Substitute-Chapter 135

At the knock, Manager Kim Woojin tensed up.

Deputy General Manager Lee Daeseong and Section Chief Park Taehun, who had been waiting with him, turned their eyes to Manager Kim at the same time.

Manager Kim slowly nodded.

At that, the two men rose with heavy expressions and walked toward the door.

“Who is it?”

Section Chief Park, wearing horn-rimmed glasses, asked.

There was no answer from the other side.

Manager Kim nodded once more.

So it’s come.

A wave of anxiety swept over him.

Deputy General Manager Lee, standing beside Section Chief Park, inserted a key into the lock that had been fastened from the inside.

All the facilities here were automated, so the moment the power went out, every door opened. The HQ Room was no exception.

To prepare for that, old-fashioned locks that could be engaged from the inside were installed on key locations like the server room. When the power went out like now, a stopgap measure was necessary.

Instead of a simple latch you turned by hand, the locks were designed so they could only be locked and unlocked with a ⊛ Nоvеlιght ⊛ (Read the full story) key, and those keys were issued only to the people in charge among the managers.

Naturally, Deputy General Manager Lee and Section Chief Park, along with Manager Kim—who was the overall project manager and answered directly to the Chairman—were among the few who possessed every key.

Deputy General Manager Lee turned the key, and Manager Kim rubbed his face dry with both hands, covering it.

He didn’t have the courage to look at Young Master Gwak Yeol’s corpse.

Yet for someone like that, he had prepared thoroughly for preserving the body.

Not only because the Chairman had ordered it. It was, how to put it, an act to lessen his guilt.

Since joining the company, Manager Kim had always belonged to the Chairman’s personal secretariat. From his days as a lowly staffer, he had watched the Young Master. He was one of the people who had been by his side as he grew from a runny-nosed kid into a proper young man. Maybe because of that—though it sounded a bit off to say it—he couldn’t deny he felt something like a parent’s affection.

So the moment he heard from the Chairman that he had decided to “handle” the Young Master, his conscience had not been at ease. That didn’t mean he defied the Chairman. No matter what anyone said, the person he served was the Chairman, so he had to follow his word completely. There were also too many illegal, filthy things he had done for the Chairman’s sake for him to even think about not obeying.

In any case, the fact that he had gone along with the Young Master’s death made him practically complicit, so he wanted to at least preserve the body properly to shed even a little bit of guilt.

Right now the bathtub was filled with ice. Young Master Gwak Yeol’s body was about to be stored in there.

Of course, he had left the bathtub drain open so the blood could flow out. Until every drop of blood remaining in the Young Master’s body had drained away, and until the Chairman gave his next order, he had to preserve the body in whole condition in the tub.

The order had come in so abruptly that they hadn’t been able to go into detail about how exactly the Young Master’s body was to be handled.

Most likely, it would be completely shredded and used as compost in the garden, same as usual, but who knew.

Maybe they would harvest the organs.

Manager Kim was convinced the Chairman was more than capable of doing that.

It was the Young Master’s organs, of all things. They were more than worthy of preservation. He was a perfectly healthy twenty-five-year-old with not even the most common allergy. On top of that, he was the one who had inherited the Chairman’s blood in the direct line.

“So fucking heavy. What are you doing, don’t just stand there staring—give me a hand.”

At that moment, the familiar voice snapped Manager Kim back to reality.

He widened his eyes before he even realized it.

When he came to his senses, Deputy General Manager Lee and Section Chief Park were flusteredly ushering in a man who was bleeding while being helped by the Young Master.

Deputy General Manager Lee hurried to lock the door.

The Young Master in the red wetsuit straightened up and looked at Manager Kim.

“None of you are armed, right?”

At the casually asked question, Manager Kim barely held back a laugh and shook his head.

“There’s no way we’d have anything like that.”

Answering that, he stood up from his seat and straightened his clothes.

“Is he dead?”

He looked down at the man and asked.

“Not yet. Do you know how to stop bleeding?”

“Yes. I can manage basic hemorrhage control.”

Section Chief Park, who had served as a medic, answered.

“You have bandages?”

“No. But we do have bed sheets.”

“Good. Stop the bleeding first, then tie him up.”

The Young Master added in a secretly conspiratorial tone, as though sharing some big secret.

“He may not look it, but he’s a professional.”

As if they wouldn’t already know that.

He was probably just being sarcastic.

“Deputy General Manager, help me out here.”

Section Chief Park called to Deputy General Manager Lee and opened the wardrobe.

In reality, it was a door connecting to the room next door, but it was disguised as a wardrobe and used to stack bedding and various supplies.

“Are you all right, Young Master?”

Manager Kim belatedly asked.

“Me? Well, as you can see. Why, are you disappointed?”

The Young Master raised both arms and flashed a picture-perfect smile.

“Of course not. Would you like some tea?”

“Give me coffee, not tea.”

Tormented by the fact that he was supposed to dispose of the Young Master’s body, Manager Kim was pointlessly elated to see him alive and well.

Wasn’t this a stroke of heaven-sent luck?

What kind of man was that mercenary?

He was one of the few professionals the Chairman trusted enough to cover his back. A man who had never lost a battle, who caused no trouble and never ran his mouth.

And yet the Young Master had come back alive from a confrontation with that man. Confidently.

Manager Kim knew very well this wasn’t necessarily a good thing for him personally. Even so, for the moment he was glad, and he planned to think about the aftermath a little more carefully.

The only reason he had been able to rise this far under the notoriously picky Chairman was his cautious nature.

He still didn’t know exactly why the Young Master had defied the Chairman, so he was somewhat careful. Besides, with the Chairman’s recent behavior, he had just started to worry about his own position.

Originally, the Chairman had had no secrets from Manager Kim. Especially after Cha Jongsoo died, Manager Kim had become the Chairman’s right-hand man by anyone’s reckoning.

Whatever he did, the Chairman always listened to Manager Kim’s opinion first. Rumor had it among partner companies that you had to get Manager Kim’s approval to land a contract.

But things had turned one hundred eighty degrees. Sometime after the project began—more precisely, from the moment the rat showed up.

The Chairman openly started keeping secrets. He was plotting his succession with someone other than Manager Kim, the overall project manager. That someone was none other than Security Captain Choi Sucheol, that thick-headed soldier.

In the middle of that, when he found out the Chairman intended to “handle” Director Gwak Tan and then the Young Master, Manager Kim felt a sense of crisis. If he was willing to strike down the grandson and heir he adored so much, there was no reason the next target couldn’t be him.

It was a situation where anyone would have to test the waters.

On top of that, the Chairman was a setting sun, and the Young Master was a sun just starting to burn. Frankly, if he were told to choose between an eighty-year-old geezer on his last legs and a twenty-five-year-old young heir, the Young Master would win by a landslide.

Even in that brief moment, Manager Kim weighed who would benefit his future more, and naturally, the scale tipped toward the Young Master.

Manager Kim poured coffee from the coffee maker and held out a cup.

The Young Master grinned and gave a small nod.

“I’ve become really suspicious lately, you know.”

He was telling him, indirectly, to drink first.

Manager Kim gladly took the cup. After sipping the coffee a couple of times, he held the cup back out, and only then did the Young Master accept it.

“It’s the same stuff we were drinking just now.”

It was a meaningless comment to someone who hadn’t seen it, but he added it anyway.

The Young Master took a sip of coffee and then flopped down onto the sofa as if collapsing.

“God, I’m tired.”

That’s what he said, but he didn’t look tired at all.

“It’s bright in here.”

Glancing around the office lit by wireless LED lamps, the Young Master spoke.

“How long do those last?”

“They’ll go about three hours on maximum brightness.”

“Three hours, huh. Not bad. What about that?”

He jerked his chin at the tablet PC on the table.

“It’ll easily run for twenty-four hours.”

At that answer, the Young Master raised the bracelet on his wrist.

“Can you still track my location?”

“No. The devices are dead.”

Manager Kim shook his head.

The location-tracking device built into the Crew’s bracelets didn’t use satellites or cell towers.

For security, they used active RFID technology so the locations could only be checked inside and around this building. In other words, the device (tag) would periodically send out a signal, and the reader would determine its location.

To do that, readers were installed on every floor inside the building, and outside they were installed sporadically along the mesh fence.

Thanks to that, they could track the Crew’s positions in real time.

Of course, that didn’t mean there were no weaknesses. The most critical one was power and network.

If the readers, which depended on electricity, lost power in an outage or their batteries were drained, they stopped functioning. In other words, real-time monitoring of that area was cut off.

To make up for that, they had internal batteries so they could hold out for at least several hours in a blackout, but someone had apparently tampered with them, because the power to every reader was dead.

In other words, the locations of the Crew showing on the tablet right now were the last points captured right before the power went out.

The Young Master likely knew this to some extent already, so Manager Kim was curious why he was asking so deliberately.

“There’s someone I’m looking for.”

The Young Master, face bored, looked at Manager Kim.

“Is he on Basement Level 1?”

At the subjectless question, Manager Kim’s eyes narrowed.

“Do you mean the Chairman?”

“No. Not my grandfather. I’m talking about the one being held down below.”

It was still ambiguous.

How many people were being held here?

Manager Kim deliberately took his time and then,

“If you’re looking for the undercover cop named Yoon Jiwon...”

he began.

“Manager Kim. Let’s not waste each other’s time. I’m tired.”

The Young Master aimed his gun.

So that was it—the real reason he’d been able to take down the seasoned mercenary.

Manager Kim felt like he’d been blindsided.

“The whole thing about our country being gun-free is total bullshit. If you want to get one, you can get one as much as you like. Of course, getting something like this takes a bit more effort, but still.”

“......”

“So how many are there?”

Manager Kim was flustered.

Not because the Young Master was pointing a gun at him, but because he was confused about how much the Young Master knew.

How did he know there were others being held on Basement Level 1 besides the undercover cop?

Honestly, was he talking based on real knowledge, or bluffing to feel him out?

With a gun in one hand and a coffee cup in the other, the Young Master might have looked playful at a glance, but his expression was more serious than ever.

“Are you wondering how much I know?”

The Young Master, reading Manager Kim’s thoughts, asked.

“To be honest, yes.”

“I’m curious too. How much does Manager Kim really know?”

Gwak Yeol held Manager Kim’s gaze.

“Remember the Board Quiz Show? When the fisherman showed up?”

The Board Quiz Show, out of nowhere?

Manager Kim furrowed his brow and nodded.

“You remember the order to stop the game that came down then, too?”

“Yes.”

“Who gave that order?”

“Well, that would be the Chairman...”

“Why?”

“I’m not sure about that either.”

He answered honestly.

Manager Kim still didn’t know why the Chairman had reacted so sensitively back then.

Not that there hadn’t been any hints.

The fisherman—the only incident where the script had been changed without him knowing.

He hadn’t had time to find out all the details, but he was in the middle of suspecting that there was some kind of connection between that incident and the Chairman.

“Do you really not know, or are you just pretending not to?”

“Sir?”

Gwak Yeol tilted his head to the right, then soon said, “Ah, so Manager Kim really doesn’t know.”

“Back then you were still a nobody, so I guess it’s only natural you don’t.”

His cryptic words started to get on Manager Kim’s nerves.

“What do you mean, I don’t know? What are you talking about?”

“You should be grateful to your past self from that time. If you hadn’t been such a nobody, you would’ve ended up like that guy. No, worse, you would’ve gone through something much nastier.”

The Young Master’s eyes sharpened as he spoke.

Manager Kim didn’t ask further. He instinctively understood this was something he wasn’t supposed to know.

“So how many are there?”

The Young Master asked again, not changing so much as a single particle from his earlier question.

For the moment, Manager Kim kept his mouth shut. There were times when silence was golden, and this felt exactly like one of those times.

Just then, Section Chief Park and Deputy General Manager Lee came back carrying bandages made from torn bed sheets.

The two of them approached to check the mercenary’s wounds. Section Chief Park bent over to inspect the injuries, then raised his head with a shocked look when he realized they were gunshot wounds.

“Manager, this...”

Manager Kim frowned and shook his head.

“Just do as you’re told.”

At Manager Kim’s order, Section Chief Park hesitated for a moment, at a loss, then finally began wrapping the bandages. Deputy General Manager Lee, helping him, gagged every time blood spurted from the wound with each loop of bandage.

Once the basic treatment was finished, they used cable ties to bind the mercenary’s hands and feet behind his back.

The carpet around him was stained red with the blood he’d lost.

Will this guy live?

Manager Kim looked down at the mercenary with a rather indifferent gaze. 𝑓𝓇𝘦ℯ𝘸𝘦𝑏𝓃𝑜𝘷ℯ𝑙.𝑐𝑜𝓂

After glancing sidelong at Gwak Yeol silently sipping his coffee, his subordinates asked with their eyes.

Manager, what do we do?

He wanted to ask that himself.

What do we do now?

More precisely, which side do I stand on from here?

Manager Kim was troubled, because that mercenary wasn’t the only one the Chairman had hired.

It was only a matter of time before the others learned that the primary fixer had failed.

Soon the others would come storming into this room.

Of course, it wasn’t as if they themselves had made no preparations. They believed they could just lock the door and stay quiet and things would pass without incident, but even so, they had something ready in case trouble broke out.

It wasn’t a contingency specifically prepared for a situation like this.

Frankly, Manager Kim had never once expected the Young Master to come back alive.

The countermeasure they had prepared was for after the Young Master’s death. In other words, it was something meant for dealing with the potential violence that might erupt while cleaning up the rest of the people the Young Master had hired.

But the situation had shifted rapidly, and maybe, just maybe, now was the time to use it.

Manager Kim cast a glance at the lock on the inside of the door.

Gwak Yeol didn’t think his father had been a righteous man.

But at the very least, he knew he was a man with enough conscience to despise a grandfather who enjoyed killing, and enough courage to speak harsh truths to his face.

That was enough.

The problem was that his grandfather had seen such a father as a thorn in his eye, and in the end, had killed him with his own hands.

The son who trusted his father walked into a death trap knowing he would die.

To that reservoir.

At that part, Gwak Yeol clicked his tongue.

What an idiot.

If you know you’re going to die, why go? You should have killed him first.

Apparently, his father hadn’t been capable of being that ruthless.

Because of that, he ended up making his son get blood on his own hands.

Anyway, the person the old fisherman had seen at the reservoir that day was Gwak Yeol’s father.

Thanks to the fisherman’s report, his father’s death had been processed as a simple suicide, and his grandfather had been able to play the grieving father, mourning his son without any rumors attaching to him.

But no one knew that the fisherman was not only conscientious enough to file that report, but also a man with a very tight mouth.

Until the day, after hearing Cha Jongsoo’s story, Gwak Yeol went looking for him, the fisherman had not spoken to a single soul about what had happened with his father—not for thirteen whole years. On top of that, he had never once mentioned the item his father had left behind.

“Good god, scared me half to death. I thought that young man had come to drag me to the afterlife.”

Laughing as he made that joke, the fisherman smiled.

By then, the fisherman, now in his seventies, was far sprier than his age suggested and still enjoyed fishing.

The fisherman was about to take a ladder and head into the master bedroom when he saw the tall Gwak Yeol and put the ladder down.

Then he told him where to push on the ceiling and told him to lift it up. After a couple of hard shoves, the ceiling panel lifted. Feeling around inside, he found something like a box.

It was a small box wrapped in faded wrapping paper. At best, it was big enough to hold something like a ring—a pitifully small thing.

“He told me, you know. That it was possible you might never come for it before I died. And if that happened, he asked me to throw it in the reservoir.”

Gwak Yeol stared down at the dusty-smelling box.

He had only gone there because he’d been curious about the circumstances of his father’s end, and he was caught off guard by the unexpected haul.

He wasn’t happy at all.

He resented his father instead, for not spending that time trying to survive instead of leaving something like this behind.

What was a son, really.

His father had thrown away his life for him, a boy he’d only lived with for ten years.

What about his mother?

“If you ever feel like fishing, come by anytime. I’ll introduce you to a prime spot.”

With the fisherman seeing him off, Gwak Yeol headed toward the reservoir.

It was where his father had sunk.

The reservoir was still.

Just like now.

Following Manager Kim’s gaze, Gwak Yeol looked at the door.

Sorry, but the people you’re waiting for won’t be coming.

He grinned.