AGENT 62

…

Early this dawn.

Yongnae woke up from his sleep feeling a weight being pressed onto one side of the bed. In that moment, sensing a presence and realizing someone was there, he was suddenly terrified. However, he wondered if a person intending to harm him would go through the trouble of sitting beside the bed, so Yongnae kept his eyes closed and tried to deduce who it was.

Actually, there was no need for deduction. As Yongnae took a deep breath, the scent he caught pointed to exactly one person. From that moment, Yongnae’s trembling from fear changed into a trembling of: Why did he come into my room at this hour of the dawn?

What was he doing, sitting perched beside me? All he could be doing was looking at my face. My face isn’t unbearable to look at, but it wasn’t exactly something to sit and spectate like this either, so it was flustering; but in truth, the trembling was greater. He thought that if he were Seo Soo, he would have been looking at his own face in a mirror instead of staring at someone else’s. While he was thinking that,

Click—.

Along with a weak resistance of air toward his face, the faint smell of gunpowder drifted in.

The smell of gunpowder? Did he strike a lighter to smoke a cigarette? Or did he strike a lighter to check my sleeping face? These thoughts occurred to him, but it was strange. In a room this dark, even the smallest lighter flame should have caused a brief flash of light before his closed eyes. But there was no light, only the dull ring of metal and the spreading scent of gunpowder. Combining that with his laugh, which sounded as if he found something absurd, Yongnae figured that what just happened might have been something other than a lighter.

Surely not. Thinking it might just be an illusion, he opened his eyes to quickly check the man’s hands as he turned his back to leave the room, but his thoughts—which he wanted to believe were wrong—were denied in an instant.

A gun. A real gun that smelled of ammunition, with the upper part slid back because there were no bullets left.

Every cell in his body throbbed violently with fear, and then he fell right back asleep. Since he was lying down it just looked like he fell asleep, but thinking back, it felt as if he might have lost consciousness.

“…”

Watching Seo Soo exchange a few words with Danny and immediately turn to leave the dining room, Yongnae gulped down his saliva.

His hands holding the phone were trembling slightly; it seemed he was feeling fear while looking at Seo Soo. However, on the other hand, he was also feeling a strange emotion.

To Seo Soo, death means nothing. When the Triad members, including the one with curly hair, surrendered, he simply let them live; even the life of the Gucheon killer, who had murdered six people including his own subordinate middleman, was something Seo Soo swapped for the raw materials of E8. To Seo Soo, someone’s death carried no great meaning.

And yet, Seo Soo had come by in the dawn to the point of killing him—this meant there was something about him that was currently getting under Seo Soo’s skin. It didn’t matter if it was in a good way or a bad way. At any rate, it meant that right now, he was not just an ‘unrelated civilian’ to Seo Soo.

“What are you so happy about?”

Danny asked as he placed the steaming beef noodles in front of Yongnae.

“Pardon?”

“No, I just saw you grinning to yourself.”

“Ah….”

At Danny asking with sparkling eyes as if something good had happened to make him laugh, Yongnae shook his head and said it was nothing. If he were to say, ‘I almost got shot in the head yesterday, and I’m happy because it feels like I’ve become a person of significance,’ anyone looking at him would call him a madman.

“Ah, could I ask you for one favor?”

“What is it?”

“If by some chance something happens to me here, could you send this phone to my parents?”

“Why the phone?”

“Ah, I’ve written a bit of a will on here.”

At Yongnae appearing so calm while saying the terrifying word ‘will,’ Danny looked back and forth between the phone and Yongnae, looking a bit flustered, before eventually nodding as if he understood. To Danny’s answer, Yongnae offered his thanks and then began to eat the beef noodles, blowing on them to cool them down.

Watching Yongnae like that, Danny turned his back to head toward the kitchen again and muttered softly to himself.

“As expected, he’s no ordinary guy.”

∞ ∞ ∞

Yongnae thought he would immediately start tracking the guys stealing the E8 today along with Seo Soo, who had returned to the mansion, but even as it passed four in the afternoon, there was no word from Seo Soo. Since Weizhen and Lee Suji had stayed at the mansion without switching shifts after Seo Soo returned, entering the room at the end of the left hallway yesterday had been nice timing.

Buzz—

[handsome guy: u in ur room?]

And at this boring timing with nothing to do, a message arrived from Lee Suji. What was “u in”?

[Kim Yongnae: What is ‘u in.’]

[handsome guy: I asked if u r in ur room.]

[Kim Yongnae: ‘u’ X ‘you’ O, ‘r’ X ‘are’ O]

[Kim Yongnae: Yes. I am in my room.]

[handsome guy: Ah]

Suji, who had sent only a single ‘Ah’ and no further response to Yongnae’s reply, soon came up the stairs with a thumping sound and arrived at Yongnae’s door. Then, after a knock-knock, he opened the door.

“I don’t know Korean very well.”

“It seems so.”

“What does that mean?”

“What brings you here?”

“I asked first.”

“Not answering with the truth can also be a form of consideration for that person.”

“What does THAT mean?!”

“I asked what brings you here.”

It was a conversation between two people like a spear and a shield.

“…Come down to the first floor. There’s a place we need to go.”

To Yongnae, who wouldn’t back down a single inch and looked like he wouldn’t in the future either, Suji finally let out a sigh as if he had lost, blurted out the purpose of his visit, and left the room first.

Why was he telling me to come down to the first floor? Was I going with Lee Suji to track the junkies?

“…”

That was so annoying, but on the other hand, it was also a relief. He was annoyed at Seo Soo for not keeping his promise after saying he would go together, but he was relieved thinking he wouldn’t die today. However, it seemed the heart that was annoyed at not being able to see Seo Soo was larger.

Yongnae, having grabbed his outer clothes and packed his pocket tool and whistle in his pocket, took his phone and went down to the first floor. He went down with a bit of expectation just in case, but as expected, Seo Soo was not there, only Lee Suji.

“Is your hearing good too?”

To Suji’s question asked as soon as he came down, Yongnae shook his head. His sense of smell was several times superior to others, but his hearing and vision were similar to everyone else’s.

“It’s the same as everyone else.”

“Then, that’s a relief. Let’s go.”

Why was he asking about hearing? Were we going somewhere loud? Was it perhaps the residence of Seo Soo, who reportedly only sleeps in loud places? For a moment, his heart throbbed with anticipation. Even though just a moment ago he was terrified of being killed by Seo Soo. Humans were indeed animals of forgetfulness. But had Seo Soo left the mansion?

However, the place Suji headed was not toward the cars to go outside, but the path leading from the first floor to the annex. So he thought they were going to the annex, but after entering the annex, Suji opened the back door and began walking toward the path behind it.

Behind the annex, a lush forest path stretched out immediately; it was filled with a dark and gloomy feeling, enough that a first-time visitor wouldn’t even dare think of going there.

Could it be that Seo Soo had ordered Lee Suji to get rid of him? Or was Lee Suji unable to let go of his suspicions and trying to get rid of him independently? While having all sorts of thoughts, Yongnae simply followed behind him quietly. Strangely, it was because he felt like nothing much would happen as long as he was with them.

“Uh….”

However, it felt like something was going to happen. Because as he followed him into the forest, he was flustered by this space that was both somewhat familiar and unfamiliar.

“You’ve never fired a gun before, right?”

The place Lee Suji had brought him was a shooting range in the middle of the forest. Not just a shooting range with targets placed roughly in the distance, but a shooting range like a professional training facility equipped with real, proper firearms. On one wall, various types of guns were hanging, from handguns to machine guns.

“…I have fired one before.”

He had fired one when he was in the military. Of course, as mentioned before, Yongnae was in a non-combat unit, so he had far fewer shooting drills than regular soldiers. Maybe three times in total during his military life? Even then, he was so bad at shooting that he never received a reward vacation for a marksmanship evaluation.

“You’ve fired one? When?”

“…When I was in the military.”

“The military? You, you were in the military?!”

“All South Korean men go to the military.”

“What?! Are you crazy? Wait…. Was the place I went to really the South?”

Even though Lee Suji is ethnically Korean, he must be a foreigner. It was a bit surprising that he didn’t know the fact that South Korean men go to the military.

“I came from the North, comrade.”

“…What?”

“I’m joking.”

“Ah, you scared me!”

Yongnae rarely jokes, but he couldn’t resist a joke like this for a foreigner asking if it was really the South.

“Ha…. Anyway, I was going to teach you some shooting today, but since you’ve been in the military, there won’t be much to teach.”

No. There would be far too much to teach. Yongnae had absolutely no immunity to guns, so he fainted the first time he saw the handgun Weizhen pulled out, and he fainted again when Seo Soo blew off the killer’s hand. And even yesterday, after realizing his head almost got blown off, he lost consciousness immediately.

He didn’t just lack immunity to guns; he lacked it way too much. Furthermore, this was Hong Kong, and there would be many people in the future who would aim a gun at his head like yesterday. But he couldn’t faint every time. He had to get used to guns quickly.

“I was in a non-combat unit, so I haven’t fired a gun very often.”

“What’s a non-combat unit?”

“Just think of it as me firing a gun for the first time.”

“Ah, really? Hmm….”

Lee Suji, who was pondering at his words, dragged him in front of the wall and deliberated over which gun would be good for him to shoot.

“…What is that one.”

In the eyes of such a Yongnae, one gun caught his attention instantly.

“Oh— Mister has some an eye for this. This is a Sig Sauer P320, it’s a gun Susu is good at firing.”

He knew. It was the gun Seo Soo had aimed at his head yesterday.