Winter Season Chapter 12

As soon as the organization member unbuckled his seatbelt, Seunghyeok grabbed him by the collar and threw him out. Then, sitting in the driver’s seat, he spoke toward the low-ranking member who was looking up at him blankly from the ground.

“If you don’t want to end up as a cripple in the hospital for a few months, don’t ever get behind the wheel in front of me again. Do you understand?”

Even before the mumble of “Ye-yes…!” ended, the door closed and the car moved. The man sat there for a long time, having landed on his backside, forgetting even the fact that he had been thrown onto the bare ground.

At the far end, the orange taxi was just now exiting the alleyway. Unlike the taxi making a left turn, the black sedan sped straight through the alley.

A number 50 was written on a sign on the corner of a telephone pole. It was speeding.

༘⋆🤍˚ .❄️₊˚ෆ

A luxury sedan came to a loud halt in front of a glittering building.

Underneath a sign that read “No Smoking Area” next to the entrance, a man who was boldly smoking a cigarette frowned as he struck the heads of new employees with documents.

He shouted, “What bastard is this, fuck,” and raised his head gallantly, but the person his eyes met was Gu Seunghyeok, who was holding the steering wheel. As soon as he realized that, he flicked the cigarette butt into the air as if tossing it and hurriedly ran toward the car.

The new employees standing behind him also followed suit, watching his lead, but before they could even reach him, the driver’s side door opened and black dress shoes touched the ground.

The man who was running over folded his upper body ninety degrees and bowed his head.

“Please go inside, hyung-nim! I will park for you!”

“Hyung-nim?”

“Ah, I am sorry, Section Chief!”

Perhaps it was because he had witnessed a shitty sight in front of a motel since the morning. Everything was unpleasant—from the man’s continuously bowing attitude to the faint smell of cigarettes and even the back of his hands covered in faded tattoos. Seunghyeok looked down at the man with cold eyes and spoke.

“You seemed busy; why don’t you finish what you were doing?”

“Ah, no, sir. I am sorry, Section Chief.”

“Recite your affiliation.”

“…I am Manager Moon Hyeonseung from Business Support Team 2.”

As he put all his strength into his posture, even those standing behind him bowed their heads repeatedly with terrified faces. There wasn’t a single thing that wasn’t irritating. Seunghyeok lifted Manager Moon’s shirt sleeve with his index finger and then let it drop with a thud.

“If you wanted to show off that you’re a thug, you should have kept playing in the field. Not putting coloring games on your body and catching kids in the head office lobby.”

“I-I am sorry. I will rectify it!”

“Rectify it my foot, report to the containers starting next week. I’ll tell the field office.”

Manager Moon, momentarily dumbfounded, shut his mouth tight with startled eyes, but Seunghyeok only looked down at him crookedly. He closed his eyes and ran his hand over his eyebrows.

“Do I have to say it twice?”

“Ah, no, sir! Understood, thank you, hyung-nim!”

As Manager Moon bent his upper body with a look of ruin, the rookies standing behind him followed suit. Looking at their expressions, it seemed they hadn’t fully grasped the situation yet.

Since he had no intention of standing there and explaining kindly, Seunghyeok left them behind and moved toward the building. From behind, a sound like a small lament broke out.

As he approached the sophisticatedly decorated lobby, a large building made of bluish glass boasted its majesty. It was a secret everyone knew but kept quiet about—that the building standing respectably in the middle of downtown Seoul was built with the blood and flesh of many people.

In front of the lobby, Taesung Group, written on a large stone that must have been two meters tall, was a group that had been wandering the back alleys under the name Taesung-pa until just a few years ago.

The achievement of Chairman Gu, who would be sitting at the top of that building now, was growing an organization that had been barely surviving by managing entertainment establishments or selling drugs in Incheon, Bucheon, and the Gangseo area of Seoul into various fields such as full-scale smuggling, drug distribution, and prostitution.

However, the expression “Group,” where justice is unclear, ultimately only meant they would do all sorts of things if it made money; in reality, it was nothing more than a slightly more elegant expression for a name that had been rolling around outside the boundaries of the law.

Chairman Gu knew this as well, so he had always hoped to attach sound words behind Taesung. Construction, development, transport, entertainment, things like that.

It was a situation where the long-cherished desire of Chairman Gu—to corporate the businesses they had been familiarly carrying out under the surface during their organization days and to make Taesung a holding company—was right in front of them. It was likely for that reason that he had called Seunghyeok, who had only been secretly handling things that would get hands dirty until now, to the clean head office.

Seunghyeok brushed back his disheveled hair with one hand and unbuttoned the top button of his shirt. It was because he already felt as if his neck were being constricted at the thought of going up and facing that snake-like face.

“Section Chief, hello!”

“Hello!”

A group in suits, spotting Seunghyeok crossing the lobby without hesitation, quickly approached and lined up. The eyes of the customers in the cafe widened at the sight of several burly men standing in a rigid line.

“Easy now, easy, boys. The customers will get scared and run away.”

Seunghyeok clicked his tongue lightly, tsk, and moved toward the elevator. Someone standing at the very front quickly pressed the button instead of Seunghyeok and bowed his waist servilely.

“Have you arrived, hyung-nim.”

“The Chairman is upstairs, right.”

“Yes, but what brings you here at this hour….”

“Are you trying to get a report?”

At the words spat out with a head tilted crookedly to one side, the organization member’s face froze. With a cold, hardened expression, he bowed his head deeply and repeated his apologies over and over. Looking down at that, Seunghyeok turned his gaze away and let out a smirk.

“Punk, getting all scared.”

The elevator stopped on the 19th floor. Seunghyeok turned toward the Chairman’s office without hesitation.

The organization member who got off with Seunghyeok followed quickly behind as if he had something to say, but when Seunghyeok opened the door to the Chairman’s office without warning and stepped inside, he stopped in his tracks, only wetting his lips with his tongue. Welcoming such a Seunghyeok was Secretary Yoon, who jumped up from his seat with a startled face.

“Section Chief, it’s only two o’clock, what brings you—”

“Let’s go inside.”

“Wait a moment, right now…!”

Seunghyeok ignored Secretary Yoon, who was hurriedly leaving his seat, and pushed open the heavy closed door. The first thing that caught his eye were two people sitting on a glossy leather sofa.

Feeling four pupils piercing this way all at once, Seunghyeok chewed and swallowed a short curse between his teeth. Fuck, so that’s why everyone was reacting like that.

“Section Chief, I’m sorry, but in a little while again—”

“Oh, Section Chief Gu. I was going to ask you to come a bit early anyway, so this is good.”

Chairman Gu, who had been throwing sharp glances at the noise of the uninvited guest, relaxed his expression and pulled up his lips. On the old man’s face, with graying, faded hair, deep wrinkles on his forehead, and not a trace of kindness to be found, the indelible marks of time remained.

Along with a sickly complexion that could not be hidden by money, power, or honor.

“Secretary Yoon, bring one more cup of tea.”

“…Yes, Chairman.”

“Right. Seunghyeok, you come and sit here.”

It wasn’t as if they were pretending to be a happy family, and he had no desire at all to sit at the same table and share a conversation, but he couldn’t very well turn back now.

Seunghyeok, who had been standing at the door until then, grit his teeth and stepped inside. Then, he sat down with a thud, not in the seat Chairman Gu pointed to, but on the side next to it.

The eyes of the man sitting opposite him, tilting a teacup, were lifted sharply. Seunghyeok leaned his back against the sofa and let out an exaggerated smile.

“It’s because I might get indigestion if we sit facing each other and drink tea.”

“…….”

“It might not be the case for you, hyung, but I’m a more delicate person than I look.”

As Seunghyeok smirked and shrugged his shoulders, Jin-hyeok turned his gaze away from Seunghyeok with a cold face. Secretary Yoon, who came in then, placed a luxurious tea set in front of Seunghyeok. Steam rose stealthily above the shallowly rippling, deep golden liquid.

“Nexus. How was it after looking it over.”

“All those establishments are much the same. There’s nothing special.”

Chairman Gu, who had been leaning back with both arms on the sofa armrests, took out a cigar stick from a wooden case on the table. His wrinkled hand was shaking so much it was visible to the naked eye, but no one mentioned it.