Vol 6 Ch 7

The resort’s VVIP room was steeped in silence. Unlike the VIP room where groups could gather, the VVIP room had only one table. I was the last of the three to finish signing, and I handed the pen back to the lawyer.

The lawyer, hired by the resort, was there to notarize loans for casino guests or transactions between parties. I had seen the Hong Kong–born lawyer’s face countless times, but right now, he didn’t seem to recognize me at all as the Hidden Taker. Once the notarization was done, the lawyer moved to sit on a chair pressed against the far wall.

There would be only one winner, decided in a single round.

“Let me explain the rules of Hold’em Poker.”

As he spoke, the VVIP table’s dealer bowed low at the waist. When he straightened and his eyes landed on me, they widened. Disqualification as a dealer. I could read his thoughts clearly: ‘Winning Table Dealer Joo Hawon?’ If my memory served me right, he was a man who prided himself greatly on being a VVIP dealer and subtly looked down on Hidden Takers.

“Hold’em is an unlimited game. You may go all in or fold at any time. However, since you requested a single-round game, if you fold, you will be considered the loser. Each VVIP player will be dealt two hole cards, followed by three community cards revealed at the center. Once the fourth and fifth cards are opened, the final betting round will take place.”

The lines dictated by the casino never changed, no matter the dealer. Other than the notarized agreement, about one billion won worth of chips sat stacked in front of the two men. Suddenly, Kwon Taeha split half of his chips and pushed them toward me.

“What the…?”

“If you win, you can take it all.”

He said it without even looking at me.

“That sounds good. Alright then, if Mr. Louis wins, he can take my chips as well.”

“But if I lose, that means I’ll owe another fortune on top of this, doesn’t it?”

“That’s your share. Didn’t they say the boss is loaded? When he’s offering to pay up, why that face?”

Something about his attitude made it feel like, if I won, he really would set me free. Maybe Kwon Taeha was that furious over my reckless behavior. If this meant he had finally lost all interest in me, maybe that was a blessing. Still, the fact that he didn’t trust me at all stung. Of course he didn’t—but it still burned.

“Shall we begin the game?”

Once the chips were distributed, the dealer asked. Taeha, Aeil Kwon, and I all gave our approval, and the dealer began to shuffle. Since the dealer wasn’t playing, his hands moved lightly through the cards. I watched the cuts and cross-shuffles with my eyes, the scent of fresh cards spreading from his fingers. With a crisp snap, two hole cards were dealt to each of us.

Without even glancing at their hands, Kwon Taeha and Aeil Kwon shoved all their chips in. An all-in from the very start. It wasn’t standard Hold’em rules, but since it was a one-round match, it hardly mattered. I, too, pushed all my chips in before even looking at my cards.

“All three players are all-in. Please check your hands.”

I peeked at my cards. [◆7, ♣Q]. The other two men’s faces were unreadable—not that it mattered. They were masters of the poker face. This game was pure luck anyway. One fold meant instant defeat. A true game of chicken.

“Mr. Louis, you can fold if you want. If you fold here, I’ll let you off.”

I wanted to crush Aeil Kwon’s smug confidence. He probably thought what I had seen was nothing more than a corrupted, unreadable half of WikiLeaks that even Kim Jaeyeon hadn’t possessed. But I had seen what he hadn’t. If Aeil Kwon got his hands on that WikiLeaks, it would be trouble.

“I might let Aeil off, but not you.”

Kwon Taeha covered his cards with his hand and grinned at me. Only he knew what that smile really meant. He signaled for a pause in the game. When he raised his hand, a sharply dressed server stepped forward and handed him a cigarette. With a snap, the server flipped open a Zippo, and Taeha lit the cigarette he had brought to his lips.

It was shocking. I found myself staring at the smoke curling from Taeha’s mouth as if hypnotized, even as the dealer laid three community cards at the center of the table. Aeil Kwon snapped his fingers in front of my face, as if to ask what I was doing.

“I thought you didn’t smoke, Taeha.”

I wouldn’t claim to know him well, but he’d never seemed fond of me smoking.

“I just resist. I’m weak to temptation.”

His eyes swept over my body.

“Wasn’t it Joo Sangkyung  who taught me to smoke? Yes… it was him who pressed the cigarette to my lips. Told me to try it before I died.”

I tore my gaze away from the burning filter.

“Continue.”

Taeha’s voice to the dealer was smooth.

“Flop cards revealed.”

[♠K, ♥Q, ♣2]

It felt like needles pricking under my nails. One pair. Not a bad start. Instinctively, I glanced at the other two men. They showed no reaction to the flop. Neither did I. With my Q, there were now two queens revealed, leaving less than a 5% chance that either of them held the remaining two. But the possibility of someone holding a king—a stronger hand—couldn’t be ignored.

“Any player wish to fold?”

A formality. With no one folding, the dealer revealed the fourth card.

“Turn card open.”

[♣K]

I blinked hard. Bad. I had two pair already, but in my experience, this often meant someone else had the stronger hand.

The board showed [♠K, ♥Q, ♣2, ♣K]. That alone was one pair visible, while I had K-Q two pair. But if someone had either ♥K or ◆K, they’d already made trips. Only the final card remained. I heard the dealer swallow audibly.

“Any player wishing to fold, please say so.”

“Isn’t that a bit too formal a question? Ha. Our fates will be decided by the river card—let’s take a break.”

This time, Aeil Kwon lit a cigarette.

“Mr. Louis, want one too?”

I shook my head. Maybe it was a dealer’s habit, but I never smoked at the casino table. If anything, smoking would break my focus. No matter how much I calculated, from the visible cards, my odds looked the best. But Hold’em always carried variables depending on the unseen hands.

Then Kwon Taeha called out to me.

“The dealer’s gone pale.”

Sure enough, the dealer was staring at me with a face that screamed his suspicions about who I really was had been correct.

“I don’t see myself making any expression at all.”

Even if I lost, I only wanted him to win. I took a deep breath and exhaled slowly.

“Boss.”

Like the others standing by the wall, Wagner stepped up behind Kwon Taeha. He handed over a ringing phone. Taeha paused the game and took the call. It was German, and his face looked stiffer than usual. He gave only short replies, then turned his gaze toward Aeil Kwon. Aeil squinted slightly as he blew smoke upward. It didn’t look like the smoke had gotten into his eyes.

All I did was press down hard on the backs of my cards with my palm. Taeha hung up at the exact same moment Aeil crushed his cigarette into the ashtray.

“We never decided what to do about variables.”

“Variables?” Aeil repeated.

“What if the condition was impossible from the start?”

“Then naturally, the notarization has to be nullified.”

“The game’s void.”

Taeha’s voice was decisive.

“What do you mean?”

“The condition’s disappeared.”

“What condition?”

“We found her.”

I froze, staring at him, forgetting even to breathe. No way…

“Kim Jaeyeon.”

Her name slipped from me before I even realized it.

“That’s right.”

I shot to my feet. My heart pounded violently. He’d found Kim Jaeyeon before the game was even over. That meant the terms with Aeil Kwon were never valid to begin with. At Taeha’s signal, the lawyer returned to the table and announced the notarized contract was now void. Neither Aeil nor I objected. As soon as I signed again, I went straight to Taeha.

“Where is she? Did they say she’s in Macau?”

Like a baby crying for its mother— Aeil’s mocking voice reached me, but I couldn’t have cared less. I grabbed Taeha’s arm where he sat. I just wanted to go to her right away.

“The game is void. The table will be cleared.”

The dealer began tidying the table. My cards were collected, then Aeil’s, and last Taeha’s—though the dealer, either by mistake or on purpose, did the unthinkable and revealed his hand. Grounds for disciplinary action, no question.

[♥K, ◆K]

Pocket kings.

And still, he voided the game? Why…?

Taeha lightly gripped my wrists, still pressing at him, and spoke.

“They found a body.”

The greatest fortune and the worst tragedy, standing side by side.

***

There were countless times I’d wished life could be repainted, like oil on canvas, layering over mistakes. But even if you scrape away one layer, the image underneath isn’t erased—it’s still there, only covered. Above the harshly spinning propellers, a faint light broke through, and I sensed the weather would sour before noon.

Inside the helicopter bound for Hong Kong, not one of us spoke. I didn’t want his clumsy comfort. And I couldn’t bring myself to accept her death.

I could count on one hand the times I’d gone to Hong Kong by ferry—never good with seasickness on the hour-and-a-half trip. Crossing from Macau to Hong Kong by air, I had done just last year.

My first helicopter trip had been with Aeil Kwon, the second with Taeha. Both times, the purpose was ominous. He pulled my hand down, prying it from my mouth. Blood was seeping from the nail of my thumb, bitten raw without me realizing. I tried to raise my hand again, but he said something. His voice felt distant.

As we approached Hong Kong’s mainland, the helicopter veered sharply up between buildings at low altitude. My head throbbed as though I were on a ride that turned too suddenly.

The STA-marked helicopter descended toward the Peninsula Hotel’s helipad. Early morning, before the hotel even opened, the place was hushed. When I stepped out, damp wind whipped my hair wild. I shoved the strands from my eyes and walked on.

Wagner and several guards, who had arrived earlier, waited with the elevator doors open. Maybe it was just from crossing the sea, but my clothes clung heavy and damp. I told myself the heaviness in my body was from the clothes alone.

The sedan that carried us away from the hotel stopped before a building that reminded me all too much of the place, ten years ago, where I had realized I was truly alone. Dark and desolate, the sight of it wrenched a sound from my throat closer to a sob than a breath. In this city, where the population seemed to crush the very islands beneath it, there were still only a handful of funeral homes. Just like in Macau, one had to wait for a turn to hold a funeral—unless you were rich.

At my father’s delayed funeral, a heavyset old man and another his age had appeared. I had never once thought deeply about who they were. Loan sharks had snatched up the condolence envelopes with their names before I could even touch them. By nightfall, I was an orphan with no roof. Too much despair for reflection.

“Will you be alright?” Taeha asked me.

Wagner opened the rear door. I stepped out, murmuring hazily, “I don’t… know.”

As we walked toward the morgue, the eyes of onlookers followed us, drawn to the guards surrounding us. Every face looked drained, like they’d just been dragged half-drowned from the sea.

We passed the corridor connecting directly to the morgue. The scene felt utterly unreal. I almost lost track of why I’d come at all. A dark-skinned Hong Konger guided us into an empty room. It felt like a giant freezer. My breath came out white, and in the back room, where he led us, the dead lay packed tight in their drawers like stored goods. I glanced at Taeha. White vapor broke from his lips, too.

A rattling sound made me turn. A morgue worker was pushing in a stainless-steel bed, looking almost bored despite the chill. The bed was rolled to the center, and people gathered around it. My nerves were stretched to their limit as I stared at the long sheet covering the body. The pale-blue fabric clung to the contours beneath. It looked less like a corpse than someone sleeping.

Was she really this small?

I grabbed Taeha’s sleeve. He looked down at me, and I shook my head.

“I don’t think it’s her.”

“……”

“She wasn’t this small.”

I felt sorry for the corpse, but I was relieved it wasn’t her. It looked no bigger than an elementary school child.

“Möchten Sie die Leiche überprüfen?”

A Hong Kong man who had wheeled out the stainless steel bed asked Kwon Taeha politely. I frowned at the German instead of Cantonese.

“He’s asking if you want to check the body.”

He was waiting for me to decide.

“……It’s so small, there’s no need to.”

“The body must be that way because of heavy decomposition.”

The white vapor scattering from his lips felt like the breath of an arctic god, devoid of the slightest mercy. When he gave a nod to the Hong Kong man, the cloth was pulled away. Whoosh—an unbearable stench, one I had never smelled before, instantly numbed my nose.

The emaciated body, like something out of the zombie movies Jahan used to watch, lay facing the ceiling. Hair was barely left; the skull-like jaw and cheekbones were exposed down to the ears. The muscles clinging tightly to the bones made it look like a mummified corpse soaked in preservative.

“Is it Kim Jaeyeon?”

Kwon Taeha asked, his face twisted in disgust.

“……”

I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the grotesque corpse. The Hong Kong man covered the body with the cloth again. I thought my sense of smell had gone numb, but no—it was that I hadn’t been breathing at all. When my brain began to sizzle from lack of oxygen, I gasped for air. The nausea was impossible to suppress.

I rushed out of the morgue and vomited straight into a trash can. Stomach acid burned the back of my throat. A handkerchief was extended to me as I struggled to catch my breath. I took it and pressed it hard against my lips. The retching wouldn’t stop, as if I had eaten moldy bread. Even after spitting and gulping down water from the cooler, the nausea surged up again.

It’s not Kim Jaeyeon. It’s not her. She could never look like that.

And Father—what about him? When his body rotted in the summer heat, I hadn’t thought of it as my father either.

Kwon Taeha supported me, and I irritably slapped his hand away.

I shoved the handkerchief into the trash and strode quickly down the corridor. The overpowering disinfectant clung to me like a second skin, and I broke into a run. Bursting out through the front gate, I found three bodyguards blocking my path. Their black suits filled my vision, leaving no exit.

“Please, to the car.”

I gasped for breath, biting down on my dry lips in dazed despair.

“You must come to the car.”

On the third repetition, the tone carried a firm promise of force.