Han Jinseung extended his hand, and one of the people nearby passed him a pair of black gloves, as though they’d done it countless times before. Han Jinseung swapped out his blood-stained gloves and lit a cigarette. Gray smoke drifted out in a deep exhale and dissolved into the air.
A space with no light, no sound, no air — heavy and suffocating with nowhere to breathe.
Han Jinseung stood with the cigarette between his lips, looking down at the naked man on the floor — skull cracked, rasping out ragged breaths.
“P-please, Representative Han, why, why are you doing this, let’s not do this, we can talk—!”
“Where is it.”
“…What?”
Han Jinseung didn’t ask twice. He took the hammer from the man beside him and brought it down on the man’s hand in a single blow.
“AAAAARGH!!!”
Fingers crushed in an instant.
Tears, snot, and saliva erupted all at once. The man was bound and couldn’t even writhe properly in his agony — above him, a fluorescent light flickered on and off with pitiful indifference.
A concrete building covered in plastic sheeting. In that trembling light, the only thing left the man could do to survive even one more second was tell the truth.
“I-Incheon! It’s in Incheon! J-just listen to me for a second! How long do you think the Chairman is going to keep watching your back when you’re not even his real son! If we w-work together—!”
At those words, Han Jinseung tossed the hammer aside without a second thought and stepped back.
One of the men nearby dragged over a chair, and Han Jinseung sat down, looking down at the bloodied man.
His expression held not a trace of emotion. Still as the deepest part of the ocean — sunk low, unbearably cold.
He had been skimming goods.
And of all people, it had been someone who had been serving the Chairman directly from inside the organization.
He’d made a good profit trafficking people all this time — and now the foolish man who had finally hastened his own end received his verdict.
The man sensed death on instinct and tried to scream for his life, but his mouth was stuffed shut. He shook his head and tried to struggle however he could — but he took a blow powerful enough to cave in his face and went down backward. His mind, however, stayed sharp. Something had been injected into his body to prevent him from losing consciousness even for a moment.
In the grip of absolute terror, the man wet himself.
Both legs were broken. Crunch by crunch, the bones were ground down. His mouth was gagged, but screams still leaked through. And still, the man did not die. Flesh was torn. Arms sawed through as bones twisted — two limbs left in shreds.
Next, the skin was stripped.
He was flayed alive, every inch of him.
Even in pain that felt like his entire body was on fire, the man could not die. The crushed and stripped pieces of him went into a boiling pot. The man was dragged forward. Already no longer resembling a human being, he fought to live until the very last moment.
When he was shoved into the pot whole, he thrashed in unspeakable agony. The lid was closed, and after some time — though it had been rattling violently even while firmly secured — the pot went still.
Only then did Han Jinseung rise from his seat, the cigarette burned all the way down.
As if signaling that things were only just beginning, he walked out of the building — and outside, dozens of cars were waiting. As he approached the one at the very front, an organization member standing by pulled the door open without needing to be told.
Deep in the night.
Drugs worth hundreds of billions, which had been in the process of being smuggled abroad, were recovered in full.
The organization that had been set to receive the goods was wiped out that same night. Along one side of the container port on the waters off Incheon, several bodies were ground up, mixed into cement, and swept into drums. The ship loaded with those blood-soaked drums had already slipped quietly out to sea before the sun began to rise slowly in the east.
* * *
A single vehicle pulled up along a main road.
It had rained briefly in the morning, and the wet metallic smell of rain mixed with city exhaust had left behind the damp, ashen scent of gray air.
The door opened and Han Jinseung stepped out — the organization members around him straightened and bowed their heads in his direction. He walked past them without acknowledgment, as though it were the most natural thing in the world, and entered the building standing with an arrogant presence in the heart of the city.
The dull, heavy sound of his footsteps reverberated through the interior, and the organization members following behind felt something close to a chill. Those who knew what had happened the night before couldn’t even bring themselves to look at him directly.
Han Jinseung’s destination was the Chairman’s office.
When he reached the door, the secretary approached with careful steps and spoke.
“The Chairman says to come straight in.”
The gates of hell, firmly shut, swung open — and Han Jinseung walked through without hesitation.
Inside the Chairman’s office sat a man who appeared indifferent, yet had never lost a trace of his dignity.
The Chairman of Baekseon Group.
Han Buseon.
He carried the weight of years on his back and yet sat with an unbending spine, watching Han Jinseung with eyes as sharp as a serpent’s.
“You’re late.”
His reproachful tone carried the full weight of power behind it.
“Over something as simple as dealing with one little rat.”
The matter had been tangled up with other organizations like a spider’s web — it was never something that could have been resolved in a single night. Despite having accomplished what was nearly impossible, Chairman Han fixed Han Jinseung with a gaze like a blade. Han Jinseung met it head-on and did not lower his eyes. He simply held that gaze in silence.
An ominous tension wrapped itself around the two of them.
Chairman Han rose from his seat.
He moved with the calm of a still sea — slow, but certain, swelling toward Han Jinseung like a wave that only grows larger.
Just a few steps.
For some, the fear and helplessness carried in the power that moved through those few steps had been enough to bring them to their knees on the spot.
Thud.
With a blunt sound, Han Jinseung’s face was knocked to the side. Chairman Han shook out the fist he’d thrown and looked back at Han Jinseung, whose head had turned back to face forward. The boy he’d first taken in had been small — now he’d long since grown to tower over him — but in Chairman Han’s eyes, he was still nothing but a green kid.
He gripped Han Jinseung’s shoulder.
“Those who don’t know any better see you as nothing more than a well-trained stray dog. But I’m different.”
The hand on Han Jinseung’s shoulder tightened.
“Because I truly think of you as my own son. From the moment you took the Han name. Even now. So, son — I would rather not have you disappoint me again.”
Han Jinseung knew those words were not sincere. He was the one who understood better than anyone that they were a mask crafted to make his true intentions unreadable. The proof was carved unmistakably into his back.
“Yes. Father.”
Only after hearing that answer did Chairman Han seem satisfied — he released the shoulder he’d been gripping, gave it a light pat, and stepped away.
“Prepare yourself for the upcoming gathering as well.”
“Yes.”
The brief exchange ended and Han Jinseung walked out of the Chairman’s office. His mouth — unscathed by the dozens of men he’d reduced to corpses — now had blood pooling at the corner. One of the organization members who noticed it approached with care. He extended a handkerchief, as if to signal that the blood at Han Jinseung’s split lip should be wiped away.
Han Jinseung took the handkerchief without much thought and wiped at the corner of his mouth. Nothing could be read from his expression. Everyone knew that Chairman Han was particularly harsh toward Han Jinseung — but without him, the goods could never have been recovered on time. He had even cleaned up every last member of the organization involved in it, leaving not so much as a speck behind — and in return, not only was there no reward, but a blow to the face.
The organization member, who had always looked up to Han Jinseung, felt a surge of anger at the sight of a mark on that striking face — but there was no way to express it outwardly, and it sat frustratingly in his chest.
Instead, the moment Han Jinseung stepped out of the building, he rushed to open the car door. Only after confirming that Han Jinseung was inside did he close it and take his own seat in the passenger seat.
“Shall I take you to the officetel?”
“…….”
Han Jinseung looked at the organization member, then gave a brief, disinterested nod.
“This is the file you asked us to look into last time.”
Han Jinseung took the file the organization member handed over and slowly turned the pages. The organization member kept glancing at him in the rearview mirror and added:
“Interesting one, isn’t he. No debts to speak of, and yet grinding away at several part-time jobs like his life depends on it. First time I’ve ever seen someone board a deep-sea fishing vessel the moment they turned eighteen and stick it out for three years. He’s not your average tough bastard.”
Han Jinseung gave no reaction to that. Nothing but the dry rustling of pages being turned.
Name: Seo Haegil
Age: 29
A record of entering a facility. High school dropout. Discharge from the facility.
A few lines were all it took to sum up his school years.
But Seo Haegil’s record after turning eighteen was quite something.
At nineteen, he’d boarded a deep-sea fishing vessel and spent three years at sea before returning to land — and after that, his work history was a revolving door. Starting from restaurant work, then slaughterhouse labor, construction sites, lonely-death scene cleanup, and even specialist cleaning that involved scraping up bodies hit by trains. There wasn’t a job he hadn’t done.
Currently, he’d suffered an accident at a construction site and broken his arm — which had gotten him let go from every part-time job he’d been working, and that was what had led him to become a player at West Hollywood.
Han Jinseung tapped his index finger against one sentence. Tap, tap.
It was a habit of his that came out when something was weighing on his mind. The organization member felt a faint chill at the sight of it. The Chairman, too, showed that same gesture when he was thinking of burying someone. The member inside the car held his breath.
Is he thinking of having him killed?
There was nothing particularly unusual about him. Nothing stood out — nothing except that he worked an excessive number of jobs for someone with no debts.
Unlucky bastard.
Going to work himself into the grave.
