Hazardous Concentration Chapter 19

No. It was more of Eunhoo’s own problem. It was for a reason he didn’t even need to be curious about. He was simply embarrassed. The shame of showing his miserable, pathetic state to the person he least wanted to see it, rather than him living a good life, weighed heavily on Eunhoo all over again.

“Mr. Eunhoo…!”

The manager, exasperated as Eunhoo just stood there blankly, whispered to him as if scolding him. Eunhoo reached out his hand reluctantly.

He could feel the crisp texture of the banknotes in his hand vividly.

“…Thank you.”

Eunhoo bowed his head to express his gratitude. At the same time, a suspicion kept raising its head in his mind. Was all of this really just a coincidence?

The fact that a server was absent today, so Eunhoo took his place, and the guest he was assigned to was Yeo Taejun—was all of this just a coincidence?

If so, it had to be a truly incredible one.

Even though he was standing in one place, he was out of breath as if he had been sprinting. Feeling a stinging sensation in his eyes, Eunhoo rubbed them with the back of his hand.

“Mr. Joo Eunhoo.”

Eunhoo lifted his head blankly. Yeo Taejun’s face was no different from before. A quiet smile hung on his lips.

“See you again.”

The moment he saw that face, he knew.

That man knew everything and came here.

That meant his visit to [Songrim] was not a simple coincidence either.

How much does he know? Does he even remember that we met four years ago? Eunhoo’s gaze wavered uncontrollably. Yeo Taejun, after casting a glance filled with interest, walked past Eunhoo with a smiling face.

∞ ∞ ∞

Thwack!

A sound like beating a water-soaked leather bag echoed incessantly. Behind Yeo Taejun’s back, two burly men were taking turns pummeling a sandbag.

“Director.”

Tap, tap. With the sound of leather shoes striking the tiles, his secretary, Kim Hyunseong, approached at high speed. Yeo Taejun asked, dangling the cigarette he had in his mouth between his fingers.

“The ledger?”

“Here it is.”

Before Kim Hyunseong could even finish his sentence, he respectfully handed over a notebook that appeared to be the ledger. Yeo Taejun, who had stubbed out his cigarette in the blood pooled on the floor, stood up from his crouching position. Blood dripped from his black leather gloves.

“Good work.”

“It is nothing.”

If his grandfather had laid the foundation for TS and his father had increased its volume, Yeo Taejun’s job was to harvest and protect those fruits. He scrutinized the contents of the ledger, not caring whether blood stained it or not.

The ledger contained, without omission, the records of the Lee family bribing people here and there while they were at TS.

“They sure have been gorging themselves on this and that for a while.”

Yeo Taejun tossed the ledger into a drum incinerator. On a sweltering summer day, with a fire lit, the heat was indescribable.

“Mmph, mph!”

Meanwhile, not far from where Yeo Taejun stood, a man was tied up with tape gagging his mouth. He twisted his body while bound to a rusted iron chair. Yeo Taejun wore an expression of disdain and approached him with a relaxed gait.

“Here you are, Uncle Jaewook.”

Lee Jaewook, who had been caught less than a week after running away, widened his eyes.

“You must have had a rough time. You’ve become so emaciated compared to the last time I saw you.”

Who would have thought that Lee Jaewook, who had always worn and eaten only the best since he received his grandfather’s support, would end up chewing on convenience store bread in a 10,000 to 20,000 won provincial motel? It was Lee Jaewook’s shortcoming that he was hot-tempered and didn’t have much patience, causing him to flare up at the slightest provocation. There was another reason why his grandfather, who only gathered useful talent for the group, supported the somewhat incompetent Lee Jaewook. It was because his father had died protecting his grandfather.

“You were pushing yourself too hard. My heart ached the whole time I was watching you.”

It wasn’t that Lee Jaewook was a genius at escaping, so it took a week to bring him in; there was another reason. It was because they hadn’t caught him. Yeo Taejun had watched through photos as he brought suffering upon himself. But even that soon became boring.

Yeo Taejun bent his waist toward the man. Rip! The tape gagging his mouth was torn off. “Aaaah!” A painful scream erupted.

“T-Taejun, what is the meaning of this?”

“The one doing the ‘meaning’ is you, Uncle.”

“What did I….”

Creeeak. Yeo Taejun grabbed the back of the iron chair the man was tied to.

“Gijoon. It was your work, wasn’t it?”

Lee Jaewook flinched at the voice that pierced his eardrums.

“Ah, I’m telling you just in case you’re curious: Gijoon didn’t die. He’s conscious, and he hasn’t been crippled. But I’m not sure about Lee Suwon. He was a cripple to begin with, but won’t he be returning even more of one?”

Lee Jaewook’s sagging cheeks twitched.

“You!”

Not only was he mocked by a young boy, but when he insulted his son as well, Lee Jaewook could not hold back his rage and his face turned red. Yeo Taejun chuckled with a nonchalant face.

“Shall I tell you one thing? I thought it was pathetic how you, without knowing your place, showed inferiority toward my father, but I didn’t actually dislike you yourself. However….”

The smile hanging on his lips vanished in an instant. Yeo Taejun tilted his head slightly to the side and muttered indifferently.

“You did something I can no longer overlook, didn’t you? You should have just touched me instead.”

Touching Yeo Gijoon, who had nothing to do with it, was the worst mistake among mistakes.

“If you had done that, I would have at least guaranteed your retirement, considering the years we’ve known each other.”

The faces of the two men drew closer. The opponent was completely terrified. In the eyes of the terrified man, a beast that seemed to be enjoying itself was projected.

“T-Taejun, I think there is a misunderstanding between you and your uncle, but don’t do anything you’ll regret later and untie this right now. Okay?”

Lee Jaewook started to handle Yeo Taejun as if he were coaxing a child.

“It seems you haven’t grasped the situation yet.”

Yeo Taejun lifted and lowered his head slightly with a look of fatigue.

“Do you still think you’re my uncle and the Executive Director?”

Tap, tap.

“If you didn’t understand, shall I say it again?”

Yeo Taejun muttered while continuously pushing and tapping Lee Jaewook’s forehead with his finger. His brow was stained red from the blood on his gloves.

“You’re fucked, Uncle.”

“Gasp!”

At the voice heard right in front of his nose, Lee Jaewook’s heart dropped. The moment his gaze met those black pupils, the cold eyes of the former chairman, sharp as a tiger’s, came to mind.

His lips trembled minutely. Fear washed over him in a rush. Now that he thought about it, Yeo Taejun resembled the former chairman more than his own father, Yeo Jiseung.

“I, I….”

That was when it happened. Snap, snap-snap. The hanging sandbag made a sound and fell to the floor.

Perhaps because of the impact of falling, or because it had been pummeled so many times before, the zipper section burst open, and a crimson mass poured out from inside.

Unlike Yeo Taejun, who was turning his back to it, the scene entered Lee Jaewook’s vision in full as he faced it directly.

“Hiiik!”

What had been beaten into a pulp, to the point where it was hard to distinguish if it was a person or a lump of meat, poured out from the narrow gap.

“Ah. Now that I think about it, I didn’t introduce him.”

At Yeo Taejun’s signal, one of his subordinates lifted the pulped face of the corpse.

“You recognize who this is, right?”

At first, he didn’t know. But as he kept looking, he realized. The identity of that corpse was his close aide and secretary, whom he had faced for over 20 years. Only then did Lee Jaewook realize that none of this was a joke, and he froze.

“U, uaaaaah!”

Yeo Taejun clicked his tongue at Lee Jaewook, who soon fell into a panic and started screaming. To think such a piece of trash with such a small capacity for courage dared to commit such an act.

“Lee Jaewook.”

Yeo Taejun, having dropped the honorifics, clamped Lee Jaewook’s mouth shut with his gloved hand.

“Mmmph!”

Lee Jaewook shook his head with a terrified face. With his jaw gripped, his head snapped backward. As blood rushed to his head, his intraocular pressure soared frighteningly. The grip was so strong that even with just the pressure, one could hear the bones creaking. Lee Jaewook couldn’t even scream due to the immense pain. His water-filled eyes trembled violently.