CTL 16

The one running from afar, waving their hand enthusiastically, was none other than Baek Cheongha. Laughing as he ran towards him, he looked just like a colt, so thrilled about something.

“Awesome! Total win!”

Baek Cheongha bustled about beside him, endlessly repeating words like ‘awesome’ and ‘win’ while laughing, before grabbing him and heading for the underground parking garage. Then, he tapped the wheels of the car, telling him to hurry up and open the door to his piece of junk. When Seohwi let out a small sigh and opened the door, Baek Cheongha quickly got into the passenger seat and fastened his seatbelt.

“Where are we going.”

To the words spoken as he started the engine, Baek Cheongha replied with a smile, “Home.”

“Whose home?”

“I have to see Seoyoung!”

“……”

My insides were in turmoil today, so I wanted to spend it quietly if possible, but that was a lost cause. It seemed it was a lost cause.

“Oppa, but who was that woman from earlier? Your girlfriend?”

Sure enough, not long after we started driving, he began to run his mouth as if it had a motor. On top of that, when did he even see Manager Kim Jia?

“No.”

“No? But it was totally a girlfriend vibe.”

“……”

“She’s your girlfriend, right?”

“I said no.”

At the denial, Baek Cheongha looked at him with a sly expression. He showed no signs of backing down despite Seohwi’s curt replies. Baek Cheongha is the only person who doesn’t flinch when he’s treated coldly. Whenever Seohwi acts aloof and cold, he would say strange things like he doesn’t know gratitude, or that oppa was alive thanks to him.

“You’re being so mean, really? You’re alive thanks to me, don’t you think you’re being too cold to me?”

“When was I ever alive thanks to you.”

As expected, he was saying the same thing again. Despite Seohwi’s assertion that there was, unequivocally, no such time, Baek Cheongha stubbornly insisted.

“I’m telling you, you really wouldn’t have been able to live like that if it weren’t for me!”

“When, exactly.”

“Wow… I can’t even tell you the details, this is seriously driving me crazy!”

Baek Cheongha hit his own forehead with a deeply wronged expression, but Seohwi paid it no mind. This wasn’t the first or second time he had been this boisterous. It was nothing new.

“Ah, so who is that woman! You went on a date, right?”

“…She asked to have a meal, so we did. That’s all.”

Once again, it was Seohwi who lost to that persistence. So he told a half-truth, but the quick-witted Baek Cheongha snorted, going, “Heh-heung.”

“Seeing this, you rejected her again, didn’t you?”

“……”

“Why do you keep rejecting them? Are you really impotent?”

“……I told you I’m not.”

Ah, my stomach is in knots and my ears are ringing. I should have just kicked him out instead of giving him a ride. I regretted it.

“You got scolded by Seoyoung for saying that last time, too.”

“Ah, seriously, you just try telling Seoyoung, huh?”

“……”

“She may not look it, but she absolutely can’t stand seeing her oppa get bad-mouthed, you know? It’s absurd. Seriously, oppa, if you tell Seoyoung, I won’t let you off. How can a person be so petty, huh? Don’t be like that.”

He’s the one who did wrong, yet he shamelessly resorts to threats. Seohwi was so dumbfounded that he kept his lips tightly sealed.

“I mean, Christmas is already next week, are you going to spend it alone again? Get a girlfriend! If you don’t want a girlfriend, then get a boyfriend! I’m not that narrow-minded, you know?”

“Not interested.”

Girlfriend, boyfriend, I don’t need any of them. In fact, in my current state of mind, it seemed like I would be at peace if only this guy, Baek Cheongha, wasn’t here.

“Ah, I’m telling you not to spend it lonely—”

“……”

“Yeah, that’s not true, is it? Seoyoung and Beomseon and I are going to hang out with oppa on Christmas again, right? We have to go play at the department store, right?”

“Please, just you guys go play on your own.”

He was being sincere. In fact, Seohwi had never once in his life wished for Baek Cheongha to hang out with him. He loathed it. A department store on Christmas. He really did not want to go.

“There are too many people. I’m not going.”

“But they said the Christmas edition donuts are coming out. Just for that one day. I have to eat them.”

“Then eat them.”

“Yep. You’re eating them too, oppa.”

“……”

Seohwi had no desire to eat any donuts. But his opinion was dismissed with incredible ease.

“I have to eat with my impotent oppa who has no girlfriend and no boyfriend. Don’t worry! I’ll buy you a donut! I can certainly buy a donut for an impotent guy!”

“Haa…”

His head was throbbing.

“Just eat among yourselves, please.”

“No.”

Even though he had said ‘please’ twice, Baek Cheongha, far from granting the request, just grinned and said.

“You have to go with us that day. That’s the only way to break that stubbornness.”

“……What?”

But then, Baek Cheongha suddenly said something strange.

“What stubbornness am I showing?”

“No, not you.”

Moreover, his way of speaking was strange too. He usually called him oppa, even while speaking cheekily, but now he was suddenly speaking to him informally, as if it were natural. He wasn’t even speaking in a frantic rush.

“……”

What’s this? I sneaked a glance at the suddenly composed Baek Cheongha, and he was staring straight ahead with an unreadable expression.

“…Who?”

“There is. A fool who doesn’t even think about the answer.”

“……”

“What’s the point of finding it over and over again, is what I’m saying… when they’re so clueless.”

He leaned his arm on the car window and muttered.

“I feel so sorry for him that I’m thinking of helping just one more time. I feel like I’m going to get swept up in it again anyway. He’s always like that. He just sweeps up everything around him.”

At that moment, as if on cue, they were stopped at a red light. Seohwi stared blankly at Baek Cheongha. Strangely, he didn’t seem like the person he always saw. The Baek Cheongha he knew was an endlessly light and bubbly person, but somehow, right now, he seemed like a different person, no… a different being.

“What are you staring at?”

“……”

As he stared blankly at the person who had only ever been familiar but now felt excessively strange, Baek Cheongha grinned.

“That guy is enduring my karma better than I thought, so I’m living very happily right now. So this is my repayment. Like a tiger repaying a kindness? So there’s no need to look at me like that.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“You just keep living without knowing. He’d probably want that too.”

“……”

Yaaawn… Baek Cheongha let out a yawn, then crossed his arms and closed his eyes.

“I’m going to sleep, so drive carefully. Wake me up when we get there.”

“……”

He turned his head away as if to cut off Seohwi, who wanted to ask what he was talking about. And then, he did not give any reply to Seohwi’s calls.

✧ ✧ ✧

“Aren’t you going to say hello? I think Manager Kim Jia just recognized you.”

Secretary Im said, trotting to keep up with Yoongeon as he walked away.

“Why bother.”

“Aww, still. Knowing our Ms. Jia’s personality, she’ll be terribly hurt, you know?”

As if I care. My insides were completely twisted. Yoongeon lowered his eyes, filled with a sense of injustice he couldn’t even voice.

Yoongeon, who hadn’t expected to see Manager Kim Jia and Seohwi here, was well and truly torn up inside. It was a scene he didn’t want to see, but the moment he saw it, he knew. The two of them, talking and eating together, suited each other very well and were the very picture of an ideal couple.

When he had accidentally seen them earlier, Yoongeon had found himself staring blankly without realizing it. Unlike the two of them, who were sitting and laughing in a warm, bright, and beautiful place, Yoongeon stood stock-still outside in the cold and dark, and it felt as if… as if someone was scolding him to know his place.

‘……’

Standing there, Yoongeon was brutally aware of his own position.

That was the future Seohwi could have had if Yoongeon hadn’t died in his past life. Unlike Yoongeon’s life (生), which had been a path of thorns where he was lonely with no one by his side, Seohwi would have always been in a place like that, laughing with the person he loved and warm people who suited him. But because he was petty and childish and ended up dying, he never had the chance to see it.

…I didn’t want to see it. Seohwi living happily without me.

“So, where did you say Ko Yoonchul is now?”

But that was all. In the first place, Seohwi was not his, so there was no need to feel these emotions. Yoongeon tried to cut off his thoughts about him and asked.

“According to the internal audit team, he went to Gangwon Casino.”

Why would the bastard who was passed out on drugs until this morning suddenly go there? It wasn’t that he couldn’t guess, but he hadn’t thought he would go today. He had thought that if he were to go anywhere, he’d crawl to the lounge bar. Since that was the only place he could do drugs with peace of mind.

“It seems the frequency of his visits to Gangwon Casino has increased, don’t you think? Shall I begin the reports?”

Yoongeon nodded his head. Secretary Im soon got into the driver’s seat after Yoongeon sat down, having opened the back seat door. He spoke to Secretary Im, who was starting the engine.

“Have them report once every hour. And contact me immediately if there are any unusual developments.”

“Yes. I will relay that to them.”

“By the way,” said Secretary Im, glancing at Yoongeon through the rearview mirror.

“The Vice President seems sloppy, but he’s quite careful when it comes to drugs. It seems we’ll have to get inside that place to catch a proper scene.”

The place Secretary Im was talking about was the lounge bar.

“Of course, I still don’t quite understand why we need to go as far as to catch that scene.”

“……”

He had already secured the route of Ko Yoonchul’s slush funds and had even prepared the data to be handed over to the prosecution once the investigation began.

Like others, Ko Yoonchul used laundered funds from various sources to increase his own wealth.

But that much wasn’t a major problem. Things like real estate or art pieces were things rich people would typically collect. Tax issues might be involved, but things like that didn’t attract much attention. Yoongeon wanted to ruin Ko Yoonchul to the point where he could never make a social comeback, so his plan was to find and get his hands on all the illegal activities he was engaged in.

That was how he found the lounge bar.

There, Ko Yoonchul engaged in not only drugs but also prostitution. Actually, it was questionable whether it could be called prostitution. He did force money on them, but it was clearly rape.

To catch him in the act, Yoongeon had spent time trying to approach him since last year. But the only route through which Ko Yoonchul raped people and took drugs was the VVIP-exclusive lounge bar, so he hadn’t been able to get his hands on any solid evidence yet. There was a limit to moving stealthily without being noticed to get close.

Of course, it wasn’t that he hadn’t tried to get in. But it was a members-only establishment, and a gathering place for people hostile to Yoongeon, so naturally, they wouldn’t accept him. Besides, they checked for listening devices and surveillance cameras every day, so it was impossible to install such things.

“It’s also difficult to send someone in under disguise. The registration process is extremely strict. You know that. We should consider it practically impossible.”

They were so cautious about accepting new members that every attempt had failed, and at those words, Yoongeon, frowning, fell into thought.

“We just need to catch that bastard, the manager. Everything goes through that bastard.”

The manager of the lounge bar was its de facto operator and the one who arranged all the illegal activities, but no one knew his face properly. So, if they could just find out his face, everything would be smooth sailing from there.

“They say he might be connected to gangsters, but we don’t know who he is exactly. Because no one has succeeded in infiltrating.”

The place was excessively exclusive. To the extent that even though Yoongeon found out about the lounge bar last year and had been trying continuously, he still hadn’t been able to find out who the manager was.

“…Trying to send someone in as a member might have been the wrong choice from the start.”

“Pardon? But how else would we know what’s inside? There’s no way. The victims wouldn’t say anything either.”

In fact, about three months ago, unable to catch him in the act, Yoongeon had come up with a backup plan and found a victim who had been forcibly taken there. She was a rookie actress from a small agency who had been deceived by her agency’s CEO, who told her she needed to greet an investor, and ended up suffering a terrible ordeal.

At that time, Yoongeon had visited her in the hospital and said he would help. He said that if she wanted to report it, he would help her do so, and if she wanted to expose it, he would help her do that too. It was because if the victim came forward to report it and blow the case open, they could stir things up without needing to catch him in the act. But the victim refused his offer.

Yoongeon suddenly looked out the window. On a large electronic billboard, there was an advertisement featuring the rookie actress who had refused his offer, wearing clothes with the logo of a foreign luxury brand.

[Designer P’s Muse]

Yoongeon averted his gaze after looking at the text written on one side of the ad screen.

“They say she goes there periodically. Voluntarily.”

Secretary Im, perhaps looking at the same ad, added.

“The most recent time she went was a month ago, and not long ago, news of her Hollywood debut came out.”

“……”

Yoongeon nodded his head without much interest. In any case, he could take down Ko Yoonchul with just what he had steadily accumulated so far. It was just a little insufficient for his plan to ruin him to the point of no return.

“Maybe I should go myself.”

“…Pardon?”

If it was difficult to send someone else, how about going himself? That thought came to him at that very moment. At Yoongeon’s words, Secretary Im looked at him as if asking what kind of nonsense he was spouting.

“No, are those people crazy? If you go, do you think they’ll even let you in?”

“At least I won’t be kicked out helplessly.”

“Ah… so what you’re saying now is that you’re going to go through all that trouble on purpose, is that it? Aww, if that’s the case, you should have told me beforehand.”

Secretary Im started being sarcastic again, but Yoongeon paid him no mind.

“Go there.”

The reason he hadn’t moved himself and had used other people until now was that he hadn’t met Seohwi yet. He couldn’t make any risky moves when he hadn’t even met him. That’s why he had acted passively. But now he had met Seohwi, and Yoongeon usually died soon after meeting Seohwi, so it was time to be a little bolder.

“Hurry up.”

“…Is there really a need for that? It’s not like we’re being chased by anyone.”

Secretary Im tilted his head, puzzled by Yoongeon, who had been slowly gathering evidence and was now suddenly in a rush, but Yoongeon didn’t answer. Even if he told him that he would die soon now that he had met Seohwi, he wouldn’t believe him anyway.

Whatever it was, since it was a place where people gathered, there was bound to be a weak point. Besides, now that Ko Yoonchul was at Gangwon Casino, wouldn’t it be alright to go for a bit of reconnaissance? At his command, Secretary Im turned the steering wheel and grumbled quietly.

An hour later, Yoongeon stood in front of an old brick building, looking up and lighting a cigarette. He had already sent Secretary Im, who had been grumbling about having to work overtime again, on his way. That guy was helpful, but usually a pain in the neck, so it was more comfortable not to keep him around for long.

“Hoo…”

White smoke rose, cutting through the cold winter air. And beyond it, a small three-story building. Not many people knew what this place, with its worn-out brick exterior that hadn’t even been properly repaired, was. Yoongeon took a few more drags of smoke before stubbing out the cigarette with his foot and heading inside. As he stepped up the stairs, thick dust scattered.

Passing the first and second floors, he reached the third floor, where he saw an old, un-nailed door. After touching the front pocket of his coat for a moment, Yoongeon pulled the door open, only to find another door inside.

“This one is the real one.”

Unlike the door he had just opened, this one was quite heavy. After knocking a few times, Yoongeon confirmed that no sound was leaking out from inside. At this rate, knocking from the outside would be useless.

Examining the pitch-black door, he noticed a very small button. It was so small it would be hard to spot if one wasn’t looking for it. After pressing the button and waiting for a long while, a rather fierce-looking man came out. The man looked Yoongeon up and down with a puzzled expression before recognizing him.

“…Ko Yoongeon Executive Director?”

Seeing that he knew him, he wasn’t a nobody. When Yoongeon looked at him with an indifferent face, the man asked once more if he was the Executive Director.

‘He’s not the manager.’

This man lacked confidence. Hesitating despite it being information that the manager of a secret lounge bar should naturally know meant that he wasn’t the manager. Watching the man who was still fidgeting with a dubious look, Yoongeon tapped the man’s cheek with the back of his hand.

“Why do you keep calling me.”

“Ah, that is…”

“But you know. Before asking who I am, shouldn’t you explain who you are first?”

“……”