No matter how long Gyujin zoomed the map in and out and stared at it, the marked location never changed. After checking the building name, he narrowed his eyes.
“A movie theater?”
Why the hell would he be at a movie theater at this hour? Kwon Dajung wasn’t the type to go watch a movie by himself.
“Why’d he suddenly go there?”
Gyujin’s expression turned gravely serious. No matter how generously he tried to interpret it, something felt off. Kwon Dajung had gone to a movie theater alone? There was absolutely no way that suited his personality.
He wanted to know what Dajung was doing there, but he didn’t quite have the nerve to go check. What if he snooped around half-assedly and ended up running straight into him? No excuse in the world would make that look any less suspicious. He wasn’t curious enough to take that kind of risk just to find out.
Well, that’s not entirely true...
“Hmm...”
Gyujin spent a long time staring down the map as if engaged in a battle of wills with it. His thoughts kept tipping wildly back and forth, leaving him unable to decide. After agonizing over it for ages, he abruptly shot to his feet.
“I can just go take a quick look, can’t I?”
There was no one around to hear him, yet Gyujin still found himself making excuses aloud. Dajung was doing something completely unlike him, and he had even ditched work for it. How could Gyujin not be curious? He only had to go see for himself what Dajung had disappeared without a word to do. That was it. He would look, then slip away.
Decision made, Gyujin hurried to get ready to go out.
His destination was, naturally, the movie theater where Kwon Dajung was.
***
“P-please! Don’t kill me!”
The man staggered backward, drenched in cold sweat.
Kwon Dajung watched his terrified face without interest and crooked a finger.
“Aagh!”
With a single flick of Dajung’s hand, the man’s body went flying. He crashed to the floor with a shriek. Something invisible began pressing down on him, crushing and mangling his body.
“No! No, wait! Please! Kwon Dajung! You can’t do this to me!”
He thrashed desperately for his life.
Dajung stared at the screaming man for a moment, then tilted his head.
“That all you’ve got to say?”
“No! It wasn’t! Dajung! I-I’m sorry! I fucked up! I’ll do better! I’ll—agh!”
His back caved inward halfway through the sentence.
The man writhed in agony, but Dajung barely reacted. He murmured as if sighing.
“Then why’d you have to ram an innocent person with a car?”
If you didn’t want to die like this, you shouldn’t have started anything in the first place.
If they had simply left Yoon Gyujin alone, neither side would ever have needed to get ugly.
Murderous intent sharpened Dajung’s eyes.
“You ordered that operation, didn’t you? Do you even know who got hurt because of it?”
“Ghh...!”
“You touch what’s mine, you die. You should’ve learned that much first.”
The man shook his head frantically. Bloodshot eyes fixed on Dajung.
“I-I didn’t order it...! Seosan! It was Seosan’s order!”
At the name, somehow both unfamiliar and familiar, Dajung’s expression went cold.
Apparently reading hope in that reaction, the man’s voice gradually regained strength.
“It wasn’t me! It was Seosan! Seosan planned this whole operation to control you—!”
“I know.”
Crack.
The sickening sound of bone being crushed rang out with brutal clarity.
“Don’t feel cheated. I’ll send that bastard after you soon enough.”
The man’s screams clung wetly to Dajung’s eardrums.
He had fought like hell to look the other way because he hadn’t wanted to do this anymore, yet after all that, he had come full circle.
There was no point feeling bitter now.
Dajung had always known that the place beside Yoon Gyujin was more than someone like him deserved.
Leaving the bleeding man where he lay, Dajung slowly turned away.
He passed through the deathly silence and walked deeper into the studio apartment.
The room, barely over thirty square meters, looked as though a bomb had gone off inside it. Apparently the man had been packing in a hurry. His belongings were scattered everywhere, and a half-open suitcase lay abandoned among the mess.
It took Dajung no effort at all to find a laptop and a phone.
He was fiddling with the locked phone when the front door creaked open.
A familiar male voice followed from behind him.
“Wow, a person’s still a person... No matter what they did. Don’t you have any lingering affection for an old colleague at all, Kwon Dajung?”
Dajung ignored the faint reproach in his tone.
Letting Ko Hyeguk’s disapproving tongue-clicking go in one ear and out the other, he silently entered another password.
The fourth attempt failed.
The screen locked him out.
“I seem to remember Manager Lee used to be your teammate, too... Christ. Who’d ever want to be on the same side as you after seeing this...?”
“Shut the fuck up.”
At the icy snap, Hyeguk pouted.
Dajung raked a hand irritably through his hair and shoved the disabled phone into his pocket.
While he opened the laptop, Hyeguk stepped inside and looked around.
“Do we really need to go this far? If you keep doing things like this, it’ll blow up fast. People are going to hear about it...”
He nudged the suitcase on the floor with his foot.
Dajung gave a quiet scoff.
“You really think behaving nicely now would make a difference? You and I are both finished either way. There’s no road back.”
The plan to kill Manager Lee had come from Ko Hyeguk.
So had the location.
If they were talking betrayal, Hyeguk was in no better position than Dajung.
“Nope. I can still go back, actually. Don’t you know how double agents work? All I have to do is bring Seosan one solid piece of information and he’ll take me back. Opening up a road home would be easy.”
It was exactly the kind of shameless thing Ko Hyeguk would say.
Dajung kept typing without even looking at him.
“No, you can’t go back.”
“What?”
“I’m going to wipe that place out.”
Another incorrect PIN.
A curse slipped from Dajung’s mouth.
Finally losing patience, Hyeguk shoved him aside and snatched the laptop away.
“Works for me. I’m planning to wash my hands of all this and retire so I can finally live in peace.”
He carried the laptop over to the collapsed man.
The instant Hyeguk pressed the man’s finger against the laptop’s power button, the PIN lock vanished as if by magic.
Hyeguk turned toward Dajung with a triumphant look.
“And for that to happen, I suppose you’d better work hard and blow Seosan’s head off first.”
Dajung snatched the laptop away from him.
Hyeguk merely shrugged at the chilly response, completely unfazed.
“What? Am I wrong?”
“I said shut the fuck up.”
Dajung’s hand suddenly stopped as he searched through the laptop.
His eyes sharpened.
He had found a hidden file.
Inside the folder was a single spreadsheet named “List Cross-Check_ver.2.”
When he opened it, a long list filled the screen.
Dajung drummed his fingertips against the laptop as he studied the check marks in the remarks column.
Hyeguk, peering over from beside him, spoke up.
“That’s a lot of addresses. Think Seosan might be at one of them?”
“We’ll have to check.”
Dajung closed the laptop and tucked it under his arm.
He got to his feet and walked past Hyeguk toward the door.
“Check? You’re going to visit every single one?”
“Got a better idea?”
At the cold retort, Hyeguk smacked his lips.
They had obtained the list, but there was no guarantee Seosan’s base was among those addresses.
Just as Dajung had said, there was nothing to do but check them one by one.
“Still, this is going to be pretty dangerous... Word’s definitely going to spread...”
“You seriously want to start worrying about danger now—”
Dajung cut himself off and reached into his pocket.
The phone he had taken earlier was vibrating.
Text messages were pouring across the lock screen one after another.
[Target is leaving.]
[Standing by.]
[Awaiting instructions.]
[Moving out.]
[Do we grab the target now?]
Among the terse messages, one word stood out.
Target.
Dajung tapped the phone, only to be met with the password screen again.
He swore.
“What? What is it?”
Hyeguk tilted his head and came closer.
Without a word, Dajung held the phone out in front of him.
More messages kept arriving even then.
[Give the order and we’ll proceed immediately.]
[Target is on the move.]
Hyeguk read the ominous messages, eyes shifting slowly from side to side.
“...You think this ‘target’ could mean Gyujin?”
***
Gyujin’s resolve swayed like a reed for the entire taxi ride.
Half of him kept thinking, Do I really need to go this far? and wanted to turn around, while the other half kept insisting, Still, shouldn’t I at least check?
The two impulses tugged him back and forth relentlessly.
Kwon Dajung was an adult, more than old enough to take care of himself. Whatever he might be hiding, there was nothing admirable about secretly following him around and digging into it.
Maybe I should just turn back now.
After the conversation at the hospital, unresolved emotions had already piled up between them layer upon layer.
Wouldn’t it be better to go home now instead of adding another misunderstanding on top of everything else?
But before he could act on the decision, the taxi began to slow.
Gyujin swept his gaze across the unfamiliar buildings and swallowed a sigh.
After all that agonizing, they were already almost there.
He paid the fare and hurried out of the taxi.
Adjusting his cap, Gyujin looked around.
Perhaps because it was the middle of a weekday afternoon, there were surprisingly few people around for such a busy district.
According to the app, Kwon Dajung was on the opposite side of the crosswalk.
Gyujin had no trouble spotting the movie theater building he had come to find.