I Said, Don't Mess With Me.
I was putting my heart and soul into grilling yakiniku on the portable griddle in front of me.
That was when Park Ji-hoon suddenly grabbed a whole chopstick-load of the yakiniku I'd been grilling and sighed.
".....?"
"Ah, my mom made braised short ribs at home since I'm on leave, so I have to eat dinner at home."
"Is that what you say while you're scarfing down five pieces of yakiniku at a time, you shitstain? That was mine, you son of a bitch!"
"Huh? What's mine is yours, buddy. Honestly, none of this is ours anyway, is it?"
Park Ji-hoon quickly shoved the yakiniku he was holding into his mouth.
"Aah~ kimochi!"
"You motherfucking piece of shit."
If Jong-hyeon hadn't been sitting between me and Park Ji-hoon, I would've beaten the living hell out of him. For real.
I handed a handkerchief to Tae-oh, who was covered in blood.
After wiping his face and hands, Tae-oh began eating beside me with an air of elegance. Park Ji-hoon, meanwhile, was busy shoving anything he could get his hands on into his mouth.
"Stho thoppit an eat awready!"
"Maybe offer some while you're saying that, jackass. You're too busy stuffing your own face."
Park Ji-hoon picked up a king crab leg and inhaled it so hard his face crumpled, then started coughing with an expression like he was about to die—it must have gotten stuck in his throat.
I couldn't hold back and smacked the back of Park Ji-hoon's head with my palm, hard as hell.
Smack!
"Keck, aack!!!"
I wanted to maintain some dignity at an occasion like this, but with that bastard Park Ji-hoon around, I couldn't focus.
Even Jong-hyeon looked flustered watching us, so how must we have looked to the other party...
Still, since they said it was good, I picked up a king crab leg and used the thin fork to extract the meat, composing myself again.
"By the way, may I ask you something?"
"".....""
I brought up what I'd planned to ask if I ever encountered the Tiger.
"May 9th, around 11 p.m. Kim Ji-ho's car accident... do you know anything about it?"
Mokichi looked at me and smirked.
"If you want information, you'll have to pay the price."
"Kahat."
"".....""
Monkeys pretending to be people.
Since it seemed none of them understood Korean, I smiled as I spoke in Korean.
"Monkeys are only cute when they're imitating people~ when they actually pretend to be people, it's grotesque."
And the person next to Mokichi translated it.
Felt like I was getting a glimpse of what it's like to look at a traitor to their own people.
Faces turning red.
"So, a price for information~ hmm hmm. Then if you tell me, I'll just go home quietly."
I ate the crab meat I was holding, scoping out what to eat next.
If you thought about letting someone who knows our information walk away intact, I figured that was a price worth paying, but Mokichi apparently had no such intention from the start.
Mokichi made a vulgar gesture with his hands.
"No, that's not it... It seems the tables have turned, haven't they? If you come into my arms, I might consider it."
The men around him smiled greasily, and I nodded.
At my reaction, Kim Tae-oh set down his chopsticks and stood up, and Park Ji-hoon grumbled.
"Ah, I wasn't done eating yet..."
And the twelve people rising from their seats, led by the tattooed man.
I sat Jong-hyeon back down and continued eating with him.
Normally, Tae-oh would have signaled the start.
But Park Ji-hoon, who had just popped the crab meat into his mouth, swallowed it and spoke.
"Old man, I'm hungry, so I kinda feel bad for you."
There was no way he understood Korean, but the other party didn't seem to need a translation either.
Hearing Ji-hoon's words, the man drew a Japanese-style sword from inside his clothes.
Park Ji-hoon dusted off his sweatsuit, loosened up, and quickly approached the man holding the sword.
His opponent wasn't completely unskilled either; he reacted to Park Ji-hoon's movement and tried to drive the blade into his side.
Judging by their clean movements, they were a little stronger than Oh Tae-hyeon's closest aides from three years ago.
But Park Ji-hoon was a completely different person from who he'd been three years ago.
Thud.
"".....""
Park Ji-hoon had grabbed the arm lightly, but the man stared at his own arm with wavering eyes—it wouldn't move no matter how hard he strained.
"I'll pray you get reincarnated in twenty years too, yeah?"
Kwoong!... Kwoong!!... Crunch.....
In this cramped space, the sound of a fist driving into a human face rang out three times, and the man's face was half caved in.
Everyone who saw it went silent.
Even... Jong-hyeon.
The man couldn't even let out a death cry thanks to Ji-hoon's handiwork.
Park Ji-hoon, smiling wide enough to show his teeth, released the arm. The man went limp and convulsed briefly, signaling his end.
Breaking the silence, a man from behind suddenly lunged forward.
But seeing Park Ji-hoon's middle kick with full weight behind it, he panicked and raised his arms to guard.
It's baffling—even after seeing what just happened, he's pulling up a guard instead of dodging.
Crack!
The arm of the man who blocked Park Ji-hoon's picture-perfect middle kick bent in a direction arms aren't supposed to bend.
Park Ji-hoon's foot sank into the man's body and came back out as if he'd kicked a block of jelly.
From the impact, the man slammed straight into the wall.
His ribs must have shattered from that one kick, because he was coughing up blood and could barely breathe.
"Gak... gak...!"
Mokichi, his whole body covered in tiger tattoos, staring at Park Ji-hoon in a daze...
Just about when I was thinking the Tigers these days had more numbers than their reputation suggested.
Tae-oh, beside me, began to move as well.
"Jong-hyeon, I can't reach the sea bream over there."
"Yes."
Jong-hyeon stretched out his arm and brought the sea bream in front of me.
The sea bream was plated like a flower and even dusted with gold, but that couldn't stop me from dipping it in vinegared red pepper sauce.
It felt like I was watching a movie in real time, so it tasted even better than usual.
At some point, Park Ji-hoon, who'd finished cleaning up first, sat down and wiped his face with a handkerchief.
He wasn't even breathing hard, as if it hadn't been difficult at all.
"Did you see that? I won six-on-one."
"You call that six-on-one? That was a tag-match format, and if I thought you couldn't handle deadweight like that, I wouldn't have raised you, you little shit."
"Bullshit? You talk like you raised me yourself? My mom raised me, got it?"
"Wow, this ungrateful little bastard. I raised you with my bosom and you don't know a thing about gratitude."
Unlike Ji-hoon, Tae-oh quietly came over and sat down.
I made sure to set aside more food for Tae-oh.
"This bastard finished after me, admit it?"
"Yeah, fuck off. You don't even remember you started first, do you? Goldfish brain. Don't you go measuring yourself against our Tae-oh."
When he tried to grab the yakiniku I'd been painstakingly grilling again, I swiftly moved the meat onto my plate.
"Wow... you're so damn petty with food, seriously."
"Tae-oh hasn't had a single bite, jackass. And you call me petty."
As we bickered like nothing had happened, the remaining Japanese man named Mokichi asked a question.
"You people... what exactly are you...?"
"...? Look it up. What are you asking for? Just type the three syllables 'Kim Si-yoon' and all my personal info comes up, from my height to my birthday."
"That's not what I was..."
Seeing a person with that look in their eyes is honestly enjoyable.
That expression and those pupils—when they thought they were the apex predator,
then faced the truth and realized they were nothing but prey.
I stared blankly at the man, then dipped the thin slice of meat in front of me into the simmering broth and ate it with vegetables.
Looking into Mokichi's murderous eyes, I chewed and mumbled.
"Hmm... Is that all you have to say? No, right?"
"Han Jeong-min..."
The man with the tiger tattoos answered my initial question with a single name.
That one name seemed to tell me the whole story.
Probably, my dad, who provides an inexhaustible source of funding to Han Jeong-min, had gotten on their nerves quite a bit.
Han Jeong-min was already Taebaek's number-one elimination target, they said...
Taebaek... It kept getting under my skin, and it was seriously annoying. Enough to want to sweep it out of my sight.
If there were a button in front of me to erase Taebaek, I'd just want to press it.
I reached a conclusion and nodded.
I said I'd clean it up, but.
Dung is still best avoided.
Unless my surroundings are such a minefield of shit that I'll step in it no matter how carefully I watch my step, there's no need for me to be the one cleaning it up.
"Jong-hyeon, please pass a message to Dad."
"Yes."
"Tell him I think it'd be best to wash his hands of Taebaek. And if he still wants to fund Uncle Jeong-min, he should send the money through Hanseong instead of doing it personally."
"Understood."
"Tae-oh."
"What is it?"
I looked at Mokichi.
"Can you handle it? Ji-hoon has to return to base—if he gets even a scratch, it'll be a headache."
"Is our Tti-yoon worried about me?"
When I shot him an expression like I'd just bitten into something foul, Park Ji-hoon shrugged.
"I can do it alone... in fact, I'm looking forward to it."
In the past, if I'd told Park Gi or Jae-hyeong to face a Tiger, I would've had them move as a pair.
But watching Tae-oh's eyes gleam as he looked at Mokichi, who had stood up holding his sword.
It seemed I no longer needed to worry about him like a child left by the water's edge.
Mokichi observed how the situation was unfolding, then smirked.
And then, holding the Japanese sword in his teeth, Mokichi slowly removed his shirt.
"Ha. I am Mokichi. You must have thought me a joke, to come at me alone... Not a bad way to go, this."
Mokichi's upper body was covered in sword scars and tattoos, exuding the weight of those years and an oppressive presence.
That was when, from behind, Jong-hyeon pulled the trigger.
Pew... pew!
The bullets lodged near his heart, and with a shocked expression, unable to grasp the situation, Mokichi took another round to the head.
"".....""
"... Was that a mistake on my part?"
Yeah, you can't beat a gun...
Jong-hyeon's trigger finger stayed light all the way through.
The more you fight, the more experience you accumulate and the stronger you become?
Well, that's true enough.
If you get hit a lot, you get used to it, and if you develop the mindset of "so what if I get hit," in a word, your guts get stronger.
But that saying doesn't apply to us.
You need experience fighting strong opponents in the world of blades?
That's somewhat true.
It does help greatly in broadening your horizons.
It's also true that your ability to identify an unfamiliar opponent's habits and find their openings grows faster the more you fight strong opponents.
But there's no need to experience that in real combat when you can get it just through the training I provide.
We finished the remaining food amid the now-familiar scenery, just like in the old days, and stepped outside.
A cute-looking man with a small M drawn near his eye was wearing a white leather glove on his right hand and watching a video.
"... HSW... Park Ji-hoon... Kim Tae-oh... hahaha."
He was cutting down dozens of people affiliated with Taebaek without taking a single scratch.
"Well now... Hanseong's little monster... they picked a good nickname, didn't they?"
And the man, gazing at Park Ji-hoon in the footage...
"Wow... Seong-min, how old did you say these kids are?"
"Twenty."
"That's insane. Twenty? Does that even make sense? Damn... kids like that are at Hanseong... what a real shame. Wish they were my subordinates, boo hoo..."
And soon the man's gaze stopped on one woman.
"Kim Si-yoon, huh... What is she? I thought she was some sheltered princess... What is she hiding? Just what does she know? That expression is way too familiar..."
In the footage, Kim Si-yoon suddenly shifted her gaze, as if making eye contact with us.
The cameras had all been hidden, but as if she'd already pinpointed most of their locations, she flashed a captivating smile toward the camera...
"Whoa... I got chills. Seriously, what the hell is she?"
"I... don't really know either."
Just then, a call came in to someone.
Lee Seong-min normally showed very little emotion, so when his face suddenly filled with shock, the man looked puzzled.
"....."
"...? What? Who is it?"
"It's... Kim Si-yoon."