PHUW 108

Chief Ahn, for once, brought up something personal with Shin Chaehee. When he laughed awkwardly, a little bashful, and looked into the distance, Shin Chaehee drew on all the improvisational skills she had honed as a lawyer.

“The President was just asking after you too, Chief Ahn.”

In truth, that had never happened. But Shin Chaehee pretended it had.

“Really?”

Chief Ahn’s face lit up.

They said these days romance was in vogue among middle-aged men and women whose children were grown. A law firm president who had divorced young and raised a daughter, and a conglomerate vice chairman’s right-hand man who had lived his whole life as a bachelor, had somehow ended up dating. But whatever had happened, lately they were in the middle of a cold war. To the daughter, who was both subordinate and child to the prickly law firm president dragging personal matters into the office, life felt like walking on thin ice. She just wished they would make peace.

“These days she’s into hiking. She keeps grumbling she has no one to go with. Don’t you like hiking too, Chief Ahn?”

No one to go with, huh. When the president went hiking, her daughter and every ambition-driven junior employee had to trail after her. Back when the romance was in full swing, the weekend power trips had stopped, but once the cold war began, they returned like clockwork. And why hiking, not golf? Other senior lawyers and colleagues were hounding her to please do something about the president, making life hell.

“I do like hiking.”

“Give her a call sometime then. I’ll be going now. Take care.”

“Alright. See you later.”

What the Hyeonsan family most feared had come to pass. The household’s time bomb had been lit. Both of them, working in their separate domains to keep Hyeonsan stable, prayed this time at least it would not end in murder.

***

The hands gripping the wheel of the lit time bomb tightened. So did the foot pressing the accelerator. Jeong Mok was driving at a speed no sane man would attempt on a national road.

The calm he had regained at the station stopped his hands from shaking. But it left him only more tense. The security team kept sending him specific addresses. They had even found the van. But where shock and fear had gone, only pure rage remained.

Ahn Haeri had been kidnapped. By a lunatic who had killed a colleague and dumped him on the roadside for all to see.

If it had been tied to Lee Sangjin, that would be one thing. But if it was for ransom, then Haeri was hurt again because of him.

Thud!

Unable to hold it in, he slammed the steering wheel. The car, detecting the impact, sounded a warning. He switched off the safety alert system. It had been nagging him with overspeed warnings for a while anyway.

The last outgoing call from Lee Ducheol’s phone had pinged from an area about ten minutes’ drive from Haeri’s neighborhood. Patrolmen from the nearest substation were canvassing the sparse row of shops nearby. Since their findings streamed straight to Chief Ahn, Jeong Mok did not need to step in himself.

Instead, he fixed his attention on his personal phone mounted on the dashboard. Gom-i was not far from where Lee Ducheol’s phone had gone dead.

Back when he installed a tracking app on Ahn Haeri’s phone, he had also fitted Gom-i’s leash with a small, high-performance GPS unit robust enough for military use. Because the dog had once been abandoned, and because anything could happen, he had discussed it with Haeri and attached it. If Haeri had been with Gom-i, they would have found him quickly.

He followed Gom-i’s signal on the phone screen as closely as he could. From the start, he had a groundless belief that Gom-i would find Haeri no matter what. As the van’s movements overlapped with the dog’s, that belief turned into near certainty.

At first he sped along the national road, then veered onto a paved backstreet, and eventually onto a dirt road. The luxury sedan, low to the ground and no SUV, scraped harshly against the uneven surface. Even that drivable path soon ran out.

He got out. Phone in hand, he turned in every direction, trying to gauge where Gom-i had gone.

In the middle of the weed-choked field beneath a low hill, something gleamed. A white van with a green round license plate. His hair stood on end.

“Haeri!”

He ran toward it like a madman. But the van was empty. No one inside. No Gom-i either.

“Ahn Haeri! Haeri!”

He shouted as he scanned the area. His cries bounced off the surrounding hills, echoing back at him in mockery.

Woof!

A dog barked from the far side of the hill. A deep, heavy bark unique to a large animal. It was Gom-i.

“Gom! Gom-i! Where are you!”

Woof! Woof!

Following the sound, Jeong Mok began climbing the hill. At the same time, he called Chief Ahn.

–Yes, Vice Chairman.

“You’re following my car’s location, right? I found the abandoned vehicle. It has to be them.”

–It’s dangerous to pursue alone. Please, wait for us.

“Forget it. Gom-i seems to know something. I’ll follow him. From now on, track my personal phone.”

–Vice Chairman, please……

He cut the call without listening.

Woof!

At first Gom-i’s barking came from the far side of the hill, then climbed higher, and soon drew closer, directly toward him. That meant the dog was crossing the hill. Jeong Mok, meanwhile, scrambled upward.

The luxury designer shoes on his feet had soles of leather, made only with indoor living in mind. To the upper-class who walked on carpet and marble, soft leather soles were the height of comfort. But for climbing a hill, they were the worst. They had less grip than rubber slippers. On rock, his feet quickly grew sore, and on soil or grass, he slipped.

“Shit.”

After sliding a couple of times, he finally took them off. To abandon them meant running barefoot once he came back down the hill, and that would be worse than running in shoes. So he couldn’t discard them, he had to carry them. He cursed his own stupidity again for not changing footwear at the station and dragged himself up the hill on hands and feet.

When he reached halfway up, a thin mountain trail appeared. He put his shoes back on and half-ran along the ridge. He was sweating a lot, just as he was about to strip off his stifling jacket, he saw a black figure in the distance.

Woof woof!

It was Gom-i. Abandoning the attempt to take off his clothes, he sprinted toward him. Gom-i charged forward at full speed toward him, then suddenly stopped. Once the dog was sure Jeong Mok was following, he spun around and ran back the way he had come.

‘Smart dog.’

He would run ahead, stop to check Jeong Mok was keeping up, then run again. Jeong Mok’s breath was burning his throat, but he didn’t slow down.

After running a long way along the ridge, Gom-i suddenly veered off the path and slid down between the trees, overgrown brush, and old fallen leaves like a sled. At the bottom was a concrete road not marked on any map, likely laid down with private money.

Across the road stretched a green mesh fence meant to block deer. The wooden posts fixing it in place had rotted and snapped, half collapsed, reeking of neglect. Beyond the fence was a field of medicinal trees, overgrown and webbed with spiders. It looked like land once farmed and abandoned.

Gom-i darted under the trees and through the overgrowth. Jeong Mok, his jacket thrown over his head, forced his way through the thorny branches.

Past the field stood an abandoned hut. Rusted farm tools and scraps of equipment lay scattered, the remnants of the former owner’s work. The eaves, heavy with mold and dust, were blanketed in white cobwebs.

Gom-i did not go closer. He stopped nearby, tongue lolling as he panted. Jeong Mok held his breath and observed the hut. The weeds in front were wild and uncut, but there was a three-wheeled motorcycle, the kind elderly farmers often modified. It was brand new.

From a blind spot he couldn’t see, voices drifted out. Jeong Mok eased himself back and gestured at Gom-i.

“They should be here by now. Why aren’t they?”

“Navigation took them off course, that’s why.”

There were two men. One voice was familiar. It was the one he had spoken with on the phone. He didn’t hear Haeri’s voice. Jeong Mok pulled out his phone and texted Chief Ahn, then switched it to silent.

“Are there a lot of dogs around here? They were barking like crazy earlier, but it’s gone quiet now.”

“People take in pups ‘cause they’re cute, then dump them when they can’t raise them. This whole area’s crawling with strays. It’s a Dog town.”

“From the sound of it, that was a huge dog. Could it have followed us?”

“Come on, no way it tracked us all the way here.”

“Right?”

“Yeah.”

While they chatted, Jeong Mok wrapped his torn, cobwebbed, jacket around his left arm and tied it with the sleeve. He loosened his tie and wound it around his right hand. Then he signaled Gom-i with his eyes. The clever dog fully grasped his intent.

Woof!

“Ugh!”

The men were startled by the dog sudden bark. Jeong Mok lunged from behind.

Thud!

Like a rugby player, he shot forward and slammed his shoulder into one man’s back. As the man toppled, Gom-i leapt onto him.

“Aaagh!”

The furious giant dog savaged the man pinned beneath him. Once down, bare hands couldn’t stop Gom-i. Ever since what had happened with Mr. Jang, the dog had grown sharper, more vicious. Blood sprayed quickly.

“You bastard!”

The other man drew a sashimi knife and swung it. But Jeong Mok had already wrapped his left arm. He caught the arc of the blade on his padded arm and forced it upward, closing the distance. The silk shredded with a rip, and his arm was cut, but it gave him the opening to strike the man’s jaw with a solid fist.

Crack!

The blow landed and the man staggered back. Jeong Mok ducked, then snapped upward, smashing his jaw again. Saliva, blood, and broken teeth flew.