Chapter 39

Knock, knock.

At the sound of knocking, Gye Do-hyeop, who had been slouched in his chair gazing at a floating holographic display, lifted his head. Evening was already setting in, but inside the windowless office of the Deputy Director, not a single ray of sunlight penetrated, making it difficult to judge the hour. The person opening the door and stepping inside was Yu Jeong-ham. After dropping Geum Seoul off at home and reporting straight to headquarters to analyze the ledger, he was only now showing his face.

“Report,” Gye Do-hyeop ordered.

Yu Jeong-ham grimaced. “If we try to force this open even a fraction, I think the entire memory is rigged to wipe.”

“‘You think’?” Gye Do-hyeop countered coldly.

Jeong-ham straightened up. “…It will wipe.”

Detesting speculative phrasing, Gye Do-hyeop withdrew his chilly glare. The rectangular device was sealed so seamlessly that not even a fingernail could slip between its seams. He lightly pressed his thumb against the circular glass inset at the center. A fraction more pressure from his fingertip would shatter the glass, obliterating the critical ledger forever.

“How does it open?” Gye Do-hyeop asked.

Jeong-ham shifted his weight uncomfortably. “Well, that’s where it gets a bit peculiar…”

Never possessing the patience to ask twice, Gye Do-hyeop snapped, “Ah, fuck, did I hire you to beat around the bush? What are you, a pressure cooker?”

Confronted with a superior who refused to tolerate even a sentence of preamble, Yu Jeong-ham hastily shook his head. “My apologies,” he said rapidly. “There’s a sensor built into the glass inset in the middle.”

Those cold pupils settled once more on the slim rectangular prism. It resembled matte stainless steel, yet each press of his thumb produced a subtly different tactile response. The surface was flawless, without so much as a scratch. It looked like some advanced composite, but even radiological scans returned nothing except solid black, revealing no hint of the interior. Fox-like bastard. Watching his superior worry the device beneath his thumb, Yu Jeong-ham’s throat tightened at the thought that one careless slip might crush the whole thing.

“The thing is, they say its sensor configuration is identical to the machines used for gemstone grading.”

Tilting his chin upward as his dark brows drew slightly together, Gye Do-hyeop remarked, “So he rigged it so that a specific gem has to be placed on top to read the ledger.”

“Yes, sir,” Jeong-ham confirmed. “We need to investigate further to determine the exact criteria.”

It was certainly the sort of scheme a gemstone-obsessed collector would devise. Drawing a long breath, Gye Do-hyeop handed the device back. Taking his legs off the desk, he pushed himself up from his chair. Normally, he would have remained in the office until results were produced, but today he needed to return home to check on his newly hired errand boy.

“Round up our best infiltrators—we’re going to have to raid that bastard’s house,” Gye Do-hyeop ordered coldly.

Jeong-ham gave a crisp salute. “Understood. I’ll make the arrangements.”

“Ah, fuck, I hate working.”

He looked thoroughly annoyed to death. Regardless, the bastard had undoubtedly used a gem in his personal possession as the key. In the worst-case scenario, breaking into his residence would be unavoidable. The operational risk was massive, so discovering an alternative before resorting to burglary would be ideal. Given how tightly those mobster thugs swarmed together, finding an empty manor was pure fantasy; it meant a full-scale frontal assault was inevitable. Watching the back of Yu Jeong-ham’s head as his subordinate returned to his station, Gye Do-hyeop stepped into the executive elevator.

“Have a good evening, Deputy Director,” the security officer said with a crisp bow.

Gye Do-hyeop shot him an irritated scowl. “Do you know me? Don’t talk to me.”

Grimacing at the polite bow offered by the lobby security detail holding the front door, Gye Do-hyeop strode down the wide stone steps leading from the entrance. In the black sedan waiting directly out front, only the driver’s seat was occupied, with no one daring to open doors for him. The moment he pulled open the rear door and climbed inside, the sedan glided smoothly onto the roadway.

Thank you for everything. Please take care.

Geum Seoul’s parting words gnawed at the back of his neck like a vicious bite of pure rage. Standing there all pure, refreshing, and tragic on his own, bathed in that scorching summer glare.

He knew the young man wasn’t brazen enough to establish a permanent nest in someone else’s home. Strictly speaking, Gye Do-hyeop hadn’t formed any concrete resolution to keep living with Geum Seoul indefinitely either. Even so, the fact that the youth had naturally assumed he would leave him behind in that gutter left him utterly incredulous.

It was not exactly an age in which people wept over pure romance, but Gye Do-hyeop had still been Geum Seoul’s first sexual partner. Shouldn’t that have complicated things at least a little? Shouldn’t the kid have harbored some faint expectation, some awkward attachment? Instead, Seoul had greedily soaked up the first dominant alpha pheromones in his life that did not make him nauseous, then wiped his mouth clean and prepared to walk away. The result left Gye Do-hyeop with the bizarre, irritating sensation of having been used and discarded.

Tap, tap.

The toe of his boot tapped against the back of the front seat twice. It signaled a foul mood. Knowing that the only correct move was to drop his passenger off swiftly and vanish from sight, the subordinate gripping the wheel pressed hard down on the accelerator. Gliding without the slightest wobble, the heavy chassis cut through the darkness, speeding along the wide avenue.

Noh Pil-gyu had been suspiciously quiet all day. The bastard normally shoved his nose into whatever his subordinates were doing the moment he had a spare second, so the complete lack of questions could only mean he was off scheming by himself. In all likelihood, he was brewing some spectacularly stupid disaster. It would have been infinitely better if he had simply sat on his ass and enjoyed his authority until retirement, but Noh Pil-gyu was burdened with the worst possible combination: useless ambition and warped conviction. Gye Do-hyeop needed to cut him out before either one became fatal.

For months, Gye Do-hyeop had ground through tedious busywork while waiting for a single opening. After nearly a year, the hilt of the blade was finally in his hand: the transaction ledger linking Gwak Chun-young to Noh Pil-gyu. Once he tore the contents out of it, he could swing that blade with lethal force. The image of pressing its cold edge to Noh Pil-gyu’s greasy throat brought a faint glint of bloodlust to his eyes and a cruel curve to his mouth.

Click.

Of course, before executing that, he fully intended to indulge in his pleasures. The vehicle came to a stop without the slightest jerk from the brakes. Aware of his superior’s temperament, the driver kept his mouth shut, omitting even a routine farewell. The man always moved on his own accord without needing to be told they had arrived. Pushing open the door and stepping out, Gye Do-hyeop lengthened his stride.

Beep, beep.

Punching in the passcode, he opened the front door, where a faint trace of pheromones lingering in the foyer barely signaled another presence.

The living room, adjusted to Gye Do-hyeop’s preferred lighting, sat dim and empty beneath the auxiliary lamps. Eight-thirty in the evening. With every window sealed behind pitch-black blackout curtains, the apartment seemed permanently overcast regardless of the hour. He stripped off the windbreaker over his short-sleeved shirt, unbuckled his holster, and pushed open the master bedroom door. Empty. Without pausing, he continued down the hall.

“Acting up is his specialty,” Gye Do-hyeop muttered to the empty air.

Narrowing his eyes, he cursed under his breath. Geum Seoul was fast asleep on the bed in the guest room. He had evidently used that room ever since being brought to the apartment during Gye Do-hyeop’s multi-day absence. Even though Gye Do-hyeop had relocated him to the master bedroom the morning after their intimate night, the youth had miraculously crawled right back into the small room.

Confirming the soft, rhythmic breaths of deep sleep, Gye Do-hyeop quietly pulled the door shut. He decided to let him sleep a little longer until he finished showering. Interrogating him wouldn’t be too late then. As he stepped into the bathroom, the warm vanity lights illuminated automatically.

—Please call me when you are available.

A message from Yu Jeong-ham had arrived while he was in the shower. Communications after hours were almost exclusively reserved for urgent matters. Draping a towel around his neck, Gye Do-hyeop stepped out of the bathroom completely naked. The cool conditioned air, a sharp contrast to the scalding steam, quickly cooled his skin. Grabbing a bottle of chilled water from the refrigerator, he quenched his dry throat.

Flump.

Sinking onto the sofa, he rubbed his dripping hair with the towel. He glanced briefly toward the guest room, but there was no sign of movement. Picking up the tablet resting on the coffee table, he tapped the screen a few times, instantly projecting a crisp blue-and-white hologram into the air before him, accompanied by Yu Jeong-ham’s voice.

Yu Jeong-ham’s voice chimed through the speaker. —“Deputy Director, transmitting the technical team’s report now.”

“Put it up,” Gye Do-hyeop ordered.

Files populated the interface in neat succession. If he scooped up the sleeping youth and carried him into the master bedroom, would Geum Seoul wrap his arms around his neck? Would he ask where they were going? Or perhaps, trapped in a daze, he wouldn’t even be able to pry his eyes open. Taking another gulp of water, Gye Do-hyeop went to set the bottle down, only to freeze and reach out his arm further. What the hell was that?

“…”

Wedged into a tight seam of the leather sofa was a tiny, rounded gemstone. Evidently a souvenir from Geum Seoul during their last intimate encounter. The memory of Seoul’s pale, glistening skin as tears streamed down his cheeks beneath him surged back, whetting his appetite.

Jeong-ham’s voice chimed in over the comms. —“The good news is that the sensor isn’t keyed to one specific gemstone alone.”

“Go on,” Gye Do-hyeop prompted.

Erasing the fleeting smirk from his face, Gye Do-hyeop rolled the tiny gem across his palm.

—“The threshold is Grade A,” Jeong-ham explained. “They say it requires a Grade A-4 or higher placed on the sensor to unlock.”

He nodded vaguely. A condition of that magnitude made the gemstone collector’s bizarre obsession somewhat understandable. Grade A gemstones were treated as national treasures. Even the specimen currently showcased in the national museum was merely a Grade 5, making anything higher, like an A-4, virtually unheard of. Leaning back against the sofa cushions, Gye Do-hyeop paused before speaking.

Gye Do-hyeop instructed curtly, “First, have the tech team investigate ways to crack it without wiping the data. I’ll look into overseas channels myself, so you prepare to raid Gwak Chun-young’s manor. You said the security on his display vault was tight as hell, didn’t you?”

Many countries possessed no Grade A gemstones at all. Vast territories and enormous populations increased the statistical chance of producing one, yet those same countries often suffered brutal wealth inequality, allowing people to live and die without ever learning the true grade of the stones they produced. One nation known to possess three Grade A gems, for example, ranked among the wealthiest superpowers in the world. South Korea, at present, was not a Grade A-holding country.

Yet Gwak Chun-young had one in his clutches. Raiding Gwak Chun-young and seizing the stone from his residence was far more practical than searching abroad. The operational risks of hunting for a gem across international channels and alerting Noh Pil-gyu versus mounting a deliberate heist on Gwak Chun-young were roughly comparable.

—“Understood, sir,” Jeong-ham acknowledged.

Sorting through his thoughts, Gye Do-hyeop picked up the gem he had been rolling between his fingers, suddenly frowning. Was Geum Seoul’s gem always this color?

—“I’ll report back if anything unusual arises.”

“Hey,” Gye Do-hyeop barked.

—“Yes, Deputy Director?”

Stopping Yu Jeong-ham before he could terminate the feed, Gye Do-hyeop lifted the remote and brightened the living room illumination. It had been too dark to notice until now, but the gem resting on his palm exhibited a faint yet distinctly pink hue. Had it been like that before?

Gye Do-hyeop leaned toward the sensor pad. “I’m scanning a gem right now. Check its grade.”

—“Pardon? Ah, yes, sir. Send it over,” Jeong-ham replied.

Gye Do-hyeop placed the tiny grain-like gemstone onto the tablet surface, a shimmering blue circle tracing beneath the stone. While the data transmitted, he called out to his subordinate again. “You still have Geum Seoul’s gem from back then, don’t you?”

—“Yes, sir. I have it with me,” Jeong-ham confirmed.

Gye Do-hyeop nodded slowly.

Beep.

Jeong-ham tapped his screen. “The results are in.”

A popup window materialized across the white hologram.

● SYSTEM

Gemstone Appraisal Certificate

Appraisal No.: GSR-079881LQ-P

Clarity: T-3

Grade Classification: D-2

—“By the way, sir,” Jeong-ham ventured, “whose gemstone is this?”

Completely ignoring the inquiry, Gye Do-hyeop pulled up a file and displayed it directly adjacent. It was the previous appraisal certificate for the gem he had recovered in that village.

● SYSTEM

Gemstone Appraisal Certificate

Appraisal No.: GSR-066192LX-J

Clarity: X-1

Grade Classification: D-10

“…That’s more like it,” Gye Do-hyeop rumbled with satisfaction.

Laughter burst from his lips before he could stop it. An omega’s condition could cause gemstone quality to fluctuate, but three grades was generally considered the outer limit. A meteoric jump of eight full levels in such a short span was unheard of. Leaving Yu Jeong-ham standing there, still waiting for an explanation, Gye Do-hyeop threw his head back and laughed openly. As expected, Geum Seoul never failed to amuse him.