Chapter 40: Six Billion

TL: LittlePeach

Once all the commotion had been dealt with.

"Hngh. Waaahh...."

"Mom, mommyyy.... my arm, my aaarm...."

The punks who had been swaggering around swinging bats just minutes ago now limped out the door, propping each other up by the shoulders.

"Come play again sometime."

"Eek!"

After kindly seeing them off past the entrance, I headed back inside Dandong Paradise.

The half-collapsed, empty bar sat in silence, of a piece with the bleak mood of the neighborhood.

Shards of broken glass and splintered wood lay scattered everywhere, and there wasn't the faintest trace of anyone bustling to open for business.

"Whew. That felt good."

"Uh, this way.... would you care to sit here? This spot's the cleanest, at least. Haha...."

The man guided me to a corner table that still had all four of its legs intact.

He scrubbed the tabletop with his sleeve, then limped off and came back with a bottle of beer wearing a fine coat of dust.

While I popped open the lukewarm beer, the man snuck a quick glance around.

Then he looked at me with a deadly serious expression.

"Uh, I only mention this in case it's been weighing on you, but.... just as you asked, I haven't breathed so much as a word about that day. To anyone."

"Oh."

"Really."

He'd gone and scratched exactly the itch that had been on my mind.

His face, plainly tinged with fear, begged me to believe him.

The sight of me pounding those punks flat as I pushed my way in must have burned itself into his memory.

"And Wang Chunsam's Eatery, where you were staying before... we haven't gone anywhere near it since that day, either. I figured you might still be staying there, so I steered clear of the place entirely, in case it troubled you. I would swear it on my life."

"Good. I'd actually heard about that already."

"And, uh, and also...."

Then, as if remembering something else, he began squirming all over with a flustered look on his face.

"Uh, look! Um.... all those times we passed by Wang Chunsam's Eatery and trampled on you and insulted you, not knowing who you were... we'd like to formally apologize for that now."

"Ah."

Only then did I remember how they used to tap-dance all over my body.

So I deliberately gave him a mischievous grin.

"You're flattering yourselves. I barely felt a thing."

"S-still...."

"If I'd held even the slightest grudge about that day, would I have packed you rice balls to carry home?"

"...."

"I'd have left all three of you to die at the Chongqing Society hideout. Wouldn't I?"

When I flashed him a bright smile, he clamped his mouth shut as if struck dumb.

Then he bowed his head low, struggling to hide the tears welling in his eyes.

"That day.... thank you, truly, for sparing our lives. Thanks to you, the three of us made it back safely to our families' arms and were able to swear we'd live the rest of our lives to the fullest."

"Well, that's...."

"We will repay this debt of life with our lives, hyeong-nim."

I shuddered despite myself.

Hyeong-nim, of all things.

"Why are you making this so awkward? Just treat me like you used to."

"I cannot do that. How could I, Wei Liang, act so shamelessly toward the man I owe my life to? You saved our lives, so it is only right that we serve you as our hyeong-nim."

"No, look...."

"Let me say it once more. The three of us who kept our lives thanks to you, hyeong-nim, have sworn, no matter what, to keep our mouths completely shut about everything that happened that day. We've wiped it clean out of our heads. Please believe us."

"Yeah, yeah, I believe you. Anyway. You must've been through a lot."

Feeling sheepish, I just chugged my beer.

It would have been nice if the beer were cold, but the carbonation going down my throat was strangely warm.

As I got a couple more mouthfuls down, I let my eyes wander over the desolate bar for no particular reason.

"Anyway, you've had it rough. That can't have been easy to get over. Have you been holding up all right?"

"Ahaha.... well, what can you do? People dying is just part of gang life. You've got to shake it off and move on."

"Where'd the other two go? The ones who ran with you."

"Those two are working three jobs these days. Lots of mouths to feed."

"Ah, fair enough. When there's a family to feed, whatever happens, you just shake it off and get back up."

"Absolutely."

Had he sensed that the mood had eased up a fair bit?

Wei Liang carefully parted his lips.

"By the way, hyeong-nim, what brings you to this part of town? Are you no longer staying in your old area?"

"I'm staying around here for a bit. For work."

"Work? By work, you mean...."

Wei Liang's face went white for an instant.

He seemed to have gotten the wrong idea, that the work I meant was the kind with bullets flying, like the work that day.

"No, not that kind of work."

"Ah, haha...."

"Anyway, what's with this neighborhood? It's like the Warring States period out there."

I asked partly to change the subject.

At that, Wei Liang let out a deep sigh and shrugged.

"Those bastards from earlier are the Jilin Gang. They've been scrapping with our Black Panther Gang for a good long while. They must have spotted me here alone by chance... I never imagined they'd just barge in like that."

"They weren't the only ones, though? Every alley out there was pure chaos."

At my puzzled remark, Wei Liang smiled bitterly and continued his explanation.

"As you know, hyeong-nim, there was that shootout at the Chongqing Society hideout not long ago, wasn't there?"

"There was."

"Ever since that day, Public Security has been running a massive back-alley crackdown with their own jobs on the line. Thanks to that, every last Chongqing Society remnant left in Dandong got hauled away. Bottom-feeders like us were let off with a warning, but the big brothers who took money directly from the Chongqing Society got strung up one after another, as examples."

"Oh-ho."

"They likely won't see proper daylight for the rest of their lives. And knowing that, all those small-fry out there are running wild, each one scrambling to crown himself king of Dandong's back alleys."

The Chongqing Society shootout had happened on the outskirts of Dandong, so I'd been wondering why the mess had spread all the way here. Now it finally added up.

"Honestly, part of me wishes someone would just seize this street outright and rule it. It's been a good while since I last heard children laughing and playing in the alleys."

If kids couldn't even play outside in peace, that was genuinely serious.

My mood soured despite myself.

It was fair to say Dandong's Public Security had half abandoned keeping order in these alleys.

"With that kind of chaos in every alley, business must be dead too, huh?"

"Business has been one step from shutting down for ages. The bar got hit with a fine on charges of organizing an illegal syndicate."

Wei Liang shook his head with a bitter smile.

"And of all things, the bank accounts under the big brother's name got seized wholesale too.... so the organization's cash flow is completely frozen. This Dandong Paradise, and the other bars we managed, they're all about to go up for public auction because we can't pay that one fine."

"Can't the people who are left just chip in and scrape the money together somehow?"

"We tried everything we could, but the fine alone is fifty thousand yuan."

"Fifty thousand? That's not exactly...."

"This is, uh, rather embarrassing to admit.... but we're in this sorry state because we don't have that kind of money."

"Ah."

Fifty thousand yuan.

In Korean money, that comes out to roughly ten million won.

It might seem absurd that anyone could end up on the street for lack of that much, but then again, China is a country where the minimum wage is less than half of Korea's.

And this wasn't even a big city like Beijing; in a backwater like Dandong, odds were high that even that minimum wage standard wasn't being properly enforced.

"If we can just pay the fine, we can keep the place itself running somehow. We could squeeze out enough for everyone's wages, at least.... but if it goes to auction like this, it's truly over. And on top of that, Public Security is watching the money channels like hawks right now, so we can't even borrow from loan sharks."

"Hmm."

"Fifty thousand yuan. Of all the things...."

Real-life noir always does come steeped in the stench of poverty.

The problem at hand was that if the bar went to auction over an unpaid fine, these guys would be out on the street the moment it did.

"Does it matter who pays the fine? The place has an owner, doesn't it?"

"As far as I know, on paper the ownership is unregistered, just floating in limbo. That's how the big brother skimmed a bit off his taxes, too."

"How many staff are left?"

"Originally there were twenty of us all told.... now it's just our trio. And during the hours with no customers, everyone's off working other jobs anyway."

Rubbing my chin absently, I found myself smacking my lips.

'Ten million won or so? I can toss that out without blinking.'

There was nothing complicated to think about.

Cultivating reliable local assets is one of the basic survival rules for a black agent.

From that standpoint, this Black Panther Gang trio looked, at the very least, like people I could trust.

Besides, isn't there a saying for this?

Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.

If Dandong Paradise disappeared, the Black Panther Gang trio would scatter to the winds.

Rather than fretting over the three of them from a distance, better to keep them somewhere within eyeshot.

Besides, when it came to money, now that I thought about it, there was still that card I'd gotten from Yang Mi-ryeong.

'I should check how much is actually on that thing.'

Anyway, my mind was made up.

"That fifty thousand yuan, I'll pay it. I've got that much on me."

"...What? You'd... pay it for us?"

"They say trust is something you buy with money. You've agreed to keep your mouths shut about me, so it's only right I pay that much for you in return, isn't it?"

Wei Liang fell silent for a moment, looking bewildered.

Then he studied my face warily.

"As the price of shutting three grown men's mouths, that's a bargain, wouldn't you say?"

At my glib act, Wei Liang pressed his lips together for some reason.

Then, as if laboring under some grand misapprehension, his eyes suddenly began to well up.

"...Hyeong-nim, you truly are a benevolent man. Even after all those times we beat you and trampled you and raised hell, never knowing who you were...."

He seemed convinced I was covering the fine purely out of the goodness of my heart.

"How many times do I have to say it? Your punches were like wet noodles."

"Ha, haha.... Right. I believe you. Of course."

He said so, but he clearly didn't believe a word of it.

Well, if that was the misunderstanding he wanted, it suited me just fine.

"Anyway, wait here and behave. I'm going to go pull out some cash."

"Yes, sir! Truly, truly, thank you, hyeong-nim."

He looked ready to burst into tears if I left him alone any longer, so I hurried out of the building.

The embarrassment would be future me's problem.

Conveniently enough, there was a bank ATM nearby.

Sliding in the card Yang Mi-ryeong had given me, I made a rough mental guess at the balance.

'She must have loaded at least five hundred million won, right?'

That was about what the prepaid chips I'd won for her at the casino had been worth, after all.

With that light-hearted thought, I pressed the balance inquiry button.

[Balance: 30,000,000 CNY]

"Huh?"

Counting the zeros on the screen, I blinked for a moment.

The number was strangely longer than I'd expected.

Or should I say shorter?

"What? Is this in won?"

If it were, the figure would mean thirty million won.

But the letters CNY sitting plainly at the end meant it was, quite literally, in Chinese currency.

"One, ten, hundred, thousand...."

Converting Chinese yuan into Korean won means multiplying by roughly two hundred.

And the amount that calculation produced was...

"...."

Six billion won.

*****

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