TMPW Ch 9 part 1

Even though it was spring, the night was cold. After the sudden bout of intense turmoil, Yuan barely managed to get herself together and looked around. She didn’t have a cellphone. She couldn’t see a payphone anywhere either. She needed to get in touch with TaeKyung as soon as possible, but there was nothing she could do.

She hurriedly found a path away from the Han River. She saw an underpass covered in graffiti and started running for it when she saw a taxi approaching. She quickly raised her hand and flagged it down.

“Where ya headed, miss?”

The middle-aged taxi driver asked her in a cheerful voice.

“Please take me to the Samsung-dong neighborhood. And I’m sorry to ask, but could I borrow your cellphone for a bit?”

“What?”

When he heard her request for his cellphone, he looked at her through his rear view mirror in surprise.

“I lost my cellphone.”

“Aigoo, how did you…”

The man hesitated before he handed her his phone. Yuan quickly entered TaeKyung’s phone number and sent him a text.

「Hummingbird.」

There was no reply. Her heart suddenly shriveled. Did something happen to him already?

What happened, Oppa?

Yuan bit her lip. She needed to get in contact with TaeKyung, but she couldn’t borrow a stranger’s cellphone every time.

Vroooooom.

Suddenly the phone rang. Yuan’s face paled. Whenever she sent out ‘Hummingbird’, her brother always responded with ‘Speak’. It was what they had agreed to from the start. They never called each other. This was because they never knew who could be listening nearby.

Afraid, Yuan lowered the phone. She quickly handed it back to the taxi driver.

“Ah? What’s the matter?”

“I think I called the wrong number. Someone’s calling back, so could you just tell them they have the wrong number?”

“Huh?”

The ahjussi’s expression turned strange.

“Please.”

Yuan put on a pitiful expression. The driver was confused, but he answered the call.

“Ah, hello?”

Then he lowered his phone and looked at it. He put it back to his ear. It seemed that the person on the other line was asking him a question.

“Ah, I think I put in the wrong number. I’m sorry. Me? I’m a taxi driver… Huh? Who? I don’t know.”

The taxi driver’s eyes met Yuans through the rear view mirror. Yuan bit her lip. Suddenly, the taxi driver spoke in a booming voice.

“Ah, sorry. I’m in the middle of driving, so… Alright, I’m busy, so I’m hanging up.”

As he hung up the phone, he sighed out a ‘Haa, what the…’ and tilted his head.

“I’m sorry. Also, thank you.”

Yuan bit her lip and sat back. Something definitely happened to her brother. Did JoonHun send somebody? What should she do now? She clenched her hands. Her head felt foggy.

As she looked out the window, she could see all the stores with their bright lights. Surveillance cameras were recording from between the traffic lights. People had their cellphones in their hands. How was she supposed to move through this city without getting caught?

Yuan’s eyes gleamed. She raised her head and spoke to the driver.

“Mr. Driver, could you take me somewhere else?”

“What?”

The taxi driver regretted having found this customer today.

---

With heavy metal music blaring in the background, a woman was sleeping coiled inside a blanket.

Her slim arms and legs were spread out. Her hair was short and black like a man’s. Her worn out t-shirt revealed her milky neck and shoulder.

How she able to sleep so peacefully with this kind of music blaring in the room, no one knew. She didn’t move an inch. She was even lightly snoring.

“Erica! Eri!”

Bang, bang, bang, bang!

“Eri!”

The voice rang again, but she didn’t wake up.

“Hey! TaeKyung-oppa’s here. Aren’t you going to wake up?”

Tae-TaeKyung-oppa?

Her eyes burst open. She shot up and looked around. A lamp in the corner was the only source of light in the room. At least ten monitors were sprawled throughout the room. Each monitor had its own PC unit. Books were inserted between these computers along with other unidentifiable junk.

The floor was littered with trash. Empty beer bottles, empty food packaging from the convenience store, even crusty bowls of stale noodles!

Bang, bang, bang!

“Eri!”

“Fuck.”

Eri shook the sleep from her body and tried to get up. Her body was tangled up in the blanket, and she fell down. As she was trying to break her fall, her hand landed inside one of the bowls of stale noodles. The banging at the door began to fade into the loud music.

She always slept and got up as she pleased, so she had no idea what time it was. She was a deep sleeper. She probably wouldn’t even wake up if someone put her over their shoulders and took her away. However, when she heard ‘TaeKyung’, her body moved on its own.

“Ah! Alright!”

Eri suddenly yelled out and grabbed the doorknob, her hand still covered in noodle sauce. However, when she opened the door, the person standing there was a totally unexpected woman. She was wearing a blue two-piece outfit and looked like she was a royal princess from England.

“Y-Yuan?”

Erica, also known as Eri, raised her eyebrows in surprise. It was Yuan. It was definitely Yuan. It had been 1 year since she last saw her one and only best friend.

“Go and pay the taxi driver.”

She yelled out to Eri.

“And turn off the damn music!”

With that, Yuan entered the house. Eri looked back and saw a taxi standing outside with its hazard lights on.

She took out her precious money and gave the man 20,000 won, and that was only after Eri haggled it down by 4,000 won. After paying the driver, Eri went back inside. Yuan was already sitting in front of a computer.

“Hey, Min Yuan. What happened?”

Her terrified face made her look like she’d lost her mind.

“What happened? Tell me.”

“I think something happened to TaeKyung-oppa.”

“Huh. Something’s always happening to him. That man is a magnet for trouble.”

Eri mumbled in disbelief.

“It’s bad this time. Eri, I’m begging you. We need to find Oppa right away.”

“Aigoo, that man is seriously taking years off my life. What did he do this time?”

Eri, or Erica Jung, was Yuan’s friend. She quickly grabbed a chair and placed it in front of a computer. She sat down and turned it on. Yuan was already furiously hacking into a surveillance system.

“Hey, you’re trying to get into TaeKyung-oppa’s apartment, right? I’ve already paved a path for that. Move over. I’ll take you to administrator mode.”

Eri spoke up excitedly. Yuan and Eri met each other 10 years ago in London. They both went to the same private school, and they were complete opposites.

Yuan was a well-behaved model student who made sure to follow all the rules. She was also the class representative. Eri was the tomboy daughter of a British mother and a Korean father, and she was the biggest troublemaker in the school. Yuan and Eri had been mortal enemies for years. They always badmouthed and went after each other. However, when they entered college, they became the closest of friends.

When Eri’s family situation took a turn for the worse, fate brought her to Yuan’s house as she looked for a place to stay. Yuan had an empty spare room available, and even though she hated Eri, London was still a dangerous place for a girl who was all alone. So Yuan mercifully took her in.

From then on, as they attended college, the two girls lived in Yuan’s apartment. As they spent more time together, they began to form an attachment for one another. Yuan acted arrogant and proud, but she easily felt lonely. Thanks to the fun and outrageous Eri, she was able to laugh a lot more.

Around that time, Eri met TaeKyung. That was also when her unrequited love for him began. When TaeKyung rejected her, she began to stalk him instead.

Of course, all she did was watch him from afar. TaeKyung’s rejection of Eri was so cold that those watching could feel the chill in the air. Having been burned, dumped, and rejected, Eri often took a peek at him through her monitors. She never approached him.

Yuan was incredibly sorry for asking this of Eri, but when it came to finding her brother, Eri was the only hacker that could do it. Like a rabid fan of an idol, Eri tracked TaeKyung’s location at all times.

“Found it.”

As expected, Eri mumbled this after not even 10 minutes had passed. Her voice broke Yuan away from her train of thought. She impatiently looked at the monitor and saw her brother leave the office an hour ago.

“Aigoo, looks likes he’s doing fine. What’s all this fuss about? I took a look this morning, and he came out of his apartment with that woman Hong SeRyung again.”

Hong SeRyung? Yuan grit her teeth. TaeKyung-oppa was still using that woman?

Suddenly, two black cars appeared on the monitor screen. Four men jumped out and surrounded TaeKyung.

“Gah!”

Eri gasped. Yuan paled.

“What are they doing? Hey, what did you brother do this time?”

They quickly opened another surveillance footage and managed to get the license plate of the car and looked it up. Surprisingly, the license was registered under the R&K company. Her brother looked as if he was trying to talk to these men before being dragged into the car.

“Hey! Why is TaeKyung-oppa letting them take him away? He’s been trained in the martial arts. He should have just beat them up… No, that’s not it. Who are those men?! Oppaaaa!”

Eri wasn’t in her right mind. Yuan was the same. She ignored her splitting headache and frantically tracked the car. The car was racing north towards the PyeongChang neighborhood. A chill went down Yuan’s spine.

“This is bad.”

Her lips began to tremble. She quickly began to hack into President Min’s cellphone. She was so devastated that her body began to shake. How much did he find out? JoonHun didn’t tell President Min everything, did he?

If he did, her brother was as good as dead. The 500 billion alone put their lives at risk, but if he found out her brother’s true identity, then…

No.

Yuan grit her teeth.

Please. She wanted TaeKyung to be safe.

The data from President Min’s cellphone began to pop up on the screen.

Let’s not think about Seo JoonHun anymore. Their relationship had already ended.

---

Bang!

Everything on the desk fell to the ground. The laptop was completely destroyed, and the vase had shattered into pieces.

Still, JoonHun didn’t move.

Yuan had disappeared. She injected a sedative into his neck and ran away.

He couldn’t even describe the agitation, dizziness, and rage he felt when he woke up. These boiling emotions had long surpassed his vocabulary.

He was going to kill them all. Min Yuan, Lee TaeKyung. He was going to rip them apart.

But…

“How have you not found her yet?”

This didn’t make any sense.

He turned around and looked at Derrick. Derrick, the genius head of security at HyunJin and a world-renown computer programmer, could not find any clues about her whereabouts.

“I’ve collected all surveillance footage of that area, but we don’t see any trace of her.”

“Ah, is that so? So you’re telling me that she turned into some kind of ghost, is that it?”

She managed to poke holes in the security system at home, but now she’s going out and messing with the public surveillance system? How could that be true?

Derrick silently handed JoonHun a sheet of paper.

The words on the paper reported a strange scenario. It said that his wife, who was only known as an illustrator, was actually a world-renown hacker called ‘Osiris’. Osiris’s program was called ‘The Book of Death’ and was so powerful that it could break through any program in the world.

“Osiris?”

“Yeah, Osiris.”

Does this make any sense? Is Derrick crazy? However, Derrick looked completely earnest.

“Ha.”

JoonHun muttered and stepped back. This was ludicrous. Everything… Everything was thoroughly planned from the beginning. She acted her role to perfection and held his hand. She accepted his embrace in order to fulfill the ultimate deception.

She pretended to grow up as a normal upper-class lady, completely graceful and elegant, but Min Yuan was a criminal. A world-class criminal.

JoonHun read through the report again. It had the same photo as the one he saw in her profile as he was heading over to their marriage meeting. Her formal dress, her tidy hair, her clear eyes.

The only difference between then and now was the way he felt as he looked at this photo. Back then, he felt nothing as he looked at her picture. Now, he felt as if his heart was ripping through his chest.

“Pfft, hahahahaha!”

JoonHun burst out laughing. This was seriously some kind of twisted comedy.

“JoonHun.”

Derrick furrowed his brow and approached him.

“…Find her.”

JoonHun suddenly stopped laughing and coldly spoke as he crumpled up the report.

“That’s…”

“Find her. Do whatever you have to do to find her… Ah, there’s Lee TaeKyung. You said that he was taken by President Min’s men, right? Keep watch. She’ll definitely turn up over there.”

She said she loved that man. They accomplished this huge feat together. They were together since they were young. Lee TaeKyung. Yuan will definitely go and try to save him.

JoonHun looked at Derrick with his cold, dark eyes. As he clenched his fist, the report crumpled in his hand.