Crrrunch!

“Aaaargh! My, my haaaand!”

“Agh! Aaagh!”

It was hell itself, with nothing else to call it.

The ssireum team and the juniors who had pushed in on numbers were rolling on the floor.

Wh-what is this!!!

Choi Hyeok-chan watched Jang Tae-san with disbelieving eyes.

He was no movie hero, and he was flying through the air.

And with two-footed kicks he was sending the juniors’ arms and heads flying.

He broke a wooden club with his bare hands.

The aluminum bat, which breaks bones when it lands, he took away with a clever turn of his hand.

“Go, Tae-san!”

“Whoaaa… insane!”

“It’s a movie, a movie…”

The Jangju High guys clapped and cheered happily.

In that time Choi Hyeok-chan watched every one of his juniors go down on the floor.

“Nnngh… agh!”

“M-my leg…”

Every one of them had an arm and a leg broken, one each, evenly.

They screamed in pain, held their broken legs and lost hold of their minds.

They were juniors who had only ever done the beating and had never been beaten like this, so the shock was greater.

“Ah~ my head. This is twenty weeks of prescribed recovery~.”

The devil of a guy clutched his head.

The club had barely grazed him and he was acting hurt.

“Guys~ what are you doing. Call 112 and 119. Say your friend was beaten by a gang of gangsters~.”

“Huh? Uh, right! I’ll report it now!”

I’ll kill him!

Choi Hyeok-chan wavered for a moment too.

Lee Gi-dong, the Yeokjeon Gang’s enforcer chief, had given the order to make certain of burying Jang Tae-san.

The organization would provide a lawyer, look after him, and give him fifty million won.

He said that at worst he’d serve three or four years and be out.

After that, he whispered, they would bring him up as a real member.

Choi Hyeok-chan had said yes, and had been wavering over murder.

His eyes turned.

If today’s business ended like this, his connection with the organization was gone, and the juniors would look down on him too.

He would never be able to live in this city again.

Slide.

Choi Hyeok-chan pulled a sashimi knife out from under the chair. (TL Note: 사시미, from the Japanese for raw fish — in Korean gang slang, the long thin blade a fish knife becomes when it is made for people.)

It was a knife dressed up as a sashimi knife.

Lee Gi-dong had given it to him, saying it was a present.

Custom-ordered, the sashimi knife was fifty centimeters long.

The edge was ground fine enough to cut through hard bone.

“You all saw it, right? Today was self-defense on my part~.”

Jang Tae-san, holding his head and talking playfully to his friends.

The guy’s back was in view.

“Diiiiiiiie! You f-ing bastard!!!”

Choi Hyeok-chan, nimble in the body for a ssireum wrestler, drove the sashimi knife straight at Jang Tae-san.

Shhhhhhhk.

He aimed exactly for the back, at the region of the heart.

His grip was full of force; once it went in, the breath would be cut off on the spot.

There was no wavering.

The die was already cast.

And then!

A prickle.

Impossibly, Choi Hyeok-chan saw the guy turn and look back at him coldly.

It was an instant, but it came into his eyes clearly.

But the sashimi knife was already at the guy’s back…

Whoosh.

With a sound of wind, the sashimi knife cut empty air.

The one who had been there a second ago was gone.

“You… are going to regret one choice for the rest of your life.”

The guy’s voice, coming from beside his right ear.

Crack!

In that instant, an enormous pain in the right elbow holding the sashimi knife.

“Kuaaaaaaaaaaaargh!”

The loudest scream of all rang out.

And Choi Hyeok-chan saw it.

The middle of his own right arm dangling and swinging as it liked.

Beep-bee beep-beep-beep.

Even with the scream going, the guy was calm.

He took out his cell phone and made a call.

“Attorney Jo, there’s been a group assault and an attempted murder. I’d like you to act for us.”

The guy, coolly consulting a lawyer.

Only then did Choi Hyeok-chan understand.

That this one was no ordinary high schooler you could take on.

“The group assault of students this time is sounding a loud alarm for our society. High school students formed a violence circle, drew ordinary students into it, and went as far as attempted murder using a sashimi knife. The reality that school violence pollutes not only the classroom and the school but the local community as well points to a reckoning owed by parents, by the community and by the political world alike. A world where children can attend school with easy minds… I think that world may be the true utopia we are all hoping for.”

The KBC nine o’clock news anchor finished his closing comment.

And the comment windows on the internet news exploded.

— A sashimi knife, they say. These are students? What on earth were the police in that town doing? Taking bribes? Is this even a country?

— What is the government doing! Declare a war on crime again! If you can’t get property prices under control, get public order under control at least!

— How does anybody live in that town? Damn, do they teach sashimi-knife technique at the school?

— For real… unbelievable.

— Don’t go easy on them for being minors! Detain every one of them and hit them with the maximum the law allows!

— Pigs! Prosecutor-pigs! Judge-pigs… we’re watching you!

Public opinion rose up like a brushfire.

Several outlets carried the violence of that day.

What had happened was reported in great detail.

Not just the main broadcasters — the internet press papered their pages with lurid phrasing.

The words sashimi knife, gangster prospect and ssireum team went up as the main portals’ search terms.

Violent Crimes detectives came down on the place along with a prosecutor and the ambulances.

The ones with broken arms and legs were dragged away.

I got in an ambulance too, of course.

I had let the club graze me on purpose.

As I warned them, I still have concussion aftereffects.

By the time the 119 crew found me, my blood had risen and my face had gone red.

I collapsed without even saying goodbye to the guys.

And then I met a familiar doctor, and from a comfortable private room I watched the news and the internet comments.

The detectives turned the city over to pull the thing up by the roots.

Word came that the chief of police, already burned once by the last incident, had gone wild.

The newly assigned prosecutor, with Attorney Jo Yun-tae’s breath behind him, hauled in every kid in the city who ran with anybody.

One of them talked, and then this one and that one gave up every name they knew.

The offense of organizing a criminal group.

This is a truly frightening law.

It is written that a person who forms or joins an organization for the purpose of committing an offense punishable by death, life imprisonment, or imprisonment for a long term of four years or more shall be punished with the penalty prescribed for that offense.

That is how I finished the business: short and hard.

I had no wish at all to let anybody off.

In the name of justice, I wrecked them on behalf of the ordinary kids who must have suffered because of punks.

Have your arms and legs shattered once and you won’t act as you please.

Choi Hyeok-chan is out of ssireum, and out of anything that takes strength, forever.

The rumor spread all over the hospital I was admitted to.

They say his wrist joint split into dozens of pieces and he had major surgery.

“Still, it’s unfinished… this isn’t all of it.”

The Yeokjeon Gang and Hong Jang-hyeok, the hands behind it, were still there.

I asked Attorney Jo Yun-tae about them, and he said there was no evidence.

The kids I’d taken apart shut their mouths as soon as the lawyers the gangsters appointed showed up.

I needed evidence.

“Tonight… I hit them myself.”

The private room I was admitted to had the ABSOLUTE REST notice on the door.

A recurrence of the concussion was added as the diagnosis.

The injury was brutal enough that no prescribed recovery period could be given.

This Choi Hyeok-chan will not be out of prison for several years.

Attempted murder, grave bodily injury, the offense of organizing a criminal group and the offense of special violence were joined together into the charges against him.

He wasn’t a problem.

But the gangsters were another matter.

“Tonight… you are going to see a different world.”

I loosened my body lightly.

And I waited for the night to get deep.

“Haa… f-ing hell. This is screwed. How exactly did you handle this! The prosecutor caught the smell of it! You thick-headed bastard!”

“S-sorry. Boss!”

“They say the new prosecutor is a hardhead. The pigs who eat our money say not to contact them. Damn… sons of bitches. At a drinking table they’re pure punks and now they’re prosecutors…”

“What does Attorney Hong say?”

“That son of a bitch is the same. Screamed at me that I’m an idiot. F-ing bastard. One of these days I’ll bury him for good!”

Park Dae-chul, the boss of the Yeokjeon Gang, took his temper out on Lee Gi-dong, the enforcer chief.

Ten years ago, when the war on crime ended, Park Dae-chul had brought every crew in the city together perfectly.

He had run the organization smoothly ever since.

It was solid enough that he had turf in Seoul too.

And then he had gotten caught in a filthy way.

Somehow, over dealing with one high schooler, he had become the center of the national press.

One wrong move and the whole thing could come apart.

At a time like this it was better to keep his head down.

“Pour me a drink.”

“Should I call the girls?”

“Never mind, kid. On a day like this even women are a nuisance.”

“Yes. Boss.”

Lee Gi-dong poured the Royal Salute 38 that Park Dae-chul liked.

A straight glass, no ice.

“You keep quiet for a while too. Keep the kids in line.”

“I gave the order on my way here.”

“Good. For an enforcer chief you’re smart, and I like that. Let’s keep it going.”

“Thank you. Boss!”

Glug.

Park Dae-chul poured a drink into Lee Gi-dong’s glass.

And the two of them knocked their glasses together.

Clink!

The clear sound of glass rang out.

A crisis like this was hardly the first.

Both of them were good at putting their heads down and hiding every time one came.

“Kuuuh. That’s good~.”

Park Dae-chul threw back the harsh whiskey in one swallow and put on a satisfied face.

Right up until a single line came to him beside his ear.

“Good, is it?”

“Wh-who’s there!”

“That’s nothing you need to know~.”

Chairs went over as the two of them kicked away from the table and got up.

Park Dae-chul’s house sat on the edge of the city.

Since he had no enemies to speak of, two members on guard were all he had.

His wife and children lived in Seoul over schooling.

“Hey! Min-sik! Chun-cheol!!!”

Lee Gi-dong called for the men under him.

But nobody answered.

Only —

Click.

The power in the house went out.

“Wh-which bastard is it! Come out now!”

Lee Gi-dong pulled a knife from inside his jacket.

Whooooosh.

Before Lee Gi-dong’s eyes had adjusted to the dark, something came flying.

Thwoock!

“Kuh!”

Lee Gi-dong took it hard in the face and went out cold on the spot.

Blood poured from his nose and mouth and ran onto the floor.

He had caught a rock square on.

“Wh-who is it!!! Come out now!”

Park Dae-chul, a man who had killed more than a few people, shouted, his nerves up.

Tonight of all nights there was no moon.

With the power out in the house, the yard lights had all gone dead too.

Step, step.

And then the sound of footsteps.

Park Dae-chul could see a black silhouette.

The intruder showed himself from the direction of the master bedroom, having gotten in at some point.

A grin.

The guy’s white teeth showed unusually bright to Park Dae-chul’s eyes.

(End of Chapter 28)