TOIGC 94

Chapter 94 …

Montage (2)

Though it fell short compared to an actual photograph, it was more than good enough to identify a person. The lessons he had taken from Fernandez were definitely paying off.

“Alright, next guy.”

“Got it. Starting with the eyebrows…”

Yoongi kept sketching relentlessly, while Choi Deok-bae kept eating dried persimmons endlessly.

The work that had started back when the sun was up finally paused as dawn broke. Yoongi lay down on his bed, looking over at Deok-bae, who was still munching on a persimmon.

“Are those actually good?”

(Nah.)

Yoongi’s expression turned intensely puzzled for a second.

“Pardon?”

(I’m not eating ’em ’cause they’re tasty, you know?)

“Then why have you been eating them all day…?”

(Just playing dress-up as a wealthy aristocrat, kid.)

“I don’t really follow. If you’ve got money, you can eat all the delicious fruit you want. Why on earth are you eating dried persimmons in the middle of summer?”

(Tsk, tsk, tsk.)

Deok-bae clicked his tongue, waving his index finger side to side with a look that suggested Yoongi was truly pitiful.

“Let’s see here, jujubes are…”

(Ahem! Listen here, think about it. Seasonal fruit is cheap, right?)

“Aren’t top-grade ones ridiculously expensive? I love seasonal fruit, so I’d know.”

(Yeah, but fruit that’s out of season is even pricier.)

“Ah… so that was the game.”

Dried persimmons were notoriously hard to come by in the summer. Yoongi had wondered why Deok-bae specifically asked for them as his reward for this job, but he finally understood.

(Sure, plenty of people do this nowadays, but value isn’t decided purely by taste alone, is it? Eating things when other people can’t get their hands on ’em—now that right there is the ultimate status symbol, ain’t it?)

“I’m pretty sure your family wasn’t that poor…”

Deok-bae’s family had historically made a living off proxy test-taking. At the very least, they had lived far better than the impoverished aristocrats of Namsangol.

(The distribution networks back in the Joseon era were an absolute mess, so fruit cost an eye-watering fortune. Come to think of it, makes me think of Jeju tangerines.)

“Jeju tangerines?”

(Yup. They had to haul tangerines all the way from Jeju to Hanyang, and if they rotted along the way, they had to ship ’em all over again. The folks living in Jeju back in Joseon must’ve been absolute supermen.)

“Did you never visit Jeju?”

(Didn’t go during Joseon, no. Domestic travel is expensive.)

Hearing remarks from Deok-bae that sounded straight out of the 21st century, Yoongi asked:

“Isn’t foreign travel expensive, too?”

(I went on the government’s dime, obviously.)

“Figures… Must’ve been quite a sight if you’d managed to become a high-ranking government official.”

(I could’ve made it, sure. Just couldn’t hold onto the seat. When you’ve got zero political backing, they hand you a nice, refreshing bowl of poison as a parting gift. How’s a guy supposed to stay a Minister or Chief State Councillor under those conditions?)

“Sometimes, when you tell these stories, they sound genuinely tragic, but for some strange reason hearing it from you makes it hard to feel sad at all.”

(Probably ’cause most of my capacity for sadness has withered away by now, right?)

Watching Deok-bae shrug, Yoongi smiled faintly before drifting off to sleep. No matter how extraordinary his physical stamina was, spending nearly twenty hours straight on drawing made falling asleep inevitable.

(At least I wouldn’t have the grit to pull off what you’re doing, even if I went back to the old days.)

It was a sentiment the sleeping Yoongi couldn’t hear, and he sank into several hours of dead, dreamless sleep.

“Ugh…”

(Don’t you wanna sleep a bit more?)

“Better to hand out work assignments in the morning.”

Yoongi called Choi Chul-gyu to the study. Chul-gyu hurried over to Yoongi’s house and shoved the study door open.

“You called?”

“Yes. I have a favor to ask.”

“Shoot.”

As Chul-gyu took a seat, Yoongi slid a single document across the desk.

“All the information Im Si-chan and his men have on Seth. Compile, organize, and categorize every bit of it.”

Having recovered a remarkably robust physique thanks to Cha Pil-gyu’s murderous regimen, Im Si-chan sat politely across from Choi Chul-gyu.

They were seated across from each other at an office reception table. While Si-chan had been reasonably polite back at the tea house, this was a politeness born of a firmly established master-servant dynamic.

“How’s office life treating you?”

“Oh, ‘office life,’ you say? You give us a home, feed us, and whip us into shape. Honestly, the training’s a bit brutal, but everyone’s pretty satisfied. Plus, we’ve all gotten a lot healthier.”

Endowed with a sturdy constitution to begin with, Si-chan had transformed into a noticeably well-muscled figure through the training. Naturally, he still couldn’t hold a candle to Pil-gyu.

“Glad to hear you’re adapting well. Word came down from the top that it’s about time you all got to work.”

“Ah, is that so?”

Si-chan’s eyes lit up as he leaned forward slightly. As far as he knew, Chul-gyu was Yaikai’s number two, meaning the only person who could issue orders to him was his ultimate benefactor, Ryu Geun-tae, the number one. Of course, the directive actually originated from Yoongi, who sat at the absolute zero position.

“We’ll be making our move soon. But before that, we need as much intelligence on Seth as we can get. Can you compile everything you and your men have on them?”

Having been kicked out of his old security firm, Si-chan now held the title of Section Chief at Yaikai. Yet he answered Chul-gyu without a single trace of dissatisfaction.

“It’s true that we handled a lot of Seth’s dirty work, but that doesn’t mean we had extensive contact with the upper echelons. In reality, I personally only ever had real contact with one person at the top. I’m honestly not sure how useful our intel will be. Will that really be alright?”

Having spent several months under Yaikai’s roof, Si-chan had learned that Yaikai didn’t operate on a blind, “just shut up and follow orders” mentality, which gave him the confidence to voice his honest assessment.

“I’m not asking for deep analysis. All you need to do is write down everything you saw, heard, and did while working at Seth. You’ll have to rely on memory, but since you guys all worked in this kind of field, your memories should at least be above average, right?”

“My men’s memories are solid, at least. We cut loose any dead weight a long time ago. Idiots who can’t even remember a target’s face are useless in this line of work.”

“Fair enough. A guy like Section Chief Im would naturally know how to pick his people. By the way, I heard one of your subordinates just had a baby boy recently?”

At Chul-gyu’s mention, Si-chan scratched the back of his head with a slightly embarrassed expression.

“You even knew about that?”

“Director Cha mentioned it to me. Give that employee a three-month vacation.”

“Pardon?”

Caught entirely off guard by Chul-gyu’s declaration, Si-chan blinked in shock.

“A kid just got born, which is the exact time a father wants to be around. Let him take a proper three-month break. Once he’s back, he’ll work twice as hard. But get this data compilation finished first, of course.”

“There’s really no need to give him three whole months…”

Suspecting it might be a test, Si-chan instinctively tried to refuse, but Chul-gyu cut him off with an even firmer tone.

“I said let him take a break, didn’t I? We’ll be giving all our employees a three-month leave when they have kids. You guys are doing dangerous work—the least we can do is let you be there when your children are born, no? Or is losing one man going to leave a massive hole in your team’s capability?”

Si-chan hurriedly waved his hands.

“No. Absolutely not. It’s just… I’ve never heard of a company policy like that before…”

“When people do heavy, dangerous work, the rewards need to be just as heavy. Do you follow what I’m saying?”

Si-chan shook his head.

“Yes, sir. I understand completely. It’s just that kind of treatment… I’m deeply grateful. We’ll work hard.”

“Good. Now get back to work. And hand that over to the employee who just had his son.”

“Yes, sir!”

Watching Si-chan walk out, Chul-gyu shrugged to himself.

Getting nineteen guys to voluntarily pull overtime for a while is a bargain if it only costs one man’s three-month salary.

“Pardon? A three-month paid leave?”

The subordinate who had recently become a father leaped to his feet in disbelief, then stared at Si-chan with deep suspicion.

“Hey, are you pulling my leg right now?”

South Korea’s official parental leave system wouldn’t be introduced until 1988. Even by 2018, it hadn’t been common for women to take it comfortably, let alone an 80s male worker taking time off specifically for his wife’s childbirth. Because of this, the rest of the crew looked at the new father with expressions that clearly said, Yeah, right.

“No, I’m dead serious. The director authorized it.”

Si-chan handed a thick envelope to the employee. The moment the man opened the flap, he dropped the envelope to the floor in sheer astonishment.

Ten-thousand-won bills spilled out in a cascade across the concrete.

“It’s three months of fully paid leave.”

“Good lord…”

Seeing the man standing frozen, unable to even pick up the money, Si-chan put on a stern face and spoke again.

“Ten seconds.”

In a blur of motion, the employee snatched up the cash at lightning speed and snapped into a rigid posture.

“I haven’t been breathing down your necks lately, so you punks are getting cheeky, huh?”

“No, sir!”

It looked straight out of a military boot camp. The other employees also snapped to attention, staring straight ahead without daring to twitch an eyeball.

“You’re reporting back here in three months.”

“Yes, sir!”

“I’ll let it slide this once because of the kid.”

Wiping away cold sweat, the employee maintained his rigid posture, while Si-chan swept his gaze back over the rest of his men.

“Listen up. Are you guys gonna fall apart just because this guy is missing for three months?”

[[[[[No, sir!]]]]]

Unless they were complete fools, anyone could figure out they’d likely receive similar treatment down the line. Because of that, not a single man in the room felt an ounce of jealousy toward their coworker’s three-month vacation.

“Good. And we’ve got some good news, too. The higher-ups finally handed us a real job.”

[[[[[Oooooohh!]]]]]

The cheers rolling off the men were entirely genuine. For any working professional, a company that refuses to give you work is a profound source of anxiety—and that anxiety had just been wiped away.

“You, pack up and head home after a few more hours.”

“Yes, sir!”

Hearing the echoing, booming response, Si-chan began distributing paper and pens to his men.

People are remarkably susceptible to visual proof. In biblical lore, no matter how much Moses tried to convince the Israelites that the land of Canaan flowed with milk and honey, they still fell back on idol worship because abstract, distant futures hold very little sway over human nature.

Conversely, seeing their colleague walk away with a three-month paid vacation filled Si-chan’s subordinates with boundless courage, prompting them to dive deep into their memories.

Tracing back through memories spanning up to seventeen years, using Si-chan as the anchor point, was no small feat. Pulling out that volume of long-term history was grueling work, yet Si-chan and his men actually pulled it off.

While certain details had faded and others were slightly misremembered, Si-chan performed cross-verifications among the men, gradually knitting together a massive vault of intelligence. It was a project that clearly wouldn’t wrap up in a single day. Since the employee on leave realized the job wouldn’t finish in just a few hours, he even started showing up voluntarily for a few hours every day to help out.

[Hey, you’re on leave, why’re you here?]

[Still got a lot of memories I need to log.]

[You enjoying staying home watching the kid?]

[Hell yeah, it’s amazing!]

The sight of a teammate willingly pitching in acted as a massive morale boost for the rest of the team. Thanks to that, though it took a couple of weeks, progress on the project became glaringly visible.

Even though I barely had any direct contact with the upper echelons, pulling together seventeen years’ worth of records makes it possible to see how the gears turn at the very top…

Along with the realization that he had truly dodged a bullet by landing here, Si-chan finally understood why Chul-gyu had ordered this massive compilation project in the first place.

Another reason to pledge my absolute loyalty to this place has just been added.

It took six weeks for all the hidden dirt on Seth handled by Si-chan’s crew to be compiled into a single dossier.

As late summer settled in, Yoongi reviewed the categorized information in his study and looked across at Chul-gyu.

“Can you guess what kind of orders I’m about to give?”