In other words, sisters to one man…
“No, no matter what, is that even possible? Legally?”
“There are loopholes that make it all possible. Rather than the law, people’s eyes are harder to overcome! Fortunately, magic happened that made that difficult relationship possible!”
The Director winked at Son Yowan and then gestured at the floor. Son Yowan, who had been thinking things like Haha, total makjang inwardly, didn’t understand the meaning of that gesture at first, but realized the meaning a few beats later and opened his eyes wide.
“Wait, Hyungnim? You’re saying it happened here…”
“Come, come!”
At that moment, the Director was already shouting loudly.
“Everyone, the hero has arrived!”
The place the Director brought Son Yowan to was a corner of Manghyang. More precisely, a small building in the middle of a forest, isolated from other buildings. Son Yowan, who had actively enjoyed Manghyang and wandered around here and there more than anyone, naturally knew this place too, but…
Under the blue sky, the surroundings where particularly old trees stood were entirely red and yellow. Among them, between a noticeably large ginkgo tree and a snowball bush densely hung with red round berries, there was a building that had almost collapsed. So… it was a ruin.
“Uh, Director Hyungnim?”
It wasn’t just some conceptual ruin that was appropriately ominous, but a real ruin with collapsed walls and a sunken roof. Son Yowan called out while following the Director who was going through the pile of stones inside the collapsed wall.
“Did the others say they’d be there? Could it be somewhere else nearby instead of here? Here the roof and walls have completely collapsed, so there’s absolutely no space for people…”
“It’s here.”
“…There isn’t.”
Son Yowan muttered as he discovered an entrance completely buried in weeds and piles of stones.
The entrance the Director “excavated” was an ordinary square door. Only the fact that it was attached to the floor was special. It seemed to lead underground.
“Don’t worry, Yohan-gun. It’s not like a tunnel, just the basement of this building normally. The ground level collapsed, but the basement is intact.”
With one hand opening the door and the other pointing to the space below the door, indicating he’d go in first, the Director explained.
As he said, below the door was the basement space of an ordinary house. As soon as they entered, the cool air characteristic of basements wrapped around their skin.
“Everyone, are you disappointed in me? I shouted until my throat was hoarse, but how come not a single person came out to greet me?”
The Director made a playful remark to the people gathered in the basement space. The people gathered there were naturally the VIPs of Manghyang. The General, Teacher, Magician. And.
That Hyungnim came too.
The Musician was also there, but, well, he was just there.
“I didn’t take your wife by force. That bitch, she, she instigated it first. She said let’s trap you and live together. She said you were boring and too stiff, so let’s pretend to kill you in an accident this time and sp-, split the money we get.”
The Musician, who had appeared looking like a wreck in just a few days, was huddled in a corner away from other people, continuously muttering something while curled up. Seeing that, it seemed his condition, which had become strange after being harshly dealt with by the Detective before, hadn’t improved at all.
But is he seeing things?
“Oh my, his repertoire has changed already.”
As Son Yowan was thinking while hearing the Musician’s muttering, the Director clicked his tongue.
“That person, really. If he’s going to act like a human radio, he should at least choose pleasant stories. Every single one smells of blood and knives… In a place where there are elderly people too.”
“Who are you treating as an old person?”
The Teacher, who seemed to be pondering whether to glare at the new madman muttering nonsense (the Musician) or the traditional eyesore with sharp edges (Son Yowan), immediately threw a barbed rebuke at the Director.
“Haha, you misunderstand, Teacher-nim. Naturally, you’re not elderly, Teacher-nim. And of course, our Commander is the same!”
The Director quickly escaped the Teacher’s net with his oiled tongue while not forgetting to curry favor with the General, the eldest (he even winked in that direction).
“I was talking about these young people. Our Yohan-gun and Actor-gun. And also… Oh my, Magician-nim, your face has become half its size already. So, is Noona still not well? Still no visits allowed?”
Instead of answering, the Magician just slightly raised the corner of her lips then immediately lowered it. It was a smile that looked extremely tired.
“Should’ve just let that bastard lie down. When proper conversation isn’t even possible, it’s the same as that child’s grandmother. Yet he insisted on bringing him.”
Not missing the material to pick a fight, the Teacher grumbled meticulously.
“Stop the idle chatter.”
Then the old woman who had been listening to people talking from behind spoke. Then everyone stopped talking and paid attention to the old woman.
“Child.”
The old woman, the General, addressed Son Yowan. Son Yowan perceptively took out the “item” from his breast and placed it on the table in the middle of the basement.
“Sorry to keep you waiting. I found it. Is this correct?”
Several people’s gazes fixed on the round old-fashioned radio Son Yowan had placed on the table. The General glanced at the Director, and the Director immediately nodded.
“AD-65.”
The General nodded.
“Bring it here.”
The Director tried to grab the radio.
“Yohan-gun?”
But before that, Son Yowan picked the radio back up.
“You brat, what are you doing!”
The Teacher immediately got angry, but Son Yowan ignored him and looked straight at the General with a smile in his eyes.
A dog that barks at the slightest breeze is the weakest specimen, so there’s no need to deal with it.
So to reduce wasted time, it was right to speak directly to that person.
“Let’s settle the service fee first, General Noona?”
“I thought I resolved your questions last time?”
“Did you? Ah. If it’s about Captain So’s position in Goyo, I heard it, I heard it. But that was a down payment, and now I’ve properly completed a job, so we need to discuss the payment for that.”
“What are you curious about?”
Son Yowan rolled his eyes around while smoothly rubbing the rounded part of the radio body in his hand with his fingertips.
“I am filled with the desire to contribute what little strength I have to the great work that Noona and Hyungnims are doing.”
“You’re not the shy type, so why start with the buttering up?”
“However, if I can’t access the core, no matter how hard I work until my bones shatter, isn’t it the truth of the world that I’ll only live as a replaceable screw or spring and get replaced?”
Son Yowan briefly grabbed the dial that inputs the frequency, then let go and grinned again.
“Not that I need to know every secret I absolutely shouldn’t know, Noona. This is my guess, but have you all perhaps been here before?”
A brief silence fell. Gazes were exchanged among the VIPs, excluding the Magician, Actor, and the out-of-his-mind Musician.
“Yes, we have, child.”
“Commander!”
Surprisingly, the person who readily agreed was the General, and the person who called out to the General in surprise was the Teacher.
Without even looking at the Teacher, the General immediately continued.
“He’s manpower doing work we can’t do ourselves. If so, that child should know what he needs to know. And I’d like to set terms with you while we’re at it.”
“Hahaha, Noona, between us what need for such…”
“I’ll report Chairman Son. I’ll use all my power to ensure he’s thoroughly ruined. Isn’t that what you want? I don’t know how much you know about me or the other people here, but among those here, there’s no one better qualified than me at tearing down others.”
When the General’s proposal fell, the young people looked shocked. Especially the Actor glanced at Son Yowan repeatedly, unable to settle down. He looked more restless himself, not knowing how Son Yowan would react.
Finally, Son Yowan moved.
Clasp!
“As expected of Noona! I already saw that you’re an extraordinary person! An arrow that pierces through a person’s deepest inner thoughts! If such a thing exists, wouldn’t it be our Noona!”
Son Yowan, who had suddenly grabbed the General’s wrinkled hand, shook it vigorously.
“I’m counting on you. Please take care of me. Wow, I was going to try to get on the good side of the Noonas and Hyungnims here so they’d please take my side when I go up against that damn old man, and it’s being resolved like this.”
Not only that, Son Yowan went around and shook hands with the other people (sometimes forcibly) before finally putting the radio back down on the table. Unlike before, he even performed putting his hands completely away in an exaggeratedly ostentatious manner.
“Now, now. Look here. We’re one team now, aren’t we?”
The Director asked back, confused.
“No, you, what. What was it? Didn’t you ask something?”
“Yep, so our generous Noona told us that you all have been here before.”
“That, that’s it? Weren’t you trying to hear what happened then?”
“Hyungnim, why would I? I’m a busy person, you know?”
…Rather than that, he wasn’t really interested in other people’s business, but he said it that way for now. It looked better that way.
“You were checking our attitude.”
The General said.
“Ours.”
“Ah, I see.”
“Such impudence!”
“I’m the one who killed that bastard, that’s right! But anyone would’ve done the same as me! Isn’t taking the blame for the boss rather an honor? There’s no need for me to be grateful at all…!”
As the sounds mixed chaotically, the General stepped in to organize things this time too.
“As you said, you brought that special radio, so now we need to tune the frequency.”
As she said that, the General gave her gaze to you, that is, the Director. The Director stepped forward.
“Ah, then shall I try fiddling with it?”
Taking the radio, he turned the frequency adjustment dial this way and that while muttering. He seemed to be racking his brain.
“But I have no idea what special frequency The Godfather hid his message on. It’s not like before the World Funeral when numbers were simple and you could come across it by chance while turning…”
Radio frequencies that used to be displayed with numbers like 9○.8MHz, 8○.8MHz in the old days now used much more complex numbers. All radio frequency channels came under the Vigilante Corps’ management upon opening, and The Godfather’s direct Signal Management Bureau collected each channel’s frequency and separately assigned individual addresses to each frequency. So for ordinary people to listen to a specific frequency, they had to tune to the “safe address” assigned by the Signal Management Bureau, not the original frequency address.
That was the reason the Director was now struggling.
“Safety is good, but the address has to be a bit long.”
As he lamented, it was nearly impossible to accidentally tune to a specific frequency.
“Do any of you remember anything? Anything is fine, so please say it. Since The Godfather-nim would have created the address, it should be a number that has meaning simultaneously to us and The Godfather-nim. Something like that…”
“20○610261126.”
The General suddenly spoke.
“Is it some kind of date? 20○61026…”
Since no one was reacting, Son Yowan opened his mouth to first display his ingrained life wisdom (currying favor with those in power), but even he gradually slowed down from the middle.
“Uh…”
That was because, if the number the General had just uttered was a date, it was a date that people living in The Godfather’s territory could never not know.
“November 26th is, ‘The Day Hands Were Pressed’… isn’t it?”
The Day Hands Were Pressed.
Goeidam, where godam leaped out into reality and affected reality, were calamities. The reason The Godfather quickly organized the warlords scattered throughout this region and seized hegemony was because he had the means to suppress Goeidam, those wicked Imagined Beings.
Hands, that is, The Godfather’s greatest power, Goyo, which could press down ghosts or evil spirits that harm people and make them instantly silent.
The day The Godfather declared he had the ability to suppress Imagined Beings was exactly the date the General mentioned—precisely November 26th, The Day Hands Were Pressed.
To be continued in Volume 2.
