I Said, Don't Mess With Me.
I got home and climbed into Whitey, the car Kim Seon-hwa had given me.
Tae-oh looked at me, then got into the passenger seat without a word.
The words I'd glimpsed written on Yoon-seo's body wouldn't leave my head.
My instincts screamed at me to punch in the address Jong-hyeon had dug up and go, but reason seemed to be telling me to wait a moment.
And then Im Yeong-hwan called.
"....."
- "You saw it?"
I want to go straight to that address.
I don't care about anyone else, so...
I wanted to see Yoon-seo's boyfriend Im Yeong-hwan's face even more.
And to make things clear, I opened my mouth.
"... What do you want?"
I'm not even remotely curious what they want.
Right now I just want to stuff them in a drum and pour sulfuric acid over them.
- "You know who I am, right?"
"Sure. Im Yeong-hwan, was it...?"
- "Kinda hurts my feelings, you talking down to me like that. You know, if I press this button right here, the whole world can see... your friend didn't look so good earlier, did she?"
"....."
- "You starting to get who's in charge here now...? I'll shoot you the address. Be here in thirty minutes~ If you're not, I have no idea what'll happen to these videos?"
"....."
- "Our Yoon-seo was totally out of her mind~ You think it'd be okay if I uploaded this? Keukeuk... So, what's your answer?"
"Sure."
The call ended and Im Yeong-hwan sent the address right away...
It was near the address Jong-hyeon had sent me.
I grabbed the wheel and hit the accelerator.
"Tae-oh."
I grinned crookedly at Tae-oh, who looked slightly uneasy after seeing my face.
"Remember the old days?"
"....."
"I feel like hearing it again. It's been a while."
"....."
"The sound of them piteously crying for their mommy..."
"... Got it."
"Everyone except Yoon Hyeong-seop, Jeong I-su, and Hwang Ji-seon. Take them all out..."
I dropped Tae-oh off where Yoon Hyeong-seop was and headed for the address Yeong-hwan had given me.
When I arrived at the address Yeong-hwan had sent, four men were waiting for me.
Lumps of meat showing off arms and legs covered in tattoos, as if the pictures drawn on their bodies were something to be proud of.
"She really came alone...?"
"Told you she would, right? Hyeong-seop figured she'd come for sure too~ She's got some serious guts, look at her face~"
"But fuck, she's really pretty..."
"Whoa, at that level, wouldn't you just take her and it'd be worth a life sentence?"
"Dumbass."
I looked at Im Yeong-hwan.
"This is a hassle, so let's wrap it up. Tell me what you want."
"What's the rush? Follow me for now."
"Haah... Just call them already. Tell me how much of your sex drive I need to cover to settle this."
"Ahahak!!! You think we're doing this to make a few bucks?"
"What, so you've got some fucking grandiose goal."
"You've got a real shit attitude, you..."
I cut off the man who was approaching me with a scoff.
"Four of you, so let's keep it simple—how does one billion per head sound? You want it? I can cut you that much right now..."
"".....""
One billion.
The moment I named a sum an ordinary person could never touch in their lifetime, all four of them froze.
"Keuk. Or don't. Look at you thinking it over~ it's disgusting, like a bunch of bugs."
"....."
"Ahak, but this really is the kind of thing people do for pocket change, isn't it?"
They clearly never imagined I'd react like this. When I moved without hesitation, they flinched and started glancing at each other.
"What are you doing? Show me what you've got ready."
I impassively followed Im Yeong-hwan.
After a moment, maybe because they decided I was nothing but a short, delicate-looking woman.
The three next to me started staring at me with open leers.
Once we turned into a quiet alley, Im Yeong-hwan looked back with a nasty smile and spoke to me.
"Don't worry~ as if we'd lay a hand on your body—"
I tied up my waist-length pink hair and took off my jacket.
"? What's this? Why are you taking off your clothes?"
"Got to thinking, my friend bought me this limited edition. If it gets dirty, I doubt you could get me a new one."
Then I pulled my knuckles out of my tote bag and set the bag and my clothes on top of a dusty outdoor AC unit.
"....?"
The pink-gold knuckles Oh Tae-hyeon had given me...
The moment I slipped them on, they flinched and stared at me.
"There aren't more people waiting, are there?"
"Keuhahaha!!!"
I shoved my knuckles into the gums of the tattoo-sleeved pig bastard who'd suddenly started laughing, no hesitation at all.
The knuckles punched through, past his lips, ignoring his teeth, burying deep.
Kwadeuk!
"Don't laugh with a face like that... looking ugly as fuck..."
I prayed these men would stay conscious as long as possible.
So they could feel, with perfect clarity, the horrific pain I was about to gift them...
Maybe his brain hadn't registered the searing pain yet. The man still hadn't grasped what had been done to him.
The moment he saw his own teeth gushing out with blood like a waterfall, the man came to his senses, fell into panic, and screamed.
Before another one could react, I swung my arm and stamped his face with the knuckles.
The skin couldn't withstand the force packed into the knuckles, splitting open, splattering droplets of blood across my face...
Again... the world started to look slow.
I could see the blood droplets getting closer and closer to me with both eyes.
But I didn't bother dodging, and I felt a warm heat spread past the skin of my face.
I thrust my left hand into the eye of another one who still hadn't grasped the situation.
Puuk...
Before he could register what had been jammed into his eye, I grabbed his face by the socket with my embedded thumb like a handle and started hammering down on his face with the knuckles.
"Kiyaaaah!!!..."
Ppaak!...
"Ah...."
Ppak!...
"Ab....."
Pagak... puuk...
I hadn't even started yet, but I looked at Im Yeong-hwan, who was already collapsed on the ground.
"What's the matter?"
"Wh...what... what is this..."
I delivered a soccer kick to the face of the tattoo-sleeved pig who was crying and screaming with all his teeth knocked out, then stomped on his face until it was unrecognizably mangled.
Peogeok.
After finishing one off, I added another stamp of the knuckles to the back of the head of the one whose cheekbone had collapsed from the knuckle strike and was convulsing on the ground.
Ppak-ah-ak!! Ppeo-eok! Peok...
Same for the one with a hole in his right eye...
After a few minutes of work, when everything had gone quiet, I finally approached Im Yeong-hwan.
Maybe he'd finally grasped the situation, because Im Yeong-hwan screamed in terror and scrambled away from me as I got closer.
I pulled the knuckles off my fingers and put them in my pocket.
And instead of the knuckles, I took out the utility knife I had in my pocket.
"Tormenting someone weaker than you was more fun than you thought, wasn't it?"
"Wh...what the hell are you...!!!"
"Don't worry. My methods might be different, but I used to be pretty fond of it too, back in the day..."
"I'll make sure you don't die as comfortably as they did."
I beamed brightly, utility knife in hand, and approached Im Yeong-hwan as he tried to back away from me.
"This feels cold when you touch it, but once it's inside your skin, it gets warm, you know? The night air is chilly... I'll warm you up."
The moment I grabbed Im Yeong-hwan by the hair, he seized my hand with both of his trembling ones.
"L...let... let go of this!!"
"I learned a thing or two from a friend, so I'm pretty damn sure I'm better at this than most doctors. Ahak."
I slowly drew the blade across Im Yeong-hwan's hand where he was gripping my arm.
"Hiiiiik!!!"
Covered in blood, I slowly dragged the utility knife down Im Yeong-hwan's arm, and he finally pissed himself and passed out.
I dragged the unconscious Im Yeong-hwan behind me and came face to face with Jong-hyeon, who had been waiting while holding my clothes.
"Clean this up."
"Yes."
"And keep a good hold of this friend here."
"Understood."
The man the Boss had sent, deliberately threatening her with facts she didn't even need to know...
Looking at that expression on the Boss's face, more familiar than anything—the one that looked like a forced smile—I could tell the situation was far from normal.
On the screen of the phone the Boss had put down... there were videos I shouldn't have seen.
Even so, unlike in the past, the Boss had entrusted the work to me.
"Everyone except Yoon Hyeong-seop, Jeong I-su, and Hwang Ji-seon. Take them out."
After dropping me off at their base of operations, the Boss headed toward where the man who had posted those photos was.
"Haah..."
His—no, their end... would be more brutal, more agonizing, and more wretched than anyone else's in the 21st century.
I lifted my head and looked at the man guarding the entrance.
"What's this? A new recruit? Damn... look at this bastard's face. So jealous I could die, man."
In the past, the Boss cherished me, who used a blade, even more than Jae-hyeong.
Unlike Jae-hyeong, he kept me at his side and raised me.
The Boss, who until the moment I died tried to teach me even one more thing.
In my past life, he was like a father to me, more like family than anyone, even more than my real family.
And that Boss, for the first time in this life, was filled with rage.
After I was reborn, once I became aware of the Boss's existence.
I worked every single day, without fail, to be of even the slightest help to him.
I'd learned countless things from the Boss, and one of them surfaced in my mind.
If you hold a blade and not your fists, become colder than that blade...
Whoever holds a knife must not have a weak heart like pity.
He told me to erase even the word 'mercy' from my mind.
The man who'd been muttering to himself while looking at me started walking into the building first, as if to guide me.
I put on the mask I had in my pocket, drew the dagger from my waist, grabbed the walking man by the hair, and drove the blade into his temple.
"Gkeok!"
The man collapsed with a brief dying gasp.
When I looked back, Agent Han Tae-yoon, who had been waiting there in advance, looked at me.
"If anyone... tries to come out..."
"Yeah, go do your thing. The Team Leader was seriously pissed too, you know? Been a while since I've seen him like that."
"Thank you."
If you draw a blade, do not let it go until you achieve your objective.
The Boss said that.
We were reincarnated and are living a second life.
The Boss and Jae-hyeong... their personalities are similar to each other.
If I said this to the Boss, he'd beat me to death... but they really were similar.
The two of them, so alike... even though their personalities and actions softened, the weapons they carried never dulled.
As if they each had two separate personalities.
I was different from the two of them, so I was afraid of acting soft.
If I lived an ordinary life like everyone else, I felt I wouldn't be able to cut people—man or woman—like I could now.
And because of that, I was afraid I couldn't be the Boss's left arm, his weapon.
That's why, every day, I steeled my heart, worked at it, and trained myself so that I could kill anyone at any moment at the Boss's command.
Be even colder when dealing with others.
When holding a blade, never stop until the objective is achieved, even if your whole body is drenched in blood...
"You! What the hell!!!"
At someone's distant shout upon spotting me, people started spilling into the hallway one or two at a time, and before long, dozens of people were squeezing out of the rooms.
I swept my blood-soaked hair back with a gloved hand.
"Haah..."
And a brawl... no, a massacre followed.