Chapter 69 : Golden Deception

A man’s scream erupts once more.

Right after the scream, powder scatters from the broken wall of the house.

“Oh my, this monster’s putting up quite the fight,”

she muttered nonchalantly, crouching down and tapping her shoulder with a staff as if she were a thug straight out of a ‘90s movie, swapping a bat for a wand.

The homeowner’s lips quivered, as if trying to say something, trembling with fear.

As if he knew where this was heading, his shaky eyes, restless fingers, and trembling lips stood out.

According to the information Ji-eun unnie managed to dig up, this man had apparently funneled money somewhere.

Talking it out wouldn’t make him cough it up willingly, so she created an air of intimidation.

“Boss? Let’s not make this harder than it has to be. I know about the stash.”

She scratched the back of her head, her tone and expression radiating the vibe of someone utterly fed up with everything.

When pressed about the hidden money, the man grew visibly flustered, fidgeting and darting his anxious eyes around.

The final blow.

The coup de grâce.

“Spit out the cash nicely… or do I have to open up your belly right here? You choose.”

The man’s eyes trembled even more violently.

Out of nowhere, his house had gone to auction, and this crazy girl had tracked down his current residence, crumpled his door like it was tissue paper, and smashed his walls.

And this “magical girl,” of all people, was now standing right before his eyes.

It seemed like he genuinely thought he’d end up smelling incense from behind a folding screen if he said the wrong thing, as his complexion turned pale.

“O-Okay, I get it… So let’s calm down, yeah?”

“You’re the one making it impossible for me to stay calm!”

With a shout, she kicked the already sunken wall even harder, sending clouds of dust rising thickly into the air.

When someone loses money, there’s nothing left in their eyes, no matter whether the thief’s a man or a woman.

Even losing money voluntarily to gambling can drive a person mad—losing it to a scam?

It was practically a miracle she hadn’t already split this guy’s head into two halves like a peach.

“Where’d you stash it?”

“Well, I can’t exactly give you cash on the spot…”

“What?”

The man muttered hesitantly, clearly watching her reaction.

When it seemed like he was about to spout nonsense again, she cut him off with a sharp, oppressive retort, upping the tension once more.

The man feebly raised his arms as if to shield his face, unable to meet her gaze directly, though his lips continued to flap.

“Let’s just… let’s calm down, okay? You should hear people out till the end, yeah…?”

His tone had suddenly become much more polite.

A middle-aged man, now on his knees, slid his fingernails into a gap in the wallpapered floor and peeled it back to reveal the cement below.

Looking closer, there was a subtle crack in the cement floor beneath.

The man fetched a flathead screwdriver from somewhere and wedged its tip into the crack, prying loose a small piece of cement.

With that, a handle-like groove wide enough for fingers appeared.

Beneath the house was something straight out of a game—a bunker-like basement.

“Urgh…”

Pathetically, the man couldn’t even open the entrance on his own.

“C-Can you… give me a little help here?”

“Sigh…”

She let out a deep sigh, crouching down and effortlessly lifting the cement cover with one hand while the man struggled with both.

The lid wasn’t that big or thick, after all.

I followed the man down the iron ladder already set in place, stepping into the basement after him.

In the center of the basement lay something wrapped neatly in a waterproof tarp.

When the man pulled the tarp aside, inside were stacks of gold bars—something you’d only expect to see in a crime movie.

I’d seen gold bars often in games or movies, but this was my first time seeing them in real life.

And even more so, I never imagined I’d encounter gold bars in this kind of situation.

The man, looking as though he had made a significant decision, swallowed hard and spoke with difficulty.

“Let’s settle for… three big ones.”

“Just three?”

“J-just three?! Do you even know how much gold is worth these days…”

Hearing his flustered response, I became curious and pulled out my smartphone to search the gold price—something I’d never bothered to check before.

105,000 won per gram. If “big ones” meant 1 kilogram each…

‘14…?’

This thin, smartphone-sized bar of gold was worth 1.4 billion won.

The staggering amount immediately broke my train of thought.

Three bars amounted to twice the deposit I had paid earlier.

Berating myself for having called it “just three” moments ago, I carefully clasped the gold bars, interlocked between my fingers, as if they were the most precious things in the world.

I was only dazed for a moment before snapping back to reality.

I remembered that certifications were always attached to precious items like jewels and demanded them.

“Certification.”

“Of course, I’ll give it to you.”

Thus, I ended up with three 1kg gold bars and three certifications that matched their engraved serial numbers.

Having gotten my money back, there was no longer any need for me to stay in Jeonju.

Flying back home, I pulled out my phone and made a call.

The man probably thought this was the end of it now that he had handed over the money.

But, of course, it wasn’t over.

“Hey, Mari, how did it go?”

“We need to report it ASAP. That idiot hid gold bars in his own house.”

“I knew there had to be something… Got it.”

The call ended quickly.

With 3 billion won worth of gold bars and their certifications tightly gripped in my hand, I arrived back home.

Anyone who cheats someone else out of money should be prepared to lose their own.

Thanks to the connections of Ji-eun, my ever-resourceful older sister, the landlord’s hidden assets were uncovered and seized.

Naturally, the auction of the officetel I lived in was canceled on the grounds that “the landlord was judged capable of repaying their debts.”

As expected of a country as skilled at collecting taxes as South Korea, every penny seemed to have been wrung out of him.

Yet, when it came to getting back what was mine, it had been an infuriatingly difficult process.

“So, what are we going to do with this?”

“Good question.”

“Gold!”

The three of us sat huddled around the three gold bars lying on the floor of my room.

Siyeon, whose spirits were lifted just from looking at the pretty gold, was left to her own devices, while the rest of us stared at the 3kg of gold bars in front of us, at a complete loss.

Frankly, this wasn’t some lighthearted situation where you could go, “Wow, 3 billion won!” and casually sell them.

With certifications and serial numbers on record, these were traceable assets that needed to be handled carefully.

Walking into a bank to resell the gold bars would directly link me to the person who had originally purchased them.

I’d been blinded by the sheer value of the gold and brought it back without thinking, but I hadn’t expected this kind of problem.

“…This is real gold, right?”

“Yeah, they say this one piece is worth a billion won. A billion.”

Siyeon, her eyes sparkling at the sight of the glittering gold, pointed to the gold bar and asked for confirmation.

How she even knew it was gold was beyond me—her knowledge seemed to grow by leaps and bounds every day.

Nodding my head, I casually listed the unit.

“Wow! That’s expensive!”

“Yeah, it’s super expensive.”

Perhaps that’s why she no longer needed food comparisons to understand.

Realizing it was a “huge amount,” Siyeon gasped in shock.

She’s currently at that point in fourth-grade math where they start learning about large numbers.

If this smartphone-sized gold bar was real, you could eat chicken every day for ten years without a problem.

Setting aside the trouble of selling a gold bar, there was another piece of good news.

“Are you planning to move out as soon as the lease ends?”

“Yes, I am. Might as well squeeze some more money out of that bastard while I’m at it.”

Squeeze more money? What’s that supposed to mean…

“The landlord must have been pretty flustered, thinking you were just any other tenant.”

“Exactly. Even I didn’t realize until I got here…”

That’s how it was.

Three 1kg gold bars, handed over in place of a deposit.

From the landlord’s perspective, it must have felt like he was pulling a fast one, handing over gold instead of the deposit…

This landlord had been buying up relatively cheaper officetels and villas in bulk to rent out.

But how on earth was he supposed to figure out which tenant from which villa or officetel had taken the gold bars?

In the end, the landlord not only lost three gold bars but would also have to return my 150 million won deposit in full when the lease ended.

“Wow, so you basically earned 300 million in one go?”

“That’s how it turned out.”

Listening to Ji-eun’s comment, I realized this was an absurdly profitable operation.

Ji-eun, standing before the gleaming gold bars, crossed her arms and tilted her head, curiously asking,

“But isn’t this skirting the edge of a crime?”

“Hey, don’t say that—you’ll hurt my feelings. What are you talking about? We dealt with the monster that appeared in the house, and the landlord gladly handed this over in gratitude.”

“Is that so?”

With my brilliant rhetoric, Ji-eun seemed momentarily bewildered, letting out a faint sound of reluctant agreement.

Truth be told, everything about this was a crime.

Fake monster alerts, trespassing, threats, and aggravated theft… and the list goes on.

If you think about it, there wasn’t a single aspect that wasn’t criminal, but it felt justified since the victim was also a criminal.

Besides, Ji-eun and the staff who provided the fake monster alerts were accomplices.

As long as the few people involved kept their mouths shut, it was flawless.

Let’s just call it vigilante justice.

“Alright, first, let’s find someone to buy these.”

“Yes, I’ll leave it to you.”

In the brief silence that followed, Ji-eun started scrolling through her phone, searching through her contacts.

Without me even asking, she naturally set about laundering the money like it was second nature.