Chapter 11 Jin
After a few weeks of playing hide and seek, we’re able to track down Goh Seung-ho to the streets of Gunsan.
The man lives like a true nomad—hopping from city to city under a rotating list of aliases, always one step ahead of his debts and the people he owes. His vices have made him a pariah always on the run.
Alcohol. Gambling. Prostitutes.
He indulges in them all like a true broken man who has nothing left to lose.
But we finally found his latest temporary housing.
He’s staying in a love motel on the outskirts of the small industrial city. It’s a place that’s a few won in cost, renting rooms by the hour instead of the night. The clerks don’t ask questions, and the building is a faded pink eyesore, its neon sign flickering weakly in the morning gloom.
The parking lot is nearly empty except for a few rusted cars and a stray dog nosing through overturned garbage.
Park Min-gyu walks beside me as we approach the entrance, his eyes focused and determined despite the early hour.
We left Busan before dawn to make this trip, and we need to be back by early afternoon.
Today, I learn the gender of my baby.
I made Monroe a promise, and I intend to keep it. But first, I need answers.
The clerk at the front desk is a bored-looking woman with a cigarette smoldering between her fingers and lipstick-stained teeth. She barely glances up as we enter.
It’s not until Min-gyu reaches over the counter and grabs the registration book that she shouts at us in Hangugeo.
“Room 208,” Min-gyu reads aloud.
I snatch the keys from the pegboard that’s marked with the same digits and turn to leave.
“Yah!” she shouts, leaping up from her chair. “What do you think you’re doing?!”
But we simply ignore her, striding out of the office and heading toward the metal staircase. We take them two at a time, making quick work of them until we’re on the second-floor landing.
The entire motel reeks of stale cigarette smoke and mildew. The exterior hallway has more lightbulbs out than working, with the few that do flickering every few seconds.
We stop in front of Room 208 and kick the door in.
Min-gyu’s boot crashes against the wood and sends it busting inward with a splintering crack.
The scene inside is as pathetic as I expected.
Goh Seung-ho sits on the edge of a sagging mattress, his pants around his ankles while a woman kneels between his legs, her hand wrapped around his limp, unresponsive cock.
The room stinks of cigarettes even more than the hallway outside, every table and dresser littered with old liquor bottles and takeout cartons.
The woman screams, scrambling backward and clutching her tits as if she’s someone respectable.
Seung-ho’s reaction is slower. His bloodshot eyes widen, and he grabs a pillow to cover his lap.
“What the fuck!” he snarls, half slurring. “Who the fuck—”
He stops as recognition dawns. Even after all these years, he knows my face.
I remain in the doorway, perfectly composed despite the squalor surrounding us.
“Get out,” I order the woman.
She’s still topless, but she knows it’s more important to obey. She snatches her leopard print blouse and chunky heels from the floor and scurries past us.
“Shut the door,” I tell Min-gyu. “Don’t forget to put the sign out.”
He does as I’ve requested, hanging the ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign on the knob and twisting the lock in the door.
We’re officially alone in this miserable room.
I take a moment to study what’s become of Goh Seung-ho, former highly regarded captain in the Bulgeomhoe.
The years have not been kind to him, though I suppose I’m partly responsible for that.
His jaw is permanently disfigured from where I shattered it, the bone healed crooked so that his mouth never fully closes. It affects his speech, turning his words into a wet, lisping drawl.
His face is bloated and sallow from years of drinking, skin mottled with broken capillaries and eyes watery and rimmed red.
He’s a ruin of a man. A husk of his former glory.
“The Great Silent Hunter,” he spits, his ruined mouth twisting into his version of a sneer. “What do you want now? Come to admire your handiwork?”
His derision isn’t worthy of a response. I’m more preoccupied with mulling over the situation.
This can’t be him.
The shootout outside the boxing arena was well coordinated. Multiple vehicles and shooters showing up at the exact right moment then delivering the cryptic message once they’d flexed their might.
That kind of operation requires resources and discipline. It calls for men willing to follow orders.
Goh Seung-ho can barely string a coherent thought together. He’s a drunken, bloated mess hiding in a love motel with a prostitute he probably couldn’t even pay properly.
But we’ve traveled four hours for this—and he was seen at the boxing match.
“Restrain him,” I order next.
Seung-ho struggles as Min-gyu hauls him off the bed and shoves him into a rickety chair, but it’s a weak, flailing resistance. I pull my blade from inside my jacket, delighting in the flicker of fear in his bloodshot eyes.
“Why were you at the underground boxing match in Yeongdo-gu?” I ask.
He laughs, producing the wet and phlegmy sound before choking on it. “Is that what this is about? The fucking boxing match?”
“Answer the question.”
“Or what? You’ll disfigure me more?” He spreads his arms wide, the pillow falling away to reveal his pale, sagging body. “Go ahead. Use your blade. Make me a true monster. It’s not as if I have much left to lose.”
His defiance admittedly gets under my skin. He’s always had a knack for that.
Which is why I disfigured him as badly as I did so many years ago. It seems that hasn’t changed.
Before I can think better of it, I lash out—a quick, fluid slash of my blade cuts open his cheek from ear to jaw.
Blood beads from the wound, dribbling down his swollen face and dripping onto his bare chest. Seung-ho laughs even louder, coughing phlegm as he does.
“There he is!” he rasps. “The real Seo Jin-tae. Not so composed after all.”
I force myself to stillness, reining in the impulse that drove me to strike.
This is not how I operate. I am calculated. Controlled.
I don’t let weak men like this get under my skin.
“The boxing match,” I repeat, my tone flat. “Answer the question.”
“I’m a gambler, you stupid fuck. I go to most of the underground matches on the peninsula.
It’s one of the few pleasures I have left,” he slurs, wiping blood from his cheek.
He gestures at the squalid room around us.
“Look at me. I have eighty thousand won to my name. I could barely pay for the whore you just chased off. Do I still hate you? Yes, and I will ’til the day I die. But I am not the man you seek.”
It’s the truth, no matter how bitter of a pill it is to swallow in the moment.
He’s being honest. I can see it in his eyes and pick it up in his voice. That’s not considering basic reasoning, which points toward his pitiful existence as a gambling drunkard. He could never strike so decisively against me.
Goh Seung-ho is many things—bitter, broken, pathetic—but he’s not the Black Shell. He doesn’t have the resources or the cunning. He’s merely a washed-up drunk clinging to the remnants of a life I destroyed years ago.
This trip has been a waste.
But that doesn’t mean he isn’t a bastard deserving of more retribution.
I step forward and drive my elbow down into his face. Cartilage crunches under me, blood spraying from his shattered nose like a faucet.
Seung-ho howls, his hands flying up to clutch at the damage, but I’m already turning away.
“We’re done here,” I say simply.
Min-gyu follows me out the door without a word.
When we step outside, the morning is still gray and chilly, smelling stale and wet. It seems the sun will be refusing to come out today.
We cross the cratered parking lot to the sleek black car waiting for us. I slide into the passenger seat, more tense and frustrated than when this field trip began.
Min-gyu backs us out of the parking lot and turns onto the street.
“Weeks,” I say. “We’ve spent weeks chasing this lead. This is what you bring me? A drunken wreck with a limp cock and a lisp?”
Min-gyu’s knuckles whiten on the steering wheel. “Baekho-je, I—”
“It’s unacceptable. It’s incompetent.” I stare straight ahead, my fury barely contained. “If I ever thought you were ready for a promotion to Ho-gwi, that’s no longer the case.”
“I understand,” he says. “I’ll do better. I will continue to search for leads.”
His promises are met with silence. They mean nothing with no results to back them up.
We make it onto the highway and begin the long drive back to Busan. I check the time on my phone, calculating our drive time and how close it’ll be to Monroe’s appointment.
It’s going to be close, but if traffic cooperates, I should make it with a few minutes to spare.
I swore to her I would be there with her when the baby’s gender is revealed, and I refuse to not be true to my word.
An hour into the drive, my phone buzzes.
Nam Joo-wan’s name flashes on the screen. I answer with a clipped, “What?”
“Jin-tae,” he says, voice strained. “I, uh, I have bad news.”
I close my eyes, a headache building at my temples. “Tell me.”
“The drug shipment from Masan. It’s… it’s gone.”
For a split second, I’m sure I’ve misheard.
“What do you mean gone?”
“The ship carrying our philopon was attacked as it came into port. An unknown vessel intercepted it and set it aflame,” he explains tensely. “We believe it was the Bulgeomhoe. The attacking ship bore their marking—a reversed crimson taegeuk.”
If I were a more impulsive man, I’d explode in rage. I’d roar and use my fists to break something. I’d be on the warpath.
I’ve always been the opposite. Always a more composed, disciplined man.
But even I have my limits.
Our drug shipment full of philopon—Korean for methamphetamine—has gone up in flames because of a gang that should be cowering in fear after the message we sent.