AT Ch2

That time, too, there was a huge commotion. As if there was anything to find in a house the size of your palm, they turned everything upside down all night, and every house on the same 7th floor was thoroughly investigated.

Like a possessions check in prison, all the residents had to come out and stand against the hallway walls with their hands behind their backs while Chairman Jang’s underlings ransacked their homes.

“No.”

This wasn’t the kind of place where neighbors lived together harmoniously.

“Why wouldn’t you know the person next door? With only this thin wall between us.”

The walls were made of thin plywood, like broken doors, so in reality, the wall was meaningless. But who lived next door wasn’t her concern.

Seemingly enjoying the sound of his knocking, Jang Heejo kept tapping on her front door with his middle finger.

“The work areas are different, and so are the hours.”

After careful consideration, Baekyoung gave the answer that sounded the most ordinary.

The Ant Tunnel always had a “queen ant”.

Every worker ant in the Ant Tunnel worked for the queen ant, Chairman Jang, and Cheonghan City moved at his whim. He had committed all sorts of legal and illegal acts and stubbornly turned the Ant Tunnel into a lawless zone, making it a place where countless dirty deeds were handled.

A place where the police and government couldn’t intervene.

Choi Baekyoung. She was born as one of the worker ants who had to work solely for Chairman Jang until she died.

The queen ant often ordered the ants to make ‘deliveries.’ Sometimes it was organs, sometimes drugs or jewels, and sometimes people.

If you did the delivery work well, you could make a lot of money. But after Baekyoung saw the corpse of a person who had died suddenly after a drug capsule burst inside their body while transporting it, she didn’t even look at delivery work. Perhaps that’s why delivery work was mainly done by gamblers or drug addicts who were desperate for money.

“Knowing who we are, you’re not intimidated and you speak well.”

She thought she had given a model answer, but Jang Heejo, as if noticing her thoughts, smiled and caught her off guard. It might have been a misstep to speak so nonchalantly, as if it were a prepared answer.

But even if the answer was slightly off, she could be dragged away and crippled, accused of knowing something. After that, she would be thrown into the hospital on the 4th floor and scattered across the country, her limbs separated.

“I haven’t done anything wrong, why should I be afraid?”

Baekyoung realized that acting clumsy here would only deepen the suspicion, so she leaned her forehead against the front door and only slightly turned her head to look at Jang Heejo. Her eyes would be exhausted, and as dry as the majority of the ants living in the Ant Tunnel.

It had to look that way.

A tired worker ant, that’s me.

Jang Heejo looked at Baekyoung’s face and winked one eye as a habit.

“I don’t easily forget someone I’ve seen once…”

He seemed to find it strange that a woman he was meeting for the first time looked familiar. It must be because it wasn’t the first time they’d met.

Baekyoung had been watching him for a long time.

He often visited the orphanage with Chairman Jang. And after seeing the worker ants who would work for him here, he went back.

Baekyoung didn’t think Jang Heejo would remember one of the abandoned children he met there. But a piercing gaze was fixed on her, as if he would remember the past at any moment.

On the other hand, Jang Heejo was an unforgettable child to Baekyoung.

***

The orphanage was in an uproar a week before Chairman Jang’s visit ahead of Christmas. The faces of the young and immature children were full of dissatisfaction as they cleaned every nook and cranny without a speck of dust, but that was only for a moment.

As soon as the children saw the presents that Chairman Jang had brought, their faces quickly lit up with smiles.

Chairman Jang visited the orphanage with his youngest son, whom he had late in life when he was over his mid-50s. Other than the luxurious clothes he was wearing and the delicately raised face typical of a young master, the child seemed like the same dissatisfied child as them.

As if someone had forced him to wear the clothes for Christmas, the child put both hands in the pockets of his hooded red coat and looked at the orphanage with an uninterested face, without saying a word.

Everyone was engrossed in the three-tiered cake that Chairman Jang had bought, but Baekyoung fixed her gaze on Jang Heejo. The red coat suited the fair-faced young master Jang Heejo well.

Jang Heejo.

That was the same name as Jang Heejo, his paternal grandfather, who had the great achievement of turning the small port of Cheonghan-gun into Cheonghan City.

The current Chairman Jang has five children from his legal wife and dozens of children from his mistresses, but Jang Heejo was the only one who was registered in Chairman Jang’s family register even though he wasn’t a child from the legal wife.

The reason was because of the will left by his grandfather, who was now deceased. The first chairman, who was superstitious, earnestly asked that if a grandson was born who had the same conception dream as when he was born, he should be given the same name. Along with the absurd will that if that child was born, he would revive Cheonghan City again.

At first, Chairman Jang didn’t believe those words either.

Until a woman came holding Jang Heejo and told him about his father’s conception dream that only they knew.

After that, Jang Heejo surpassed all the children. He became the son that Chairman Jang cherished the most, and Chairman Jang took his youngest son everywhere.

Baekyoung, who grew up listening to the stories of adults, was fascinated by Jang Heejo, who had such a destiny. To be born with the same conception dream as his grandfather and to have the same fortune.

“There are so many friends of yours here, why are you standing there hesitating?”

Chairman Jang spoke generously, as if Jang Heejo and the small ants of the orphanage were on an equal footing. At the same time, he pushed Jang Heejo’s back and placed him among the children.

“What, are we doing charity for beggars?”

Jang Heejo, who had been standing among the children, opened his mouth, which he hadn’t opened the whole time.

No one in the orphanage, or rather, in Cheonghan City, could speak so rudely to Chairman Jang.

Everyone, from the children who were dancing clumsily while showing off their talents on stage to the teacher who was playing the piano, stopped moving at his voice. It wasn’t a loud voice, but its impact was enormous.

Everyone thought that Chairman Jang, who had been insulted by his son in front of others, would issue a stern order, but he unexpectedly laughed heartily and replied.

“That little rascal, he’s got potential, he’s got potential. He’s the spitting image of me when I was young.”

His eldest son from his legal wife was already in his late 20s. It was too benevolent to be a word from the mouth of a person who had recently broken his grown-up son’s head with an ashtray.

At Chairman Jang’s words, the orphanage’s clumsy talent show started again. Baekyoung, who was watching the scene of cutting the cake, slipped out quietly, watching the snow falling outside.

She was also curious about the taste of the three-tiered cake. However, there were over a hundred mouths here, and she was too tired to wait for her turn.

If you want to be greedy and compete, you have to fight someone. And you have to somehow show your strength and win it to make it yours.

The lazy Choi Baekyoung hated such tiring things and had retreated early on.

Even the children who smiled like angels in front of Chairman Jang were already looking at each other warily. There were also fools who said they would be loyal to Chairman Jang for the rest of their lives, and there were children who hid their true nature because they wanted to look like good children.

Perhaps if Chairman Jang stroked someone’s head here, that child would be rolled up in their blanket tonight and kicked.

“They’re really stupid…”

There are children who have a strong sense of rivalry. There were also many children who didn’t openly envy Jang Heejo’s life in front of him, who was the same age, but envied and slandered him behind his back.

They envied Jang Heejo, who had risen in status with just one dream, even though he was the child of a bar hostess who wasn’t even a mistress, saying that he was just lucky. And they wanted to somehow throw him into the mud they were standing in.

The children in this orphanage are beings who have to work for Chairman Jang even after they become adults. So, Chairman Jang usually encouraged them by saying that instead of cultivating the right character, people need to have a tough side to do great things.

The first thing Baekyoung saw when she came outside was the big kids holding bright red lacquer and writing on the orphanage wall.

[Jang Heejo you fuckingbastard]

The spacing wasn’t even correct.

Rumor had it that Jang Heejo’s birth mother, who brought him, limped or was blind in one eye.

The children who were ready to do bad things for Chairman Jang in the future were using that to make such slander. The lucky child whom Chairman Jang, who never accepted illegitimate children, had uniquely accepted.