“You’re dead now, punk! Heh heh heh.”

“Let’s give the Jangju High bastards a good beating today.”

Oho. So this was the hideout?

It was the site of the old department store in the middle of town.

It sat next to a nightclub that did good business.

It was the town center, but after a fire that left several people dead there had been no buyer.

The rumor that gangsters ran the place was everywhere.

Instead of the front entrance there was a back door that opened onto the alley.

It looked like a dog hole an ordinary person would never find.

So I bent at the waist and followed them in.

“F-ing hell…”

“This place feels like crap.”

Five loyal friends had come along.

Along with Do-jung, who had sold his soul for pizza, they were nervous.

The truth is my friends were middling at their studies.

They weren’t much at fighting either, of course.

Ordinary faces, easy enough natures.

Friends like that, being dragged off by guys who would be gangsters one day, had every right to feel their guts shrink.

Inside, ten-odd of them were glaring at us.

Once we were in, they blocked the entrance.

That didn’t make my friends back off.

It wasn’t because of the pizza.

If it had been, they would all have pulled out when we dealt with the Hong bastard.

“Boss, we’ve brought Jang Tae-san!”

“Good work.”

So that one was the final boss, as expected.

The Industry High ssireum team guy who had picked a quarrel with me over Ye-rin sunbae.

We were at the back of the department store’s ground floor.

Dim light was seeping in.

The steel shutter was down over the front entrance.

Most of the windows were covered with thick cloth.

Gangster movies have ruined people.

He sat on a worn-out sofa with a cigarette clamped in his mouth.

It probably looked amazing to little punks, but it was pure kid stuff.

“Jang Tae-san~.”

Kid, who do you think you are, Jo Min-su? Stealing a line from somewhere.

“You called~ Choi Hyeok-chan~.”

I did it right back.

“Pff…”

“Kikiki.”

My friends, who couldn’t read the situation, laughed.

Come to think of it, these guys really are idiots.

However much they trust me, their bones could get broken in here, and yet they were completely at ease.

“You bastards want to die!”

“Argh! The Jangju High sons of bitches have always been unbearable.”

Same to you, punks.

“You ignored my warning.”

“Warning? What warning?”

“Son of a bitch… today is the end of you running your mouth.”

That bastard’s eyes were dangerous.

Choi Hyeok-chan’s pupils were bloodshot, as though he had made up his mind about something hard.

And the feel of this place was bad.

Since I started training, my body had been very sensitive.

It was sensitive to energy that had not been purified.

On top of that, I could feel strong yin energy here.

Blood?

Sharp eyes could just make out bloodstains too.

To anybody else it was a dusty, filthy floor, but not to me.

It looked like a place where a few people had died.

“Let’s keep it reasonable. Hyung here has done some living, and a whole life turns out to be one moment. It’s hard enough living hard and busy — is there any need to get worked up over something small?”

I gave him real advice.

I look like a high schooler, but my inner world is in its thirties.

In this room, I was the only one who knew that the years without sense are only a phase.

“Boss? Wow, isn’t that bastard a complete psycho? Boss, I’ll fix his manners for good!”

“Count on losing one leg.”

The young punks tried to scare me.

“You know this counts as the offense of special violence, don’t you? Criminal Act, Article 261. The offense committed by showing the collective force of a group or a crowd, or by carrying a dangerous object, and inflicting violence on the body of another!”

When I recited the article they flinched.

Scared, punks?

“If I get a nosebleed in here, that’s special bodily injury. A minimum of one year of imprisonment, they say.”

There was nothing to be scared of in kids playing at being gangsters.

When I finished, the little bastards shut their mouths.

The more of a punk one of them is, the better his small calculations work.

“Your dads and moms are going to have to grovel to me. You have money for the treatment? For your information, I hurt my head a while back, so once I lie down it’s a six-month job. And I only use private rooms, so work it out.”

For all their spitting around, they were high schoolers.

They weren’t professional gangsters who carry blades.

When dads and moms came up, I saw their bodies stiffen further.

Live decently, kids.

“You little… cute, aren’t you~.”

The boss was different.

Choi Hyeok-chan drew a long pull on his cigarette and blew the smoke out.

The smoke rolled into a doughnut and floated away.

There was something detached about him.

The medicine didn’t look like it would work on this one.

And the brat’s prospects were rotten.

A ssireum wrestler who dreams of being grand champion, smoking…

If Ho-dong had seen it, he’d have slapped him across the face.

“Choi Hyeok-chan. You’re a gelded bastard. An athlete, and you’re smoking. And is a woman an object? Son of a bitch with nothing but shit in his head. Tsk, tsk.”

That was a clear provocation.

The time for smiling and making up with that bastard was past.

The unpleasant thoughts hanging in this room felt foul.

“Heh heh heh heh heh.”

The lunatic only laughed.

A hundred percent crazy, and I could feel it.

My friends watched my face.

They would be feeling the danger by instinct too.

“Stomp him. The big bosses will be covering us.”

“Yes! Boss!”

Big bosses?

The scale of this business was bigger than I’d thought.

At the same time, the words big bosses let me infer several things.

Three hundred thousand people, but it isn’t that big a city.

There was exactly one crew in this city who got called the big bosses right now.

The Yeokjeon Gang, a name that would have suited the 1930s.

No wonder a high schooler had the run of this building.

It was a large commercial block next to the nightclub the Yeokjeon Gang ran.

Not a space some high schooler could use as he pleased.

“The Yeokjeon Gang bosses are behind you? Whoa! I’m so scared~.”

My guts have gotten about as big as they can get by now.

At this age in the past I would shake at the sight of a gangster.

They’re a big outfit, with a branch even in Seoul.

But not today.

The Yeokjeon Gang… then Hong Jang-hyeok is behind it.

I’m not an idiot.

If this were about Choi Hyeok-chan and Ye-rin, there was the park on Mount Jangju and plenty of other places, not here.

But this is not a place where kids play.

The only bad blood that connected to the Yeokjeon Gang was Hong Jang-hyeok.

“Jang Tae-san! Say you’re dead, kid. The bosses have marked you. Heh heh heh.”

“Stupid bastard. You’re finished here. Your family too~.”

“Run your mouth again. We’re all juveniles. Even if we beat you into a cripple, we put up a million-won deposit, cry and snot all over the judge and grovel, and we’re out in no time.”

“Son of a bitch. Thinks he’s the only clever one~. Kiki.”

Whoa… I had forgotten for a moment.

That punks are even better versed in the small calculations.

This is why the law needs teeth.

Let them off for being juveniles and things like that come back out into society as violent criminals.

An eye for an eye! A tooth for a tooth!

The Republic of Korea’s criminal law system, mass-producing decent victims while it argues for the rights of criminals.

Wait just a little.

Whatever means I have to use, I will tear the whole thing up and turn it over.

“All right. I’m sorry. I took you for a big joke.”

I admitted it.

And I made a firm resolution.

For the good of society, I made up my mind to give those punks a thorough education.

“No time. Stomp him!”

“Yes! Boss!”

The young ones said Boss easily enough.

Huh? These bastards are using clubs too?

God knows when they had readied them — wooden clubs and aluminum baseball bats in hand, the cowards.

“T-Tae-san!”

“Ah, hell…”

My friends’ faces were worth seeing.

With the game bigger than they’d expected, their nerve looked like it was collapsing.

Heh heh. Did you think pizza came that cheap, boys?

Crack.

I loosened my neck and my hands and feet, lightly.

Showtime.

The Taegeuk Five Elements Dual Intent Fist, handed down by Divine Lord Cheollyong, that born tutor of illegal lessons.

Today it got a proper live test.

Come here. Come on.

I pointed a finger at the fat pig with the club in his hand.

“This crazy bastard! Diiiiie!”

Whshhht — the club came at me with a vicious sound.

Crazy pig!

The kid had nothing in front of his eyes.

There was enough force in it to be four weeks of prescribed recovery if it landed.

Sparks came out of my eyes.

Young punks these days have bodies too big for me to go easy on them.

Whoosh.

I dodged the club as it came, easily.

And I put a fist into his fat lower belly with everything I had.

Thwooock!

“Kuh!”

The ssireum pig, who had eaten nothing but pork belly, had springy skin.

One hit and he rolled around screaming like a stuck animal.

“Bleugh… urk.”

The pig threw the tteokbokki he’d eaten at midday up all over the floor in a stream. (TL Note: 떡볶이, tteokbokki — chewy rice cakes simmered in sweet chili sauce, sold from carts outside every Korean school. The cheapest, most common snack a teenager eats.)

He’d eaten plenty of it.

“Could you finish this quickly? It’s dinnertime.”

“Y-you little shit!”

“Stomp him! Blow that bastard’s head open!”

“Waaaaaaaaah!”

My friends, who had come along for pizza, huddled to one side and lost their minds.

The feel of it was more savage than when we took the Hong bastard.

See a group brawl with your own eyes, the kind you’ve only ever seen in movies, and your legs go out from under you.

I was a cheat character leveled up by illegal tutoring, so no problem.

The pigs and the hard faces came at me.

Untrained, every-man-for-himself high school punks~.

“Hah!”

I let out one light shout and charged.

There’s one thing these idiots don’t know.

The fact that in the movies the hero rarely gets beaten by punks.

Today the hero of this turf is…

Me!

(End of Chapter 27)