Translator: – – Editor: – –
Remarks: And here we see that the loan has been finalized properly.
–RED
============================
Chapter 35: Hyungjae Loans, Part IV
Translator: HunterW
Editor: RED
“Sob…sob….”
“Gahh! My leg!”
“Please! I’m…bleeding!” Cries of pain and cries of help echoed all over the office.
“All of you, shut up. If I hear even hear you breathe, I will break your other leg.”
“Mmm!”
“Mm mm!” They all covered their mouths with their hands in fear as soon as I finished talking.
“Good. That’s perfect. Now I think I can hold a proper conversation with your boss.”
I walked over to Oh Hyungjae, who was still lounging in his comfortable leather chair with his legs propped up on his desk. Except he wasn’t comfortable at all. The closer I got to him, the more his body visibly shook.
“Who…who are you…why are you doing this to me…” All that confidence was gone and he promptly dropped his legs off his desk and asked me very politely.
“How many times are you going to make me repeat myself? I told you. I’m a deva who just needs some cash.”
“Ah! R…right. I…I’m sorry.” He jumped off his chair as if he had just remembered, and took down a large painting hanging on the wall on one side of his office. Behind the painting was a large wall safe.
Oh Hyungjae entered a code into the safe with shaking hands.
[Incorrect password.]
“Slow down. Do you think you’ll be able to put in the right code, shaking like that?”
“Ha…ha…I’m…I’m sorry.” He re-entered his password and must have gotten it right this tim, as the safe clicked open.
Inside the safe, there were stacks of 50,000 won bills and bonds. At a glance, there was probably around few billion won in there. Oh Hyungjae reached in with both hands and took out an armful of stacks of 50,000 won bills.
Oh Hyungjae could only think about staying alive right now. He didn’t care about his money at this point.
He was up against a monster!
Fists and knives didn’t work against him. He saw with his own eyes how the monster’s kicks could easily snap a man’s leg.
He had to live first! Revenge would have to come later!
“Here… here you go. You can take everything in the safe. If it’s not enough, just tell me. If you just give me some time, I can prepare more for you.” Oh Hyungjae poured out the cash in front of the real, bonafide deva. At a glance, it was probably about a billion won.
“See? If only you had just handed over the money in the first place. Then I wouldn’t have had to hurt your buddies like that. Tsk tsk tsk.”
“For…forgive me. I have a bad eye for people,” Oh Hyungjae replied, bowing his body as much as he could.
“Before I go…” Oh Hyungjae’s trembling body flinched as I came closer to him. He had just witnessed the most violence in his life as a mobster and probably couldn’t think straight.
He dealt with stall merchants and bums for the most part, but this loan business was the most competitive amongst gangsters. He had killed and buried his competition before. All those lives he had taken were the reason he was able to build his company to point it was at now.
But the man standing before him was different.
He was different than the other people Oh Hyungjae had dealt with previously. This man could kill a man with a finger.
Oh Hyungjae could do nothing but tremble in fear in front of that man.
“What…whatever you need, just tell me. Ah!”
I kicked Oh Hyungjae’s knee before he could finish talking.
“Gahh! I…I gave you all of my money. If it’s not enough…gahh!” With his knee shattered like his lackeys’, Oh Hyungjae scrambled and writhed on the floor. He didn’t want to die.
Not fazed by that pitiful sight, I lifted my foot and placed it on his other knee and put all my weight on it.
“No…please. Gahhh!”
His other knee crushed in a sickening crack and Oh Hyungjae cried out in pain.
“Please…spare me. Gahhh!” Oh Hyungjae cried out with tears and snot running down his face. But I was far from satisfied.
The more I looked at him, the more I was reminded of how he managed to escape to Busan even after being killed by the Sunbin Guild. I kept remembering how he lived the good life with the Yung Gong guild and how he went about bragging that he kidnapped and sold so many souls to the Yung Gong guild. I remembered how he continued to torture the very people he kidnapped.
It didn’t matter to me that I wasn’t one of them. I didn’t have the misfortune to get mixed up with Oh Hyungjae, but that didn’t matter.
I wasn’t trying to be some goody-two-shoes protector of the weak, but it didn’t sit well with me to leave this piece of shit go unpunished. If I didn’t know who he was, well, who knows?
His one-death penalty back then was not enough compared to all the sins he had committed.
“Gee…I’m not sure if I should spare you.”
“Please! I beg of you! I apologize for whatever I’ve done. Sir! Please, let me go this once,” Oh Hyungjae begged as he crawled on the floor with his arms. He crawled to get as far away from me as he could.
I slowly walked up to him and placed myself in front of him. I looked down at him and he raised his head to look back at me.
“Spare…spare me,” he spouted again with tears and snot streaming down his face. I lifted my foot once more and held it over his right elbow.
“No! Please!”
I put my weight on his elbow despite his cries and broke the bone with a sickening crunch. His elbow looked like a car ran it over.
“Gahh! My…arm! My arm! Gahh!” Oh Hyungjae writhed on the floor in pain. “You son of a bitch! Ahhh! Why are you doing this to me! Gahh!”
I stepped on his left elbow and broke it the same way.
Overcome with more rage than pain, he glared up at me and swore. But I didn’t care what he said or how he felt. I had made my decision in the cab ride here.
He was the lowest piece of shit ever. He committed so many atrocities after he became a deva. It was probably for the best to kill him while he was still a mortal.
The thought that this was all predestined from the moment I caught his flyer in the wind came to my mind.
I had killed someone in my past life. Of course, that person was a deva and I knew he was going to resurrect. But I had never committed actual murder. The desire never came to me even when the worth of mortals plummeted.
If I killed Oh Hyungjae, I would be murdering a man for the first time. Killing other devas back then didn’t count.
Even though I made my decision, my conscience kept making excuses for him. My conscience kept back when I killed devas, probably because I knew they would resurrect sooner or later.
“Cough! Please…I’ve done wrong. Just leave me with my life! I need a hospital.” Blood poured from his elbows and knees and soaked the floor.
All of his rage dissipated pretty quickly, as he begged for his life with a pitiful voice.
“I’m going to kill you, right here, right now!” I shouted with steady determination. I think I shouted louder than I should have to drown out my conscience.
If I stopped here, there was a chance Oh Hyungjae could change. After all that he just went through, he could move back to the countryside and work on a farm or join a temple.
“But I’m not going to leave here with potential regrets. If I’m going to regret anything it’ll be after I know I’ve done all that I could!” That was what the new me decided.
I decided I wasn’t going to leave any of this to chance, but to make sure to finish it all. If I couldn’t make a difference because I was afraid that I would regret it then nothing was going to change.
I looked over at Oh Hyungjae who was lying back, gasping and panting for air. I lifted my foot one last time and placed my heel on his neck. I pushed down on my heel.
“Gak! Gurg!” Oh Hyungjae couldn’t move his limbs and could only squirm. I didn’t want to watch him wriggle like that under my foot, even if he was a bad guy and pushed down with all my weight.
His neck finally gave with a crack and his body stopped squirming and laid still.
I had killed a man for the first time.
I felt a strange, confusing feeling wash over me, but I quickly held it together. Right now, I didn’t regret what I just did. I was going to leave the shaking till later.
I looked over at the other fourteen people on the floor of the office. They were all looking at me with fearful and horrorstruck eyes.
My only target was Oh Hyungjae.
They weren’t the best people for working with Oh Hyungjae, but I didn’t need to kill any of them.
“Take this chance to lead better lives.”
“…”
“!!!”
“???”
I uttered that one sentence to them and walked over to the pile of money. I picked up twenty stacks of 50,000 won bills and placed them in my inventory. A hundred million won should be enough for the remaining time it was still useful.
If you want the hundred million back plus interest, then come back as a ghost. I’ll meet you anytime, I thought to myself as I gave Oh Hyungjae’s dead body a final look. I wasn’t going to shirk away from my first murder.
I looked over at the imprisoned deva in the room and locked eyes with him. He was already untied and ungagged at this point.
There was nothing I could do or say to help him and I looked away. I wiped my bloody soles on the carpet floor and went outside. I didn’t want to come back here ever again.
I didn’t like drinking. But right now, I was craving soju.
—
My name is Do Sunghoon.
I was a one-day laborer working for Oh Hyungjae, and had found a Don Gate by chance. I used it to be reborn as a deva. But other than that, I felt nothing different.
I didn’t have overwhelming strength, I couldn’t fly, nor could I breathe fire. I was the same as before. I continued my work like always, before I was taken by Oh Hyungjae’s goons.
They saw that I no longer had my token of knowledge on my wrist and knew that I became a deva. The goons were curious if devas really didn’t die and killed me. I resurrected soon after.
They questioned me after witnessing that, but I didn’t know anything else. The Don Gate painfully transformed me before spitting me out with a message that I had become a deva.
All I could do afterwards was to stare at the fading Don Gate.
I wanted to tell them everything, but I didn’t know anything else and these assholes kept hounding me for answers that I didn’t have.
After all that, they killed me again and found out that devas felt the same pain. While I spent so much time in pain, the man appeared.
“A deva, like me!”
That man definitely did not have a token on his wrist, and he himself said that he was a deva.
All I knew about devas was that while they couldn’t fully die, there was nothing else separating them from other humans and expected him to fall into the same situation as me. But I was wrong.
He was a deva like me, but he was different.
He could grab knives by the blade and not get a single scratch on him. Oh Hyungjae’s goons punched and kicked him, but they were the ones that were hurt.
“That deva was on a whole different level!”
That man was everything I had expected a deva to be.
I felt the force of the seemingly light kick as I watched it shatter the knees of the thugs. The sight of all the blood, flesh, and bone shards splattering around the room didn’t disgust me or scare me.
Watching all those thugs that I feared cover their mouths and sob at the deva’s command to be quiet was like watching a dark humor skit.
I was moved by the fact that this man was a deva like me. I had hope that I had the possibility of becoming as strong as him.
In the thirty minutes that man was in Oh Hyungjae’s office, he killed Oh Hyungjae and fully traumatized all of the thugs.
When that man crushed the arms of the knife-wielding thugs, I didn’t think that it was cruel. In fact, it felt good watching them get their just desserts. They weren’t going to be able to feed themselves for a long time.
Superman! He was like the Superman that I dreamed of becoming when I was a kid. It was a dream that I quickly grew out of, knowing that it was impossible. But he was real. Superman was real. Superman was a deva!
I’m a deva, too. I am a deva, too! There’s nothing I can’t do. The proof is right in front me. I can be as strong as Superman and shatter kneecaps with a small kick!
I lived my life in fear, afraid to get hurt.
These guys were the devils in people’s ears.
Oh Hyungjae and his ilk were human trash that made their money by coercing people into borrowing from them and forcing them to pay them back at insane interest rates. Just killing them once was too good for them.
The deva I had just witnessed was stronger and cooler than any sort of hero I had heard of.
“I…I want to become a deva like him!”
I ingrained the man’s appearance in my mind.
