Chapter 18: This Is What Happiness Is

TL: LittlePeach

"I'm busy. I've got a lot on my plate."

-Then think of it as a side job. With your skills, it'll be dead simple.

"...Fine, let's at least hear it. What is it?"

For someone who'd called out of the blue, her voice was remarkably measured.

Unlike usual, this seemed like fairly big business.

Once I played along, Yang Mi-ryeong began explaining, step by step over the phone, the situation she was in and what she wanted.

-As you probably know, we're at war with the Chongqing Society remnants all over Dandong. Thanks to you, we've got our justification locked down, but choking the life out of those rats is proving harder than it looks.

"Is that so? I hadn't heard a single gunshot, so I had no idea."

-Guns are off the table. Dandong Public Security sent us a warning. One more gunshot in the city, and whether he loses his badge or his head, he'll wipe out the Chongqing Society and the Kowloon Society both. I may hold Director Wang's leash now, but I can't just bulldoze the rules.

At Dandong Public Security's warning not to cross that bare-minimum line, the two organizations had finally drawn their knives and axes instead.

As a result, the war being waged quietly in the back alleys had mostly devolved into a mindless battle of attrition, spilling blood day and night.

-At this rate, there's no telling when the war will end. Rather than let my men bleed out for nothing, I decided it'd be cleaner to just cut off the enemy commander's head and call it done. Though the Chongqing Society bastards are probably thinking the exact same thing I am.

I listened in silence, then shook my head firmly.

"I don't take jobs killing people. A black agent is a civil servant, not a contract killer."

-No, I'm not asking you to kill him. I'm asking you to kidnap him alive and bring him to me?

"Ah."

-Jin Hao, the Chongqing Society's Dandong branch chief. Bring in that one man, and this tedious war ends in no time.

A hollow laugh escaped me before I could stop it.

I'd refused to do the killing, so she'd calmly turned around and demanded something even more of a headache, cool as anything.

-The problem is that the Chongqing Society bastards are buying up even the two-bit street thugs of Dandong's back alleys to pad out their numbers. And with those reinforcements, they're running a guerrilla war, stirring up the whole neighborhood. If that Idiot Jin Hao loses it again and shoots up a hotel without a thought for the consequences... then we're all finished. It would mean completely ruining the Dandong business the Kowloon Society spent years and a fortune building up.

That's exactly what makes a cell network so terrifying.

A massive organization has too much to protect and inevitably grows sluggish, while the bottom-feeding mosquitoes with nothing to lose can swarm in from every direction and suck it dry.

-So I want to hand the job of kidnapping Jin Hao to you. For a man who punched through SSD forces and abducted So Se-hyok, bagging one lousy gangster should be a walk in the park, no?

"That only worked because the luck happened to break my way. Besides, the Chongqing Society isn't some lousy gang, it's an organization under the Triads."

-In any case, pull it off and I'll make sure the fee is nothing to sneeze at. I guarantee it'll be a sum you'd never touch in your lifetime.

A sum I'd never touch in my lifetime.

No human being could hear that and feel nothing.

Even so, I was in no position to expose my identity any further than I already had.

"I heard you out. But as I told you last time, as a black agent I can't take private commissions unrelated to national security. I'll have to decline."

-Look at you, playing the civil servant.

Even if my body could take a bullet and stay perfectly fine, I hadn't the slightest reason to help Yang Mi-ryeong complete the Kowloon Society's conquest of Dandong.

The fact that she was Agent Crow was a separate matter entirely.

Despite my flat refusal, Yang Mi-ryeong just gave a leisurely snort, not the least bit bothered.

-Call me anytime if you change your mind. I'll be waiting.

Click.

Then, without waiting for my reply, she hung up on me.

I stared down at the darkened phone screen and scratched the back of my head for a moment.

But there was nothing to agonize over. The answer was already decided.

"Let's pretend I never heard that."

I flipped the phone face-down and simply forgot about it.

*****

Given the nonstop parade of blood and bullets these past few days, an onlooker might come away with a rather cinematic misconception about the job of a black agent.

But bombs going off and guns blazing are truly the rarest of exceptions, erupting only once in a great while.

In reality, a black agent's actual skill set breaks down to ninety percent disguise and lying low, with the remaining ten percent being the ability to bolt without a backward glance the moment a cover gets blown.

The best play is to never create a situation where drawing a gun becomes necessary in the first place.

That's why nothing mattered more to black agents than blending in quickly among the locals, as if they'd been born and raised right there in the neighborhood.

Melting seamlessly into the daily lives of ordinary, humble people is our real job.

"Um, Young Master, you know the laundry lady from the shop next door? Every time she sees me, she talks my ear off about arranging a match between Young Master and her daughter... Might you have any interest?"

"A blind date?"

In that sense, I may have done my job a little too well.

One day, when I'd settled in completely at Wang Chunsam's Eatery, Chae A-ra hesitantly brought it up while I squatted in a corner of the shop plucking duck feathers.

A blind date, of all things.

"I don't particularly mind, actually."

"Truly?"

"Yes."

Living under a cover identity, this sort of thing happened all the time.

It seemed my cover story, the young man who'd rolled up his sleeves and come all the way from Heilongjiang to help Kite No. 3 with his injured shoulder, had gone over a little too well with the shopkeepers around here.

"So I just go out, get treated to a meal, and come back, right?"

"Get treated... ah, yes. Well, I am certain she would at least buy you a cup of tea."

"Though honestly, she'll probably be disappointed and bail pretty fast."

"Oh, how could that be? With Young Master looking so very fine."

"Ahaha. Anyway, please tell her I said yes."

When I readily accepted the blind date, Chae A-ra tilted her head as if she hadn't expected it.

And so the next day, I found myself sitting across from the laundry lady's daughter at a teahouse on the outskirts of downtown Donggang.

"Hello. My name is Dan O-yeon. I work at Shenyang City Hall these days."

"I see. As for me, well, as you know, I've been helping my hyeong-nim Wang Chunsam with his restaurant."

"My mother told me. She said you're a very kind and diligent man."

"Ahaha. Such a generous view of me, it's honestly embarrassing."

My first impression was of a somewhat prim young lady.

She seemed inwardly quite taken with my neatly dressed appearance, and with a flush rising to her face, she peppered me with all sorts of eager questions from the very start.

Then the topic of conversation naturally drifted in a more practical direction.

"Do you happen to have any savings put away? I'm curious about your plans for the future as well."

"Hmm. The money I've saved up so far comes to roughly a thousand yuan."

"...Pardon? Ahaha. What a joker you are."

"No, really. The reason I'm living off Chunsam hyeong-nim right now is that I fell behind on rent at my old place and got thrown out."

"...."

At my unvarnished honesty, her smile stiffened by degrees.

Her eyes trembled violently, as if an earthquake had struck.

Well, it wasn't a lie.

Under my cover identity in China, that really was my entire fortune.

"I, I see..."

"Yes, yes."

"I, um... just remembered something urgent. I'm afraid I have to get going."

And so our meeting drew its curtain exactly thirty minutes after it began.

I'd figured I could at least score one free meal, but maybe I laid it all out a little too early.

"...So you're telling me you got dumped and came straight home?"

"Yeah, pretty much."

The dumbfounded looks on Kite No. 3's and Chae A-ra's faces that evening, when they heard how the date had gone.

Thanks to that, the looks I got from everyone around me turned thoroughly sour.

"Good grief, I can hardly believe it. Such a decent-looking young man, and his entire fortune is a thousand yuan! Couldn't even pay his rent, was about to end up on the street, and still had the gall to come rolling into this restaurant, they say!"

"Oh my goodness, imagine that. And here I was, none the wiser, thinking he was a diligent young man who came all this way to lend a hand to his injured elder brother."

"Diligent, my foot! Latching onto a newlywed couple in their honeymoon glow like a bedbug, without a shred of tact! Oh, poor Chunsam and the young missus, working themselves to the bone. Isn't he a complete freeloader?"

"That's exactly what I'm saying. Tsk tsk. That face fooled me too, but he doesn't live up to it one bit!"

That day, the kind and diligent young man who'd come to help his injured hometown elder brother died.

As if determined to dig him a grave and bury him for good, the shopkeepers gossiped darkly about me at every opportunity, sneaking glances all the while.

Well, it was for the best.

I'm a black agent, after all.

Love and settling down are nothing but luxuries.

"Sniff."

Anyway.

After that day, word about me apparently spread far and wide along the neighborhood aunties' intelligence network, and not a single blind-date offer ever came my way again.

The warm days rolled on, and on one such evening, for some reason, a lonely chill crept up my side.

"Good work today. Get some rest, see you tomorrow."

"Yes, hyeong-nim. Good work yourself."

"Young Master, you have worked hard again today."

"Not at all. Hyeongsu-nim worked far harder than I did."

Closing up shop, finishing the prep for tomorrow's ingredients, then laying out my sleeping bag in a corner of the first-floor restaurant and settling in for the night had become second nature by now.

I lazily pulled a can from the fridge.

Kicking back with a beer after a busy day's work was one of the small pleasures I'd been treating myself to lately.

'This is what happiness is, I guess.'

But then, the world never does run exactly the way I want it to, does it?

Brrring.

"Hm?"

The phone Crane No. 13 had handed over to me was ringing.

As if something had happened, at this late hour.

"Yes, Wang Chil hyeong-nim. Is something..."

-Sparrow. Shut your mouth and listen very carefully to what I'm about to say.

Crane No. 13 cut me off before I could even finish my greeting.

There wasn't even time to blink in confusion.

-I'm going to die soon. Right now, someone is trying to pick the lock on my hideout door.

"...."

At his low, sunken voice, my back straightened of its own accord.

Paying my silence no mind, Crane No. 13 kept talking.

-The camera feed shows two armed men. China or North Korea, one of the two. Plenty of suspects, but no certainty yet.

"...."

-I'm starting the hideout burn procedure now. Once I'm dead, get on the phone with Agent Crow. I never mentioned it, but we go way back. I won't tell you to trust her unconditionally, but she's reliable enough. Get along with each other.

Calmly, step by step, he laid out what might well become his last words.

I clenched my teeth without realizing it.

-It's always like this, the moment things seem to be going well. I promised my daughter a new phone for Children's Day this year...

The moment he murmured that final, lament-like line.

-Bang!

A chilling sound, there and gone in a split second.

-....

And then, a long silence.

I bit down hard on my lip.

*****

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