He dragged the claw end of the hammer across Bulgom’s chin, and Bulgom’s teeth chattered like he was shaking from the cold.
“Go on, say it. Tell me you lied to me again.”
“Hyung…….”
He looked like he wanted to beg for forgiveness on the spot, but with both arms bound he couldn’t move an inch, so he threw everything he had into making his eyes do all the groveling. The sheer audacity of the tactic drew a hollow laugh out of Gang. That reaction made the cold sweat start pouring down Bulgom’s face, and the sight of it was almost pitiable.
“Bulgom. Read me the office motto hanging behind me. Out loud.”
The new phrase recently mounted on what had been a bare concrete wall read:
“Live honestly! That’s what it says!”
Gang had never properly held a pencil in his life, yet he’d had his subordinates bring him ink and hanji paper and written it out himself. Calling the wildly scrawled handwriting clean would be a stretch — but the meaning came through with perfect clarity, and that was more than satisfying enough. Which was exactly why he’d had it custom-framed and put up. He’d been having them dust it every day without fail, and the motto gleamed without a single speck on it.
“Let’s live honestly, shall we. Hm?”
The words came out naturally as he turned back to Bulgom — and then it struck him, unsettlingly, that he sounded just like his boyfriend. Or rather, his ex-boyfriend. His mood sank in an instant.
He clenched his jaw so hard the muscles in his cheek bulged — and Bulgom, as if making up his mind, squeezed his eyes shut and shouted.
“I, i-it’s, it’s, it’s true! It’s not a lie! I confirmed it myself!”
That was when the rest of the organization members went berserk.
*
The office was thick with dust in a way that made him question whether it had been swept at all.
“I keep saying, open a window…….”
Gang looked at the men rolling around in the dust pit with a blank expression, then got to his feet and pushed the half-open office window all the way up. He sat himself on the old aluminum window frame, turning his back on the chaos inside, and gazed out.
With no tall buildings in the way, the alleyways below were visible down to every detail. A cold wind blew past with a chill that felt like real autumn was finally coming.
Some time passed. Dark clouds gathered, and rain began to fall drop by drop. The shower soaked the whole neighborhood in no time. Bulgom was truly getting beaten to dust in the rain.
Gang reached into his trouser pocket, pulled out a cigarette, and stuck it between his lips. Mangchi, having somehow made it out of the chaos in one piece, lit it for him. Gang bit down on the capsule and drew in deep — the acrid taste traveled all the way down his throat.
“Hyung, isn’t this a pheromone cigarette?”
“Yeah. I told them to give me whatever was selling well and they handed me these.”
He exhaled a stream of smoke, the cigarette pinched between his index and middle fingers.
They said it was a cigarette that perfectly replicates alpha pheromones…… but pheromones are nothing special. Just this level of scent and people are going wild and jumping each other? That thought sent a sudden surge of anger through him. You were lured away from me by something as trivial as this smell?
If anything, the scent he’d smelled before was better than this. Though of course, claiming to perfectly replicate it was surely an exaggeration.
“I thought you’d quit for good…….”
“Oh, look, Bulgom’s making a run for it.”
“Ah, hey!”
He sent the one who’d started to lecture him back into the fray.
Honestly, cigarettes gave him no pleasure. They tasted bad and cost too much. When he was young he’d started because it seemed cool for no real reason — and now……
He found himself chewing on the filter for no reason, then picked up a document sitting on the desk. It was the very reason Bulgom was currently getting beaten mercilessly.
Printed on A4 paper was a photo of a man grinning broadly, standing next to a woman who appeared to be a dominant omega. The photos attached behind it showed the omega leaving from his office, captured from the back. The image quality was poor and the omega’s face wasn’t visible — but the laughing face was unmistakably that man. It was a smile Gang recognized. Specifically…… it resembled the smile on his face when, sometime in the past, Gang had boldly declared he would quit smoking for him.
A flash of irritation hit — and Gang pressed the lit end of the cigarette out against the man’s smiling face.
Smoking again was his own private declaration of sorts — a sign that he was completely done with him. A one-man resolve to go back to who he was before they ever met.
But the moment his attention wandered even slightly, his head filled right back up with thoughts of Kang Jaeho. A jumble of fun memories, happy memories, memories of tumbling around in bed together. Every good memory from those days now stabbed at him like a sharpened blade.
On top of that — Bulgom’s updated report on the man, the evidence that proved his boyfriend had been cheating on him with an omega who was his fiancée — that made things even harder, and that went without saying.
He said he loved me. Looked at me with eyes that said I was the only thing that mattered. What the — a fiancée? He was so beside himself that words failed him entirely.
“That’s enough.”
Sensing things were about to go too far and someone was going to end up at a funeral, Gang stepped in to stop it — and found Bulgom sitting there pitifully like a little mermaid, his shirt hanging in shreds.
“Has Director Kang’s hospital history been confirmed?”
“That’s…… we confirmed that he visited the hospital a few times, but the reason for it, not yet…….”
“The fiancée’s identity?”
“That’s also not yet…….”
“Haah—.”
It seemed like Kang Jaeho’s protection was holding firm — outside of knowing the fiancée was a dominant omega, they hadn’t been able to get any information on her at all. On top of that, they still couldn’t find out what he had been hospitalized for or what was wrong with him — even after shaking down every visitor who had come to the hospital that day, hospital staff, and people in Director Kang’s inner circle. Just how much money had the man funneled into keeping things quiet……? He didn’t think Bulgom was lying. The head of the Gangho faction, Director Kang — Kang Jaeho — was more than capable of it.
“Right. It’s only been a week…… look into it more. And bring me the perfumes.”
“Yes!”
Right now, with nothing on the man to work with, the only clear lead was the scent Gang had smelled with his own nose. His subordinates clearly wanted to stop the expensive and seemingly pointless perfume shopping — but there was nothing to be done about it for now. If they didn’t like it, they could go and find out something — anything — about Director Kang.
Bulgom, pulling his tattered shirt back up around himself, hauled over the shopping bags that had been flung aside. Gang waved away the lingering pheromone cigarette smell with a hand.
Then, all of a sudden, a fundamental doubt crept in. Was it actually a perfume, what he’d smelled? Because the person Jaeho was cheating with turned out to be not a beta as he’d assumed, but a dominant omega of all things.
“Could it be pheromones, not perfume……?”
Following the thinning cigarette smoke with his eyes, the words slipped out of him, and they were almost laughable.
How could a beta like him smell an omega’s pheromones? An omega who happened to have a hobby of wearing perfume made far more sense. But then again, it didn’t quite add up — why would an omega bother wearing perfume when they had their own impressive pheromones?
And if that wasn’t it either, then it meant Kang Jaeho was cheating not just with the omega, but with a beta too.
“Damn it, does that even make sense?!”
“Right, that’s what I’m saying! Against all that improbable odds, I went and got all of these!”
Gang was picturing the sight of men and women of all ages, omegas, betas, and alphas alike, trailing endlessly in Kang Jaeho’s wake — and if Bulgom hadn’t shoved the perfumes in front of his face at that moment, Gang probably would have gone straight to the man and put a fist in his face. Regardless of any facts to the contrary.
“This one’s a limited edition that was incredibly hard to get, and this one is so famous I was running all over town looking for a department store that still had stock — thought I was going to die. And this one, the scent is actually incredible—.”
Like a salesman possessed, Bulgom upended the shopping bags onto Gang’s desk and launched into his pitch. Half perfume presentation, half complaints about everything he’d had to go through to get them.
“Skip it. Just open them.”
“Yes!”
The limited edition, said to be the hardest to find in the entire world—
“Not it. Pass.”
The one with such legendary fame it was selling at a premium due to low stock—
“Does absolutely nothing for me. Next.”
Next. Next. Next.
Gang watched as Bulgom’s face grew progressively more haggard with each cap he opened. The discarded perfumes were scooped up by the other members, who spritzed them here and there. Seeing everyone inhale deeply and say they smelled good, Gang supposed they were at least well-regarded.
“Hyung, please don’t just sniff it, would you mind actually taking the time to properly appreciate the scent—!”
“There’s nothing to appreciate. Completely different.”
The exact quality of that sensual scent didn’t come back to him in sharp detail, but he could tell with certainty that none of these were it.
“This is really the last one. They say this one perfectly replicates the pheromones of an incredibly popular alpha actor right now, and it’s genuinely indistinguishable— hey, hey.”
He snatched the bottle from Bulgom’s hands before he could start on whatever story he’d lined up and spritzed it into the air. Of everything tested so far, this was the closest — but—
“Yeah. Cheap. Put it away.”
“Nooooo!”
Bulgom clutched his head in despair — and the guys around him, who had been kicking him just moments ago, were now patting his shoulders in consolation. Gang acknowledged the hard work, but wrong was wrong.
“Keep looking. Whether it’s the perfume or something on that omega fiancée or anything at all about Director Kang — don’t miss a single thing!”
“Yes! We’ll do our best to find it!”
Bulgom, who had been crumpled on the floor again in misery, and the men around him all shot to their feet and shouted with sharp, focused voices.
Gang slapped Bulgom’s chest with his palm — the torn shirt kept flapping in front of his face — grinned, and said:
“Let’s hit the field, boys. It’s been a while.”
When the weather was this gloomy, nothing worked better for lifting a bad mood than getting the body moving.
*
“I’m here—.”
He pushed open the heavy door with both hands to reveal cheap burgundy wallpaper dressed up to look luxurious, and the doormen standing before it. The smell of air freshener sprayed to cover the characteristic underground odor hit his nose. He found himself comparing every scent he caught now to that nameless fragrance. As expected, the air freshener was a complete loss.
This was the one place under his jurisdiction that ran a drinking establishment.
Gang gave a perfunctory reply to the men bowing at ninety degrees and walked down the corridor lined with plush carpet. The ones following behind were just three — Bulgom, Mangchi, and Gamja.
“Oh, hyung! What brings you here……!”
A green-haired head popped out from somewhere and blocked his path. This was the one who managed this place more devotedly than Gang himself did. Small in build but with a temper that more than made up for it — no concerns about leaving things in his hands.
“Weather was nice today. Thought I’d do a deep clean.”
“Hahaha— you’re funny, hyung. It’s pouring outside like the sky’s got holes in it, what do you mean the weather’s nice.”
“Less dust flying around, isn’t that nice?”
“Hyu-uung— business is way too— wa-ay too good right now, please, no big scenes—.”
“Alright. I’ll keep it gentle.”
Gang ignored the one dancing around in front of him and kept walking.
In truth, it wasn’t unusual for Yuseong faction guys to cross into Gangho faction territory and drink themselves senseless. Annoying as it was, as long as they didn’t cause serious trouble, there was no justification for beating up people who were contributing to revenue. There was even a certain satisfaction sometimes in slipping extra cards out of the pockets of the ones who’d drunk themselves stupid and running a few hundred more.
He walked past the blaring music and peals of laughter ringing out even through the closed doors. Without a moment’s hesitation, Gang kicked open the door of the most secluded room at the very back.
“Oh my, President Oh— long time no see.”
A quick count put the number at seven. Just the right amount for a light workout. As they shrieked at him about what the hell he was doing bursting in while they were drinking at this early hour, Gang explained to them with a pleasant smile.
“Just here to collect on the tab—.”
The sight of their ugly faces going pale with shock stoked a fire inside him that got him running. Gang walked into the room, grabbed the heaviest, biggest bottle on the table, and launched himself at the man seated at the head of the table — President Oh.
CLANG!
He brought the bottle down on the man’s head without an ounce of mercy.
“AAAAAAGH!”
Wow~! Perfect score! Amazing!
The karaoke machine’s cheerful announcement rang out at impeccably timed coincidence, filling the room. With the fanfare blaring right along with it, his heart started pounding harder and harder. Lucky day for you, isn’t it.
Whether these guys actually had an unpaid tab at his place or not — he hadn’t been briefed on that and had no idea. Their faces, however, were making a compelling argument. The look of a thief, every single one of them.
The real justification for beating the living daylights out of them was…… simply that he felt like it.
