Substitute-Chapter 123

Five years of effort were about to go up in smoke.

They’d caught four, but the rest would be exposed soon enough.

If all seven got killed?

Forget this operation ending—his police career would be over too.

Detective Kim Gyeongseok buried his face in both hands, then scrubbed it dry.

There was no way it was going to end like this. He’d approached so meticulously—this couldn’t be happening.

It had started five years ago, with Amber.

A project that would become the masterpiece of his police career, begun by luring in his young lover.

There was no way it would get blown this easily.

It couldn’t be....

While Kim Gyeongseok was losing his grip, Detective Park Youngjun immediately informed Captain Lee Jemun, the head of the covert operation, that an emergency had broken out, and then rang all personnel.

“Sir, get a hold of yourself. This isn’t the time.”

He ended up encouraging Kim Gyeongseok.

Kim felt both proud and sorry that the junior—green as a rookie—was hustling in his place. He had so much more experience, and yet even in a crisis he couldn’t do a thing; he was ashamed of himself.

Everyone had been eating and sleeping nearby, so the entire team assembled in under fifteen minutes.

After a quick briefing from Detective Park on what had happened today, they each took their seats. There wasn’t much they could actually do, but they began reviewing the comms they’d exchanged since yesterday to see if they’d missed anything.

Detective Park, who was on duty, rushed over whenever the seniors called and handled their questions deftly. He even covered the parts assigned to Kim without a hitch.

He was his junior, but smart enough to be proud of.

And yet....

That kid looks a little too calm.

A thought skimmed across Kim Gyeongseok’s mind.

There’s a traitor inside!

His heart started to hammer.

“No, not like that—hit F. Yes. And..., one moment. Yes, Captain. It’s Youngjun. Right, right. The thing is....”

Detective Park answered Captain Lee Jemun’s call.

Kim frowned and looked down at his own phone.

Of all people, the captain had chosen Detective Park over him.

Tsk. Kim clicked his tongue in displeasure.

No matter what anyone said, he, Kim Gyeongseok, was the core of this project.

Yet in a moment like this, Captain Lee was calling Park Youngjun.

It’s him!

Kim’s suspicion that there was a traitor flipped to certainty in an instant.

He sprang from his chair and lunged at Detective Park Youngjun—his direct junior and the colleague who’d been with him since the start.

He drew his handgun and leveled it at Park’s forehead.

“Was it you?”

“S—sir, what... are you... doing....”

Without hesitation, he thumbed off the safety.

“Tell the truth. Was it you?”

“W-what... do you....”

Panic was written all over Detective Park’s face.

Other detectives bolted to their feet in alarm, but when Kim swept the gun across them, no one moved.

“Gyeongseok, what the hell are you doing? Put the gun down!”

One of Kim’s seniors finally found the nerve to bark him down.

“Are you the rat?”

Ignoring them, Kim growled low.

Yeah. It’s him.

He was the only team member who had seen everything about the project—of course it had to be him.

Hadn’t they traded countless secrets?

“Sir, what on earth are you saying?”

Park set his jaw.

“You son of a bitch, how could you betray me!”

“Sir, why are you like this! Betrayal? Is that what you should be saying right now?”

Park’s voice shook as he shouted back.

“One. Two.”

Calmly, Kim began to count.

“Sir! Please, get a grip!”

“It’s a live round.”

Bang! He fired into the air.

Detective Park flinched; the rest crouched, hands over their ears.

“Kim Gyeongseok! Drop the gun!”

“Sir!”

“Put the gun down!”

Voices rose all around telling him to stop, but Kim had no intention of doing so.

“You know the first two are blanks.”

“Sir!”

Bang!

Just as he brought the muzzle back to bear, his vision flipped. Detective Kim hit the floor, driven down hard.

Before he could process it, with a heavy jolt both arms were wrenched behind him and he was subdued. Only after the cuffs clicked did he get hauled upright again.

He knelt—by force, not by choice.

Standing in front of him was the head of Narcotics, the senior he respected most. The only one who had silently backed his plan for five years.

“Captain!”

So why was he looking at Kim like that?

“Jemun hyung! Sir!”

Why was he treating him like this?

This couldn’t be.

He shouted that the one who should be cuffed was Detective Park Youngjun, not him.

“Sir, grab that bastard! Youngjun betrayed us. Sir! Captain!”

He yelled himself hoarse, but Captain Lee Jemun only stared up at the ceiling.

You bastard, this isn’t the time!

“Our boys’ lives are hanging by a thread!”

Kim looked up at his senior and howled.

“Are you planning to let them all die? Sir! Jemun hyung! Say something!”

Only then did Captain Lee lower his head and look at Kim. To be precise, he glared at him like he was ready to kill.

“Because of you, you motherfucker.”

“What?”

“Because of you. Because of you, seven of them are about to die, fuck.”

He said it.

What is he talking about?

Why because of me?

Who started this project in the first place?

Sure, the proposal had been his, but the man who actually secured the budget and drafted the detailed operation was Captain Lee Jemun.

Not me—you.

And yet he laid everything at Kim’s feet.

At this critical moment. With their boys’ lives under threat.

This was why he hated the brass. When things got urgent, all they did was look out for themselves.

“Jemun hyung. I don’t know what this is, but let’s save our boys first. Save them first! Then demote me or whatever the fuck.”

At Kim’s desperate plea, Captain Lee clicked his tongue.

“Gyeongseok, didn’t you say with your own mouth that Han Seoho was the Grim Reaper?”

“Huh? Han Seoho? Why the hell are you bringing him up now?”

The non sequitur had Kim ready to tear his hair out.

“No—you, you bastard. You’re the Grim Reaper.”

He couldn’t make heads or tails of what he was saying.

Kim stared up at Captain Lee, baffled—and then it hit him.

“No way. No way! You’re the one who betrayed us? Is that it? You betrayed us? No, right? It’s not you, right?”

Still on his knees, Kim raged.

Captain Jemun couldn’t be the one.

This wasn’t going to end as a simple matter of trust. If he was the traitor, Kim’s entire life was as good as denied.

At Kim’s words, Captain Lee burst out laughing. He cocked his head like a madman and tittered.

“I’ve heard everything now.”

He said it in a voice full of laughter, then knit his brows.

“You’re the traitor.”

He snapped, ice cold.

“Kim Gyeongseok, you fucking bastard.”

Grinding his teeth, Captain Lee flung a stack of photos in Kim’s face.

It felt like his right cheek got nicked, but he didn’t care. He was more curious what the photos were.

Strewn across the floor, Kim could make out only three of them—but that was enough to end the game. Scenes he believed could never, ever have been taken.

Silence fell.

“I should’ve seen it sooner.”

Lee Jemun sighed.

“It’s my fault for trusting you to the end.”

His face twisted.

Then, looking like he might cry any second, he clenched his teeth.

Ha, fuck.

Busted.

Detective Kim twisted his head side to side.

How did they know? No—how did they get the shots?

“Take him.”

No sooner were the words out than Kim’s body was yanked up.

At last, he was on his feet.

Kim planted himself, refusing to be dragged.

Captain Lee blatantly ignored him.

“All units, move out! Every last one of you onto the vans—no exceptions!”

He barked the order for show.

“Upon arrival, follow the Police SWAT commander’s instructions. No independent action allowed!”

Apparently the Police SWAT they’d move with was already on standby.

“Youngjun, Minseok—you move with SWAT.”

Kim, who had always stood at the center of the operation, found the situation deeply offensive.

Idiots. Do you even know where you’re going?

Without me, you can’t do a damn thing.

He snorted.

Kim decided there was no reason to resist and allowed himself to be led off.

“Why are you laughing?”

Captain Lee grabbed him.

So he’d noticed Kim smiling.

Of course—man’s a ghost.

“Is this funny? You think this is fun?”

A moment ago he’d said to haul him off; now he stopped him to bark in his face.

“No, it’s not that.”

Kim opened his mouth anyway.

He couldn’t help it—he felt sorry they were about to waste their time. No matter how hard they tried, they wouldn’t set one foot in that place.

Detective Kim smiled again.

Grim Reaper.

It might be the most fitting name for his nickname.

People died on every project he touched.

Even so, his results were decent. He rounded up drug offenders one after another, and hauled in gangsters and dealers who supplied them in droves. For that, he racked up dozens of commendations—from the station chief and the commissioner, and from social groups and members of the National Assembly tied to drug eradication.

Especially when it came to cases involving men who sleep with men—no one wanted to get involved but him—so it was practically a blue ocean.

Kim knew Gwak Hoon. He ⊛ Nоvеlιght ⊛ (Read the full story) despised the old man and envied him. It was jealousy close to respect.

A drug lord—Gwak Hoon.

The man who had sold to his father the drug he could never escape until the day he died.

Of course, he hadn’t met or known Gwak Hoon directly. From the time he was a snot-nosed kid, Gwak was already a big shot—there’d been no chance to meet.

He only learned the facts later, after he became a cop.

His father had been a small-time thug. A neighborhood errand boy who did anything that paid. Then he ended up delivering something shady—cheap dope with a vicious hook. What they called bong: methamphetamine. Like any third-rate thug, his father snuck a taste out of curiosity and wound up addicted—one of those all-too-common cases.

Delivering Gwak Hoon’s drugs, his father ended up buying from Gwak’s organization. Because of the father, even his mother got hooked and lost her mind. Detective Kim broke his back caring for the siblings those two had spawned.

The sport he’d taken up because he was starving turned out to be one of the best things he ever did, and thanks to it he became a respectable cop—but despite all that struggle, his siblings either became addicts too or died young.

After he sent even his baby sister—the one he cherished most—to a drug rehab, Kim swore revenge.

Not the cheap way, tugging the tail, but the head—he set Gwak Hoon as the target.

As a cop, he strode boldly into the world of men who sleep with men that others avoided. Drugs and sex were inseparable, so he got more than he’d hoped.

With no compunction, he seized the weaknesses of addicts and sexual deviants and made money. You needed money to mingle with the powerful.

With the money he made that way, he toadied up to high-ranking men who sleep with men. Threats got him less than persuasion, so he chose that line and pursued it. He didn’t shy from paying bribes.

They say sincerity moves heaven.

Before he knew it, he’d entered “Deep Room,” a secret society of high-ranking prosecutors and police—including former officials—who were men who sleep with men. Unlike in society, it wasn’t a master–servant relationship; they were close friends who shared tastes. Of course, even so, his job was still cleaning up after them, but he gained a lot of intel.

Rumors about Gwak Hoon—the drug lord now playing the part of a bona fide business figure—and his lover Cha Jongsoo were among them.

But there was simply no reaching Gwak Hoon. In the secret circle, they deified him as a great man while treating him openly as an over-the-hill old geezer.

“That pervert old man—word is he’s on his last legs, yeah?”

“I heard he’s got a terminal illness? And that lover of his is acting up—looks suspicious.”

They brought up Old Man Gwak Hoon at the drop of a hat, but no one met him directly.

It wasn’t as if they had no connections. Honestly, any one of them could’ve wrangled an invite to a party Gwak hosted if they wanted, but the Deep Room members shied away from the old pervert. No matter how they dressed him up as a hotshot entrepreneur, they couldn’t erase the name “drug lord,” so they prudently kept their distance.

In that climate, Kim couldn’t bring Gwak up first, and even if he did, it made people wonder what the hell was wrong with him. They voiced worries he might be using.

They were a contradictory bunch who popped every drug under the sun while shunning addicts.

In the end, Kim had to find another way.

Around that time, he met a kid—Amber. The name “Amber” was the nickname Old Man Gwak later gave him, but Kim still called him that.

Amber went to a prestigious university. His parents were public figures with positions in society—types who amassed wealth by crooked means. Because he flaunted what his parents had, Amber was invited to every pervert party, where he guzzled booze and had sex. He didn’t use condoms and caught every STD but didn’t care.

And yet his dream, like his father, was to become a famous legal bigwig?

A punk with yellow shoots.

Then, by chance, Kim heard Amber grumbling about “Maybe I should get some plastic surgery,” and that sparked the idea for the current covert operation. Thanks to a rumor he’d heard in Deep Room. Namely, that Old Man Gwak liked to have sex with someone who looked like his lover—this story had a huge influence on the plan.

“How about it? Want to get your face done like this guy?”

He slid over a photo of Cha Jongsoo in his younger days.

“Oh! He looks like me, huh?”

With his ugly face that didn’t look a damn thing like him, Amber grinned.

“Right. Just a little touch-up. I’ll pay.”

“Sure. Just a little, right.”

That’s how it started.

It annoyed him that Amber, drunk on American dramas, swanned around like some big spy, but to his face Kim egged him on.

Maybe because he was young, he fell for Kim’s bait easily.

Catching Jade was pure luck. No—phenomenal luck.

He’d managed to rope in the kid’s older brother after the father—practically heaven’s favor.

Choi Minjae... fuck.

That bastard wasn’t even worth mentioning—a worm.

“It’s not that—ah, should I say this or not.”

Kim stalled for time on purpose.

Captain Lee’s face flushed red and blue. He glared at Kim like he’d swing a fist any second.

Kim hemmed and hawed with a slightly sheepish look.

“I was just wondering if you know where you’re going....”

“What did you say, you little shit?”

“I asked if you know where it is. That place?”

At Kim’s question, Captain Lee arched a brow, then looked to Detective Park beside him, clearly asking for an answer. You know, right? It’s the location we know—right? The silent question.

Detective Park shot Kim a flustered look.

“It’s—the location you—no, Inspector Kim Gyeongseok—gave us....”

“See? You don’t know.”

“What do you mean? Speak plainly!”

Captain Lee grabbed Kim by the collar.

“The location Youngjun knows—the one I reported to you—it’s all bullshit.”

Inspector Kim smirked.

“Come on. So naive. Why would I tell you that, huh?”

For his own ends, Kim had tampered with all the files. Especially the location data for where the Paradise Project was being held—he altered every last bit.

The location he reported, the location they thought they knew, was false.

“If you want to know, you could uncuff m—”

Before he could finish, stars sparked before his eyes.

Captain Lee’s fist put Kim back on the floor.

It hurt like a motherfucker.

“Drag him out. Minseok, you go to the Cyber Investigation Bureau and request an IP trace, and Youngjun, re-review the reports. Team Leader Jang! Get the boys out, now! I’m moving with SWAT. Report directly to me!”

Captain Lee kicked up a storm.

Christ. You won’t find it like that.

It was frustrating.

Even if they brought the entire Police SWAT, they wouldn’t find it.

Kim had made it that way. It was the part he’d obsessed over most when he designed the operation.

[Whatever happens, do not stop the operation.]

To hit Gwak Hoon, casualties were unavoidable.

But these cops wanted to have their cake and eat it too. They drafted a pie-in-the-sky plan to both protect police personnel and nab Gwak Hoon.

Like hell. Even if every cop there threw in prepared to die, they might barely manage to take Gwak.

So Kim hadn’t considered the safety of the seven undercovers. He pretended to, but in truth, he didn’t care if they all died; he preferred it. He wanted them to go in ready to die. If everyone inside died—not just the police—and they could take Gwak Hoon, he would let it happen.

For his own ends, he deliberately colluded with the enemy. He knew exactly what kind of man the enemy was, so he fed him information to put him at ease.

Some of it was real and some fake, but the truth that mixing truth and lies just right makes everything look true held up this time too.

The result was about to be successful.

If only he hadn’t been exposed—it would have been perfect.

Well, nothing to be done.

Operation “Judgment” was practically a special gift made for Kim Gyeongseok.

He had merely used public resources to the fullest for a private revenge.

Isn’t that genius?

No matter how he looked at it, he couldn’t help admiring his own plan.

But how did they figure it out with those idiot brains?

There hadn’t been a single gap....

Or was I just too full of myself?

Inspector Kim smacked his lips.