"Seong-ho…"

His lip split and his face badly swollen, Sang-jong Lee called to Seong-ho Kim with difficulty.

There was no strength in his voice.

It barely reached Seong-ho Kim, on the very edge of being heard.

"I shall ask once more."

Just then Seong-ho Kim ground out the finished cigarette under his shoe and said,

"Do you still think my elder brother-in-law must repay the whole of it?"

"The money I have to get back is ten billion won. Will you repay it?"

"Really, why answer a question with a question? It isn't as though you can't follow what is said."

Deciding he had talked as much as was needed, Seong-ho Kim gestured to Jeong-cheol Choi.

Taking the signal, Jeong-cheol Choi raised a hand so the security staff behind him could see it plainly.

And thrusting it forward, he shouted,

"Begin."

Waaah—

The security staff who had come with them fell on the savage-faced man and his crew in a single rush.

"Wait. Wait."

The savage-faced man put out a hand in alarm.

But Jeong-cheol Choi and the security staff showed no intention of stopping.

Coming on at a run, they seized the men wherever they could lay hands on them, and slammed each one they caught into the ground.

Several were holding clubs and lengths of pipe, but they had no chance even to think of swinging them and were busy going down.

Against overwhelming numbers, and against the force of security staff hardened by training rather than padded with flab, they could not so much as think of resisting.

"But — what is this…"

At the sight of security staff falling on them as though there had never been any intention of talking, the savage-faced man was lost for words.

Ordinarily he was the one in the position to use force.

It was the other side who shook like leaves before merciless violence and were busy begging to be spared.

As Sang-jong Lee had been kneeling on the floor a moment before, so it had always been: he struck and the other man was struck.

But today was…