Chapter 85: A Tiger and a Tiger

TL: LittlePeach

Knock, knock.

At the sound of someone knocked on the door, my eyes snapped open.

I'd been leaning against the sofa, catching a quick catnap.

I'd figured that if I lay down on the bed I'd be out for good, so it felt like I'd only closed my eyes for a moment.

Knock, knock.

Someone knocked on my door again.

"Pardon me, sir. Refreshments have been laid out in the drawing room."

However much time had passed, the window had gone dark while I wasn't looking.

"Right. I'll be there shortly."

Slurp.

After first wiping away the drool I'd leaked everywhere, I followed a staff member to the drawing room.

The others had already arrived and claimed their seats.

Ruixing and his daughter, in comfortable but immaculate clothes, occupied the seats of honor, and across from them sat Yang Mi-ryeong in business casual.

"Welcome, Mr. Nguyen! Now you can finally tell us everything about what happened that day, can't you?"

Lu Yangyang in particular was practically bouncing off the sofa, unable to contain herself.

She must have really been looking forward to my story.

"What exactly were you so curious about?"

"All of it! How a North Korean assassination squad ended up storming into Dandong, and how you rescued Jin Hao, Mr. Kodam. All of it!"

For all her doll-like looks, Lu Yangyang seemed to have quite the healthy appetite for this kind of blood-spattered story.

She showed enormous interest in the gunfight between me and the North Korean assassination squad, and Ruixing didn't seem inclined to rein in his daughter's curiosity either.

I lifted my teacup and briefly put my thoughts in order.

It had all happened barely a month or two ago; the memories were still vivid.

"Very well. On that moonlit night, my commission began with a call from Boss Yang Mi-ryeong."

"Gulp."

Thanks to my lying skills, which had improved by leaps and bounds right alongside my acting, I began leisurely spinning the tale however it rolled out of my head.

Naturally, my identity as an NIS black agent had to be left out entirely.

When I plugged that gap with the persona of a freelance hitman of mixed Vietnamese blood, the pieces of the story clicked together rather convincingly.

"They opened the assault by smashing the building with an RPG. I slipped onto the rooftop and took their rear, and in that cramped space I was nearly turned into a sieve by machine-gun fire. If not for my exceptional pistol marksmanship, it would have been the end of me."

"Wow! Really, with just a pistol?"

"That's right."

"How, with only a pistol... I can't believe it!"

"Well, now... it's not as if I can give you a demonstration."

Every time I so much as opened my mouth, Lu Yangyang's eyes went wide as saucers.

That reaction made the telling that much sweeter, and I warmed to it even more.

"A few days ago, I was kidnapped in Sihanoukville while there on vacation. To be precise, I let myself be kidnapped. They were obvious amateurs at a glance, but I was curious how they ran their business down there."

"My goodness!"

While I was at it, I rattled off everything I'd been through on my recent vacation in Cambodia.

From what happened at the wenchi compound I'd walked into on my own two feet to rescue a kidnapped acquaintance, to the story of how I'd turned the Mango Farm, occupied by the Italian Mafia, into a smoking ruin.

"My god... is that all true?"

For a good while she just sat there, spellbound by my patter, wearing the sated expression of someone who'd eaten her fill.

Around then, my stock of stories was scraping bottom.

"Oh, that's right! So when exactly do you intend to return my fiancé?"

She snapped back to her senses and shot Yang Mi-ryeong a sharp, dagger-eyed glare.

Yang Mi-ryeong, who had likewise been listening to my story in a daze, came to at the pointed question.

She smiled lazily and returned fire.

"Hard to say. If you're that worried about your fiancé, Miss, why not come visit our Kowloon Hotel yourself? I'll see to it you're treated like royalty."

"I will gratefully accept your goodwill, Boss Yang, and nothing more. But I have no intention of sending my daughter there."

Ruixing cut her offer down firmly before his daughter could answer.

At that, Yang Mi-ryeong lifted her perfectly cooled teacup and gave a small snort.

"Then let me turn the question around. When exactly does the Chongqing Society plan to take Young Master Jin Hao back? We can't very well keep the man at our Kowloon Hotel for the rest of his life."

"Mmm."

At her question, which pierced straight to the quick, Ruixing gave a bitter smile.

While he wet his lips with tea instead of answering, Lu Yangyang, having overheard something strange, wore a bewildered look.

"Father, what is this about? Are you saying Jin Hao is being held hostage at the Kowloon Hotel on purpose?"

"That is..."

At his daughter's question, which struck dead center, Ruixing couldn't bring himself to speak.

Apparently Lu Yangyang had been raised like a hothouse flower, sheltered all this time from the Chongqing Society's succession troubles.

On behalf of the visibly stuck Ruixing, Yang Mi-ryeong continued the explanation in a gentle voice, as if soothing a small child.

"You may not be aware, Miss, but things inside the Chongqing Society are quite complicated right now. Two factions are locked in a standoff over the successor's seat."

The Militant Faction and the Aboveground Faction.

The rivalry between Jin Weiliang and Ruixing over the Chongqing Society's next reign.

Even the reason Jin Hao had to remain a hostage at the Kowloon Hotel.

In my case, I'd heard it all on the ride over, so none of it came as a surprise.

"Which is why Boss Jin Yao entrusted his second son to our Kowloon Society, temporarily, to keep him safe."

"...."

Only then, hearing the situation at last, did Lu Yangyang's face drain white.

Ruixing simply watched, his expression heavy, as his daughter confronted reality through someone else's mouth.

Lu Yangyang raised trembling eyes to her father.

"Could it be... did all this happen because I refused the engagement to Brother Jin Weiliang?"

"My child. None of this is your fault."

"But..."

By the look of it, Lu Yangyang's intended had originally been Jin Weiliang.

But the engagement to Jin Weiliang had fallen through for some reason, and Jin Hao had been chosen as her fiancé instead.

It's rich of me to stick my nose into another family's affairs, but honestly, if Jin Weiliang and Lu Yangyang had gotten engaged, this whole succession mess would probably have resolved itself without a hitch.

Curiosity got the better of me, and I wet my lips.

"Miss, why did you refuse the engagement to Jin Weiliang?"

"Well... I always felt he was a man whose outside and inside never matched. On the surface he always treated me with the warmest smile, but somehow he never failed to give me chills."

"And Jin Hao was different?"

"We've known each other since childhood, so part of it is simply that I'm comfortable around him... but that man is very simple. If anything, his problem is that everything he feels shows plainly on his face."

"Mmm."

He was a simple one, all right.

Whining after losing all his money at the casino.

Then beaming from ear to ear, mood fully restored, the moment I tossed him some consolation chips.

Anyway, thanks to that, the option of Jin Weiliang and Ruixing joining hands had vanished for good.

From there, the feud between the Militant Faction and the Aboveground Faction became an unavoidable course, and today the two factions stood in open opposition over the succession.

"...I have not the slightest intention of taking the Chongqing Society boss's seat."

After hearing out Yang Mi-ryeong's explanation, Ruixing sighed and shook his head.

Having sat through the whole account, his face hung heavy with fatigue.

"If Jin Weiliang wants it, he is more than capable of taking that seat for himself."

"But then the Chongqing Society will split clean in half and turn on itself, won't it? The people running the aboveground businesses won't just stand by and watch Jin Weiliang run wild."

"That too will be a burden Jin Weiliang must shoulder as the next boss."

Ruixing seemed almost excessively detached from the Chongqing Society's succession, as if it were someone else's problem.

As if to probe his true feelings, Yang Mi-ryeong asked casually, still smiling.

"Then what did Boss Jin Yao have to say?"

"That is nothing an outsider needs to know."

Clack.

Ruixing set his teacup down hard, drawing a cold line.

It was a gesture of refusal, a warning not to raise the subject again.

Yang Mi-ryeong finally backed off and nodded.

In the silence, we had each just raised our cups to drain what was left of the tea.

Thunk.

"Huh."

"Oh my?"

The chandelier lighting the drawing room went out, plunging everything into pitch darkness.

Unlike me and Yang Mi-ryeong, who reacted with a flinch, Lu Yangyang and Ruixing were oddly calm.

"No cause for alarm. The power grid around here has been unstable lately, so this happens from time to time. Give it ten seconds and the mansion's backup generator will kick in and set things right."

But before long, ten seconds came and went.

The lights never returned, and the silence stretched on.

'Something feels off.'

A strange chill traced its way down my spine.

It was the very moment an ominous premonition flashed through my mind.

Crack-crack! Crack!

"...."

Gunshots rang out in rapid succession from somewhere inside the mansion.

At the same time, urgent footsteps began surging toward us from beyond the drawing room door.

Wham!

The door burst open in the darkness, and light spilled through from the other side.

A flashlight beam.

"...Ruixing's here!"

I'd known this was no mere blackout from the moment the gunfire started.

The instant that voice reached us, my body moved on pure reflex with no time to think.

"Everyone down!"

"Mmph!"

First I grabbed Yang Mi-ryeong beside me and forced her into a crouch, then heaved the solid-wood sofa we'd been sitting on up and over.

In that single instant, we had cover enough to hide us all.

Bang, ba-bang!

The gunfire came pouring in, right on cue.

Bullets thudded dully into the wooden sofa and went no further.

"Aieeee!"

"Shh!"

Ruixing likewise grabbed Lu Yangyang and pulled her down low behind the sofa.

Meanwhile, I quickly scanned for anything that could serve as a weapon.

The flashlight the intruder aimed alongside his muzzle traced out the room's contours, however dimly.

'One inside the room, for now.'

First I reached out, swept my hand along the table, and closed it around a dessert knife.

Then I tilted my body at an angle and sprinted for the door.

Tap-tap!

"...You!"

Yang Mi-ryeong's belated gasp of alarm brushed past my ear.

Bang! Ba-bang!

Busy shooting, he must not have spotted me slipping out of his line of fire into the blind spot; the flashlight beam stayed trained on the sofa.

Which meant his position was laid out plain before my eyes.

'Left-handed. Flashlight in the right hand.'

Bang! Ba-bang!

Muzzle flash flickering inside that halo of white light, I closed to point-blank in a couple of strides.

Shunk!

"Gyaaaargh!"

I rammed the knife in my grip deep into the gunman's neck, and black blood sprayed out through the darkness.

The flashlight he dropped spun as it fell, sketching the room's outlines in sweeping arcs.

Snatch.

I plucked the pistol from his slackening grip and pulled the trigger, aimed square at his heart.

Bang!

"Hrk!"

Beyond the body crumpling limply to the floor, another intruder came through the open door.

He froze stiff in the darkness, an instant away from tilting his flashlight my way.

Bang!

"Guhhk!"

Blood welled from the hole punched through his chest.

I stripped the flashlight from the fallen man's grip and tipped it briefly toward the corridor beyond the open door.

No one besides those two had come up to the third floor.

Click.

I shut the door at once and locked it.

"You can come out now. We're safe for the moment."

With the firefight wrapped up, three faces popped up from behind the sofa.

When I aimed the flashlight at the ceiling, the chandelier's crystals drank in the light and cast a soft glow over the room.

"You! Are you hurt?"

Yang Mi-ryeong hurried past the sofa toward me.

She picked up another flashlight rolling on the floor and aimed it at me.

"Blood! You're bleeding right now..."

"It's not my blood."

"Still, just to be safe..."

"No, truly, I'm perfectly fine. Their marksmanship was atrocious, every last one of them."

My sturdy body aside, I hadn't given them the leisure to land a single round in the first place.

I roughly wiped the blood spatter from my face and glanced back over the sofa.

Lu Yangyang, stunned by the sudden gunfire, was trembling violently in her father's arms.

"This is a raid. Any idea who sent them?"

Truthfully, there was no need to ask.

Ruixing, one arm wrapped around his daughter's shoulders, already wore a grave expression.

"Most likely... Jin Weiliang."

I'd been thinking exactly the same thing.

Even the backup generator, which should have kicked in right after the outage, had been shut down.

Which meant this was the work of someone with intimate knowledge of how the mansion's internal systems ran.

In that case, the enemy naturally belonged to the Chongqing Society.

And at this point in time, the only man who would try to assassinate Ruixing was Jin Weiliang.

'No windows in this drawing room. I was thinking of jumping down and hitting them from behind.'

It followed that the intruders were most likely those Husheng Gang men, the Chongqing Society's core muscle.

I didn't yet know how many had come, but that was something I could find out as I went.

"...A few days ago, Boss Jin Yao asked me whether I had any intention of inheriting the Chongqing Society."

Just then, Ruixing, one flashlight in hand, walked over to the drawing room wall.

What he was raising was a continuation of the very subject he'd dodged minutes before.

At his sudden preamble, Yang Mi-ryeong and I listened in silence.

"But I declined on the spot; the seat is far beyond a man like me. And then the boss said this. He did not care who took the Chongqing Society, but his successor absolutely had to be a tiger."

A tiger?

Was it some Zen riddle carrying a hidden meaning?

While I stood there blinking in confusion, Ruixing flung open a display cabinet and swept every book on its shelves crashing to the floor.

A shotgun, cunningly hidden inside, came tumbling out.

A Benelli M4, an Italian classic.

"Ooh."

"It seems Jin Weiliang has finally steeled himself to be the tiger that tears out my throat."

Ruixing looked as though he'd finished steeling himself as well.

Because beneath that head of white hair, the eyes that had been sunk in gloom all evening were now raised in a razor-sharp glare.

*****

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