‘As An Adult’

Belatedly, Hanna realized his misconception.

The man actually believed Yeji’s suicide note belonged to her.

Then again, since he hadn’t pried into the actual contents of the letter, it was only natural for him to assume that.

While she felt relieved by the misunderstanding, his cold, bloodless callousness nevertheless brought a sudden sting to the rims of her eyes.

He had absolutely no reason to be kind to her, yet it seemed she had unconsciously harbored a shred of expectation.

Just as Hanna let out a bitter, self-deprecating sigh, Beomgyo rose, his chair scraping loudly against the floor.

“If you find yourself unable to go through with it, name your price by tomorrow.”

Looking ready to turn on his heel and leave, he instead took a slow, deliberate loop around the table.

Halting firmly right in front of Hanna, he grabbed the armrests of her chair, spun her around to face him, and leisurely leaned his upper body down.

Hanna’s gaze became instantly locked onto the man’s dark eyes as they drew closer.

Furthermore, as the scent of cigarette smoke drifted to the tip of her nose, she habitually bit down on the inside of her cheek—only to feel a sudden, sharp prickle at the nape of her neck.

It was the exact spot where Juyeol’s syringe needle had pierced her flesh. Pressing his solid thumb against the long, torn laceration she had gotten while struggling, Beomgyo murmured, “I’ve made a proper, adult proposition,”

“Ngh…”

“So instead of overthinking it, you just need to give a reasonably childlike answer.”

A reasonably childlike answer… Did he mean she should stop being stubborn when she didn’t even have the guts to die, and take this opportunity to secure a hefty sum of money…?

While Hanna busily tried to decipher the meaning behind his words, Beomgyo’s lowered eyelids slowly lifted.

Meeting his gaze once more, she couldn’t find a single trace of amusement in his eyes.

The voice hovering right in front of her lips carried the exact same weight.

“Understood, kid?”

He had asked a question, but judging that they weren’t on a first-name basis anyway, Beomgyo simply adopted the title Miju had used to address her before straightening his posture.

“You heard all of that, right, Dr. Yang? Take good care of the kid.”

Leaving a parting word for Miju, who had been hiding behind the curtain eavesdropping on their entire conversation, he strode out of the motel.

Tracking his retreating figure with her eyes, Hanna belatedly cupped her throbbing neck and stared down at the keycard left entirely alone on the table.

The anesthesia seemed to be wearing off.

The inside of her cheek was beginning to ache much worse.

The following morning.

A long line of black sedans drove along the coastal road.

Seated in the back seat of the second vehicle, Seo Beomgyo silently gazed out the window at the sea, which was heavily blanketed by a dense sea fog.

The place they arrived at after driving through that suffocating silence was the front of a small temple.

With a cliff where waves crashed violently on the right and a majestic mountain range on the left, this temple was where the memorial tablet of Seo Beomgyo’s late father, Seo Junho, was enshrined.

A belated memorial service was being held at the temple, sixteen years after his passing.

Arriving a step late, Beomgyo opened the car door and stepped out. As he surveyed the dense crowd of cars tightly packing the parking lot and the rowdy men gathered around, every single eye locked onto him as if by prearrangement.

“You’ve arrived, Director.”

Beomgyo walked with practiced ease through the bulky men bowing deeply from the waist. However, before he could walk very far, an arm suddenly shot out to block his path.

Though it was a memorial service, the man was dressed in a patterned shirt with a darker hue than usual; it was none other than Jo Changdae, the representative of Club Heaven.

Tapping Beomgyo’s shoulder with the watch case he was holding, Changdae pushed up the pitch-black sunglasses resting on the bridge of his nose.

“My arm’s about to fall off, man. Just take it.”

“What is this?”

“What do you think it is? It’s a gift for Brother Junho! This kind of thing is supposed to be taken care of by the son. Here.”

Beomgyo knew all too well that Changdae, who normally would have raised absolute hell over the incident at the club yesterday, was holding back his temper strictly because of the significance of the day.

Amidst that, Beomgyo narrowed his eyes suspiciously, doubting whether a gift from him could truly be well-intentioned, prompting Changdae to let out an exasperated laugh as he personally flipped the case lid open.

“You absolute piece of sh*t. It’s a watch. A watch!”

“…”

“I made a big decision to get this in pure gold so your old man can completely straighten his shoulders, even in the afterlife… Hey, you motherf*cker, a senior is talking to you!”

Staring down at the blindingly glittering gold watch, Beomgyo walked right past Changdae as if he couldn’t care less about pure gold or anything else.

“It’s not my father’s style.”

“F*ck me, are you saying my style is tacky right now?!”

Already harboring a massive grudge, Changdae spat out a string of curses and took a step forward upon having his sincerity completely dismissed. However, one of his subordinates quickly rushed over to hold him back.

“Please, endure it for a bit. The Chairman is already inside.”

Beomgyo caught the underlying reason from the subordinate’s words, finally understanding why everyone was loitering outside without entering.

Passing alone beneath the plaque that read ‘Hakrimsa Temple,’ Beomgyo neatly fastened the open buttons of his suit jacket.

Crossing the dusty courtyard and ascending the twelve-stepped stone staircase, a thick scent of burning incense greeted him.

Without casting a single glance at the endless rows of funeral wreaths lining both sides, Beomgyo walked straight inside. He then bowed politely from the waist toward the guest who had arrived ahead of him, standing before a massive Buddha statue.

“It has been a while, Chairman.”

“Ah, you’re here.”

Kwon Ikjae. Despite being on the verge of sixty, his back and shoulders remained perfectly straight, and he still maintained his thick black hair along with the fierce aura of his youth. He was the current boss of the Cheongri Clan, an organization Beomgyo had been a part of for the past sixteen years, and the founder of the Hakrim Group.

Furthermore, he had been a childhood friend of Beomgyo’s father, Seo Junho, and was the only person who had consistently marked his death anniversary alongside Beomgyo for the last sixteen years.

Just as he did every year, Ikjae placed a single cigarette and a Zippo lighter down in front of Junho’s memorial tablet.

Shortly after, he unndipped the cap of a soju bottle he had prepared, murmuring in a heavily subdued voice.

“It feels like just yesterday that young Beomgyo was running amok, vowing to avenge his father, but sixteen years have already flown by.”

Clear alcohol poured smoothly, filling the transparent glass to the brim.

“Then again… filtering out a loathsome mudfish muddiering up the clear waters is never an easy task.”

Unlike Ikjae, who spoke with calm composure, Beomgyo tightly clenched his own wrist behind his back.

While he was alive, his father had been a member of the same Cheongri Clan alongside Ikjae.

Coming from a filthy, impoverished background and belonging to a criminal syndicate that once made the entire Busan underworld tremble, perhaps a dog’s death had been a foregone conclusion for his father.

As such, whether his father had been prepared for it or not remained unknown, but Beomgyo certainly hadn’t been.

He never imagined he would lose his father so abruptly, so utterly pointlessly. Least of all, he never expected to watch him get stabbed to death right before his very eyes…

At a funeral parlor guarded by nothing more than two young children, uneducated adults lacked the basic decency to watch their mouths.

Thanks to their reckless chatter, Beomgyo discovered that his father’s death was a hit carried out by a rival faction over an intersection of business interests. The moment the funeral procession concluded, he grabbed a raw, metallic sashimi knife and headed straight for their stronghold.

The one who had blocked that reckless, hot-headed eighteen-year-old Seo Beomgyo back then was none other than Kwon Ikjae.

[If you want to avenge your old man, do it with me.]

Ikjae had spoken while holding an umbrella over the head of a young Beomgyo, who was shivering violently under a torrential downpour.

[The ones who took out Junho… it wasn’t those small-time fish.]

[Then who was it! Who the f*ck was it!]

When a completely unhinged Beomgyo raised his blade and screamed like a wild animal, Ikjae dropped the umbrella he was holding.

Instead, he recklessly grabbed the dangerously glinting blade with his bare hand, barking in a heavily locked voice.

[Mudfish.]

[What…?]

[It’s the work of mudfish b*stards who mistakenly believe they’re weapons meant to turn into dragons.]

The ‘Cheongri’ (靑彲) in Cheongri Clan translated to ‘Blue Imugi’—a mythical serpent. To call someone a mudfish mixed among them meant one thing.

[You’re saying… the person who killed my father is inside the Cheongri Clan…]

Beomgyo had doubted his own ears. It was entirely unbelievable. That his father, of all people, had been eliminated by the very syndicate to which he had shown such absolute devotion and loyalty.

Why… why on earth… Beomgyo had mumbled, utterly shell-shocked, but there was no grand, sophisticated reason behind it.

He was eliminated simply because he went against the syndicate’s wishes. That was all it took.

[It will take a long time. It won’t be easy, and if you’re unlucky, you might end up dying a dog’s death just like your father before you can even touch them.]

Releasing his grip on the violently trembling blade, Ikjae slid his blood-stained hand into his suit inner pocket. He pulled out his business card, thrusting it in front of Beomgyo as he added, [If you still feel compelled to do it, take my hand, Beom.]

Heeding Ikjae’s words that it was still too early for a blade, Beomgyo accepted his blood-soaked business card instead of the heavy sashimi knife.

Entering the life of the Cheongri Clan through that card, he had bided his time in absolute silence for a staggering sixteen years. And just one year ago, he had finally succeeded in completely slaughtering every single one of those mudfish b*stards who had risen to become figures of authority in the underworld.

“Your son went through immense hell during that time. You know that, right?”

Having filled two glasses to the brim in the meantime, Ikjae set the soju bottle upright and let out a deeply gratified smile.

As the newly established boss of the Cheongri Clan, Ikjae didn’t just offer empty praise; he had truly credited Beomgyo with an immense share of power.

When shedding its archaic traditions to transform into a corporate syndicate, the very first move Ikjae made was placing Seo Beomgyo in the position of Executive Director.

Because of that decision, Changdae—who had been left with nothing but a single club handed down to him—along with the senior figures who had been bypassed by a much younger man and the old guard whose roots remained firmly in the criminal underbelly, raised fierce objections. Yet, Ikjae refused to make a single compromise.

Instead, using them as an example to demonstrate to the world that times had changed and that the master of Cheongri was different, he proudly built the Hakrim Group upon their blood.

It was an event that publicly broadcasted just how exceptionally highly he regarded Seo Beomgyo.

“Now that you’ve completely settled your late father’s grievances, shouldn’t you start living a proper life, Beomgyo?”

Picking up his own glass, Ikjae lightly clinked it against Junho’s glass sitting before the memorial tablet, murmuring quietly.

“Get married, have children…”

Staring down for a brief moment at the sloshing soju that rippled with a crisp clink, he suddenly turned back to Beomgyo and asked.