Chapter 23

Beep.

Entering the office, Gwichang greeted him coldly. “Yes, Director. You called.”

Returning from his trip, Noh Pil-gyu appeared to have gained several kilos. Pompously patting his bulging paunch, he dished out nonsensical directives as usual.

“Aargh, fucking quotas day in and day out,” Noh Pil-gyu grumbled. “The media is rotten to the core… one of these days I’ll have to fucking replace the whole lot of them.”

Gwichang stared deadpan at his babbling superior. Due to depart for Namhae tomorrow, the man was already salivating over regional delicacies. Gluttonous yet incompetent, loathing subordinates more capable than himself while lusting for promotions, beholding such staggering idiocy made Gwichang feel as if he would break out in hives.

“Make sure you draft a detailed briefing on what you’ll be doing while I’m down in Namhae.”

“Understood,” Gwichang replied impassively.

Waving him away like a pest, Noh Pil-gyu barked, “Get out.”

Bowing his head with barely a pretense of respect, Gwichang exited the Director’s office in a crooked stride. The foul stench of alcohol pricked his nostrils. The man was a paranoid pest, perpetually suspicious that subordinates were plotting betrayal. The moment he stepped into the corridor, Yu Jeong-ham fell into step behind him.

“Deputy Director. I’ve prepared the itinerary report.”

It was the signal. Entering his office as the sensor slid the door open, Gwichang settled into his black leather executive chair. Reclining his torso almost horizontal, he propped his long legs atop the mahogany desk.

Toss.

His half-rimmed glasses landed carelessly upon the polished wood.

Gwichang settled into his chair. “Begin.”

“Just as you surmised, Deputy Director, they couldn’t find the ledger. Gwak Chun-young made a move moments ago. We received intel that his men visited Boss Lee’s wake, asking probing questions.”

“Boss Lee? Lee Dae-chang?” Gwichang questioned.

“Yes, sir,” Yu Jeong-ham confirmed.

Lee Dae-chang had been the broker who brought Lee Hee-joong to Park Gil-pyeong’s village. Tracing his movements after slaughtering Lee Hee-joong confirmed that Gwak Chun-young had yet to retrieve the ledger.

Gwichang nodded slowly. “They’ll be entering that neighborhood shortly.”

Yu Jeong-ham added, “Once they lean on his associates and discover Boss Lee frequented Park Gil-pyeong’s auctions, it’ll be a matter of days.”

While Lee Dae-chang’s demise had been staged as an accident, a syndicate boss like Gwak Chun-young would easily smell foul play. The death of the man who first encountered the runner; footprints of someone hunting for the ledger—Gwak Chun-young would descend upon Geum Seoul’s shantytown before long.

Learning that a faction impersonating ‘Iljang Trading’ had already swept through the village would accelerate his movements. That had been Gwichang’s design all along: provoking Gwak Chun-young into reacting once he realized someone was hunting his vulnerability, using that momentum as bait. Entering under Iljang’s banner had been a convenient, amusing ploy. Yet an unforeseen variable had surfaced.

“Mmm.”

What were the odds that Geum Seoul’s crude disguise would hold up before Gwak Chun-young—a veteran gemstone collector and hardened arms dealer?

Gwichang could not fathom why Geum Seoul crossed his mind once every day. Was it the pheromone? Or the face? Setting subjective tastes aside, Geum Seoul was breathtakingly more stunning than anyone he had ever encountered—so lovely it made immediate sense why the kid bundled himself up in grotesque disguises. Had he walked the earth with that naked visage, his existence would have been an infinitely deeper mire regardless of gemstone rank.

Park Gil-pyeong would have been the first to pounce. He had raped Lee Hee-joong the very night the runner arrived. Given how routinely the assault followed, it was clearly his standard repertoire.

‘I could smell that piece-of-shit Park Gil-pyeong’s pheromones all over him. Not that that bastard losing his mind over pretty, flat-bellied omegas is news, but omegas rarely run away. If he made it this far, things had gone as bad as they get…’

That had been Im Gyun-il’s confession before his teeth were wrenched out. Gwichang was certain Park Gil-pyeong had yet to lay a finger on Geum Seoul. The fake padding strapped beneath his shirt passed muster only through thick layers of loose cotton; the moment hands explored his frame, the crude counterfeit would have betrayed itself instantly. Had Park Gil-pyeong ever touched him, he would have known the bulk was fake, and the glaring nose prosthetic and braces would have been stripped in short order.

Geum Seoul would have long since been reduced to Park Gil-pyeong’s personal plaything, never to be sold away. A wretch dealing in gems would never casually part with something far more dazzling. Instead of running errands, he would have been locked in a room until reluctantly sold off to some wealthy client who caught a glimpse of that face…

Gwichang spoke up abruptly. “Hey.”

“Yes, sir,” Yu Jeong-ham responded at once.

For three days, Gwichang had envisioned Geum Seoul once every day like this. On the first day, it was the boy begging for mercy in the weed field. On the second, it was Geum Seoul clutching the antenna atop the sun-scorched roof as he reached his arms out toward him. And now, it was an imagined Geum Seoul pinned beneath Park Gil-pyeong, pale skin ravaged by ruthless bites.

And just added to that mental reel was Geum Seoul appearing before Gwak Chun-young. For someone supposed to prize only high-grade gemstones, Gwak Chun-young had kept a mere C-grade like Lee Hee-joong as his favored concubine. Geum Seoul, too, would inevitably be dragged into his clutches regardless of gemstone rank.

Gwichang ordered abruptly, “Put cameras in Geum Seoul’s neighborhood.”

“Sir? To keep tabs on Gwak Chun-young?” Yu Jeong-ham asked in surprise.

Gwichang’s tone dropped to an icy chill, “Did I ask for a status report?”

A pair of pitch-black, entirely unimpressed eyes fixed on Yu Jeong-ham.

“Ah, no, sir…” Yu Jeong-ham stammered, lowering his head.

Gwichang listed the locations flatly. “The entrance to the village, the alleys, the first floor of the building, and the second-floor hallway.”

“Sir? Y-Yes… understood. To dodge the director’s eyes, early next week should be feasible,” Yu Jeong-ham reported.

Even that was a timeline pushed to its absolute limit, yet the man gave an immediate shake of his head.

“Too late. I’m heading down to Namhae with Noh Pil-gyu tomorrow, so get it done while I’ve got him occupied.”

“Sir?” Yu Jeong-ham asked in bewilderment.

Gwichang clicked his tongue in mock irritation. “You’ve been ‘yes-sirring’ me nonstop since a while ago, fuck’s sake. What is this, hip-hop?”

The only moment Noh Pil-gyu ever lowered his guard was when Gwichang—the thorn planted deepest in his side—was pinned directly within his line of sight. Which meant that if Gwichang traveled with Noh Pil-gyu from the outset, the difficulty of Yu Jeong-ham slipping away from the schedule to plant the cameras plummeted drastically.

The lingering question, however, was why he would go so far as to spend two excruciating days alongside that vile man. Gwichang loathed sharing airspace with Noh Pil-gyu to the point of declaring it felt like silverfish chewing through his IQ. Whether this was an utterly pointless errand or an indispensable move to secure the ledger began to blur in Yu Jeong-ham’s mind. Naturally—of course—it had to be for the ledger, an order issued after Gwichang ran his own calculations and deductions, but even granting that… Yu Jeong-ham recalled the face of Geum Seoul he had briefly glimpsed not long ago.

“…No way.”

Impossible. There was no earthly chance their deputy director was that kind of man. The idea of him taking a personal fancy to another human being was unthinkable.

Some time back, a terrorist outfit that managed to dig up Gwichang’s identity had deliberately sicced a gorgeous Omega on him in an all-out effort to seduce him.

The setting had been an afterparty for some high-profile wedding—whether political or corporate aristocracy slipped his mind. Guests already sodden with liquor were tangled together in every corner. The beauty had snuggled neatly into Gwichang’s arms, and Gwichang, too, had casually felt up the man to his heart’s content. The two looked striking together, and Jeong-ham remembered laughing over the comms with Da-ol about how even their resident ghost seemed weak in the knees before a pretty face.

At the time, none of them harbored the faintest inkling that the partner was an enemy plant, and the sheer, dazzling radiance of the man’s looks had caused everyone to drop their guard.

Right around the hour when everyone was thoroughly plastered, as the beauty leaked intoxicating pheromones and threw his arms around him, Gwichang had suddenly, in one blinding flash, scooped the man up.

Not cradled like a princess, but flipped a clean one hundred and eighty degrees upside down. Seizing both of the man’s ankles in his fists, the deputy director immediately began dunking him headfirst into the swimming pool like a rag mop. It was his method of suffocating the pheromone release.

Pandemonium erupted in seconds as horrified screams swept through the venue. Amid the shrieking chaos, Gwichang alone crouched calmly by the edge of the pool as though playing a mildly amusing claw machine game, repeatedly plunging the thrashing man into the water. Oh? Still pumping out pheromones? Still? Even now? How about this? That was the chilling tenor of it.

The uproar eventually blew over once it came to light that the man had been put up to it by a hostile syndicate and had approached him deliberately, but that did nothing to prevent whispers from circulating among certain dignitaries who branded Gwichang a psychotic raving lunatic. Accurate though the label was, the director at the time—unwilling to let the department’s reputation get dragged through the dirt—stepped forward and made up an excuse about how ‘our boy suffers psychological seizures on occasion,’ which finally quelled the rumors. That explanation, too, was not entirely devoid of truth.

In any case, this was not about comparing whether that infiltrator or Geum Seoul was more attractive; it simply meant that if this ghost of a man were ever capable of falling for someone purely on account of their looks, he would have surrendered to that spy first.

Gwichang barked without looking up, “If you’re gonna mutter, say it out loud or get the fuck out. Why are you twitching like an eyesore? You eager to die?”

“Not at all, sir…” Yu Jeong-ham muttered hastily.

At the curt eviction delivered over a venomous sidelong glare, Yu Jeong-ham shook his head vigorously. Since the man had voluntarily stepped forward to plunge into hell himself, Jeong-ham planned to move fast and rig the cameras during the window. To plant them in the building without Park Gil-pyeong catching wind, dawn would be the only viable time. Sketching out the tactical blueprint in his mind, he stepped out of the deputy director’s office.

It took Geum Seoul all of a single day to slide back into his monotonous routine. He had taken a couple of vicious kicks from the boss for failing to hold his post until the auction wrapped up and for losing Im Gyun-il to ferry the clients, but the boss was in high spirits over the heavy haul of gems sold and the remaining rental balance cleared by the Iljang Trading crew, so the beatings ended there.

Today, as always, had been grueling from the break of dawn. Washing clothes, hauling them down, hanging them, folding them, and then sprinting breathlessly through the neighborhood to hand over the bundles and collect the coins. The scorching heat cleared the alleys of all living souls by midday, which meant he had to run his rounds early in the morning if he hoped to catch anyone face-to-face and get paid.

Whenever a house sat empty and he couldn’t deliver the garments, the residents routinely pushed the date back and refused to pay on the spot. Having failed to reach two houses today before turning back, all he had to show for his labor was a single five-hundred-won coin. Night had swallowed the sky whole by now, leaving no more errands to run. This meager coin was his entire day’s earnings.

“Seoul-ah.” At Rin’s call, Geum Seoul looked up from the thin nickel-silver pot simmering on the portable burner. Pointing with his folding fan, Rin added, “Looks like you need to add more water.”

“I was just about to.” Seoul lifted the ladle.

The two of them often pooled their rations, cooking several days’ worth of food at once before dividing it between them. For Rin, the meal was little more than something to take the edge off his hunger. For Geum Seoul, it was precious food clawed out of survival. Either way, they shared it.