I'll Leave You a Billion
A message came in from Oh Gong-tae.
It had been a test. Between Pipe, which held a hundred thousand titles on Steamer, and OneCent, which owned Rule along with a host of other major games — what should JW Dive In acquire?
Yoon Jong-seok's answer would decide whether he was fit to take charge of JW Dive In's gaming division.
Yoon Jong-seok had landed on almost the same point Jung Jinwoo had been turning over in his own mind.
If the right person showed up, Jinwoo had already been planning to hand off JW Dive In's gaming division. Piling that onto Vice Chairman Ko Yoon-seok — who already had more than enough on his plate — would have been too much.
Until the trust ran as deep as it did with Oh Gong-tae, Jinwoo had no intention of revealing who he really was.
That would ease Vice Chairman Ko Yoon-seok's burden considerably.
Some actor had once said the best thing in the world was making a great deal of money while remaining completely unrecognized.
The point, presumably, was that you could go wherever you pleased, because nobody knew your face.
He hadn't killed the gangsters. He hadn't beaten them — he'd only educated them. Wait, no. He had beaten them a little.
And he'd even let the private investigators who'd come to kill him walk away alive.
He couldn't quite bring himself to say any of that.
People chased fame to get money and power. Jung Jinwoo already had both. He had no need to become famous. If anything, he was afraid of losing the small, ordinary happiness he currently enjoyed.
Those words were genuinely moving. Especially the part about following Jinwoo wherever he went — that brought a lump to his throat.
That's right. Be moved.
Whether Jinwoo was around or not, the businesses would run themselves just fine. But if Oh Gong-tae went to prison, Gold Coin, Dive In — the two hundred trillion won invested in AI accelerators and server costs — would all sit idle.
The man needed to generate massive returns. How could they possibly send him to prison?
He kept that part to himself, of course. It was a joke, anyway.
But Oh Gong-tae's words — that he would follow Jinwoo anywhere — felt so dependable it almost hurt. How could he send someone this loyal to a cell? He'd go himself first.
"Director Choe! Mrs. Kim! Where the hell is everyone?"
Kim Gwang-deok shouted, but nobody came. Director Choe Hyeongdal was as good as a limb — a man who never left Kim Gwang-deok's side except when he slept.
"These goddamn worthless… never around when I need them. Ugh…"
Kim Gwang-deok pushed himself up from the chair. His belly was swollen with ascites, and every movement cost him. The cirrhosis meant the fluid had to be drained on a regular schedule. His mind was perfectly clear. His body simply refused to obey. Too many years of heavy drinking in his youth.
"Khack… koff… khaaaaack."
The cigarettes, too — every so often they closed his throat. He was alive thanks to having one lung cut out, but even now he sometimes had to sit in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber before his body would come back to him. He was old enough that even keeping himself upright was a struggle, and yet there was still so much left to do.
"Director Choe! Mrs. Kim!"
No matter how he called, there was no answer. The vast mansion felt completely hollow.
"Where the hell is everyone? I asked for a glass of water!"
His voice rolled through the cavernous house and died. Nobody answered.
"That damned girl…"
When he was alone like this, he thought of his only blood relative — his daughter. Her father was this sick. She could at least show her face once in a while. After his wife died twelve years ago, Kim Mi-rim had cut off all contact. He was still her father. She could visit now and then. Everything he had done had been for her own good, and she didn't even understand that.
He laboriously made it as far as the living room and turned his head toward the sofa.
"Ah—! Ah—!"
A massive man was sitting there.
"Good evening, Chairman."
"What are you doing here…"
Kim Du-chil. The nationwide gang boss. Wasn't he the man who occasionally handled the jobs Kim Gwang-deok asked him to take care of? Why had he shown up on the sofa without so much as a word of notice?
"I came because I have a message to deliver to you, Chairman."
"You should have called first… Director Choe! Mrs. Kim!"
Being wary of Kim Du-chil was only natural. That was why Kim Gwang-deok had deliberately raised his voice. Hadn't Choe Hyeongdal warned him last time? If Kim Gwang-deok kept stirring things up, Kim Du-chil would not let him be.
"They're not here. I asked them to step out for a while."
"You did? Why would you—"
What was he planning to do? Instinctive terror gripped him, but Kim Gwang-deok kept his face composed, as if nothing were wrong.
"Why don't you have a seat."
Kim Gwang-deok's eyes flicked toward the CCTV camera mounted in the living room. At this moment, that camera was the only thing that could protect him.
"The cameras are off."
"Wh-why did you turn off the cameras? What are you trying to—"
"If I'd come here to hurt you, Chairman, I wouldn't have come in person. I would have taken care of it quietly. I won't harm you, so please — sit."
Kim Du-chil. Had this bastard always been this gentlemanly? Kim Gwang-deok had thought of him as a thug who did dirty grunt work… but the courtesy was flawless, almost unnerving. The wariness remained, but Kim Gwang-deok dropped onto the sofa across from him.
"You're getting ahead of yourself. You think you can hurt me?"
A fight was about momentum, wasn't it? He spoke boldly. Kim Du-chil just smirked.
"I came here because I was asked to deliver a message."
"A message? Who sent you?"
"You don't need to know that."
Don't need to know? Kim Gwang-deok's eyes narrowed.
"Who? Who the hell dares? Are you threatening me right now? Do I look that easy to you? One word from me — you and your entire organization are in cuffs. You understand?"
"Heh."
Kim Du-chil let out a short, dry laugh.
"Looks like Prosecutor General Jo Dong-jo got taken care of by someone."
"Jo Dong-jo? How do you know Jo Dong-jo?"
Kim Gwang-deok's eyes bulged. How did Kim Du-chil know about Jo Dong-jo? How did he know they had tried to use Jo Dong-jo to take down Jung Jinwoo? Then the fact that Jo Dong-jo was under investigation — it wasn't that he'd shown up on the CIO's radar. Someone had tipped them off.
"Please come to your senses, Chairman. Do you even know who you're throwing your weight around against?"
"What? Th-throwing my weight around? You bastard, who do you think you're—"
"Right now, Chairman, you're running around making noise without even knowing who you're up against. That person holds power beyond anything you could imagine. Making a few dozen people disappear from this world is nothing to Him."
"Is it Kwak Junggap? Did that bastard send you? You used to do jobs for me! How could you go over to the Kwak family—"
"Hahaha…"
Kim Du-chil laughed as if he couldn't believe what he was hearing.
Who the hell was this person?
Jung Jinwoo flashed through his mind — but there was no way some ordinary office worker held that kind of power. No… wait. The day Jung Jinwoo had come, hadn't Kim Du-chil's entire crew — the ones waiting to lynch him — all been laid out cold?
"This person you mentioned. Who is he?"
"I don't know the details myself. I've seen him, but I've never seen his face…"
They'd said the real one was someone else — not the man standing behind the light. The one who commanded that man with the chillingly polite voice as if he were a mere limb.
"What?"
Someone had siphoned off the money Kim Gwang-deok had quietly dispersed so that no one would ever find it?
"Looks like you haven't turned on the TV yet. Once you do, you'll understand what I mean. Well. I've said what I came to say, so I'll be going. Chairman… if you see me again, you know that means you didn't listen. Next time, I won't walk away as quietly as I am now."
Kim Du-chil planted his cane, stood, and limped toward the door.
"Take care of your health."
He bowed his head, turned, and walked out through the front entrance. The moment he was gone, Kim Gwang-deok frantically groped for his phone.
He tried to open his bank accounts. They wouldn't load. The other accounts he'd opened under borrowed names were the same.
"Wh-what is this…"
He checked the companies whose stock he'd bought and parked. Seventy percent of Kim Gwang-deok's wealth was invested in the form of convertible bonds.
Yeonse Trading — a shell company he had created long ago to hide slush funds. It wasn't listed, but it occasionally changed hands on the over-the-counter market.
StockPlus. A specialized exchange for unlisted shares. He opened the app. Other stocks were trading actively, but when he tapped Yeonse Trading, nothing moved.
"What the hell is going on?"
Kim Gwang-deok hurriedly turned on the living room television.
"Th-this… this can't be…"
The remote slipped from Kim Gwang-deok's hand. As if the pain from moments ago had been a lie, he bolted for the master bedroom. He shoved aside the nightstand beside the bed, and a safe embedded in the wall came into view. The old combination dial clicked and rattled in the silence. He opened the door.
Inside, the cash, the gold bars, and the bearer bonds were still there.
"Th-these bastards, where do they get off bluffing? Huh?"
They didn't even know there was a safe here.
"Hahaha… what do these bastards know about me… they don't even know there's a safe in this room… wait… wait?"
The grin on Kim Gwang-deok's face slowly froze.
"N-no… it can't be."
He roughly tallied the cash, the gold bars, the dollars, and the bonds inside the safe — then sank onto the bed.
"The billion they said they'd leave me… this billion… this was it?"
A chill crawled up Kim Gwang-deok's spine. The few remaining strands of his hair seemed to stand on end.