A Plot

‘Is it clothing Doha hasn’t purchased yet?’

A small sigh of relief escaped him. The fact that he didn’t see those clothes from his dream meant that the event wouldn’t happen right away. There was still a little more time.

He closed the closet door and sat on the bed, retracing his memories. Like for anyone, dreams weren’t perfectly clear to Sana. Only one or two intense scenes were vivid, and the rest were blurry, as if filtered.

The place Choi Doha was standing was the back of the club.

At first, he couldn’t even guess where it was, but visiting the club in person, he could be certain.

It was fortunate that he didn’t have to worry about mistaking it for another building, as the club building itself had such a unique shape.

However, he didn’t know the date or time the event would occur. There were no clues about the date or time in the dream at all.

With Yeon, he had seen a clock inside a furiously driving car. The time displayed on the clock and the date below it were clear. Several road signs also passed by outside the car.

Thanks to the signs, he could estimate the location of the accident, and he saw the exact time of the accident on the car’s clock. That’s why he could save Yeon.

But this time, the hints were too few.

‘I don’t want him to die. I want to save him somehow.’

The more he spent time with Doha, the stronger his wish grew. But he felt a suffocating frustration because he had so little information. At times like this, if Mooyoung or Yeon were by his side, they would have been helpful…

‘Do not seek out anyone from Muryeong. That is the path for you to live an ordinary life.’

When he left Muryeong, Mooyoung had told Sana that. He told him to forget everything he had experienced and learned in Muryeong.

He warned him that if he tried to use his abilities for any reason, there would be a price to pay. Although it was an ability given out of necessity for something, Mooyoung said he hoped Sana would live an ordinary life as much as possible from now on, and that was Mooyoung’s personal wish, not the Muryeong leader’s.

But…

The price he had to pay and Doha’s life. Which was more important?

Sana, who had gotten up from the bed and was pacing the room, took a deep breath. This time, he couldn’t follow Mooyoung’s words.

Dragon Holdings. The moment the word he had seen in the news yesterday came to mind, he clenched his fist.

Yeon’s last client, that was Dragon Holdings. Kang Dohyeok, the chairman there, would know where Yeon was. Sana needed Yeon. Yeon might know what Sana was curious about.

Yeon was someone who had the ability to see all human connections as colorful threads. So, Yeon would know who was trying to kill Choi Doha.

Doha swallowed a sigh, looking at the stack of documents in front of him. After meeting Chairman Choi Taejin in the morning, Park Jaemin told Doha to review all these documents and understand their contents.

It was easy to say, but the sheer volume made him wonder if he could get through it all in a day.

He opened a file and checked inside, letting out a hollow laugh. It was the same content as the file he received on his phone yesterday. ‘Where on earth did that guy get this from?’ He couldn’t help but acknowledge his information-gathering skills.

His eyes scanned down, then paused in the middle. It seemed there was something different from the file he saw yesterday. However, he couldn’t take out his phone to compare it with that file. Park Jaemin was sitting in the same office.

He had no choice but to scan the page that felt different multiple times, committing its contents to memory. He would have to compare them when he got home later.

“Do you have some idea what it is?”

Park Jaemin was standing right in front of him, having arrived unnoticed.

He asked, his lips curling up, seeming pleased with Doha, who was looking at the documents with a serious expression. He suddenly checked the wall clock visible behind him and saw that two hours had already passed.

Doha’s gaze dropped to the documents. They were different from the club ledgers. This was definitely a list of transactions, buying and selling something.

“It seems to be transaction details. It doesn’t say what the transaction details are for, but this file is for the timing and unit price of incoming goods, and that one is a list of clients who received these goods.”

Indeed, when comparing the two, the quantity of goods matched exactly.

The numbers were different because the amount brought in and the amount sold were different, but even that roughly matched when a certain interest rate was added.

“As expected, a smart guy is different. He gets the gist just by looking at the numbers.”

Park Jaemin was satisfied.

“A ship will be arriving tomorrow. Go to Incheon Port with Sinhak. Sinhak will take care of the goods, and you just need to confirm the weight of the goods and pay the price according to the unit price they call out.”

He seemed to be trying to separate the tasks of storing and transporting goods from handling payments. Doha silently nodded, indicating understanding.

He had taken Doha to be introduced to the Chairman and entrusted him with work that Kim Sinhak had monopolized, but Park Jaemin still didn’t trust him 100%. The documents he had just shown him were proof of that.

It didn’t state what the goods were, nor was there any information about the seller. The names of the customers who bought the goods were all erased. All that was on the documents were the numbers exchanged during transactions.

‘Even pretending to trust me, he’s still testing me.’

The moment he realized that, Doha also refrained from speaking much and didn’t even betray that he had noticed some of it. Park Jaemin seemed pleased with Doha’s demeanor, patted his shoulder, telling him to take it easy, then left, saying he had business to attend to.

‘So, in the end, he means for me to look at all these documents.’

After Park Jaemin and his followers left, Doha leaned back on the sofa and sat comfortably. When he took out a cigarette, the quick-witted Jungwook quickly brought an ashtray and placed it in front of Doha.

This guy, too, was a strange one the more he saw him. Even though they had only known each other for half a year, he was diligently following him, calling him ‘Brother.’ Just by looking at him, Jungwook seemed older, yet he had never asked his actual age. He had saved his life, so he had knelt without hesitation, calling him ‘Brother.’

“Thanks.”

When he thanked him for the ashtray, Jungwook scratched the back of his head awkwardly. The bear-like guy’s innocent smile really didn’t suit his size.

He shook his head and turned his eyes back to the documents, but his pocket vibrated with a ziiiing. Doha checked the caller ID and stood up.

“Where are you going?”

Jungwook asked out of habit.

“To get some fresh air. And finish my cigarette.”

When he pointed to the lit cigarette, Jungwook lost interest. He went out of the office and pressed the call button.

“Yeah.”

Even at his short reply, the other person didn’t question what it was.

[That guy I asked you to look into, Kim Sanha, 20 years old, I finally got a proper hit this time. There’s nothing particularly special. He’s ordinary.]

‘Ordinary, huh.’ That word was even funnier. Just by Sana’s description and his demeanor, he was far from ordinary.

“Muryeong?”

[Ah, that one’s a bit ambiguous. There’s nothing that comes up with the word ‘Muryeong,’ but since you said it was a shaman group, I dug into that a bit. Then ‘Muryeong’ popped up in an unexpected place. Do you remember the tax investigation at Hoban Gallery last year? They managed to get out of it, but anyway, that’s not important, there’s a rumor that the representative of Hoban Gallery introduced shamans to political and business circles. Shamans in this day and age, isn’t that absurd? Perhaps because of that, the parties involved kept it quiet, so it’s not widely known, but it seems those shamans came from ‘Muryeong.’]

So, there really was an organization called Muryeong, just as Sana said.

“Not some kind of cult?”

[Cult, huh… It’s a bit different from a religion. It seemed more like a place that dispatched shamans for a fee. But nothing comes up here either. I thoroughly checked, but this much rumor was all there was. There are also rumors that it’s completely disbanded now.]

“Disbanded?”

[That’s also just a rumor, so I don’t know if it’s true.]

‘I don’t have anyone waiting.’

At the mention of Muryeong being disbanded, he remembered Sana’s words about having nowhere to go.

“When was it disbanded?”

[I don’t know that, of course.]

Well, indeed. What difference did it make when it was disbanded? The conclusion was that Sana’s words about having nowhere to go and having no family were true.

[But why did you ask me to look into this? Is that Kim Sanha guy a spy or something?]

“I suspected it.”

He answered honestly.

[You suspected it, but from what I hear, you think he’s not.]

This time, he didn’t deny it. The other person seemed to fall silent for a moment, then he heard the sound of a door opening and closing, as if he was moving somewhere.

[Don’t drag it out too long. The atmosphere here isn’t normal either.]

Doha let out a hollow laugh at the other person’s words. Still, this guy was genuinely worried about him.

[Are you laughing?]

Even though he didn’t make a sound, he cleverly sensed Doha’s reaction.

[It’s no laughing matter. If you end up never being able to come back, ah, I’m hanging up. Call me back later.]

The call was abruptly cut off. Doha also deleted the call history he had just made from his call log and put his phone back in his pocket.

‘I guess I can put aside the suspicion that Sana is a spy sent by Park Jaemin for now.’ Indeed, if he were, he wouldn’t have approached him so absurdly in front of the club. Wouldn’t he have found a more natural method?

He thought Sana wasn’t lying, judging by his actions and eyes, but he had reconfirmed it, as the saying goes, ‘even a stone bridge should be crossed by tapping it.’

If Sana wasn’t an operative planted by Park Jaemin, then he now had to worry about the opposite. He had to make sure Sana didn’t become his weakness by catching the eye of Park Jaemin or Kim Sinhak.

He thought that far, then a hollow laugh escaped him. ‘His weakness, huh…’ He hadn’t fallen that deep yet. If the situation became dangerous, he would abandon Sana without the slightest hesitation. So, it was unnecessary worry.

“Shall I deal with that first, then?”

He mumbled to himself, looking up at the office window, then went up the stairs. He had to quickly look through all the documents piled up in the office to keep the promise he made to Sana.

A very trivial and ordinary promise: to return early and eat dinner together.