OMS 41

Park Dong-sik passed the street lined with jewelry stores and hid in a corner alley. There, he opened his backpack and changed into the jacket he’d packed earlier, covering his face with a hat and mask. After climbing the hill, he saw a worn two-story building straight ahead.

Entering the building and heading to the basement, the smell of urine reached his nose. Park Dong-sik took gloves from his jacket pocket and switched off the main power at the electrical box in the corner. Checking his surroundings, he noticed the letters “Zeus Capital” over the building.

After knocking on the door and getting no response, he realized everyone must have gone to the meeting with Moon Ho-cheol, which was about three hours away. Without hesitation, he entered the passcode, went inside, and was instantly greeted by familiar surroundings.

He never thought he’d come back here. Lost in old memories, Park Dong-sik headed straight to the president’s office and removed the large painting from the wall. When the safe appeared, he tried several combinations. Unfortunately, each attempt resulted in an error message.

Damn. Park Dong-sik thought about what to do next. What was the president’s house code again? He tried the number he’d memorized while taking a drunk Moon Ho-cheol home, but it was wrong too. Of course, unless he was an idiot, he wouldn’t use the same number.

Feeling frustrated, he rubbed his face. Then his eyes caught the desk calendar. Moon Ho-cheol might be a bastard to others, but he was incredibly filial to his parents, especially his mother.

When was that day? He flipped through the calendar backward. His mother had a grand 70th birthday celebration this year, and the office staff had served at the party all day…

The calendar stopped in July. July 15th was marked “70th birthday” in pen. He took out his phone, calculated his mother’s birth year, and entered the six-digit birthdate into the safe.

With a pleasant chime, the lock turned.

Park Dong-sik burst out laughing.

“Haha, damn. You filial bastard.”

Opening the safe revealed organized documents, gold bars, and cash. Park Dong-sik reached deep inside the safe and felt around. A box came out with it. Opening the lid, he found a handgun. Moon Ho-cheol had acquired it with difficulty and kept it around for emergency purposes.

Park Dong-sik put the gun and bullets in his inner pocket and stared at the gold bars. How many are there? There must be more in the house safe too. Without hesitation, he swept the gold bars into his bag.

“President Moon. Let’s consider this my severance pay.” After working like a dog under him, he didn’t even come to the funeral or send condolence money. This much should be fair as severance pay. Park Dong-sik hurriedly closed the safe and escaped outside. While running down the hill to catch a taxi, he happened to bump into someone. Unable to maintain balance due to the heavy bag, he started falling backward when the man reached out to steady him.

“Are you okay?” Instead of taking his hand, Park Dong-sik pushed himself up from the ground and pulled his hat down lower over his head. 

“I’m fine.”

The man was holding a camera. A photographer? Before he could think further, a taxi stopped in the distance, and Park Dong-sik rushed to get in the back seat.

“Please take me to Paju. As fast as possible.” Fortunately, there was no traffic during the weekday afternoon. In the taxi, Park Dong-sik changed his outer clothes, removed his mask and hat, and fixed his hair. After a long drive, the taxi stopped near the meeting place. After paying the taxi driver, he walked along the alley where there were quite a few factories.

Taking out a cigarette, he stopped to look around when his phone vibrated in his pocket. It turned out to be none other than Moon Ho-cheol. 

[“Our boss, how far have you come? We were thinking of coming out to meet you.”] 

“About 10 minutes away. Wait.” He hung up and stubbed out his cigarette. After taking a deep breath, he took out the gun from his chest and loaded it. Pulling the hammer and practicing aiming, the angle didn’t feel quite right. Hope this thing fires. Putting the gun back in his chest, he said inwardly to himself, “Hopefully, there won’t be a need to use this.”

Continuing uphill, he came across a factory marked “Myeongjin Industry.” The factory seemed long abandoned and desolate, without a single ant in sight in the wide empty lot. This place must have been bustling with people before. If the owner hadn’t been scammed and ruined by someone, then perhaps it still might be prosperous to this day. The person to blame for this desolate landscape was Moon Ho-cheol.

Opening the heavy iron door, he spotted two bulky men in the distance. Unlike Park Dong-sik who mainly handled small collections, these guys did the nastier work. They used to be so arrogant whenever they met. As he walked up to them, one of them gave a slight bow.

“They’re waiting inside.” Following their guidance, he found Moon Ho-cheol inside. The office furniture was covered in dust, having lost its owner, and suspected bloodstains were visible in various places.

“My, you’ve made such a difficult trip. Should I call you our boss, or would you prefer madam?” 

“Call me whatever you want.” 

“Alright then. Anyway, you’ve come all this way. I should at least offer you a drink.”

At Moon Ho-cheol’s gesture, an employee brought two disposable cups of coffee from packages already premixed with cream and sugar. When living as Park Dong-sik, he used to drink several of these a day…There wasn’t even time to eat with all the work he had to do, and Moon Ho-cheol would throw fits if collections were late. This was all he had to satisfy his hunger.

“I really didn’t think you’d come. Even though people say everyone’s the same, there are still different levels, right? But someone like you came here because of some shaman? Why? For what reason?”

Instead of coffee, Park Dong-sik chose a cigarette. Nothing was better than cigarettes for hiding nervousness. “Your tongue’s quite long. Stop the nonsense and get straight to the point. I’m here on borrowed time too.” 

“I like how straightforward you are. Let’s go ahead and do that then.”

He called his subordinate, and moments later, they dragged someone out from inside. It was the fairy shaman in hanbok, beaten so badly she was barely recognizable. Her makeup was smeared like a ghost, and her hair was a mess.

The shaman painfully opened her eyes to look at Park Dong-sik and let out a groan. “You’ve messed up her face. She’s my mother-in-law’s precious shaman.”

Moon Ho-cheol looked puzzled at those words. “Who…?” 

“Didn’t you know? This person is my mother-in-law’s bestie.”

Park Dong-sik wiggled his pinky finger. He saw the shaman’s bewildered expression but pretended not to notice. Since she was involved with that so-called spiritual master, Mother-in-law Song shouldn’t feel wronged about being associated with a shaman. Moon Ho-cheol snorted.

“What kind of joke is that?”

“Does it seem like a joke to you?”

The shaman didn’t deny it and just lowered her head as if following along with everything. Confusion spread across Moon Ho-cheol’s face, but only for a brief moment. He quickly changed the subject, pretending to act calm on the surface.

“Putting that aside, do you know Park Dong-sik?”

“…”

“I heard you went to his funeral, and that you even paid off the debt of that hyung who was close to him.”

Park Dong-sik swallowed hard. Fortunately, Moon Ho-cheol didn’t seem to suspect that he was Park Dong-sik. Moon Ho-cheol originally didn’t believe in supernatural phenomena, which seemed to help in this sort of situation he had found himself in. Well, even I would think it’s nonsense if someone claimed their soul had switched bodies.

“So.”

He gestured to his subordinate. The subordinate handed over some documents, which Moon Ho-cheol passed along to Park Dong-sik. Park Dong-sik’s face contorted as he looked through them. It was a contract with Park Dong-sik listed as the debtor. The seal was Park Dong-sik’s too. Wait, this amount…

One, ten, hundred, thousand, ten thousand…hundred thousand…million…ten million…billion? The principal alone is 400 million won?

By rough calculation, with interest, it would be about 1 billion won.

As Park Dong-sik stared with an incredulous expression on his face, Moon Ho-cheol crossed his legs and lit a cigarette.

“I wondered where that bastard was spending all that money, but now I see why. If I had such a pretty lover, I’d want to spend lavishly too. It pains my heart since he was a dear dongsaeng, but what can we do? Dead men are dead, and debts must be collected in the meantime.”

This was totally absurd. I had never borrowed money from Moon Ho-cheol, so what was this contract?

“You want me to pay for this?”

“His father has no ability to pay, and he’s already down one kidney. So I was hoping the wealthy CEO could pay it off. You must have had fun with him while he was still alive. Our Dong-sik was quite handsome and well-endowed. Must have been quite useful, right?”

Looking at Moon Ho-cheol cackling like that, Park Dong-sik felt like pulling out a gun and putting a hole in his head. While he could acknowledge that Park Dong-sik was indeed handsome and well-endowed, it pained him deeply to realize he had contributed to this man’s despicable behavior of trying to extort money with fake contracts.

“What if I can’t pay?”

“What choice do we have then? I’ll have to speak with your husband separately. Ask him to pay the debt on behalf of his wife.”

This bastard. It’s straight-up blackmail. Suddenly, Park Dong-sik remembered Lee Hee-soo’s lover from the Gangwon-do villa. Was he like this too? Did he fearlessly blackmail Kim Jun-han? Park Dong-sik wanted to leave Moon Ho-cheol to die by Kim Jun-han’s hand, but he didn’t want to add to yesterday’s bad impression.

“Hmm…”

“If you don’t have cash, a transfer is fine too.”

Park Dong-sik sighed quietly and took out gold bars from his bag. One, two, three, four, five, six—as the gold piled up, Moon Ho-cheol’s eyes changed. His subordinates behind him stood with their mouths wide open.

“Ten pieces. This should settle it, right?”

Moon Ho-cheol rubbed his chin and smiled slyly.

“Eh, it’s slightly short though?”

Park Dong-sik replied brazenly.

“Don’t chaebol get discounts?”

Moon Ho-cheol nodded his head readily.

“Deal. We might become good business partners in the future, so I should show this much generosity.”

Business partners my ass, you bastard.

Moon Ho-cheol kept smirking as he packed away the gold bars into a bag.

“The more I see you, the more generous our CEO seems. No, why did someone like you ever meet Dong-sik? Hm?”

Then he tore up the documents in front of them and wrote out a proof of payment. But Park Dong-sik wasn’t planning to end it there. He had one of the subordinates bring paper and a pen, and pushed them toward Moon Ho-cheol.

“What’s this?”

“How can I trust a gangster’s word? I need to get a written statement at least.”

Despite the written statement, Moon Ho-cheol would continue to use Park Dong-sik to blackmail him in the future. That was just the kind of person he was. He wouldn’t easily let go of prey once he had a taste. As proof of this, his eyes gleamed with joy at the thought of having caught a big fish.