A Scorching Day Chapter 63

“Joon.”

Inside the office, Ki Joon, who had been lying face-down on the desk with his head buried, lifted his head at the low call. The deep, low voice belonged to the only person who could, if only for a moment, ease the nerves that Ki Joon kept perpetually sharp and on edge.

A man with a familiar face stood at the doorway, his face heavy with fatigue.

It had already been three years since Managing Director Hwang had been fitted with a prosthetic leg after the accident that cost him his right foot. Yet every time Ki Joon saw his faintly limping movements, a dark shadow fell over his heart. Suppressing the familiar heaviness that threatened to set in, Ki Joon lifted his gaze.

“Have you eaten?”

“Not yet. You?”

“Me neither.”

“If you’re done with work, let’s go get a bowl of hangover soup. You’ve been drinking on an empty stomach again, haven’t you.”

At a loss for words, Ki Joon gave a faint, wry smile. He couldn’t deny it—the strong smell of alcohol on him was impossible to hide.

After finishing work, he’d have a drink or two, and before he knew it, he’d have emptied the bottle. The hollow, chilly feeling, like a phantom pain in his chest, followed Ki Joon like a chronic condition. Filling that empty space with alcohol had become a habit.

“I scoured the area around Wando over the past couple of days. From the tea houses to the gathering spots. Then I was thinking of moving further south next. What do you think?”

Usually, Managing Director Hwang’s reports only covered which areas they had searched. Neither of them asked about results, nor did they bother reporting them. Ki Joon shook his head with a dry expression.

“From tomorrow, I’ll search the establishments under Cheonghyeon again. Starting with Maehwa.”

“Maehwa? That’s in Buwon, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

‘Maehwa’ was an entertainment establishment under the management of the organization Cheonghyeon, one of its lower-tier affiliates. While not on the level of Cheonghyeon, the high-end club in Gangnam, Maehwa was still a fairly large establishment, with nearly a hundred escorts and hostesses under its wing.

“Understood. Then I’ll round up the boys and head over this afternoon, so—”

“No. I’ll go myself.”

Ki Joon’s loosely lowered gaze held a blade within it. It was an edge forged by fatigue, crystallized during endless tightrope-walking on the single strand of suspicion and vigilance.

He had crawled to Ki Woohyun’s feet, holding up that one condition: find Gawon for me. It had been three years since Ki Woohyun readily promised to do so.

It had been a long time since Ki Joon let go of the expectation that Ki Woohyun would be putting in his full effort to find Gawon. His naive belief that if he obediently did as Ki Woohyun said, Gawon would be found soon enough—that had lasted barely a year.

There was another reason Ki Joon worked under Ki Woohyun, doing as he was told. The ability to deploy even a small number of people to thoroughly search every corner of the country was only possible from the position he currently held. If he couldn’t wield state power like the police, this was the best option available to Ki Joon.

Perhaps mindful of the attention from the organization’s directors, Ki Woohyun had faithfully handed over Ki Joon’s inheritance without any tricks. So he had more than enough funds to find one person. Yet the horrific reason Ki Joon continued to do this work, which he found nauseating to the point of disgust, was that there was a high possibility Gawon was involved in this very underworld.

Searching only the sunlit, above-ground surfaces accessible to ordinary people had its limits. To dig through the dark, foul-smelling shadows like rotten swamps, he had to throw himself into them first.

The numbers were small now, but if he moved up to headquarters at Cheonghyeon and gained greater power—then he could mobilize more people. Like a beast coiled tight for a leap, Ki Joon glowed with a faint, predatory light in the darkness, biding his time.

“Won’t you be tired? This is your first day off in a while… It’s been a long time since you had a break.”

“I’m fine. Just pick about five men for me. I’ll leave around 3 p.m.”

It was impossible that Ki Joon’s movements—scouring the organization’s affiliated establishments—didn’t get reported up to Representative Ki Woohyun. Even though it could easily be dismissed as a threat to the hierarchy, Ki Woohyun maintained a consistent non-response. He must know that while Ki Joon submitted to Ki Woohyun in every other respect, he showed a razor-sharp edge on this one matter alone.

“…Alright. Let’s do that.”

Managing Director Hwang nodded heavily. Suddenly, the face of a slender boy came to mind—the one who used to stand beside Ki Joon in his school uniform, smiling brightly.

Joon used to smile so well next to that child, too. Managing Director Hwang twisted the corner of his mouth wistfully and left the office with Ki Joon.

∞ ∞ ∞

“Excuse me~.”

Ahn Seongjoon offered a sloppy greeting and knocked on the door. Through the wide-open door, a rowdy drinking session came into view.

The karaoke machine blared noisily, and a woman was singing along to the accompaniment. Dressed in server’s clothes, Ahn Seongjoon set down a plate of fruit snacks on the table with a careless thud and scanned the room.

Four male customers, four women. He had questioned why they needed to search a room without any escorts, but Ki Joon was adamant. Every time they came down to Maehwa, he scoured not only the rooms currently in operation, but also the escorts’ waiting room and even the hostesses’ lodgings, combing through every inch.

After this happened several times, the owner of Maehwa started complaining. Bringing in a bunch of men and regularly searching the rooms was severely disrupting business, he said. But with Ki Joon being the nephew of the organization’s representative and the managing director of Cheonghyeon, the owner couldn’t exactly stop him, so all he could do was stomp his feet in frustration.

In the end, they reached a compromise: when searching the rooms, they would disguise themselves as servers. To avoid disrupting business. That was why Ahn Seongjoon, who lived and died by his pride, was lugging around fruit with this ridiculous tie on.

“Fuck my life.”

“Huh? You want a tip?”

Catching his muttered self-deprecation, one of the customers, his face flushed red, leaned an ear toward Ahn Seongjoon. Barely suppressing the urge to kick him, Ahn Seongjoon nodded vaguely, saying, “Sure, I’d love that.”

“Okay—I’ll drop a tip for the sexy oppa.”

“Oppa, you should give it to me, not him, me.”

The hostess sitting beside him gave Ahn Seongjoon a wary look and coquettishly whined. Her face showed clear hostility toward these people who weren’t even part of the establishment but kept coming regularly to stir things up.

“Mm, yeah. I’ll give you some too, pretty.”

What a bunch of bullshit… Ahn Seongjoon let out a hollow laugh but accepted the 100,000 won the middle-aged man handed him. A tip incomparably smaller than what he’d get at Cheonghyeon—he could only scoff.

“Much obliged.”

Still, money is money. Ahn Seongjoon roughly stuffed the bill into his pocket and sauntered out of the room. After searching the next room and the one after that, he came out to find Ki Joon looking horribly worn out. He had just come from searching the room used exclusively by the male escorts.

“We should move to the workers’ lodgings.”

Managing Director Hwang, who had also come out of the next room, said in a low voice. Ki Joon nodded wearily.

The Maehwa owner, reluctantly and under duress, had handed over the locations and passcodes of the hostesses’ lodgings, so they moved there. Most were located in old studio apartments near the Maehwa building.

They thoroughly searched the mostly empty homes, as most of the workers were out on the job. A few hostesses and escorts who were off-duty woke up groggy and greeted Ki Joon and his party with disheveled faces.

Ki Joon silently searched their homes, even as they grumbled and pulled their blankets over their heads. His heart had long since hardened to stone, dead to any guilt about rummaging through others’ homes and invading their privacy.

They scoured every employee’s lodging to the last detail, but today too came up empty. The group gathered near the sedan parked on the main road, heads bowed and silent. Ki Joon muttered with an emotionless face.

“Let’s head up.”

“Yes! Managing Director!”

Bowing, they split into two or three cars and set off toward Seoul. Ki Joon rode with the driver, a low-level lackey, and Managing Director Hwang—three in total.

An endless wave of fatigue washed over him. That morning, he’d had hangover soup with Managing Director Hwang, gone home, and slept for three or four hours. After that, he couldn’t piece together any more fragmented sleep. He’d had to force himself up.

Waiting for 3 p.m., he’d gone to the local gym and pounded the heavy bag. After exercising until he was completely spent, he showered and came straight down to the Buwon area. Every time he got in the car, a faint spark of hope—just maybe—tirelessly bloomed anew.

But the moment he came up empty like this, the hope that had swelled so brazenly was ruthlessly trampled. Accompanied by a pain so cruel it was almost unbearable.

“Get some sleep, Joon. Alright? You’ll collapse like this.”

Concern colored Managing Director Hwang’s voice. He knew Ki Joon barely slept properly every day, so his worry was palpable.

Ki Joon didn’t answer, blinking his eyes slowly. As he deeply closed and then opened his eyelids, which felt gritty as if filled with sand—

A familiar tteokbokki shop sign came into view.

It was an utterly ordinary franchise tteokbokki place. The kind you could spot anywhere across the country without effort. But today, that familiar signboard struck his eyes with unusual poignancy. Perhaps because just a few days ago, he had sobbed his heart out in front of a photo of Gawon taken right in front of that very shop.

“…Wait.”

That was why. It was pure impulse, with no plan whatsoever. Yet, as if possessed, Ki Joon spoke. The gang member gripping the steering wheel quickly pulled the car over to the side of the road.

“Hm? Why, Joon.”

Following Ki Joon’s gaze, Managing Director Hwang asked in a puzzled voice. He thought perhaps Ki Joon had spotted someone resembling Yoon Gawon, but in front of the tteokbokki shop Ki Joon was staring fixedly at, there was only one burly man waiting for his takeout order.

“Do you want some tteokbokki? Should I buy you some?”

“…No.”

Ki Joon smiled weakly. He thought to himself how pathetic he was, going to such lengths. Carefully gathering his damp, sodden heart, he roughly rubbed his eyes with the palm of his hand.

“I’m fine. …Let’s go.”

The car slid forward again. The man with the packaged tteokbokki hanging from his wrist turned around and quickly passed out of sight beyond the window. Leaving behind a dull, lingering regret, the car headed for Seoul.