Chapter 12

As the tirade dragged on, Yu Jeong-ham and the operatives let out carefully controlled breaths. The heat was so suffocating that even swallowing air turned the stomach, sweat running without pause. But Noh Pil-gyu loved holding court before subordinates with the veins in his neck bulging, so nobody could step away.

He sat on his fat ass drinking expensive liquor under the excuse of official duty while men in the field cooked in the dirt. Watching him force his fabricated heroics down their throats was nauseating.

Fortunately, Gwichang had planned ahead. Four vehicles were parked just outside the holographic camera’s blind spots with their doors open and the air conditioning blasting toward the formation. Without those occasional breaths of cold air, someone would almost certainly have collapsed from heatstroke.

The clearing felt like a sauna hotter than the human body. By 2:40 p.m., even Yu Jeong-ham—born in the hottest city in the country—was dripping as though he had just stepped from a shower, and the back of Gwichang’s T-shirt was soaked through. Yet absorbing Noh Pil-gyu’s drunken rambling without showing a trace of disgust might have been the most monstrous thing about him.

—“Sir, it is time to attend the banquet.”

Normally the man would have rambled another half hour, but an aide leaned in to whisper that it was time for a banquet. With his face already red from drinking, a banquet clearly meant more alcohol. Sure enough, his round cheeks lifted in satisfaction as he wagged a thick finger.

—“Have the progress report finalized down to the letter so I can review it the moment I return.”

*Read thoroughly, my ass.* The bastard hated text more than he hated biting his own tongue. Everyone present was thinking the same thing, but ending the call now was miracle enough to make them swallow the complaint. *Grrrk.* A chair scraped harshly backward, and Noh Pil-gyu disappeared from the hologram.

Fsssh.

Gwichang dismissed the ranks with a low rumble. “At ease.”

Waving his arm toward the operatives, Jeong-ham called out, “Hey! Go crowd into the cars, and half of you head down to the lodging below. You’ll catch heatstroke out here.”

The instant Yu Jeong-ham followed the command with an order of his own, the men—some already shirtless, others violently fanning their collars—piled into the vehicles on either side. Huge bodies crammed shoulder to shoulder as doors slammed shut around the precious cold air. Suffering in the same furnace himself, Jeong-ham gestured toward a separate idling vehicle and offered it to Gwichang.

“Man, this heat is downright savage,” Jeong-ham remarked. “Why don’t you cool off a bit before we head back into the neighborhood?”

They were still only in an empty clearing below the village. When Yu Jeong-ham switched off the auxiliary device, the holographic backdrop of the Sangjin-gu redevelopment zone vanished. Gwichang took a bottle of water, uncapped it, poured the entire thing over his head, and shook out his soaked hair. Water streamed down the back of his neck and disappeared into his shirt.

Gwichang wiped water from his eyes, asking, “Have you figured out the deployment for the guys tomorrow?”

“Yes, sir,” Jeong-ham replied deferentially. “Since our guys are combing their way up from the bottom anyway, the only place left for him to run is toward the top. Still… with this brutal heat, could Lee Hee-joong really have survived three whole days?”

Gwichang countered coldly, “By now, that bastard’s already bolted. Tomorrow, we’re hunting the son of a bitch who helped him.”

“Right…” Jeong-ham nodded slowly.

Yesterday Gwichang had only theorized that the runner had already made it down the mountain. Now he sounded certain. Once again, he had sprinted several steps ahead in his deductions without bothering to explain any of them. *He could at least keep me in the loop.* Yu Jeong-ham edged closer. *It’s hot. Back off.* At the quiet growl, he immediately retreated.

“You mean there’s someone else besides Geum Seoul?” Jeong-ham inquired.

A cold sneer twisted Gwichang’s mouth. “You call that a fucking question? If you’ve got too much tongue in your mouth, chew on it with your molars.”

Gwichang was certain. Without an accomplice, there was no sensible way Lee Hee-joong could have slipped cleanly out of the trap and vanished for days. Someone in this miserable town was helping him escape—or hiding him outright.

Lee Hee-joong was an outsider, so local sentiment was unlikely to explain it. Money was the obvious motive. Whatever the truth, they needed it uncovered by tomorrow. Iljang Trading’s real thugs were already tearing through the city in search of Lee Hee-joong, and once Noh Pil-gyu returned to Seoul the day after tomorrow, moving under his nose would become far harder. Gwichang roughly swept his wet black hair back and put on his sunglasses.

Thud.

Yu Jeong-ham swung open the rear door of the heavily tinted Humvee and a blade of cold air spilled into the heat. Gwichang did not get in. He slipped a hand-rolled cigarette from its case, caught it between his teeth, and frowned faintly before turning toward Jeong-ham.

“Hey.”

Jeong-ham turned around. “Sir?”

“Where is Geum Seoul right now?” Gwichang demanded.

Jeong-ham froze, realizing he had lost track. “…Ah.”

Only then did Yu Jeong-ham realize they had lost track of him. The acoustic racket had been silent throughout the entire call with Noh Pil-gyu. With nearly every operative summoned to the clearing to appear on screen, no one had been left to tail Geum Seoul. Just as promised, the boy had somehow bought them more than an hour and a half of silence—and everyone had become so absorbed in deceiving Noh Pil-gyu that no one had asked how.

Whoosh.

Instantly turning his back on the vehicle, Gwichang strode toward a nearby dirt bike, tearing off his sunglasses and tossing them carelessly to the ground. Scooping them up from two paces behind, Yu Jeong-ham bolted toward the remaining bike while flicking on his radio.

“All units assemble at the clearing! Turn the vehicles around!”

—Copy that. Understood.

It was hardly a wild leap to suspect Geum Seoul had used the window to contact the hidden Lee Hee-joong. The fact that a neighborhood errand boy knew how to stop the broadcast was suspicious on its own. If he could silence it whenever he wanted simply because he ‘knew everything about the neighborhood,’ why had he spent years walking around with cheap cotton jammed in his ears?

The timing smelled just as bad. When Gwichang’s unit first arrived, the village had been quiet. Now the speakers had erupted as though on cue—and the one person who knew how to stop them was the same person suspected of hiding Lee Hee-joong. Was Geum Seoul tied to Noh Pil-gyu? To Gwak Chun-young?

“We’re taking the dirt bikes ahead, so follow behind with the three-wheelers mixed in!”

—Turning vehicles around. ETA to rendezvous point is one hundred eighty-five seconds.

They were standing at the outer perimeter, where the road narrowed enough to stop full-sized vehicles. Two mud-splattered dirt bikes roared to life and lunged up the rough mountain track, their engines sounding ready to tear themselves apart.

Vroooom.

Red dust exploded behind the bikes and clouded the air. Gwichang never looked back to see whether Yu Jeong-ham could keep up. He lowered his center of gravity over the handlebars, and the machine carved up the steep track like a hunting animal.

Skrrrrt.

Eight minutes. Gwichang cut hard around a massive boulder and crushed the brakes. The rear wheel screamed through dark earth, spraying gravel as the bike swung sideways. He locked the front brake as well, brought the machine shuddering to a halt, then dumped it as though it were scrap metal and flung his helmet into the dirt in the same motion. *Crack.* Something inside snapped. The helmet bounced twice and rolled still.

Screeech.

Already five paces behind the leading man, Yu Jeong-ham brought his own machine to a halt. Parking the bike far more gently than his boss and pulling off his helmet, he scrambled after him.

Tap.

“What is it, sir?” Jeong-ham asked, panting as he caught up.

Yet there was no need to run. The moment Gwichang stepped into the suffocatingly narrow alleyway of the village, he froze in his tracks. Yu Jeong-ham pulled up beside him with a bewildered expression.

The heat was savage enough to soak clothing through. Yu Jeong-ham, panting with sweat running down his face as though he had dunked it in water, squinted along Gwichang’s line of sight—then craned his head upward.

“…”

“Wait, what the fuck is that?” Yu Jeong-ham blurted in disbelief.

The boxy concrete building at the center of the neighborhood. The upper floor with laundry strung outside. The junk-strewn rooftop, its broken wire fence standing in for a railing. Above even that, the little eave around the iron roof door. And at the very edge stood Geum Seoul, dangerously balanced, still prodding a long pole toward the antenna fixed to a pointed steel spike. *Squeak—scrape.*

He was stretched onto his toes, both arms extended as high as they would go. Even from the ground his posture looked dangerous, his clothes pasted to his body with sweat as if he had been dragged from a river. At the highest point of the wretched village, beneath a merciless thirty-eight-degree sun, Geum Seoul had held that punishing position for an hour and forty-five minutes.

A dry breath escaped Gwichang. “Ha.”

Everything had a reason. Every effect had a cause. Gwichang had spent his life learning that truth. He had met more killers than he could count and listened to just as many alibis, excuses, and justifications. Religion. Conviction. Revenge. Blood. Love. Emotion. Every act had a root.

Geum Seoul should have been no different. He had spent his life running errands for scraps worth a few hundred won; money was the measure attached to every movement. Cheap labor for cheap coins. Nothing more. Someone who had converted every breath into currency since childhood ought to understand the value of risk better than anyone. Geum Seoul himself had said that ‘the price depends on what the errand is.’ So by that logic, he was risking his life on this rooftop because Gwichang had offered a hundred times his usual fee.

“…What kind of lunatic is that kid?” Gwichang muttered under his breath.

Still, a thin thread of instinct kept scratching at Gwichang: the one-percent possibility that money did not explain all of it. He knew indulging the curiosity would probably reveal nothing remarkable. That tiny doubt moved his feet anyway.

Gwichang turned to the approaching unit. “Uh… wait. Never mind. Stand down, all of you. Take a break.”

—Sir? Yes, sir. We’ll dismiss the units.

With Yu Jeong-ham barking orders into the radio beside him, Gwichang entered the building. The interior was still muggy, but at least the walls blocked the sun’s needle-sharp heat. He took the stairs in long strides, passed the level of Geum Seoul’s room, climbed the final flight, and shoved open the heavy iron roof door.

Screeech.

Two steps through the doorway, Gwichang turned. An iron ladder leaned steeply against the raised roof structure. Above it, Geum Seoul remained locked in exactly the same position. The stance made looking down nearly impossible, so he had apparently been unable to see who entered despite the door’s screech. From this close, the extent of his exhaustion was obvious. Sweat had soaked him as thoroughly as the storm had days earlier, dripping from matted hair onto clothes glued to his skin.

“Geum Seoul,” Gwichang called toward the roof.

The low voice belonged to Gwichang, cutting cleanly through the dead air.

“Yes.”

The answer came so faintly that his voice seemed close to dissolving.

Gwichang ordered firmly, “Let go.”

He had clearly gone beyond his limit. His whole body trembled like a leaf, and the instant permission came, Geum Seoul released the pole. His hands simply dropped.

Kzzzt. Kzzz-kzzzt.

Skrrrk—screeech. Screeech.

The acoustic shriek burst back to life at once, flooding the entire neighborhood. The relay box appeared to be connected directly to this point. *Thud.* Geum Seoul disappeared from sight beyond the ledge with the sound of dead weight hitting concrete. For one instant Gwichang wondered if he had died, but a ragged thread of breathing told him the boy had only collapsed.

Seoul wheezed from above. “Did… did it finish well? That important… business of yours.”

“Yeah.”

Gwichang could not see the boy’s face, so he stepped back. Worn shoes and violently trembling shins came into view, the shaking severe enough to resemble convulsions from sunstroke. He shoved the leaning ladder aside. *Grrrk.* Metal scraped heavily over concrete.

“Come down,” Gwichang commanded, extending an arm.

The bare rooftop concrete baked like a furnace. Heat shimmered visibly above the slab where Geum Seoul lay collapsed.

There was no practical reason for Gwichang to have come up himself. Yet he had climbed onto a rooftop hot enough to scorch bare flesh, shoved the ladder aside, and now waited while Geum Seoul forced his trembling body upright. The boy looked between the ladder’s end and the tall man standing below.

“…”

Geum Seoul blinked through sweat. Droplets clung to his lashes and spilled down his cheeks like tears, striking the gray concrete in dark specks that almost seemed to hiss. They were not tears. His entire face was flushed from the heat. He swung his legs over the ledge. Gwichang raised both hands. Instead of reaching for the ladder, Geum Seoul stretched his arms toward him and let his body fall.

Flump.

Gwichang caught the featherlight body and lowered him easily to the floor. It was like the other time, when he had lifted him through the window. Even drenched in sweat, Geum Seoul still carried that faint, verdant scent of deep green. This time, however, his skin was scalding hot.