunned by the report that he couldn’t even think about hurling the approval folder in his hand.
“All of them?”
“We requested and received CCTV footage from each bank...”
“Ha! Let me see that bastard’s face!”
Up until that moment, Choi Jeong-san had been certain they could identify the culprit and recover every last won.
“Here...”
He snatched the phone from the chief of staff and stared at the photo on the screen.
“!”
The man in the picture wore a face that felt horrifyingly familiar.
“Me? That’s me?”
The blurred face caught on CCTV looked exactly like the one he saw in the mirror every day.
“...The banks didn’t suspect anything and processed the closures without question. The signature left with the bank matched your handwriting exactly, sir. That’s why we haven’t been able to request an investigation yet.”
In truth, Park Jin-tae had not failed to request an investigation. He had simply chosen not to.
“How did they get the password? You can’t close accounts just by using my face!”
“...We suspect it was a hack.”
“They hacked the banks, found my accounts and passwords, then had plastic surgery to make themselves look exactly like me? And copied my signature too?”
If they had appeared in Hong Kong, Switzerland, and Bermuda as well, that meant they had identified every one of his accounts.
“It appears to involve a major overseas criminal organization. We checked through Interpol and heard there was a similar attempt in the Vatican recently.”
“!!”
He’d learned about that through a news article that had recently arrived in his email. He’d almost deleted it because it came from an unfamiliar address, but it had linked to a real overseas news site, so he’d opened it and read the report.
“They kidnapped a cardinal, had him surgically altered to look like him, infiltrated the Vatican, and tried to steal artifacts from the Vatican Museums, but failed. The people involved have all been arrested and are now in custody.”
“......”
The only difference was that this time, they had succeeded.
“Can we get the money back?”
The mention of an overseas criminal organization was beginning to make him nervous. Even the method they’d used to wipe out his secret accounts had blown far beyond Choi Jeong-san’s common sense.
“Since there’s no record of your departure from the country, we can prove you were in Korea. Right now, the only option is to request an investigation from the relevant countries and wait.”
The real problem was whether he could weather the noise that would come out of that process.
“But in the course of the investigation, it’s highly likely that your overseas slush fund will come under scrutiny. In particular, if they calculate the taxes and penalties on unreported income... the cost could easily exceed the amount of the funds themselves. There’s no way to avoid criminal charges, either.”
That’s something you can’t afford to deal with.
Park Jin-tae was certain Choi Jeong-san would never go through with a formal investigation.
“......”
Choi Jeong-san trembled so violently it looked as if he might erupt at any second.
“My money! What the hell am I supposed to do about my money?”
“I haven’t asked for a formal investigation, but I have requested account tracing from the banks.”
In reality, he hadn’t asked the banks to trace anything at all. The overseas closures had already been completed cleanly, and aside from Choi Jeong-san and Park Jin-tae, no one knew what had happened.
“...Can you find it?”
Park Jin-tae could have answered no with perfect confidence, but he couldn’t say it out loud here.
“I asked if you can find it, you bastard!”
“If they dispersed the accounts and ran them through nominees, recovery will be difficult. It would be the same even if they opened secret accounts in another country and transferred the money there.”
“......”
Choi Jeong-san, reeling from the report, couldn’t even lash out the way he normally would.
“My money... all my money...”
“It may take some time, but I’ll do everything I can to recover it.”
“Bring it all back. Every last bit! If you can’t, I’ll start with your fucking neck!”
“......”
Park Jin-tae decided it was time to leave.
Then cut me loose, if that’s what you want.
After all, the money wasn’t even his. And if he thought about how he’d managed those funds all this time without ever receiving a proper reward, it was obvious what would happen even if he recovered them: he’d get cursed out for his trouble.
He’d probably just buy me a drink and act like he was doing me some enormous favor.
Maybe he’d even toss him an envelope with a little cash in it, but it would be nothing more than pocket change.
“Huff. Huff. Aaaagh!”
Choi Jeong-san went berserk, shoving everything off the desk in a fit of rage. Park Jin-tae simply kept his distance and watched as the man overturned the desk and kicked the chair.
It really is time to get out. I’m so glad I prepared things in advance.
“Fuck! Kill them all! Aaaagh!”
Choi Jeong-san was flinging the desk over and stomping around like a madman.
If I can just slip out of the country quietly and take only my own accounts...
Park Jin-tae had already decided to take the slush fund he’d secretly set aside and leave. He had never married, so there was no family to worry about, and his parents had died a few years ago, leaving him wonderfully unburdened.
“Huff. Huff.”
...What a hateful bastard. Why does he look more and more disgusting the longer I look at him?
Park Jin-tae had been at Choi Jeong-san’s side for a long time, but recently, without even realizing it, his hatred had begun to grow. Today in particular, he couldn’t stand the sight of Choi Jeong-san’s face.
“What are you standing around for? Get out! Go find my money, now!”
“...Yes, sir.”
He bowed with perfect posture, then backed out of the president’s office. Once outside, with a calm expression on his face, he found the secretary waiting nearby.
“Secretary Yim. After the president leaves later, please tidy up the office for him.”
“...Yes, sir.”
“I’ll probably be out for a long stretch on the president’s instructions, so if anything urgent comes up, just text me. I don’t think I’ll be able to answer calls.”
“Yes. I’ll contact you by text only.”
As Park Jin-tae left the company, he pulled out his phone and searched for airline tickets.
“I’ll have the moving company come and handle the luggage...”
He intended to vanish from Korea before Choi Jeong-san even noticed.
...
After wrapping up the accounts, James kept watch on TY Telecom’s situation.
It was because, in the past, when he had confirmed that Park Jin-tae was staying close to Choi Jeong-san, he had planted a small ember of resentment in the man’s heart.
Hate him more. More. More!
Without Park Jin-tae acting as Choi Jeong-san’s hands and feet, his room to maneuver would shrink dramatically. But because of this slush-fund mess, his plan was moving ahead faster than expected.
He’s faster than I thought.
After all, Park Jin-tae’s anger at Choi Jeong-san had already been building, and because he had handled the accounts himself, he’d managed to siphon off a considerable amount of money.
So where are you off to now?
KE9XX. ICN-FRA
Germany, huh...
He was planning to fly to Frankfurt.
But that’s not really the final destination, is it?
Sure enough, not long after buying the ticket, he was searching for another flight. This time it was a route from Frankfurt to somewhere else.
James turned away without any hesitation.
We’ll meet again anyway.
The traces of mana were carved too deeply into that body. No matter where he ran in the world, he would never escape James’s palm.
A few days later, a middle-aged Asian man arrived on an island in Indonesia.
“Hah. Not bad.”
Wearing a Hawaiian shirt and dark sunglasses, he had checked into the resort he’d booked and was now making his way to the beach in light, casual clothes.
He sat in an armchair beneath a giant parasol that blocked the sun, a cold drink packed with ice in his hand.
Clink.
Even the sound of ice knocking against the glass felt fresh and pleasant.
“I should’ve left earlier. It’s so comfortable here.”
After flying from Incheon Airport to Germany, then making several transfers and using a new passport, Park Jin-tae had finally arrived in Indonesia. He had already obtained a new nationality as well, and no longer used his old name.
“Mr. Arthur. What would you like for dinner tonight?”
“Make it mostly seafood. And please don’t disturb me until mealtime.”
“Yes, Mr. Arthur.”
The resort employee accepted the order and left, while the man called Arthur kept his gaze on the fierce sunlight and the waves glittering back at it.
By now, that bastard must already be suspicious of me.
He’d vanished without a word, so Choi Jeong-san would almost certainly suspect that he was connected to the criminal organization that had cleaned out the overseas accounts. But none of that mattered anymore.
It’s true that I’ve been skimming money from your accounts all this time.
Long before this incident ever happened, he had quietly been withdrawing money from Choi Jeong-san’s accounts little by little.
If it ever came out, that bastard would’ve tried to kill me.
That was why he’d moved even faster. He hadn’t been the one to cause this incident, but there was no way to escape responsibility for it.
“Still, I’m relieved I don’t have to look at that face anymore.”
More than anything, the thought that he no longer had to endure Choi Jeong-san’s filthy temper left Park Jin-tae feeling absurdly lighthearted.
Then someone appeared behind him.
Step.
He was certain it was just a resort employee who had ignored his instruction not to disturb him. But since the timing was convenient, he did have something to ask.
“Could you bring me another drink?”
The one he’d brought was already empty.