Chapter 87: A History of Struggle

TL: LittlePeach

Taking out every hostile in sight didn't mean the situation was fully over.

A proper raid is built from operatives in many roles, infiltration, standby, reserve, and getaway teams, each running its piece of the operation from its own position.

In case more of them were lying hidden in wait, I combed the mansion inside and out, from the entrance to the parking lot.

Squelch, squelch.

The blood pooled on the floor clung wetly underfoot.

"Doesn't look like there are any more...."

I'd spent a good long while wandering around in plain view, and not a single attacker came at me.

Besides the Husheng Gang men sprawled across the stairs, a few more bodies caught my eye, but sadly, they looked like the mansion's staff.

'I had my doubts when I saw no grenades, but they really were amateurs.'

Triad soldiers, by and large, seem to have zero understanding of tactical movement.

By their math, piling in with numbers, pointing guns, and dumping rounds should be plenty.

I'd sensed it before, watching Chongqing Society men get mowed down by that North Korean hit squad, and tonight's business made it all the more certain.

"Survivors, none."

Patrol complete, I took the stairs fast and reached the third floor.

Knock, knock.

I rapped on the drawing-room door, but there was no stir from inside.

It hadn't even been ten minutes; by my gut, about eight had passed.

Knock, knock.

"It's me."

"...."

Only when I knocked again and spoke did the faintest reaction come back.

She must have been pressed right up against the door; Yang Mi-ryeong's thin breathing sounded very close.

Keeping her suspicion up to the very last, a thoroughly professional reaction.

"I told you I'd be back within ten minutes."

When I brought up something only the two of us could know, a sigh of relief finally slipped out through the door.

But only for a moment; a coy question came flying right after.

"I don't believe you. Prove exactly who you are."

"How?"

"Where was the last place we kissed?"

A dry laugh escaped me before I could stop it.

Inventing things that never even happened, cool as anything, just to loosen a person up.

"We're not like that."

Click.

The door opened.

And then, whump!

"Whoa."

Yang Mi-ryeong burst through the open door and threw herself into my arms.

Soft and sudden, piercing straight through my lowered guard, her skin pressed flush against me all over.

"Thank you. For coming back, like you promised."

The sudden embrace locked my body up for a beat, but before I knew it, I was patting her back.

Those few minutes of waiting for me to return must have felt brutally long.

Former black agent. Agent Crow. Kowloon Society Dandong branch chief.

For all the history she'd stacked up, she was still just a woman who felt fear like anyone else.

"You'll get blood on you."

"That stopped mattering a while ago, didn't it?"

Meanwhile, a flashlight beam swung onto us and I squinted for a moment.

A glance showed Boss Ruixing blinking at us with an astonished look on his face.

"Ten minutes aren't up yet, right? I'm back, safe and sound."

"Sir, what in the world are you...."

"I meant to have a car ready downstairs while I was at it, but I couldn't find the keys anywhere."

By then Yang Mi-ryeong had stepped out of my arms.

I took the flashlight from her and jerked my chin toward the door.

"Let's head straight out. I've cleared away everything troublesome."

"...Understood. Yangyang, let us go."

"Y-yes."

From there, the escape went off without a hitch.

We took the stairs down and headed out of the mansion.

Not so much as a breath could be heard from the group.

The surprise was Lu Yangyang's reaction.

Boss Ruixing's daughter through and through, perhaps?

Clatter.

"...."

Debris drifted down now and then in the corridor the gunfire had shredded to rags, but Lu Yangyang clenched her teeth and made not a sound.

Even at the sight of the bodies strewn across the first floor, she only kept a composed expression on her face.

"I'll drive."

"Please."

Yang Mi-ryeong and Lu Yangyang took the back seat side by side, and Boss Ruixing sat up front.

Vroom.

As I drove us out past the mansion's fence, I kept my nerves strung tight and scanned our surroundings.

Unlike when I moved light and alone, the car was now full of people I had to look after.

"...."

"...."

No one said it aloud, but surely everyone in the car was looking at the same thing.

Boss Ruixing's mansion, sunk in darkness and blood, fell steadily behind us, while Boss Jin Yao's brightly lit mansion drew steadily closer.

Taking in that contrast, Ruixing's expression sank especially heavy.

"...."

"...."

We drove straight on past Boss Jin Yao's mansion.

Apparently there really was no follow-up plan beyond the raid; nothing on the road rose to block our way.

We drove on for about five more minutes and reached the entrance to the estate grounds.

The guards posted at the iron gate stepped forward to bar the way.

"Halt. Halt."

"Wha... hey, hey. That's Boss Ruixing."

"Yikes."

But the moment they confirmed Boss Ruixing's face in the passenger seat, the guards went white as sheets and scrambled backward.

That alone made it look like the Husheng Gang raid on the mansion was not the will of the Chongqing Society as a whole.

Clank.

For all the vigilance I'd kept up to the very end, the massive iron gate swung wide open almost anticlimactically.

"Have a peaceful night, sir."

"Thanks. Keep up the good work."

I offered the greeting breezily and drove through the open gate.

I pulled my phone from my pocket, opened the map app, and set the navigation for Taoyuan Airport.

'Honestly....'

Somewhere in there, it struck me just how tactless the world could be.

A blood-reeking massacre lay behind us, yet the view spread out before us was infuriatingly beautiful.

Whoooosh.

Rustle, rustle.

Outside the window, moonlit waves broke white, and the brush swayed in the wind like a rolling tide.

Those indifferent sights caught in my eye all over again.

"...."

For a while, none of us spoke.

Boss Ruixing gazed out at the nightscape beyond the car window, his mouth drawn down in a grim line.

Then, at some point.

"Tonight's affair.... was likely Boss Jin Yao's warning to me."

Ruixing finally forced his mouth open, chewing over each word.

His voice was strained, like a man swallowing bitter medicine.

"A warning?"

"A warning to accept, clearly and fully, that the essence of our Chongqing Society is no scholarship foundation, but a Triad organization grown fat on the blood of countless people."

Put bluntly, the root of tonight's disaster came down to the Chongqing Society's succession.

And frankly, it was a problem Boss Jin Yao could have ended by simply pointing at one of the two.

Had he done that, no slaughter would have broken out at the mansion tonight in the first place.

"The Boss always said the same thing. That he had lived his whole life like a tiger in a blood-reeking jungle. And so whoever inherits this enormous seat must likewise be a beast of prey, exactly like him."

"...."

"So this war will never end unless one of us, myself or Jin Weiliang, dies. Each of us must tear out the other's throat and destroy him, and by that alone prove himself the beast."

With Jin Yao looking on, Jin Weiliang had finally run wild.

'No, not looking on. More like egging him on, wasn't it?'

In the end, Ruixing had survived after all.

Now neither of them could afford to hesitate any longer.

Jin Yao's ultimatum had been laid before everyone's eyes.

"Where the Chongqing Society's future goes from here...."

Having spent a lifetime at his side, Boss Ruixing surely understood Boss Jin Yao's intentions better than anyone alive.

It was just as he let out a deep sigh.

"Then come to Hong Kong."

Yang Mi-ryeong, who had been listening in silence, spoke up abruptly.

She was in the middle of comforting a trembling Lu Yangyang, an arm wrapped around the girl's shoulders.

The closeness between them looked so natural I found myself wondering when the two had gotten so close.

"Our Kowloon Society will host Boss Ruixing and Miss Lu Yangyang with every courtesy. We will guarantee your safety so that Jin Weiliang can't lay so much as a finger on you."

What she was angling for was plain as day.

Taking in Boss Ruixing meant winning the entire Aboveground Faction that followed him.

A glance at the rearview mirror caught a flicker of Yang Mi-ryeong's expression, elegant on the surface with her true intentions tucked away.

"...I am truly grateful for the offer."

Boss Ruixing surely knew as well as anyone that those words were no simple kindness.

He closed his eyes for a while as if lost in thought, then before long shook his head.

"It is shameless of me, but I would ask one favor of you, Boss Yang."

"Anything. Just name it."

"Take Yangyang to the Kowloon Hotel. If it is you, Boss Yang, I can entrust my daughter to you."

In other words, he himself intended to remain in Taiwan to the end.

Yang Mi-ryeong's offer of asylum with the Kowloon Society had been, in the end, refused.

"Whether I live or die, I must remain in Taiwan."

"F-Fatherrr...."

At that, Lu Yangyang, who had stayed so composed until now, choked up, her voice trembling.

Ruixing kept his face impassive and shook his head firmly.

"Yangyang. You will stay at Boss Yang's side, together with Jin Hao."

"Hic... hicc...."

"This father of yours will pound the ground firm, so that the two of you have a place to come home to, whole."

Jin Weiliang's merciless offensive tonight seemed to have hardened his resolve to retreat not one step further.

At last, the two tigers of the Chongqing Society had finished every preparation to tear each other apart.

Screech.

"We're here."

"Mr. Nguyen. You have truly been through a great deal tonight."

"Don't mention it."

Before long, we arrived at the airport.

Word must have been sent ahead; Kowloon Society men were gathered together at the airport terminal.

Just before leaving Taiwan, Lu Yangyang shared with her father a long, long embrace that might well be their last.

"Hicc...."

"Don't cry, Yangyang. You're making a mess of that pretty face."

"But stiiill...."

"Your father may have put on some years, but he's the man who weathered every storm there was and built the Chongqing Society into what it is today. Something like this is truly nothing."

"Hic, hic...."

"I will survive, without fail, and see to it that you two set foot on Taiwanese soil again. Don't you worry."

As I quietly watched the wistful scene between father and daughter, a hand gently caught the hem of my sleeve.

I turned; deep in the night, under the bright lights, Yang Mi-ryeong's whole body was covered in bloodstains.

That was from her hugging me so hard back at Boss Ruixing's mansion.

"You're coming to Hong Kong with us, right?"

Amid the dark red stains, her face shone singularly white.

I hadn't been conscious of it, but I probably looked even more gruesome than she did.

I nearly nodded without thinking, then let out a dry laugh.

'She really never gives me a moment to drop my guard, this woman.'

If I followed her to Hong Kong like this, I'd be well and truly on her hook, with no chance of ever getting away.

I shook my head and covered her hand with mine.

"I think this is where we part ways."

"...."

Squeeze.

Yang Mi-ryeong wordlessly hugged me tight one more time.

Not the fierce clutch of before; this was the gesture of a reluctant farewell.

"I never put my safety in someone else's hands. And yet.... somehow, with you, I keep ending up owing you my life like this."

"...."

"See you next time. I'll be in touch."

On her way out, Yang Mi-ryeong patted a sniffling Lu Yangyang and moved on into the airport.

Then, about halfway along, the two of them stopped short.

Lu Yangyang spun around to look back at me.

"Mr. Nguyen!"

"...."

"I will never, ever forget that you saved me and my father!"

Eyes shining bright, Lu Yangyang looked straight at me and bowed deep from the waist.

Feeling a little sheepish at the name Nguyen, I gave a small wave, and after that she set off down the path without hesitation.

Neither of them ever once looked back.

"You've raised a composed young lady."

"So it seems.... In the time I wasn't looking, that tiny slip of a child has gone and become a full-grown adult."

With Kowloon Society men surrounding the pair as escort, their group soon disappeared beyond the departure gates.

Left behind, the two of us looked at each other for a moment.

"Sir, you're not going along to Hong Kong?"

"No. The job Boss Yang Mi-ryeong hired me for ended right here."

"Then might I ask you to play my chauffeur, just for tonight?"

"As long as there's a bed in it for me. Where can I take you?"

"Let us go to a building my scholarship foundation manages. I'll set aside a place inside for you to stay."

We drove the same SUV we'd come in out of the airport.

In the emptied-out car, we sat wrapped in our own thoughts, without a single word between us.

'That was one long day.'

And far too long a night.

Keeping myself alive was easy; keeping others alive was a problem of a whole different dimension.

I'd been so tense that a dazed, bone-deep exhaustion washed over me, leaving my whole body aching.

And yet, why was it?

Fatigue aside, vitality was brimming through every part of me.

Blood churned round and round through my body without pause.

In protecting others, I could feel that I myself was alive.

'My heart's pounding.'

Who was it who said that human history is a history of struggle?

Why Boss Jin Yao had split the Chongqing Society in half and set it tearing at its own throat... I felt I could understand, just a little.

*****

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