Hitman
Park Jin-tae rolled his eyes, already trying to piece together who his opponent might be.
...Who is it?
Then one possibility surfaced.
Did Choi Jeong-san send someone to tail me?
Anyone who could come all the way here and call him by name had to be a hitman Choi Jeong-san had set on him because he no longer trusted him. Park could think of no other explanation, and the reason was simple: he belonged to the same breed of man as Choi Jeong-san.
If I want to stay alive right now...
Before he could even dare turn his head, he heard the man's voice again.
"No matter how hard you spin your wheels, you won't find a way out of this."
"..."
"There's no one else here. Even if you scream for help, nobody's coming to save you."
"..."
Park Jin-tae carefully clutched the glass he had been drinking from. He had to buy time somehow, even if it meant throwing this.
"So if you'll just be sensible..."
Before James could finish, Park shot to his feet and hurled the glass backward.
Whoosh.
"Oh, really?"
Thanks to the grueling training he'd undergone under the knight's mana, James was able to lean aside from the slowly flying glass and take another step forward.
"!!"
Park Jin-tae, who had been planning to throw the glass and flee immediately, froze when James's face came into view so clearly and so familiarly.
"H-How..."
"You recognized me?"
Park Jin-tae had no trouble identifying James's face, even in clothes utterly unsuitable for a sweltering tropical island. He had never seen him in person, but he had stared at that face countless times through photos.
"J-James Kane?"
"Correct."
"H-How are you here...?"
There was no reason for James Kane, whom he had been monitoring until recently under Choi Jeong-san's orders, to appear here.
Why is this bastard in front of me...?
"Sit down. I've got a lot to say."
James dropped into the empty chair beside the armchair Park had been using.
"..."
"I said sit."
"..."
After glancing around to make sure no one else was nearby, Park sat down carefully. Right now, survival mattered more than the fact that James Kane had appeared in front of him.
"What is this? How did you find me?"
"That part isn't all that important, is it? We're already here face-to-face. The next part matters more, don't you think?"
"..."
Realizing the other man had no intention of answering, Park Jin-tae decided to wait instead.
"As expected, after all those years dealing with Choi Jeong-san, your manners toward your superiors are excellent."
From the fact that James knew Choi Jeong-san and from the reality of his sudden appearance before him, Park drew a small conclusion.
"...Just say what you want. It sounds like you already know everything."
Knowing everything was one thing. What James wanted from him was another.
"Right. Thanks to you lot tailing me, I found out everything too. Namely, who my biological father is."
"Looks like your boys were sloppy."
"You can't tail someone well if you're not a professional."
"Hah. So what are you getting at?"
"..."
James turned his head slightly, taking in Park Jin-tae's wrinkled face.
"I want you to satisfy my curiosity. It shouldn't be that hard."
"...And what do I get in return?"
"Every last cent in the slush fund Choi Jeong-san lost this time."
"!"
James admitted it without hesitation.
"That was me."
"Y-You?"
"Look at my face. Doesn't it seem familiar?"
"Ah!"
Park Jin-tae recalled the blurry CCTV footage.
"A little disguise goes a long way. Besides, foreigners have an even harder time telling Asian faces apart."
It had not been a disguise through makeup, but a flawless transformation through magic.
"Ha. I never imagined you'd be involved in the slush-fund theft... Then how the hell did you get the password?"
"I found it in the safe you manage."
"...W-What?"
"I was surprised at how easy it was to pull out the account details and passwords. You had an officetel set up, didn't you? And all the passwords were written down in your ledgers... Ah. You're getting older, so I suppose the memory has started to go?"
"..."
James knew full well that Park Jin-tae served as Choi Jeong-san's private vault, and he had also figured out that, for security, Park had rented an officetel under the name of a company employee. Going to an empty place and retrieving the account numbers and passwords had been absurdly easy.
"Now then. Are you ready to answer my question?"
"...Not yet."
Park Jin-tae straightened his back and leaned against the chair, gazing down at James with a little more ease. Now that he had confirmed James was not an assassin sent by Choi Jeong-san, there was nothing left to fear.
"Not yet."
"What else do you want?"
"I don't trust you."
"Ah. You won't believe it until the money actually lands in your account?"
"That's right."
Park was certain James would never actually transfer such a vast sum of slush-fund money to him.
"You still haven't checked your account? I thought you already would have."
"!?"
"When I closed Choi Jeong-san's accounts, I routed everything into yours."
"What? Into my account? How in the world did you..."
"Wasn't it sitting right there in your safe?"
Park Jin-tae had been keeping his own account information in the ledgers stored at the officetel as well, in case he was ever caught siphoning the slush fund before the job was done. Of course, by now, he had already pulled the account and erased every trace.
"W-Wait a second..."
Park logged into the banking site he had never bothered to access before and checked the balance.
And there it was.
"!"
Every cent that had been in the real slush-fund account had been neatly deposited into the account of Arthur Kris, the new identity he had created for himself.
"Is that enough trust in me now?"
"Hoo. Looks like this money's going to be trouble."
The fact that all the money from the slush-fund account had been deposited was not something to celebrate. If the bank or investigators ever dug around, every accusation would come right back to him.
"The bank won't know anything anyway, will it? You never left any instructions there, did you? Nor with any domestic or foreign investigative agency."
"Heh. You knew that too?"
Now that he had confirmed his comfortable retirement fund, Park felt a little more at ease. Besides, the president's illegitimate son sitting beside him clearly wasn't going to drive him all the way to his death.
"And even after that, you still have something you want to know? With abilities like yours, it seems like you can find out anything."
"Things that happened almost thirty years ago are a little difficult."
"Thirty years?"
"What happened to my mother, Jeong Min-ju?"
What James wanted so badly that he had handed over all of Choi Jeong-san's slush funds to ask was about his biological mother, Jeong Min-ju.
"..."
Park Jin-tae worked his mind for a moment.
Looks like he doesn't know I took care of the bastard's mother too.
He could not tell the truth. If he did, James might burn with revenge and report every last thing he'd done to Choi Jeong-san.
"I don't know anything about that."
"Should I ask more precisely?"
"I said I don't know."
"..."
James sighed as if there was no helping it and drew a strange figure in the air with his finger.
True Marionette. Action.
"If it's not this, nothing gets done."
"What?"
"From now on, only the truth will come out of your mouth."
"..."
"Preparation complete. Let's begin again."
"Begin what..."
"We're going to start from the very cause of everything that happened, and then lay bare her final moments. From your own mouth. For the record, this is a type of hypnosis, so you won't be able to resist it. You're completely under now."
Park Jin-tae had no idea what he was talking about, but after that, his mouth spilled the past whether he wanted it to or not.
"...Thirty years ago, Choi Jeong-san heard that his mistress, Jeong Min-ju, was pregnant, and..."
Why am I saying all this...?
"Keep going. Until the moment she disappeared."
"They tried to send her abroad somehow before she gave birth, but she went into hiding in the provinces. And only after the child was born did she get back in touch. So..."
Choi Jeong-san, through Park Jin-tae, sent word that he wanted to meet her, and she appeared at the promised place holding the child she had just given birth to. But the one who met her was not Choi Jeong-san. It was Park Jin-tae.
[Please... just take care of this child.]
[This child only?]
[I'll live quietly, in hiding. So... please, just let our Jimin live...]
[Fine. I'll speak to the chairman and try to persuade him to accept the child. But if you show your face again, I won't let it slide like today.]
[...I understand.]
"...The baby she handed over was taken by Choi Jeong-san himself and delivered to the orphanage."
"Okay."
That part of the story was complete too: the baby had been left in an orphanage shortly after birth.
"And then?"
"But she kept wandering around near the house, hoping to catch even a glimpse of the baby from afar. She must have been worried because she hadn't seen him in days. As if there was any way a baby sent to an orphanage would still be there. That's why, after escorting the boss, she was spotted by my eyes."
Jeong Min-ju had been unable to go far because she worried about her newborn child. Choi Jeong-san and Park Jin-tae, after discovering her presence, eventually devised the worst possible plan and carried it out.
[Didn't I tell you not to show your face again? If the chairman sees you like this, what then!]
[I'm not asking you to take me back. I just... let me see my baby for a little while. Sob. I miss Jimin.]
[Hoo. Fine. But not here. I'll bring the child out under the pretext of a trip, so we'll meet in the East Sea.]
And so they lured her onto a small fishing boat far from Seoul, out on the East Sea.
Park Jin-tae put her aboard and headed out to the open sea. He had told her that Choi Jeong-san and the baby would arrive on another boat, so she had no choice but to wait.
But after an hour of sailing out over the endless ocean, there was no other boat in sight.
[When is the boat he's on supposed to arrive?]
[Sorry, but there's no other boat.]
[What are you talking about? Where's our Jimin! Where is Jeong-san?]
[The young master isn't in any position to be traveling right now. The real young master was just born.]
Choi Jeong-san and his wife had also had a son.
[... ]
[Your child will be growing up safely in the orphanage.]
[An, an orphanage...?]
[You'll be able to meet your mother only when she's dead.]
Park Jin-tae was explaining the old events without missing a single detail.
"...She fought back in terror, but no one could help her. I was on the boat... ugh."
Park struggled to resist the hypnosis that was forcing the truth out of him, but it was useless. From the start, it had never been hypnosis at all. It was magic.
"Keep going."
"...I stabbed her with the knife I brought... ngh... tied the rock I brought to her feet and threw her into the sea..."
Even at the very end, she was said to have begged for her child.
[Jimin... please, take care of our Jimin...]
[Why don't you just become a ghost and watch over him yourself?]
Splash.
After confirming that she had sunk into the deep sea, Park Jin-tae said he threw the bloody knife into the ocean and erased the evidence of the murder. Then, as if fleeing, he took the boat back to shore. That was the end of the incident in which James's mother, Jeong Min-ju, disappeared and was murdered.
"..."
Even after hearing the full story of that brutal past, James asked calmly, "Is that all?"
"...Yes. That's all."
"So my mother, Jeong Min-ju, was killed by your hand?"
"I only did what Choi Jeong-san ordered. I didn't carry out anything on my own."
"..."
James rose to his feet, looked out at the sea, then lifted one finger and pointed at it.
"You go in too."
"!"
Against his will, Park Jin-tae jolted upright and stumbled toward the sea. The magic James had used was not a limited spell that merely forced the truth out of him, but a puppet spell that compelled obedience to the caster's command.
"Ugh. N-No! No, I said!"
Splash. Splash.
Park looked around, but no one was there.
Splash.
As he walked into the water against his own will, James's voice came again.
"Stop."
The water where Park had stopped came only up to his knees. But there was no room to feel relieved.
"Kneel."
"!"
No matter how shallow the water was, kneeling changed everything.
Smack.
"Glurk."
Now the waves were striking his face.
"Hah."
Park Jin-tae strained to keep himself upright and lift his face above the water, as if sheer stubbornness might let him live.
But James's simple voice, coming close, made that effort meaningless.
"Put your palms on the bottom. Do it."
"!"
Then James gave the next command.
"Repeat after my final command. On one, bend. On two, extend. One."
"...One."
He had only just managed to keep his nose above the surface until his palm touched the seabed, but once he bent his arms, his head was fully submerged to the crown.
Gurgle.
Salt water flooded into his mouth and nose. Yet his arms and legs had gone rigid, refusing to move.
...I-I'm going to die.
Then James's voice came again.
"Two."
"Puhah! Two!"
"One."
"O-One!"
Splash. Gurgle.
Park Jin-tae was forced under the seawater again, gulping down a mouthful of brine. To anyone watching from a distance, it wouldn't even look like he was in danger. It would merely seem as though he were dipping his face into shallow water to look at the bottom.
Gurgle.
"Two."
"Puhaaah!! Two!"
The pattern repeated.
Gurgle.
"Puh!"
Gurgle...
Plash. Plash.
After Park Jin-tae had experienced the terror of death in the sea countless times, James crouched down beside him.