NTH 78

“The truth is, when I took Mr. Jin to the hospital today, we were being followed.”

The moment he heard the word ‘followed,’ Jeha’s face hardened.

“Tell me in detail.”

“From the moment we left the apartment parking garage, one car followed us at a constant interval. I intentionally tried changing to a different route, but sure enough, it stuck with us. There were four men in that car, and since I didn’t know how many more of their remnants might appear, I first requested support from Security Team S.”

Security Team S was a dedicated team from Jeha’s family’s main house for providing security to VIPs, equivalent to immediate family members. The authority to request their support was only given to those with a position higher than the Chief of Staff within the group. Carelessly using that authority could cost the requester their job, so support requests were only made cautiously in very urgent cases.

“And so.”

“Team S provided emergency support with two cars and four plainclothes bodyguards, so we went to the hospital under secret protection. When I took Mr. Jin up, I had only two of them follow us and left two to secretly remain in the parking garage to watch our car.”

“Did the tailing vehicle follow you all the way to the hospital parking garage?”

“Yes. The windows were heavily tinted so I couldn’t see inside, but I confirmed that it did follow us in.”

“Continue.”

“When we went up for the medical appointment, I received a report that four men got out of the car. Two of them followed Mr. Jin upstairs, and two approached our car.”

“To the car? Were they trying to install or tamper with something?”

“That is correct. They said they were trying to break the brakes. The team members who remained in the parking garage subdued those two.”

“What about the ones who followed you?”

“Our agents immediately knocked them out as they tried to approach Mr. Jin using the confusion, and moved them in a wheelchair. Since it was a hospital, no one was suspicious.”

“It seems Cheon Sagang has finally made his move. Where are the men you caught? Surely you haven’t turned them over to the police already, have you?”

“I have them held securely to be dealt with after receiving your instructions, Young Master. What would you like to do?”

To Chief Jeong’s question, Jeha replied with a cold expression.

“I will go see them myself. We’ll leave after I put Jin to sleep.”

When night fell and Jeha confirmed that Jin was sound asleep, he quietly slipped out of bed. Dressed in black jeans and a charcoal gray knit sweater, Jeha came out to the living room where the waiting Chief Jeong spoke.

“A security agent from Team S is waiting in the parking garage. Are you really planning to go yourself?”

“Yes. I have a few things to confirm.”

“Somehow, I would feel more at ease if I were to accompany you.”

“Then Jin will be left alone at home. That makes me too anxious. I can’t trust anyone else, so you must protect Jin, Chief Jeong.”

“I understand. Please be careful on your way.”

Jeha entrusted Jin to Chief Jeong, left the apartment, and went down to the underground parking garage. A security guard from Team S, who was waiting with the car ready, greeted Jeha politely.

“Chief Choi is waiting for you over there.”

“Let’s leave immediately.”

The bodyguard opened the rear door of the car for Jeha, then got into the driver’s seat and started the engine. Jeha, in the back seat, put on the rider jacket that had been prepared for him and pulled a black baseball cap down over his eyes.

“Where did you take them?”

“To a private property in J City.”

The car drove for a little over an hour and arrived in J City.

The private property, which was off-limits to outsiders, bordered a large lake and was so quiet it felt desolate. Since the family’s vacation home was under renovation, a warehouse building for storing materials, scheduled to be demolished once the vacation home was complete, had been erected by the lakeside.

Guided by the bodyguard, Jeha opened the large iron door of the warehouse, which looked like a factory, and went inside. The five or six Team S bodyguards who were inside bowed to Jeha.

On the floor, four men, who looked like they had already been beaten to a pulp, were kneeling with their hands and feet bound, swollen and bruised all over. Jeha approached the person in charge, Chief Choi.

“Did you find anything out?”

“These guys are gangsters from a group called the ‘Sangbong-i Faction,’ based in Jungnang District. The organization itself isn’t very large, and these guys are just low-level grunts, so they don’t seem to know much.”

“Let me ask a few things.”

Jeha stood in front of the man on the far left, a buzz-cut man who looked the oldest of the group, and spoke.

“Who ordered you to tail us? Tell me exactly what they told you to do, without leaving out a single word.”

“……”

“It would be better for you to confess quickly before you suffer something worse. I have less patience than I look.”

Still, the buzz-cut man kept his mouth shut. Chief Choi, who was watching from the side, grabbed the hair of a young-looking grunt next to the buzz-cut man and raised his fist. As the young-looking guy let out a frightened gasp, the buzz-cut man shouted urgently.

“Wait! I’ll tell you everything, so let him go! I was told to follow the car with the license plate ‘348Seo 165X’ and bring back the pale-looking boy in his early twenties who was in it!”

“By whom.”

“Our organization’s second-in-command told us to. He said he was doing it as a request from an acquaintance.”

“Who is this ‘acquaintance’.”

“What would low-level lackeys like us know? Though there was some talk that it was some loan shark or something who had lent a lot of business funds to our organization.”

The moment he heard the words ‘loan shark,’ Jeha’s brow furrowed slightly.

“Have you ever seen this loan shark in person?”

“I saw him, though it was from a bit of a distance.”

“Describe his appearance as you remember it.”

“He was about 2 meters tall and built like a judo athlete, and he looked just as nasty as us.”

“2 meters? Did he have any tattoos or anything?”

“Tattoos, well, let’s see……”

The young-looking guy, who had just been freed from Chief Choi’s grasp and was listening to their conversation, spoke up from the side.

“I saw it! He had a snake tattoo on the back of his neck. It was shaped like two snakes twisting their heads together. I remember thinking it looked pretty cool and considered getting one like it myself.”

If that was the case, the one who had instigated the kidnapping was, without a doubt, Cheon Sagang. Composing his expression, Jeha once again questioned the buzz-cut man.

“The fact that you tailed the car from the moment it left the apartment means you’ve been watching for quite a while. When did you start this job?”

“It’s been over a month already. The guy barely came outside, so it was damn boring. I heard two of the guys who did this job before us got caught trying to approach recklessly and were beaten like dogs by some lanky guy, and they’re still bedridden.”

Come to think of it, he remembered receiving a report that Chief Jeong had dealt with some suspicious individuals. At the time, he had thought they were just neighborhood thugs, but it seemed that too had been at Cheon Sagang’s instigation.

“Tell me in detail what you were trying to do by following us to the hospital this time.”

As Jeha interrogated him in a cold tone, the buzz-cut man frowned.

“We got a little scared too after finding out our target was using professional bodyguards. But after watching for a long time, we figured out that the bodyguard was just one guy who also served as the driver, and that the two of them went to that hospital about once every ten days.”

“And so.”

“We split into two teams. One team was to follow them into the hospital and grab the kid, and the other team was to wreck the car’s brakes. If we put the kid in our car and bolted, he would try to follow us in that foreign car.”

“And where were you planning to take him after you caught him?”

“Where else but back to our organization’s headquarters? We don’t even know why the loan shark wanted us to grab that brat. Whether he was going to gut his intestines or sell him off as a male prostitute.”

Jeha became extremely displeased and, after hearing only that much, had the bodyguards continue to watch them and came out of the warehouse with Chief Choi.

“Young Master, how on earth did you get involved with such lowlifes? Your family at the main house will be greatly concerned if they find out.”

Chief Choi said in a gruff tone. If one only heard the content, it might sound as if he were reprimanding Jeha, but Jeha knew well that he had come all the way to a place like this because he cared for him just as much as Chief Jeong did.

When it came to matters Jeha wanted to keep secret, Chief Jeong was a man who would remain silent even with a gun to his head, so Chief Choi had no way of even guessing the cause of this situation.

“Since I also need to ask for your cooperation, Chief Choi, I will tell you the whole story frankly. I am currently dating someone. He is twenty-three years old, and he is a man.”

“……Excuse me?”

Chief Choi was the type of man who wouldn’t even bat an eyebrow at most things, but Jeha’s words were so shocking that he uncharacteristically let his mouth hang open, wearing a dumbfounded expression.

“He has been living with me in my apartment for several months now. I plan to spend the rest of my life with that person, but the problem is, he is quite sick. He was born with a weak body and is a patient with an incurable disease.”

“Young Master. Are you really alright? The more I hear, the less I understand.”

“I don’t need others’ understanding for my love life. Even if my parents and my grandfather all oppose it, I have no intention of giving this person up. It is only natural that I choose my own partner.”

Chief Choi was extremely confused, but he quickly regained the sense of a seasoned employee. In the first place, with Chief Jeong, who had practically raised Jeha, now settled in Jeha’s home and looking after this supposed lover like a nanny, there was no way anything he said would have any effect.

As far as Chief Choi knew, Kwon Jeha was not only the smartest among his five brothers at the main house but also a person who was outstanding in every aspect, second to none among all of Chairman Kwon’s descendants. For such a person to act this way, there must be some sort of reason.

“I understand. But what on earth is the reason that your lover is being chased by gangsters?”

At Chief Choi’s words, Jeha let out a light sigh.

“It’s a bit complicated, but before he met me, that person was being harassed by a loan shark. The man rented him a single room in a rundown shantytown and then demanded repair costs, claiming it was flooded during the monsoon. While adding murderous interest every day.”

“He got tangled with the wrong kind. That’s their usual method.”

“So I paid off the amount that man claimed was a debt all at once, but it seems what the loan shark wanted was not money, but my lover himself. Seeing as he’s going as far as mobilizing gangsters to take him.”

To summarize, this whole affair was a love triangle dispute stemming from the youngest son of a quasi-chaebol family who was a professor at the nation’s top university, a low-life loan shark backed by gangsters, and a sickly young man in his twenties with an incurable disease.

Chief Choi was genuinely dumbfounded, but Jeha had a serious expression as if his own life was on the line, so he could not say anything.

“So, what do you plan to do with those men now, Young Master?”

“That’s what I called you out here separately to discuss, Chief Choi. I am well aware that the main family’s security team does not exist to intervene in such illegal matters. So let’s use a completely legal method.”

“How?”

“What did you say those guys’ names were earlier? The Sangnam-i Faction?”

“It’s the Sangbong-i Faction.”

“Right. The Sangbong-i Faction. Did you say it’s not much of an organization?”

“Yes. Its scale and power are not significant. It’s at the level of a subordinate organization that pays tribute to a larger group.”

“Those kinds of guys usually make money by running businesses. What are the main ones?”

“On the surface, they run pubs or nightclubs, but their main source of income is things like illegal gambling dens operated in the shadows. They probably have several gambling dens, commonly called ‘houses’.”

“Then find out about a few of the illegal gambling dens or houses run by the Sangbong-i Faction and tip off the police about them simultaneously. It must be enough to get all of the Sangbong-i Faction’s executive-level members arrested, not just the grunts in there right now. Crush the organization so thoroughly that it’s completely dismantled and incapable of any activity.”

“That is something that can be done within the confines of the law, so it is not difficult, but will that solve your problem, Young Master? It’s not like the loan shark in question will be arrested.”

“Even if we imprison that man, as long as his subordinates remain on the outside, he can give orders from inside his cell. The priority is to cut off the limbs he can command by spreading the rumor that getting involved with him brings bad luck.”

If Cheon Sagang determined that it was no longer possible to devour Jin’s soul in this life, he could mobilize third parties like gangsters to kill Jin or create a situation where Jin would take his own life, and simply look forward to the next life.