Flash—!
The rain that had been scattering like sleet was gradually intensifying. The Dogang faction’s action captain swallowed hard at the feeling of metal colder than the sea breeze.
“Dogang faction created by Choi Jeongcheol. What’s the reason you suddenly bulked up?”
Is he really asking because he’s curious?
The Kwonmyeonghoe Boss seemed too lazy to even speak in complete sentences, asking while pressing his cheeks firmly with languid eyes throughout. His jaw was crushed and his head turned at the cold, heavy touch.
Is this the strategy of Kwonmyeonghoe, which has maintained the lineage of Korean gangsters with force and intelligence for many years? Just crudely stabbing faces with tools?!
But at this rate, it seemed he’d be beaten to death with all his teeth knocked out before he could even open his mouth.
Let’s just go along with it appropriately for now.
Having finished thinking that far, the action captain obediently answered Siwon’s question.
The Dogang faction’s sudden growth began when Choi Jeongcheol started gathering thugs and gangsters flying around both domestically and internationally.
“As the number of people increased exponentially like that, we received contact from the global organization ‘Central Cartel’ to be subordinated to the alliance. That’s how the Dogang faction became known.”
“That’s strange. Being affiliated with the Cartel and receiving the Cartel’s recognition are completely different things.”
At Siwon’s words, the action captain, who had been acting as if he would confess everything, shut his mouth tight. When the gloominess pressed down on his entire body, he looked at Siwon with a look of hurt pride.
“I-I don’t know either! What the Cartel was thinking when they brought our Dogang faction into the alliance…!”
The action captain’s words didn’t reach Siwon’s ears. Even thinking about it again, he found it difficult to understand the Cartel’s intentions and fell into thought for a moment.
One year ago, in the first dispute after Kwonmyeonghoe’s generational change, Siwon lost his wife and his one and only friend. The Cartel side recommended a rest period along with remarriage, but Siwon refused this and asked to be expelled from the Cartel. It was to quit being a gangster. Siwon planned to transform Kwonmyeonghoe into the legitimate Kwonmyeong Group. Of course, most of the main family’s organization members who followed Siwon also went along with his wishes.
The Cartel asked him to reconsider, but Siwon’s resolve was firm. Eventually, they said they would accept his opinion and promised to send Cartel members directly to wrap up all cooperative projects and actively help Kwonmyeonghoe until the end.
However.
After a week passed, after a month passed, not only did no one come, they couldn’t even make contact. Moreover, every company the Kwonmyeong Group tried to invest in ultimately broke the contract, saying they received support from overseas investors.
When he had Daerim investigate, those overseas investors were all ghost companies created by the Cartel for money laundering.
While blocking his path at every turn and remaining silent like that, Choi Jeongcheol’s Dogang faction suddenly began to grow absurdly large.
In a situation where rumors even began circulating that there were overseas mercenaries specializing in contract killing among the Dogang faction members, he couldn’t just trust the Cartel. Siwon had to protect the approximately fifty organization members remaining in Kwonmyeonghoe with full force while exploiting the weaknesses of Choi Jeongcheol and the Cartel.
Moreover, he had to successfully transform Kwonmyeonghoe into the Kwonmyeong Group.
He absolutely couldn’t let them catch him with any weakness.
“Answer me. What deal did you make with the Cartel?”
Just then, the rain that had been pouring down like buckets stopped abruptly. The full moon gradually revealed itself from within the clouds.
The action captain thought Siwon’s eyes seemed to be shining, so he closed his eyes, opened them, and looked again. It was because the moonlight reflected on the water surface made it look that way, but the gleaming eyes looked threatening enough.
“Are you not going to answer?”
When Siwon asked again, the action captain bit his burst lips. If he spoke any more information he knew, even if he survived here, he would be killed if he returned to the Dogang faction.
When the monkey wrench tapped his jaw again, the action captain grimaced. He had secretly been gaining false courage from the fact that he was an action captain commanding hundreds of subordinates.
“Ah, fuck! I can’t do more. If there’s something coming, there should be something going, right? Huh?! After beating a person up like this, you want me to say what more? I said everything, I said it all!”
The action captain looked straight into Siwon’s eyes. He stiffly endured with effort, putting strength into his head that kept turning, pushed by the monkey wrench.
“Really? That was everything you said?”
“Huh?”
“Then we have no more business with you either.”
“Heok!”
Siwon shrugged his shoulders and stepped back two steps. While the action captain was being defiant, Lee Cheon hooked a net-throwing hook onto the ring protruding from the lower part of the drum. When he raised his arm, the lever was lowered in the wheelhouse.
The front part of the boat opened wide, and the drum containing the action captain was quickly dragged backward with an unpleasant sound.
“Ahhhhh! S-save me. Save me!”
The drum stopped just before falling into the sea. When Lee Cheon raised his fist to signal to stop, Oh Cheon raised the lever with good timing. The action captain looked at Siwon as pitifully as possible, with half his entire body under the deadly waves and the rest hanging over the boat.
“S-s-s-save me…! I’ll, I’ll talk… I’ll say more! Please!”
Siwon, who pointed at the trembling action captain with the monkey wrench, smiled and asked.
“You honestly thought our organization system was pathetic, didn’t you?”
“N-n-n-no. I didn’t think that….”
“This is exactly why Kwonmyeonghoe has been able to maintain its lineage for so many years. Because there’s no compromise.”
“Th-that….”
“It’s a crude method used since the old man’s days, but the effect is good. Isn’t it?”
“N-n-n-no? The effect is good. Very good. Really good.”
While watching the action captain nodding his head frantically, Siwon signaled to Lee Cheon with his eyes. When Lee Cheon slowly raised his clenched fist, the action captain trembled, having turned deathly pale, then shouted.
“I’ll talk, I’ll say everything! So, please save me… okay? Si, Siwon-nim! Kwon Siwon-nim! I’ll tell you everything!”
At the sobbing action captain’s cry, Siwon gestured with his chin to Lee Cheon, pointing to the front part of the boat.
When the bow side closed with a heavy sound, the action captain trembled while tightly gripping the drum that felt like one body. I-I’m alive. If he had lost his balance just a little more, he might have been sucked into the waves in an instant. Siwon, who had been watching that sight for a moment, took off his yellow raincoat hood and sat with his legs crossed on the portable chair Teolbo brought.
“Now, then, let’s begin.”
“Well….”
Purple lips, chilled cold by the icy sea breeze and rainwater, moved.
“I-I also haven’t been an action captain for long, so I couldn’t attend executive meetings many times but….”
When it seemed the story would be somewhat long, Siwon fumbled in his pants pocket, feeling like yawning. The cigarette pack was completely empty, so as he smacked his lips, Teolbo held out a cigarette from beside him.
Instead of answering, Siwon patted Teolbo’s shoulder, lit the cigarette, and waited for the action captain’s next words while scattering acrid smoke into the air.
“Choi Jeongcheol said he wants the Kwonmyeonghoe Boss’s, that is, your head, Kwon Siwon.”
“My head?”
At the unexpected words, Siwon pointed to himself and asked. The action captain nodded with a serious expression.
“If they don’t want to expel you, they can just say they don’t want to. Why specifically the Boss’s head…?”
Teolbo, who had been listening, also looked down at Siwon with an absurd face. Had a new rule been created that you had to offer the Boss’s head to be expelled from the Cartel?
“What was shared in the last meeting as Kwon Siwon’s new weakness is your lover. I heard you cherished and loved your wife tremendously before. Your male concubine, no… that lover would also be quite close to you, so they said if we target that bastard, we could easily kill you.”
“Ha….”
At the action captain’s words, Siwon covered his eyes with his palm. Half right and half wrong. It was true that he trusted his wife, but Lee Seongyeom is neither a male concubine nor a lover. He’s even less his weakness.
It’s just that the rumor spread wrongly because he took care of him a bit so the kids’ tutor wouldn’t die from being caught up in a useless fight.
“Who was the first to report that I have a male lover? I’m very displeased that such a rumor spread. Even though I’m like this, I’m a married man and a father… I really want to know who it is.”
Right. That bastard is the culprit who made things complicated, so let’s catch and kill him first.
At Siwon’s gaze, more full of madness than ever, the action captain blinked in confusion.
“The Boss told us?”
“So who’s the person who tipped off Choi Jeongcheol?”
“That’s the Boss.”
“…Ha, never mind. It must be one of the executives. Then what did the Cartel promise to do if you eliminate Kwonmyeonghoe?”
“They said they’d give us the weapons distribution rights guaranteed by the alliance…!”
The action captain belatedly twisted and bit his lips while gauging Siwon’s mood. It seemed his tension had briefly loosened during the earlier conversation with Siwon. Without realizing it, he had been smoothly revealing the organization’s confidential matters.
Siwon stood up from his seat with the half-smoked cigarette in his mouth.
“Everyone worked hard.”
A sense of dismay crossed the action captain’s face at the atmosphere of suddenly ending the interrogation. Although he had disclosed the affairs of the Dogang faction and the Cartel, he smiled awkwardly with the desperate hope that he might still be able to set foot on land again.
“Um, then what about me….”
“Oh oh, wait a minute. Oh Cheon!”
Siwon briefly raised his hand and gestured to Oh Cheon in the wheelhouse, jerking his thumb behind his head a couple of times.
“Let’s go back!”
Understanding that signal, Oh Cheon smiled and nodded. When Lee Cheon turned off all the lamps just then, the boat bathed in moonlight made a loud engine sound.
At that engine sound, strength drained from the arms of the action captain gripping the drum.
That’s it. I can return safely alive!
“What are you doing? Hurry up and open it.”
Lee Cheon, who entered the wheelhouse, said while taking off his raincoat. Oh Cheon approached the lever standing tall in the center of the instrument panel and pulled the long rod hard with both hands.
Splash!
A rusty drum floated on the sea surface, then soon disappeared, swept away by the waves. Siwon watched that spot, threw his cigarette to it, and went inside the boat.
