Rrrrattle.

Ten or so men got out all at once from a battered eleven-seater van with years on it. Tracksuits, military gear, jeans and short sleeves — the clothes ran to every kind.

The ages ran mixed, from the early and middle twenties to the middle forties.

There was one thing all these assorted men had in common.

"Yaa~ so this is what they call the East Sea?"

"The look of it is something."

"Heh heh. Just the right weather for a job~"

It was the way they spoke.

They were Joseonjok knifemen brought in through the Yeonbyeon Jangbaek Society. They had entered the country on a group tourist visa.

Once the job is handled without trouble, each man is to get twenty million won.

"Hyungnim. Where is that little bastard?"

"The little bastard's name was Ha Tae-ung, was it not?"

The Joseonjok men's eyes glistened, every one of them, with killing intent.

"That's enough gabbing."

Jo Myeongcheol, who holds the squad leader's post on this contract, snapped it out. There is a long, dark scar driven in under Jo Myeongcheol's jaw.

He looked late thirties or so, and his body quick and light.

The forearms showing below the short-sleeved shirt are smooth, without an ounce of slack on them. Fine muscle lay tangled and tough across them, and they looked hard even to the eye.

The hair shaved short and the sunken set of the eyes raised the gooseflesh more than anything else.

It is a face with no laughing muscle in it at all. He had done no more than stand still without a twitch and say one line, and the men around him read it, looked away and shut their mouths.

They have settled in Yanbian and live there together, but almost nobody among them knows his past. Nothing about Jo Myeongcheol's particulars was known to begin with.

Only a rumor went around now and then that he had deserted the North Korean army.

Jo Myeongcheol turned his eyes toward the sea.

Slap.

The waves struck the breakwater one after another and broke.

"We did not come…