Chapter 102: Are You Trying to Buy Me With Money?!

TL: LittlePeach

Shinichi already looked like my persuasion had completely stolen his soul.

Adding a bunch of unnecessary explanations at this point would only backfire.

The spark had already been thrown. Now all I had to do was wait for the leftover suspicion and imagination to spread into a full-blown wildfire on their own.

"Shinichi-san. I'm going to keep investigating Samgor inside this prison. And if I should happen to vanish without a trace.... please assume they quietly disposed of me."

"I, I understand."

Once I'd found the missing Southeast Asia Team agents safe and sound, I intended to stroll out of this prison before long.

Since I'd neatly worked even that timetable in as bait, Shinichi, with no idea what was really going on in my head, put on a resolute expression.

'From here on they can go to war with each other or whatever else they feel like.'

With that, I'd wrapped up my personal objectives in New Bilibid, free and clear.

"I'll be sure to see you again, Le Wei-san."

"Yes. It was a pleasure, Shinichi-san."

I'd pinned down the Irobuchi-kai's location and confirmed what Samgor really was, so all that was left now was to find the missing agents and quietly get out of here.

'Stirring up chaos is too easy.'

Back in Zone A, with nothing weighing on me.

As I strolled along at an unhurried pace, a question suddenly flitted through my head.

'Come to think of it, does Frank even know Samgor's people are inside this prison?'

The one who'd told me the Irobuchi-kai was hiding inside New Bilibid in the first place was Frank, Narcotics Team 3 leader of the Australian Secret Intelligence Service.

It struck me all at once that maybe the target he'd been after inside this prison wasn't the Irobuchi-kai at all, but Samgor.

'He handed me the intel first, so common courtesy says I owe him something back.'

Following one thought as it bit the tail of the next, I made my way to a suitable open lot in Zone A.

Prisoners who recognized me scattered in a hurry to clear a path, and I settled down in the middle of the space they'd swept so neatly clean and pulled out my phone.

Brrrrring.

Click.

-Who is this. State your business.

Picking up unknown numbers anyway seems to be a shared qualification of black agents in every country on earth.

To Frank's greeting, thick with wariness, I answered with a smile on my face.

"Hello, Frank. It's Sunny Kick."

-...Oh. Sunny Kick?

"Keeping well?"

Frank seemed to suffer a brief brain stall at my call coming out of nowhere.

Then, apparently grasping the situation all at once, his voice came through the phone buoyant with excitement.

-Are you calling from inside New Bilibid right now?

"Oh, correct. I didn't expect you to catch on that fast."

-A call comes in from a Philippine number at this exact timing. How could I possibly not?

Now that he mentioned it, he had a point.

I nodded afresh at his confident declaration.

"Well, anyway. That's right. I'm inside New Bilibid at the moment."

-Good. Did you manage to find the Irobuchi-kai in there?

"As it happens, I'm on my way out from having a cup of tea and a chat with their manager."

-Oh ho?

He sounded intrigued, so in the spirit of sharing information I gave him a quick rundown of everything that had just happened.

The relationship between the Irobuchi-kai and the Shanyuan Society, the cover identity I was working from in between them, the delicate tension between the Irobuchi-kai and Samgor, and the chaos I'd quietly stirred up on top of all of it.

Frank listened to the whole thing without a word, huffing air through his nose.

-...Impressive, Sunny Kick. Your nerve alone is worth respecting. Weren't you afraid? If your identity had been blown, the worst would have happened.

"The worst? What's the worst, catching a few bullets?"

-....

Anyway.

Leaving Frank's belated reaction where it lay, I rubbed the bridge of my nose.

"The way I see it, Frank, you're probably a lot more interested in Samgor than in the Irobuchi-kai."

-Correct. The Irobuchi-kai was only a bonus we stumbled onto while chasing Samgor. They were never our primary concern.

Just as I'd expected.

Frank chuckled quietly and continued.

-To think you'd call me directly from inside New Bilibid.... Perhaps because it's such an unexpected harvest, I even feel a sense of accomplishment. Sunny Kick, would you be willing to take a job?

"A job?"

-The man you mentioned a moment ago, Wei Hong. A job to abduct him.

"Huh."

Out of nowhere?

At Frank's unexpected proposal I smacked my lips for a moment.

My real purpose in coming into this prison had only ever been to secure the missing Southeast Asia Team agents in one piece.

Once the job was done, I'd planned to leave this place without a shred of regret.

"But here's the thing. I infiltrated the prison for another job, so taking on a separate contract might be diffic...."

-Are you aware there's a bounty on his head?

Tempting.

I shut my mouth mid-excuse without meaning to.

Confirming my silence, Frank let out a pleased laugh on the far end of the line.

-At present, police from eight countries, including Australia, the United States, and Canada, are jointly and relentlessly tracking Samgor’s main base. Wei Hong is one of Samgor’s mid-level leaders, and our Australian team has had its eye on him for quite some time. We intended to arrest and interrogate him the instant he stepped outside the prison, but the bastard lives surrounded by thirty cartel members and shows absolutely no intention of leaving.

"Hmm."

-I'm making this offer because I believe you could seize Wei Hong inside New Bilibid and hand him over to us.

If I set my mind to it, it wasn't as though I couldn't.

The only reason I hadn't laid a hand on Samgor and the Irobuchi-kai right then and there was that I'd been counting on them tearing each other apart and going down together.

'Shame to waste all that chaos I stirred up.'

Did my silence make him anxious, while I pretended to mull it over?

Before long, Frank tossed out exactly the line I'd been waiting for.

-The official bounty on his head is a full one million dollars.

"Oh."

One million dollars. A tidy sum.

But Frank wasn't finished there.

-And I'll add one more offer on top of that. If you take Wei Hong alive inside New Bilibid and hand him over to us, I'll pay an additional five hundred thousand as a bonus, on my own authority.

"Ooh."

One and a half million dollars in total. Over 1.5 billion won.

Are you trying to buy me with money?!

...Except it was far too much money for that line to work.

There couldn't have been a better set of terms for changing my mind.

'Forget stirring up chaos. Let's just clear Samgor out right now. The Irobuchi-kai, well, the Southeast Asia Team can handle that.'

At the mouthwatering offer I caught myself rubbing the corner of my mouth.

Then a practical question suddenly occurred to me.

"But say I do abduct Wei Hong. How exactly are you planning to get him out?"

-The truth is, we already have team members planted inside New Bilibid. Just hand Wei Hong over to them, and we'll handle the extraction ourselves.

"Really? Which zone are they in right now?"

-They're staying in Zone A.

"Uh, what?"

Zone A. That would be this very zone, where I currently reigned as king.

When I tilted my head and fell silent for a moment, Frank misread what it meant and sounded puzzled himself.

-What is it? Is there some problem with that zone?

"Do those team members report the situation inside the prison to you on a regular basis?"

-Of course. I receive a report on internal developments every evening without fail.

“Then you must have heard that Zone A recently got a new top dog.”

-I did. Apparently, he’s a lunatic who turns people into blood pudding with his bare fists, whether they come at him with knives or axes. My agents said they’re keeping their heads down so they don’t provoke him under any circumstances.

“Actually, that lunatic is me.”

-....

"If you can reach your people directly, would you mind telling them to come find me right now?"

Was he so dumbfounded he'd run out of things to say?

For a while, all that came through the phone was the sound of air huffing out of his nose.

*****

Representing the Australian Secret Intelligence Service agents infiltrated inside New Bilibid, one man came to find me.

His name was Oliver.

An agent who'd been in Zone A for about a month.

"...."

He stood in front of me with his face frozen stiff.

He was built like a mountain, but going by his expression alone he might as well have been a marten that had just crawled into a tiger's den.

"Hello. Frank filled you in, I take it?"

"Th, that's right."

Every time I so much as opened my mouth, he pulled his neck in like a turtle.

He must have witnessed the show from a distance, at least, back when I was going around playing real-life Tekken in Zone A.

"To start with, I'll handle abducting Wei Hong and bringing him here. Everything after that is on the Secret Intelligence Service, correct?"

"C, correct."

"Do you have any weapons on you?"

"A, a handgun."

"Nothing like a grenade?"

"I don't have anything like that.... Is a handgun not enough?"

"If I fire a gun, the prison gets noisy."

Oliver shut his mouth.

The fear from a moment ago had vanished without a trace, replaced by an incredulous look that said, and a grenade wouldn't?

Maybe that broke the tension, because he let out a dry laugh and shook his head.

"Anyway.... just how do you intend to abduct Wei Hong?"

“I’ve actually been thinking about that. There are endless ways to do it, but nothing has really jumped out at me yet.”

“Endless ways....”

That was when it happened.

Tap, tap-tap.

While we'd been talking at our leisure, raindrops had started falling from the sky.

Thanks to Southeast Asia's signature heat and humidity, once a rain cloud came through, it would dump an idiotic water bomb like a waterfall.

Shhhhhhhh!

"Aagh, fuck!"

"I'm soaked, dammit!"

The moment the black clouds rolled in, everything around went dim in an instant.

In that brief span, prisoners drenched to the bone came scrambling under the slate eaves of the makeshift buildings.

Rumble, crash!

With a thunderstorm crashing down, lightning and all, the walkways that were usually swarming with people emptied out in no time.

The weather was fickle beyond description, but after pouring like this for thirty minutes or so, the sky would clear as though it had never happened.

"Hm?"

Then something odd caught my eye.

Among the bundle of wires on a utility pole nobody ever bothered to look at.

Snap, crackle-snap.

Between the lines wound any which way around a transformer, I could see a small short circuit sparking.

Crack, crack-crack!

Every so often blue flashes leapt between the strands, tangled together as precariously as a spiderweb.

That was what came of never repairing a line when it blew, just slapping a new one over the top and mindlessly multiplying the number of strands.

"Oh."

Crash, ka-krack!

Along with the deafening thunder, a bolt of lightning flashed through my head as well.

*****

Rain poured down as though a hole had opened in the sky.

The dense black clouds completely blocked out the sun, making the world as dark as midnight.

Rumble, KRAK!

Thunder boomed like exploding bombs at regular intervals, and the curtain of rain was so thick that it was impossible to tell whether anyone was walking across the open yard.

As if by prior agreement, the prisoners had all crawled inside the buildings and hunkered down.

The Samgor members were no exception.

"Look at the state of this shack.... check out the water coming through the ceiling."

"Once the protection money comes in we ought to get some repair work done."

Drip, drip-drip.

Inside a large makeshift building in one corner of the prison, raindrops falling from the cracked ceiling soaked the floor.

Thirty members of Samgor, the drug cartel that ruled Southeast Asia, were gathered together in that place.

“Man, I wanna go to Bangkok.”

“What, did you smear honey all over the place or something?”

"Once, on a rainy day, I crawled into a club and ran into my ex, a model with a killer body. I keep thinking about the way she ground her ass into my thigh."

"Horny bastard. Is that really all you've got in your skull?"

"Reproduction is an important matter, you bastard."

In the damp air they sat huddled together as usual, shooting the breeze about nothing at all.

A few had gathered to deal out cards, and a few more were killing time staring at their phone screens.

That was the moment.

Crackle-snap.

"Huh? What the, a blackout?"

"Ah, fuck."

All at once, every light illuminating the makeshift building went out together.

The darkness that fell in an instant threw the whole place into an uproar.

"Check whether the breaker tripped."

When Wei Hong gave the order irritably from the dark, one of the men poked his head out the window and shook his head.

"Looks like a line shorted out somewhere. The power's down across this whole area."

"Tch. So we're stuck with this bullshit until the rain stops."

Through the wide-open door, the entire surrounding zone was steeped in pitch blackness.

The prison's power grid, strung together in slapdash fashion, gave out every time it rained. For them this was business as usual.

"The rain should let up in about an hour. I'll call someone to fix it then."

The Samgor members dug out lighters and candles in the dark and got them lit.

Under the dim glow they picked their idle chatter back up, waiting for the rain to stop with nothing but their phone screens for light.

As the rainwater dripping through the gaps in the ceiling pooled and sloshed across the floor, soaking their ankles.

Crackle-snap!

"Guhhhk!"

"Nnnghaaark!"

"Uh-uhhhh?"

All at once, blood-curdling screams filled the makeshift building.

The Samgor members standing with their feet in the pooled water began convulsing head to toe and dropping where they stood.

"Wh, what the fuck!"

"El, electric shock! There's current in the floor!"

"Nngguhhaaargh!"

At the sight of those hulking bodies foaming at the mouth and thrashing around, the men still unharmed leapt up in terror.

Reflexively they climbed onto desks and wooden chairs and curled themselves up as tight as they could.

"Fuck!"

Wei Hong too threw his usual dignity aside, scrambling up onto his leather sofa and flattening himself against it.

Snap, crackle-snap.

That was when it happened.

Splash, splash.

"...Wh, what is that?"

Beyond the electrified puddle, a black silhouette could be seen approaching at a leisurely pace.

The man had walked in through the rain without the slightest sign of a shock, perfectly at ease, and when he swept back his soaking hair.

Drip, drip.

Crackle-snap, snap.

Water droplets touched the wire gripped in his hand.

Blue current started branching out in every direction like tree limbs, throwing off sparks.

Crackle-snap!

"No, wait...."

"In, sane...."

The Samgor members were still convulsing en masse from the current running across the floor.

The man paid it no mind at all, stepping across the flooded floor as he came closer.

While every one of them watched that insane scene unfold, dumbstruck.

"Hup."

The man swung the wire in his hand like a whip.

Snap!

"Guh?"

The three or four men who'd taken refuge on the desks toppled to the floor the instant the wire touched them, without managing so much as a proper scream.

"Ngigigigigigi!"

The moment they hit the pooled water, a second shock followed.

"Hup, hup."

"Kk!"

Every time the man swung the wire around like it was a game, the men who'd fled to higher ground were electrocuted helplessly and came raining down onto the floor.

"Uuuuuhhhh."

"Nngguuuuh!"

"F, fuck!"

"Stop! Sto-op!"

Snap!

"Guhk!"

"Kgyagyagyagyagya!"

Swinging that blue flash and scattering sparks everywhere, the man made no attempt to hide how much he was enjoying himself.

Facing that devil's smile, Wei Hong seriously wondered whether he'd already been struck by lightning and dropped into hell.

Fine, the electrocution made sense, seeing as the man was swinging a live wire around. But why on earth could that man walk over a flooded floor as if it were nothing?

"...."

Before long, the man came into focus in Wei Hong's terrified eyes, dragging the crackling blue wire behind him.

Undisguised fear settled over Wei Hong's face, a face that had never worn anything but menace.

"S, sir? I, I don't know what it is you want, but l, let's talk, let's talk this out...."

"Hup."

"W, w, wait.... Kgiiiik!"

Struck by the wire, Wei Hong sprang up like a frog and slammed back down into the floor.

Soon enough he too lay sprawled out, white foam bubbling at his lips as his body shook.

"Ngigigi."

"Nguhguhguh."

Thirty members of Samgor, Southeast Asia's largest drug cartel, were left rolling around on the floor, just that pathetically.

Before long the man flung the wire out the door and rubbed his nose.

"Making money is easy."

*****

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