KTSR | Chapter 22

Bbang shook his head firmly.

“That’s not it, man. Getting beaten up is obviously worse.”

At Bbang’s resolute words, Ijin felt dejected. Come on, at least take my side a little. Ajusshi was way too firm.

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His eyes caught sight of the overcast sky, teetering on the edge of rain. He had been staring at it all this time but was only now noticing. If it started raining in the middle of the race, that would be the absolute worst.

“You’ve been running your mouth, but you’re still in one piece, no organs missing. That’s already special treatment. And come on, do you really think you’ll come in last? Unless you fall off the horse or something.”

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“…….”

Only then did Ijin look at Bbang with bright, sparkling eyes. His face, which had been dim just moments ago, regained a faint light, and Bbang let out an internal sigh of relief.

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“Right? I do ride pretty well, don’t I? People used to call me a prodigy back in the day.”

Seeing him immediately perk up and chatter excitedly, Bbang chuckled before quickly dropping the corners of his lips. This was exactly why he couldn’t help but keep an eye on him—like a youngest nephew you can’t ignore. He had even met jockeys younger than Ijin before, but somehow, this kid felt different.

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“You clueless brat. Just humor me a little, is that so hard?”

At Bbang’s blunt remark, Ijin let out a deep sigh.

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“Well, yeah. If I could do that, my life wouldn’t be such a mess. They’re just a bunch of gangsters anyway. If I could just accept them as hopeless scumbags and move on, it’d be fine, but I just… The words come out of my mouth like I’m being stabbed with a knife. Maybe I’m not even talking, ajusshi. Maybe I’m just screaming.”

At Ijin’s unusually serious words, Bbang shook his head with an exasperated sigh.

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“Look at this poet over here. Just say you have a nasty temper, why make it sound so dramatic?”

At Bbang’s indifferent comment, Ijin let out a foolish laugh.

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“Right? Yeah, I just have a bad temper.”

Then he rubbed his face with both hands.

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His throat felt itchy. There were moments like this, when he just wanted to scream like a madman.

Clover, who had been running freely, approached and nudged Ijin’s head gently with his muzzle. Ijin let out a small, empty laugh and wrapped his arms around the horse’s head.

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He felt like he could breathe again.

***

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While Ijin was hugging his beloved horse, Kim Jaeman stood with his arms crossed, watching the monitor that displayed his own precious creation. Just looking at it made him feel proud and satisfied. If he raised it just a little better, it would definitely turn into a golden goose laying villainous eggs. Thinking about the commission he would eventually take made him feel full already. Like the slow-growing smile of contentment on his lips, his mind drifted back to his first encounter with Kwon Hyeongdo.

Kim Jaeman and Kwon Hyeongdo first met in an abandoned mining town.

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It was a small gambling house, the kind they called gosabari.

Kim Jaeman had been expelled from university after just a year. His grades had been good, but apparently, intelligence had nothing to do with being dumb enough to ruin his own life. His downfall? He had fallen in love with the thrill of Go-Stop.

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At that time, Kim Jaeman was a direct subordinate of the boss in charge of loan sharking inside the gambling house. That was only because he was quick with numbers.

But he had never believed that he was meant to rot away in this gosabari. No, he had long since made up his mind—one day, he would clean out the boss’s vault and disappear.

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Fortunately, he hadn’t reached the final stage of gambling addiction yet, so unlike the other poor bastards who had been dragged in with him, he was still capable of thinking.

He had even chosen an auspicious date for his plan, paying a hefty sum from his carefully saved emergency stash to a newly anointed shaman named Cheolsan Bosal.

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But as it turned out, that shaman wasn’t freshly possessed by a spirit at all—his powers had long since faded, and he was just scraping by with smooth talk. The auspicious date Kim Jaeman had bravely obtained? It turned out to be a cursed day where everything would go to hell.

Still, there was one thing that fraud had predicted correctly, “A noble person will come from the west.”

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Because that was exactly when Kwon Hyeongdo burst through the western doors of the gambling house.

“Shit, shit! What the fuck?! Are we under fire?! Is it the cops?! What the hell is Team Leader Moon doing, why hasn’t he given us a heads-up?!”

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The boss yelled, clutching a bundle of cash to his chest like a mother hen protecting her chicks.

“Not a cop, just a motherfucker.”

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Since gambling houses like these operated at night, like owls, the figure of Kwon Hyeongdo standing in the darkness outside was barely visible. But that only made him seem more eerie, more formidable.

Not that he needed any dramatic entrance to be terrifying.

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Kwon Hyeongdo was already more than enough without it.

Kim Jaeman instinctively knew—this was a man who wouldn’t let him die here.

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At the time, Kim Jaeman had been tied up on the floor, shivering in his underwear after getting caught trying to follow the boss and taking a beating for it.

Later, he found out that the tool Kwon Hyeongdo had used to crack open a man’s skull like a dumpling wasn’t just any pliers—it was a massive pair, the kind used on construction sites.

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Team Leader Moon had been stationed outside, assigned to chirp like a bird if the cops showed up. He was supposedly a former neighborhood wrestling champion, but Kwon Hyeongdo had knocked him out with barely any effort.

Kim Jaeman had naturally assumed Hyeongdo had brought backup. But when he saw him stuffing the boss’s money into his pockets all by himself, he realized otherwise.

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And so, he begged.

“H-Hyungnim…! Please, take me with you!”

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Kwon Hyeongdo, his face splattered with blood, simply looked down at the sniveling, tattered mess that was Kim Jaeman. The only sound in the room was the quiet, deliberate chewing of the squid leg in his mouth.

“Are you a dealer, a middleman, or a recruiter…? No, wait—”

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Kwon Hyeongdo’s eyes gleamed as he suddenly lifted the squid leg high, as if having a grand realization. To him, everything seemed like a game.

“Let me guess… Bacchus?”

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“H-hic…! No, I was the boss’s calculator…!”

Desperate to prove his worth, Kim Jaeman frantically emphasized that he wasn’t just some dealer, errand boy, or flyer distributor—he had an actual role that required intelligence.

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“I—I’ve got a damn good head on my shoulders! I’m great at calculations!”

But that so-called strength meant nothing to Kwon Hyeongdo. Stuffing money into a sack instead of just his pockets, he scoffed.

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“If your brain’s so sharp, why are you here getting your ass kicked? If you were good at numbers, you should’ve bolted before they caught you. Or at least licked their boots and played nice.

“H-Hyung, if you leave me here, I’ll freeze to death!”

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“I’ll call the cops for you.”

“Ah, hyung! No, hyungnim!”

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Kim Jaeman sobbed miserably, snot and tears mixing together.

“I can’t, I have a theft record…”

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Yeah. The real reason he got expelled from school wasn’t gambling—it was because he’d stolen cash from the register at the pub where he worked just to fund his Go-Stop games.

Since it was his first offense, he didn’t go to prison, but that was enough for his parents to cut ties and for the school to kick him out. He couldn’t afford another red mark on his record. Too many minor crimes pile up, and eventually, you pop open a piggy bank the hard way.

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Desperate to survive, Kim Jaeman laid all his cards on the table.

“I know everything. From the gosabari¹ in Gangwon-do to the daesabari². I even know where the damn delivery guys stash their cut. Please, hyungnim, take me with you…”

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A bold move—claiming to know every big and small gambling den, including those sneaky bastards who set up shop in their vans and skipped town without a word. Only then did Kwon Hyeongdo finally untie him.

Back then, Kwon Hyeongdo drove around in a tiny Damas. Seeing his massive frame crammed inside that tiny thing through the windshield had been one of the funniest sights Kim Jaeman had ever witnessed.

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Anyway, after three months of cramming himself into that toy-sized car, sleeping curled up like a stray dog, Kwon Hyeongdo finally raided all the gambling dens Kim Jaeman had snitched on. A month later, he used the earnings to set up a legitimate business and placed a call to Chairman Choi.

Kim Jaeman had always been curious. If Kwon Hyeongdo had been part of Chairman Choi’s circle from the start, why did he go through all that trouble? Why drive that tiny-ass car around like a broke punk? Why raid gambling dens like a maniac?

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After all, Chairman Choi had expanded his organization at an insane pace, and his men—unlike typical gangsters these days—had an oddly strong sense of loyalty, like some romanticized warriors of old. Rumor had it, the reason for their unwavering devotion was simple: the chairman’s generosity with his wallet. The sheer amount of money he controlled was legendary in their world.

At first, Kim Jaeman thought maybe Kwon Hyeongdo was just a low-ranking enforcer back then. But even now, after climbing to Executive Director, his way of living hadn’t changed at all. In an era where even the lowest street thugs strutted around in suits, Kwon Hyeongdo still wore his weird-ass shirts, standing out like a sore thumb in their world.

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Back then, now, always—Kwon Hyeongdo was an impossible man to understand.

But one thing was certain: as long as he stuck by Kwon Hyeongdo’s side, he’d never have to freeze to death in his underwear again.

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“Shit. Our hyungnim has a goddamn nose for money.”

Kim Jaeman muttered as he scratched his greasy, unwashed hair, reeking of instant coffee, cigarettes, and a few days’ worth of sweat. Then, with a tap, he hit the Enter key.

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Hundreds, thousands of emails shot out at once. Spam mails—all containing the link to a website built from Kwon Hyeongdo’s idea.

Twelve hours later, the website had hit its target amount.

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And just like that, the address changed again. All off commission fees alone.