Chapter 67

It took roughly three full seconds for Gwak Chun-young to process that the man spewing profanity fit for a teenage delinquent was the same predator who had just butchered every man present except him and Manager Lee.

Do-hyeop snapped with a smirk, “The fuck are you glaring at?”

Even with a heavy shotgun barrel inches from his temple, Do-hyeop merely lowered his eyes and let out a breezy chuckle, driving Gwak into baffled exasperation.

“Ha. I suppose young punks are reckless because they haven’t grown up yet…” Gwak remarked with a shrug.

A dismissive shrug rolled across Gwak’s shoulders as relief settled into his chest. The immature vocabulary proved this bastard was still wet behind the ears. For the Special Security Department to dub such a juvenile delinquent a ‘ghost’ revealed the agency’s pathetic standards.

Gwak added with a cruel smirk, “Or perhaps you were simply raised like a stray…”

With each syllable, Gwak tapped the shotgun barrel hard against Do-hyeop’s forehead.

“It seems our esteemed Minister Gye failed miserably at parenting. Or should I call it grandfathering?”

Echoing through the high vaulted ceiling, their conversation drifted past the masonry corridor to the pillar where Geum Seoul crouched in breathless stillness. Even to an errand boy ignorant of lineage and state politics, the insult was brazenly malicious.

“They call you Gwichang, don’t they?” Gwak taunted.

Gwichang. The familiar moniker sliced through the damp subterranean air, making Seoul’s dark-stained brow twitch.

“Dying doesn’t scare you, does it? You’ve already died once,” Gwak continued mockingly. “Forget the ledger and negotiations—would you prefer to die right here?”

Gwak continued his taunting provocations. Grasping exactly what the man was trying to strike at, Do-hyeop narrowed his level brows slightly—not because Gwak’s words had landed any real blow.

“Listening to you yap makes me want to vomit my guts out…”

Do-hyeop muttered with a grimace, turning down both corners of his lips as though genuinely nauseated. The sniping they had been trading back and forth cut off there. In the next instant, his gaze slid past Gwak’s shoulder, and he tilted his head.

“So you’re going to kill me?” Do-hyeop asked.

“……” Gwak kept his mouth shut in wary silence.

Hearing the strange thread of amusement woven into the man’s tone, Gwak knitted his brow. Right on cue, an airy chuckle bubbled past Do-hyeop’s lips, followed by an exasperated sigh.

“Man, you sure dream big,” Do-hyeop replied with a breezy chuckle.

Clack.

As though summoned by that very dismissal, a dense cluster of crimson laser dots suddenly carpeted Gwak Chun-young’s chest, materializing from the shadows without a breath of warning.

“Stand down!” Yu Jeong-ham’s voice boomed through the subterranean vault. “Your actions constitute a direct terrorist threat against a state intelligence agency under Article Four of the National Emergency Security Measures Act! You are classified as an active felon and will be neutralized upon non-compliance!”

Yu Jeong-ham timed his entrance as if he had been waiting for the scuffle inside to settle. He stepped forward with a disciplined line of black-clad tactical operators at his back, every rifle already leveled. Gwak noticed the crimson dots, frowned, and turned. The unit had reached one of the corridors and locked into formation with their sights trained on him. Yet even confronted with that, Gwak—who had prepared for the possibility from the outset—showed no panic.

Gwak chuckled smoothly, “If you insist.”

With a casual flick of his wrists, Gwak dropped the shotgun onto the wet concrete. On the opposite wall, Manager Lee lowered his sidearm as tactical operatives swarmed the space with heavy bootfalls. Even as his arms were wrenched behind his back and bound in plastic flex-cuffs, Gwak sneered at Gye Do-hyeop.

“How long do you think you can hold me even if you drag me in?” Gwak mocked.

Complete legal immunity had already been guaranteed to him by Director Noh Pil-gyu. Even if hauled into custody, a formal arrest warrant would never be authorized. Forty-eight hours. No matter what unhinged antics Gye Do-hyeop pulled, the chances of decrypting the ledger with an A-grade jewel before the clock expired were exactly zero.

Gwak taunted with a smirk, “You have two days at best.”

Step.

Strolling over to where Gwak was pinned against the masonry wall, Gye Do-hyeop crossed his arms and leaned in with a lazy tilt.

“Yeah. Two days is enough time to take a tropical vacation,” Do-hyeop replied smoothly.

Gwak scoffed, “What could a mere lackey of Noh Pil-gyu possibly accomplish?”

Midway through his mocking sneer, Gwak blinked in sudden unease. Gye Do-hyeop’s lips had curled into a dazzling, cheerful grin. As Gwak furrowed his brow, deeply unnerved by that radiant smirk while Yu Jeong-ham hauled him around—

Weee-ooo—weee-ooo—!

High-pitched sirens shrieked simultaneously from two wrists: Gwak Chun-young’s and Manager Lee’s. Both men froze in unison, their faces draining of color as they twisted back.

“What the hell?!” Gwak shouted in shock.

With his hands still unsecured during the frisking, Manager Lee frantically checked his wrist display. It was a five-alarm perimeter alert broadcasting from Gwak Chun-young’s private estate.

● SYSTEM

INTERNAL DETONATION DETECTED

“Boss! Fire alarm at the primary residence!” Manager Lee shouted in shock.

The compound had been engineered with obsessive security protocols; an actual fire would trigger automated firebreak bulkheads to isolate the chambers. Yet a secondary emergency klaxon tore through the receiver a second later.

Beep—!

● SYSTEM

FIRE SHUTTER DEPLOYMENT FAILED — QUARANTINE IMPOSSIBLE

Gwak Chun-young’s face went white with horror.

“Boss!” Manager Lee screamed in terror as crimson warning text began strobing across the digital screen.

Gwak’s eyes bulged as he caught sight of the flashing alert.

● SYSTEM

EMERGENCY PROTOCOL Z-9 INITIATED — DESTRUCTION COUNTDOWN ACTIVE

“You! You bastard, what the fuck did you do to my house?!” Gwak screamed.

With an exaggerated shrug of innocence, Gye Do-hyeop scoffed, “The fuck are you barking at me for? My place got looted too. Guess it was the same asshole. Ah, the world is so fucking scary. I should go sleep in mommy’s bed.” Folding both arms over himself as though searching for a nonexistent mother’s embrace, he brushed past Gwak wearing a radiant, ear-to-ear grin.

Gwak roared in manic fury, “Hey! Do you have any idea what you just did?!”

Thrashing like a rabid animal against his flex-cuffs, veins bulged along his neck as though ready to tear Do-hyeop apart with his bare teeth.

“Untie me!” Gwak pleaded frantically. “You son of a bitch, listen to me! Deputy Director Gye! If you do this, you’ll never open the ledger! You won’t be able to touch me!”

At those words, Gye Do-hyeop halted in his tracks. Turning around as though willing to hear him out, Do-hyeop waited while Gwak gulped down breaths, struggling to claw back his composure. The nape of Gwak’s neck, trembling visibly, had flushed red.

“Hmm,” Do-hyeop hummed.

The reason Gwak was losing his mind over Do-hyeop’s asymmetrical strike lay in the estate’s automated failsafes.

Having built a private gallery into his home to house his illicit treasures, Gwak had poured fortunes into airtight security systems. Even with an undercover mole planted among his household staff, Do-hyeop had never managed to lay eyes on the gallery’s interior.

Strictly speaking, no living soul other than Gwak Chun-young could cross the threshold. When receiving operational debriefs while inside the gallery, Gwak held conferences across an ajar portal; even Manager Lee, his most trusted lieutenant, had never been permitted to take a single step inside.

“Is that so?” Do-hyeop asked, raising an eyebrow as he halted the prisoner escort.

Watching Do-hyeop appear intrigued, Gwak swallowed hard and blurted out terms, his face twisted with frantic dread.

“I have to go there right now! I swear I’ll report to headquarters immediately after! The security system needs manual biometric reset, you crazy bastard! Otherwise—”

“Otherwise… does the vault room blow up too?” Gye Do-hyeop asked softly with a tilted head.

Gwak Chun-young’s eyes widened in sheer horror.

It was the most closely guarded secret in Gwak’s security architecture: an emergency failsafe designed to activate after a major structural detonation. If biometric authentication was not supplied before a designated countdown expired, every asset inside the gallery would be subjected to total thermal incineration. Gwak had designed the protocol himself on a simple calculation. If his stronghold ever fell, he would probably already be incapacitated—and he would rather reduce his beloved collection to ash than watch it pass into a rival’s hands.

Do-hyeop murmured with a grim smile, “So you see, Chun-young.”

In Gwak Chun-young’s line of sight, Gye Do-hyeop wore an expression of genuine, mocking pity. In that instant, Gwak realized that this had been the man’s scheme all along.

“You…” Gwak stammered.

“You have no A-grade jewel, and the ledger is already in my hands,” Do-hyeop whispered coldly. “Do you honestly think Noh Pil-gyu is going to wipe your ass?” Do-hyeop chuckled as he stepped backward into the shadows. “If he wipes anyone’s ass, it’ll be mine.”

Gwak had survived all these years—meeting countless senior officials and politicians, scheming, and slipping them money—because they acted, in the end, within a range he could predict. Of course, swallowing bribes was itself beyond all common sense; but judged purely by the scope of their attacks and counterattacks, it was true.

It had genuinely never occurred to Gwak that an NSSA deputy director—or anyone of comparable rank—might blow up another man’s home without a second thought. His own home, no less: the private estate of Iljang Trading’s president. Part of that confidence came from the monstrous security architecture he had poured into the property; he had never believed an intruder could penetrate deeply enough to matter. In any case, this had gone beyond every expectation. Men seated in high office were spineless almost without exception, so terrified of exposing their own ugliness that they rarely issued a criminal order before constructing three layers of plausible deniability around it.

“Aaargh! Let me go! You crazy fucking psycho!” Gwak screamed into the darkness.

Taking several strides while wrestling a shrieking, horrified Gwak Chun-young, something suddenly slipped from Yu Jeong-ham’s fingers and clattered onto the concrete.

Hiss—!

It was another smoke canister like the ones that had blanketed the vault minutes earlier, billowing dense white clouds from the floor to flood the corridor anew.

“Ah, dropped it. My bad,” Yu Jeong-ham announced breezily. “Everyone keep a tight grip on the suspect!”

“Understood, sir!” the operators chimed in with deadpan compliance.

Though calling it a fumble was blatantly unconvincing, the tactical operatives played along with total shamelessness.

“Aaargh! Mmph… ngh! Mmmph!”

Gwak Chun-young’s desperate howling was abruptly smothered. Someone had evidently clamped a heavy palm over his mouth, but shrouded in thick white smoke, not a trace of the roughing-up registered on their tactical bodycams.

Beyond several suspicious scuffles and muffled grunts, nothing made it into the official deployment log. By the time the haze finally settled, the operation was formally concluded, and Gye Do-hyeop was already striding away from the commotion toward Geum Seoul, who was surrounded by field medics receiving emergency triage.

“Look at me,” Do-hyeop commanded softly.

Stepping close, Do-hyeop cupped the boy’s chin to tilt his face upward. Though the medics had wiped away the worst of the gore, dark blood still trickled stubbornly from the split beneath his left brow.

When he had first slipped through the hidden ventilation duct and gazed down from the rafters, Do-hyeop had thought the sight resembled a twisted Bernini sculpture. The neck arched back in helpless agony, the sweat-slicked hair, the face drenched in crimson, the swollen eyes and bruised lips—everything caught the sickly yellow cast of the wall lamps to enshrine a portrait of pure desolation.