Notes.

Soundtrack (part 2) :

Gatsby's Death and Portico (Craig Amstrong - the Orgasm soundtrack)

Envole-Moi (Jean Jacques Goldman, Génération Goldman version - one of my theme song for Woon, it's about misery and education as a solution to fight it)

Lost Boy (The Midnight)

Marilyn's Theme (Alexandre Desplat - one of my "classical" theme for Woon, really soft and sad piano)


ACT ONE : THE KING


PART TWO : COOLING


« I didn't choose to be born here

Between ignorance and violence and boredom

I'm gonna beat it, I promise

And if necessary, I will use legal means»

(Jean Jacques Goldman, « Fly Me Away »)


They had attended a rave party for their eighteenth birthday, in a former nightclub and strip club, completely disused, about ten kilometers by motorcycle from the village where the orphanage was located. Cho-Rip, usually happier with the reading and game nights, had exceptionally agreed to accompany them to celebrate the occasion. Woon wasn't particularly fond of rave parties, and generally preferred activities that involved fewer people gathered together, but Dong Soo enjoyed them very much, especially since he sometimes mixed there, and frequently frequented them, as well as nightclubs, enthusiastically accompanying a large majority of the other kids in the orphanage, who could spend hours dancing and drinking, while challenging each other to bring the conversations back to life.

Woon usually stayed at a distance, or in his room at the orphanage. They had had a few parties together, but never for very long, and Dong Soo was very concerned about Woon's amusement, always offering him to come home if he was bored, while the latter, noticing that Dong Soo was having a good time, would tell him that everything was fine, when in fact he was looking forward to returning to the silence and solitude of his bed.

The rave parties almost always took place in the old nightclub. It had pole-dance bars that the dancers and curious guests loved, it was spacious, offered shelter in case of rain, still had good insulation and a few benches, and a bar in perfect condition. All you had to do was bring the mixing console, amps, neon lights, a few extra seats and drinks, and that was it. As soon as a date was decided, posters were put up in all the nearby villages, that is to say a little less than a dozen.

By the time of the 2003 rave party, Woon had already been there three times with Dong Soo, Cho-Rip having followed on one occasion. The parties were run by a small committee of young adults who were careful with drinks, had their hands ready to pick up the phone in case of an emergency, and knew first aid. The parties always went well, and there had never been a scandal or disaster since they had been set up, starting in 1995.

From the rave party of his eighteenth birthday, Woon mainly remembered sensations, impressions, but they were of a surgical sharpness, like photographs taken on the moment by each of the nerves of his skin. He called them out to him whenever he was cold, in other words, all the time, letting them resurface, invade him with their peaceful warmth, envelop him, and sometimes lost himself in them for hours, without even paying attention, so much had they become anchored in his muscles and his reflections over time.

The reason was essentially twofold. First of all, Dong Soo had kissed him for the first time during this rave party, after this pole-dance bar thing. When Woon went back up the thread of events, he could feel Dong Soo's arms around his waist, lifting him up in the air as if he weighed nothing, which was an exaggeration, and also the sensation of dizziness that he had felt when Dong Soo had made him swirl in his embrace, laughing with happiness and pride, shouting "Woon-ah, you were wonderful, you were sensational, I can't believe it, it was crazy !".

The dance floor was crowded with people, and their orphanage classmates were stomping their feet on the floor, shouting, singing, dancing and hugging each other, celebrating the coming of age with a debauchery of excitement and joyous disorder. In the middle of the tumult, Dong Soo had kissed him. At times, the memory and its sensation climbed the slope of Woon's memory even without him having wished it, and imposed themselves on him with all their violent gentleness and perfection. It had been a kiss of jubilation, a kiss of admiration and encouragement.

It had been a kiss of love, and Woon hadn't known how to react, or what to do, or what to answer, and Dong Soo had then apologized, ashamed, repentant, seeing that he had made him uncomfortable. It's not that, Woon had thought desperately, it's not that, it's not you, it has nothing to do with that. The second reason was that they had slept together that night for the first and only time in their lives.

They had come home with the local bus, whose driver also participated in the raves and offered free return trips. During the ride that had passed through all the villages, with theirs in the middle of the list, Woon had contemplated the countryside, the fields plunged in darkness, and hadn't said a word to Dong Soo, sitting right next to him. They were just the two of them : Cho-Rip had remained, momentarily accepted among the others, and encouraged to get wasted.

Their shoulders were touching each other. He had wanted to apologize, to say that it was okay, that he had enjoyed it. He probably would have done so had he not been afraid of crying on his seat during his speech. He couldn't think of reacting in any other way, for lack of habit. No one had ever kissed him. He had no idea what was the social protocol to follow after such an event, and felt irretrievably lost and overwhelmed by something over which he had no control.

Dong Soo, silent on his left, obviously didn't dare to say anything either. And yet, as the bus was moving forward, there had been something, a change, a rebalancing, an adjustment between them, a new understanding, that had led them naturally to the next step once they had sat on Woon's bed back at the orphanage.

Woon's room, unlike Dong Soo's, was terribly impersonal. The walls were bare, the furniture common. The only distinctive sign of Woon's presence were his study books and his clothes, but otherwise, there was nothing. The room could have belonged to anyone else. Woon had never really felt at home there, like anywhere else except perhaps his father's apartment, to which his childhood memories connected him, but that evening, when Dong Soo had landed next to him on the mattress, he had thought about redecorating the room, bringing back objects, colors, that would have been his alone, that would have expressed fragments of who he was.

They had returned home early, and the corridors of the orphanage were plunged into silence, into darkness. Woon remembered seeing two o'clock in the morning displayed on his alarm clock. Dong Soo's hand had come to touch his, very shyly. Woon had grabbed it back, had realized that he didn't want to let go of it. They had kissed again, without a sentence, without a word, much more carefully than during the rave party.

Woon's heartbeat echoed in his head, frantic, impatient. Dong Soo had wrapped a hand that didn't tremble around his jaw, bringing his face closer, and Woon had thought, deliriously, as Dong Soo's lips were pressing cautiously against his own, that nothing was real, that he was dreaming, and that waking up would be abominably sad.

Then they had stopped and looked at each other for a terribly long second. It was Dong Soo, braver, or more convinced, who had spoken.

"What do you want to do?" he had asked him, without urgency.

His eyes were confident, patient, clear. The question, for a moment, had seemed metaphysical in Woon's mind, tangled up in imprecise but tender ideas, and in equally pervasive anxieties.

"I don't know," he had replied. "I've never..."

He hadn't gone on, but he hadn't needed to. Dong Soo had never either. And he had felt a little silly realizing that, in the end, it didn't matter, it didn't matter at all, it was irrelevant. They were two great inexperienced kids together, awkward, uncertain, equal in their ignorance and lack of interest in the thing at first, but Dong Soo was looking at him reverently, submissively (tell me what you want), hopefully, perhaps, and then he had smiled, and his smile was infinitely kind and sad at the same time.

"If you want," he had articulated slowly. "If you want, I have an idea. And if you don't want, I'll go back to my room."

Both options frightened him. The first, on the other hand, was wrapped in a delicacy and warmth that the second definitely didn't possessed.

"Do I have to take anything off?" he had asked, thereby revealing his decision.

"No," Dong Soo had informed him while shaking his head. "Well, not really, I think. I don't know, honestly."

"Is there anything in particular I need to do?"

"Just...lie down, for starters."

Woon had complied with a docility that would have surprised more than one, and put his hands on his belly, legs stretched out, glued together. He had felt Dong Soo looking at him, then had heard him puff.

"What?" he had hissed.

"Nothing. But you look like a corpse. The way you're lying down. That's funny."

He had pointed it out in such a nonchalant and relaxed manner that Woon had smiled back, to hide his discomfort, and his blushing cheeks. He didn't remember very well, but he thought he had called him a moron, or something like that. At their stage of friendship, it was no longer an insult, at most a little affectionate nickname, or an onomatopoeia. It had the merit of relaxing the atmosphere a bit, and making the whole thing less weird, less stuffy.

The mattress had bent under Dong Soo's weight when the latter, having stopped laughing, had joined him and stretched above him, with a thousand precautions, almost taking care not to touch him. They had ended up face to face, Woon and his hands still tied like a corpse in his coffin, Dong Soo and his attempts not to collapse on him, even though, in retrospect, Woon had come to the conclusion that he wouldn't have found the thing unpleasant or uncomfortable.

Dong Soo's body radiated enough heat to replace the comforter that Woon almost never gave up, even in summer, and he stood on one elbow, doing nothing, contemplating Woon lying underneath him. He had bent down and kissed him firmly on the lips, as if to mark the beginning of something, which to some extent had been the case. Woon had let him do so, had responded to the caress of his lips with more temerity as he was getting used to it and growing fond of it, yet without moving an iota.

He had no idea what Dong Soo was going to do, even if his thoughts were full of possibilities, but that was all they were, hypothesis, suggestions, and maybe Dong Soo wasn't even thinking of doing what Woon was thinking of at all, maybe he didn't like it, didn't want to do it, especially not with Woon, and by the time he had made up his mind, Woon had already become entangled in regrets bigger than he was, and awful as hell.

"If you don't like it, or if you don't want to," Dong Soo had said, "tell me. I promise I'll stop right away."

"Yes, okay," Woon had articulated, his throat suddenly dry.

"And if you want something, tell me. Okay ?"

He had nodded his head, suddenly unable to speak. There was something else that had appeared in Dong Soo's eyes as the latter had straightened up, and moved on the mattress, standing in front of Woon's legs, signaling him to bend them. Then he had placed his hands on his knees, and Woon had felt as if a thread was breaking inside him, shattering.

He had let Dong Soo spread his thighs very gently, staring at him, occupied only with the warmth of his palms pressed against the denim of his jeans, hands that had touched him hundreds, thousands of times before, but never with such reserve or adoration. Ordinarily, Dong Soo was brutal, imprecise in his gestures, hasty. That night, however, he had let his hands slide all along Woon's legs and then his thighs with an attentive slowness, a little frightened no doubt, caressing his skin over his jeans, warming it, engraving himself into it forever.

When his hands had reached Woon's hips, he had abandoned his good manners for a moment, and had let himself fall back very gently between his thighs to kiss him. Woon had felt all his weight on him, had tied his arms around his neck, buried his hand in his curly hair, had vowed to let him do whatever he wanted, had wrapped his legs around his waist and would have wanted to imprison him there, to keep him there forever.

Ravage me, he had begged in thought, arching his hips slightly to press himself against Dong Soo, transform me, love me, make me bend, and if you do it well, I will be yours forever, forever.

He remembered wanting to catch his breath, head buried in the pillow, and not succeeding as Dong Soo was kissing his neck, his chest, one kiss each time, over his sweater, and their hands were still entwined as Dong Soo was going lower down, where Woon felt regular and demanding pulsations, not frankly unknown, and yet totally new in the context in which they manifested themselves. Dong Soo, kneeling between his thighs, had opened his jeans, then raised his sweater very slightly above his navel.

He had caressed the skin of his belly and Woon had vibrated, shivered, and trembled at the contact of his warm skin against his own, always cold, the lines of his hand and fingertips against the curves of his abdomen and the bones of his hips. Dong Soo had then bent down slightly, placed one hand under Woon's lower back, and instinctively, Woon had lifted himself up to allow him to lower his jeans and boxers, then finally free one of his legs, to maneuver better afterwards.

The cold had attacked his skin, but Dong Soo's naked hands against his thighs were burning, and Woon had wanted them everywhere, all the time. He had caught one in flight, slipped it under his sweater, made it touch his nipples, go up to his neck and his cheek, had pressed his lips against his palm, had licked it, had gently bitten one of his fingers.

Dong Soo, smiling, had stopped to come and kiss him again, covering him like a coat. Woon had dived his fingers into the crease made by his spine, pressed his whole palms against his shoulder blades, felt the muscles roll and contract beneath his skin. Dong Soo had sighed softly against him.

Then he had straightened up, looking very focused, as if he was about to perform some incredibly complex manipulation, the success of which was absolutely necessary. He had moved backwards, so that he could kiss Woon's belly, and had gone even lower. At the very moment Woon had felt his (tongue), he had arched painfully, almost immediately, as a moan had rushed down his throat, imperious, desperate, surprised and distraught.

Dong Soo had grabbed his hips, enveloped them gently with his hands, holding him against the mattress, against himself, preventing him from slipping away from his touch, even though Woon had never felt so unwilling to do so. His mouth was warm and tender, he was careful, he was kind, letting his fingers massage Woon's hips, and the latter, while forcing himself to breathe, to calm down, one way or another, had felt like a marble statue, like Galatea sculpted by Pygmalion, made alive by his care and love.

He would have wanted to shrink, to be able to hold entirely in Dong Soo's hands. He had grabbed them, imploring him (don't let me go don't leave me help me), and Dong Soo had squeezed his hands back firmly (I got you), trying to please him, to find what he liked, to adapt to his rhythm. He had never done anything, but he knew Woon, and he was undoubtedly driven by the desire for his pleasure above all. Under him, Woon was panting, groaning, wavering, accepting the proof of friendship, the proof of love, the kindness of the offering and its tenderness.

His orgasm, harrowing, terrible, wonderfully slow and gradual, had been a gigantic wave, and Woon had drowned in its triumph, in its absolute power, in the abandonment it had offered him (THE WAVE).

x

It was completely dark when the Genesis took the underpass to the private parking lot of the Tower where the Sky Corporation offices were located. In the night sky, the moon was full, mocking, and its roundness, reflected a thousand times by the windows of the skyscrapers, shrunken, was that of a pearl separated from its original ornament and elevated to divinity-like heights, occupying in the celestial vault the place that should have been hers around a slender neck, charming ears, a slender wrist, or elegant fingers.

In the towers, the employees continued to be active, but the darkness of certain windows came to appease this idea of permanent frenzy, of working madness, of human alienation, which implied that hours and hours spent in an office was the only indicator of an individual's quality, to the detriment of their skills and ingenuity. At that time, the Sky store was still open, and Woon knew that customers were still coming in. He never went there. The mistake would have been colossal.

In the parking lot, the Genesis and the car Joo-Bong was driving parked next to each other, and one of the soldiers accompanying Joo-Bong jumped out of the vehicle to open Woon's door, just as the driver had done when they had arrived at the warehouse. On the road, Woon had sent a message to Baek Myun, warning him of his imminent return. He was waiting for him, lined up with three other men, two soldiers who were also official security guards, while Baek Myun was a department director.

For the public, he directed all contacts with their gem suppliers, and sometimes personally transported the cases containing the stones so that Woon could examine the most interesting pieces, in order to have them set on the models. A fourth man, Jang Taesan, stood with them, hands behind his back and looking solemn. He had been promoted to the position of head of security and, as a lieutenant, he was primarily dedicated to protecting Woon and recruiting new faces. In association with another lieutenant, he also intervened on the issues of gun and alcohol trafficking.

The two sectors were also functioning perfectly, and a good part of Heuksa Chorong's profits from the previous year came from them, notably thanks to a monumental sale that had taken place in South Africa, in Johannesburg, for an entire group that was involved in bank robberies and thefts, and which was then challenged by another community with equivalent methods.

They had the fire, Woon had generously provided all the fuel they needed, and a few days later, in the sofa of his living room, through his giant screen television, had witnessed the great outburst of fire and blood that had occurred during the confrontation between the two clans in the middle of the streets of the city. Most of the time, he agreed to travel for such matters, where the risk of disagreement was greater, mainly because the stakes were high and the sums negotiated were too great to try to play dumb.

He had watched the media cover the whole event and had felt nothing, not a hint of pity or regret, absolutely nothing except a craving for sashimi with soy sauce. His cat, Jun, a gray Oriental longhair that he had picked up from a cardboard box when she was no more than three weeks old, as he had just became a lieutenant in Heuksa Chorong, at a particular rank that existed at the time and which was described as the "Human Lord" role, consisting of taking charge of recruiting and consolidating the relationships established with the associates as well as maneuvering those with the opposing gangs, had come to lie on his lap, and he had been vaguely disappointed to note that he was more moved by his pet's mark of tenderness than by his participation in the deaths of several people and the chaos engendered in a city and a country already ravaged by crime.

The problem, in essence, was always the same. He had grown up surrounded by violence, and it had become so regular that it no longer even made him blink, except in certain situations that sometimes drifted towards personnal stuff. The gentleness and compassion remained much more disturbing for him in that sense, as they were more unfamiliar, wilder, and more uncontrollable because of their lack of familiarity.

The men bowed to Woon as he walked toward them, followed by Go Hyang, Joo Bong, and the other soldiers. They hadn't seen each other yet that day, so the curtsy was still relevant. It was terribly cold in the parking lot. Woon, tightening the sections of his coat around him, stood in front of Baek Myun.

"What's the problem, exactly?" he asked, referring to the other gang leader who wanted to see him in person so badly.

Baek Myun followed him to the elevator, a monstrous machine of iron and aluminum, with marbled white and gray paving, whose walls were lined with mirrors that doubled its inner population.

"He didn't want to tell us," his lieutenant declared.

"Did you insist?"

The question was rhetorical, but it was on principle.

"Beyond reason, sir," Baek Myun asserted to him.

He was one of the few who didn't call him "boss" like most of Heuksa Chorong's soldiers and lieutenants, preferring to refer to him as "sir". When Woon had asked him why, the man had simply pointed out that he was old-school, and that he found it more logical to use a vocabulary better suited to the management of a company rather than a mafia, which he believed prevented mistakes from being made and the true nature of the organization from being revealed.

A hint of irritation filled Woon as he listened to his answer. He had never liked having to deal with the bad mood of the opposing gang leaders, especially when it was unjustified, let alone in the evening when he just wanted to go home and eat in peace, while looking at Dong Soo's paintings and the models of the jewelry the company was planning for the next collection.

Mentally cataloguing the last exchanges with the Mafia leaders in the preceding months, he tried to make a list of all the potential grievances they might have had against him and Heuksa Chorong. Under Chun's leadership, the relationships were much more subdued, for in spite of his strong sense of independence and his perpetual couldn't-give-a-damn approach, the guy had enough charisma, poise and temperament to command respect even from his enemies.

Because of the history of the group, and the knowledge that all the other leaders had of his process of transfer of power, Chun had been able to inspire enough fear and deference without having to push too hard. For Woon, on the other hand, the reception had been very different. He was younger, and the old men at the top of the organizations had made fun of him. Similarly, his appearance had been the subject of constant remarks and insults.

They called him "the upstart," "the cherub," "the pretty boy," for those with the most decency, but Woon had also accused the "faggot," " fairy," and other laudatory designations that had been tragically uttered more frequently than their less extreme cousins. The words weren't especially new, as he had heard them in his youth, often at the orphanage, where his relationship with Dong Soo had aroused the jealousy of some and the stupidity of others, but they were nonetheless unpleasant.

Unlike Chun, and despite the fact that he had killed him in accordance with the ritual of ascension to the title of " Sky Lord ", or less symbolically of chief of Heuksa Chorong, Woon had spent his early years proving his worth and skills in an environment where youth and attractiveness were two criteria highly unfavorable to a reputation, or at least unhelpful.

He was known to be a good lieutenant, and most of the barons had already seen him as a human lord, but they weren't so supportive of his taking up of power. Some reasonable, tactful leaders had quickly accepted the change of direction and dealt with Woon respectfully, sometimes even more than with Chun, because Woon was more diplomatic.

On the other hand, others were immediately resentful and hostile, perhaps to compensate for their fear of Chun, and were not shy about letting it be known, sometimes allying themselves against him to make him bend under their arguments. In the first months of his presidency, Woon had negotiated more often under the pressure of a barrel pointed at him rather than a tray of appetizers, and more than once his men and the opposite gangs had almost came to blows.

Generally speaking, however, Woon always ended up calming things down and finding common ground, and alliance contracts could then be resumed in a more positive light. And when he didn't succeed, he settled the matter more definitively, by putting a bullet in a body part of the chiefs who had persisted in their narrow-mindedness, and who then showed much more inclination to negotiate in a relaxed way, by laying down their weapons.

For the most stubborn, Woon saw no other option than to kill them, and to move on to a new boss who was more willing to listen to his proposals, even if it meant suppressing them one by one until a suitable candidate came along. He had killed two of them in this way, elders abominably stuck in their methods and traditions, who had united against him to bring him down from his throne and had caused him countless problems in his first year.

The first had been replaced by his son, whose abysmal stupidity was harmless to Woon, and the second by his nephew, who proved to be even worse, and whom Woon also ended up killing in a bloody confrontation in Busan, in which he almost lost his life and an old lieutenant of Heuksa Chorong, whom he had always appreciated for his loyalty and thoroughness.

Irremediably, all the other gang leaders had finally bent the knee before him, or tolerated him enough not to want to eliminate him at all costs. During diplomatic meetings, especially in the case of territorial incidents, Woon was careful not to offend anyone, and to offer satisfactory solutions for all, not hesitating at times to spend colossal sums of money to maintain the peace, without fear of inflicting too much damage on the organization's bank account, whose establishment over the past century had allowed its various members to make its capital grow to the point where it was now one of the richest mafias in the world, and probably the wealthiest in South Korea.

In particular, by extending the organization's activities to more diversified areas, which none of the leaders had done until then, Woon had triggered an exponential increase in income that was hailed even by its most convinced detractors, and had earned him a revival of reputation among all the other mafias. In addition, he was said to be reliable, cautious, and thoughtful, attributes generally appreciated in an industry where lies and cheap shots were common during transactions.

During the summer of 2020, there had been some small friction with leaders of smaller groups suffering from the sanitary and economic crisis, but overall, Woon had no memory of spotting or being informed of a vendetta launched against him. While it was possible that things had changed in the meantime, the likelihood seemed weak to him, and he failed to see why a clan leader could become so upset and demand a private meeting.

(Unless)

At the same time that Woon had taken over the leadership of Heuksa Chorong and developed his business, Dong Soo had also sketched out his own illegal path once he was well established at the NIS, and besides painting, which was undoubtedly his least dangerous hobby, he had also been managing a whole bunch of other underground activities for the past ten years, the moral aspect of which was extremely questionable.

"I'll see him," Woon announced to Baek Myun when the elevator opened on the top floor, where he had his office.

"I took the liberty of having the large meeting room prepared in case you would like to talk to him in private," the latter then warned him, with an eloquent smirk on his face.

"You stay, with Taesan and Joo Bong. Go Hyang too. For privacy," he added in the same tone.

"Of course," she answered, quiet and as beautiful as a belladonna plant.

Everyone descended at the top floor, and went to the long meeting room with its impeccable paneled walls, furnished with buffets and shelves of glossy oak, a huge walnut table whose surface seemed unctuous because the wood was so satiny and dark, a chandelier and sconces in the art deco style, with voluptuous curves, a thick, sumptuous carpet that seemed to imitate a bear's fur, soft armchairs and a giant screen, on which was projected that of a computer connected by a cable.

Woon took a seat at the end of the table, in the chair that was assigned to him because of his hierarchical status both in the company and in the mafia organization. Normally, the room was mobilized for large monthly meetings with his lieutenants, or department managers, to review the Sky Corporation's turnover, signed contracts and collections, and then the profits made by Heuksa Chorong, alliances (or misunderstandings) with other gangs, transactions and activities in each sector.

It was also used for meetings between business leaders, who were no more friendly to Woon than the mafia had been, and, as in this case, for more individual discussions. Go Hyang took the seat to the right of Woon's, with Joo Bong sitting next to her. Baek Myun and Taesan came to occupy the chairs on the left. Then Joo Bong, after checking the computer connections, activated the mechanism with a remote control, and the giant screen turned on, projecting the call being transmitted to the gang leader.

Most of the exchanges were done like that, when a face-to-face encounter wasn't necessary. Mafia leaders all had an address book with the names of their colleagues. Until now, Woon had only dealt with two women out of a dozen male leaders. The glass ceiling was much stronger and tougher in the underworld, but the female mafia barons, once at the top, tended to be much harder to dethrone than the men, having learned to be cautious and alert for longer than they had.

The screen ended up reflecting the image of another meeting room, almost as sumptuous as the Sky Corporation's. There, too, at the end of the table stood a corpulent man, engrossed in a custom-fitted designer suit, with thick fingers, a gold wedding ring in his left hand, and a massive signet ring on his right hand. His face was round, his cheeks swollen with fat, his beard bushy but well trimmed, and his hair grayishly flattened back.

He was surrounded, like Woon, by a few of his lieutenants, some almost as puffy as he was, and his expression was one of outraged discontent. His name was Hong Dae-Ju. Heuksa Chorong had been in business with him for nearly twenty years, the union having been suggested by him when Chun was still alive and in his golden age. He headed a rival group whose activities were concentrated in political corruption, and officially held the position of vice-minister of National Defence himself (although there were rumours that he was expected to take over the full leadership of the ministry because his predecessor was involved in a shady money laundering scheme - subtly and secretly orchestrated by Hong Dae Ju himself).

He had come to terms with Chun's harshness and perhaps feared him, although it seemed, in his meetings with Woon when he was still a lieutenant, that he was relatively unimpressed by the temperament of Heuksa Chorong's leader, whom he saw more as a springboard for his own political and mafia glory. They were almost similar in temperament, and yet Hong Dae Ju was in some ways more vicious, more ambitious, and above all more cunning than Chun.

Nevertheless, despite their long collaboration, or perhaps because of it, they had had many, sometimes heated disagreements, including an unsuccessful attempted murder on the part of Woon one night, after Hong Dae-Ju had tried to kill one of his former comrades and teenage crush, named Ji-Seon, who had been involved in an unfortunate ginseng poisoning scandal involving the president's wife.

"Ah, the Sky Lord," he greeted him in a mocking tone, emphasing on the outdated title like a torturer pouring acid on an open wound.

Woon replied with a complacent smile.

"In the flesh," he replied. "You wanted to see me ?"

He disliked Hong Dae-Ju, and abhorred their meetings, mainly because he always asked him for a service in return for payment, like a servant, and he was extraordinarily condescending and unpleasant. He believed that Heuksa Chorong owed much to his support as one of the most respected and powerful boss in the industry, both in the public world and beyond, and therefore expected his obedience and devotion.

Chun had once told him that he would have neither, but had continued to work with him, for him, doing vaguely insulting work for an organization of Heuksa Chorong's level, and Woon had taken over, albeit without enthusiasm. He had searched long and hard for ways to get rid of the collar that Hong Dae Ju still wanted to put around his neck, but had found nothing as satisfying as a proper execution, and his only attempt had flopped years earlier.

Since then, Hong Dae Ju's mistrust and protection had grown considerably, and Woon doubted that he would ever have another opportunity to attack him again so directly.

The other leader smiled in turn, like a shark, only with his teeth. His eyes were still young, but sharp as razor blades, and sometimes they seemed to pass through you like a glass plate.

"Indeed," he confirmed. "I think we have a little problem to solve, you and I."

Woon searched quickly through his memory, found nothing that could have matched the description given by Hong Dae Ju.

"I'm not sure I'm following you," he replied. "We've been doing good business lately."

"Oh, yes, we have. Very good business. Congratulations again on your victory against the Yamaguchi-gumi, by the way. Our country rarely gets the chance to demonstrate its superiority over the yakuzas, and you did it with a dexterity that should be credited to you."

"You flatter me," Woon said, thinking (politician's trick). "It wasn't much."

Not much with a stockpile of guns that would have made Interpol faint, an organized meeting with a hundred members and verbal barbs exchanged along the way between the leaders for four hours, to end finally with a shoot-out of extraordinary brutality that had resulted in thirty dead and almost as many wounded, mainly among the yakuzas, in the nightclub owned by one of the latter.

Woon and Heuksa Chorong had made the entire clan their ennemy, but the honor had been worth it, and above all the money, since they had emptied the cash box and the underground safes of the club once their opponents had fallen to the ground, finding jewels, artworks, money in abundance and rare bottles of alcohol. Almost everything had been brought back to South Korea, and was now sleeping quietly in another, more secretive, and therefore more secure safe, somewhere in a dark, discreet bank.

Woon smiled as he thought that even Dong Soo, who must have gotten the news through the media, had congratulated him by text message, before asking him if he had thought of bringing him some real sushi. Of course, I brought you a unique variety, tasting like gunpowder, Woon had replied, part amused, part dismayed by his friend's request.

Dong Soo had sent him back a smiley face in tears, claiming that he was tragically allergic to it. Woon had reminded him of his regular use of explosives over the past few years, and Dong Soo had defended himself by stating that it was the mixture of rice AND gunpowder that triggered his reaction. Woon had called him an idiot. Dong Soo told him that he was "his idiot, with a dynamics stick in his hands". As you can see, I'm explosively fond of you, he had thought appropriate to add afterwards, while Woon was casting a Judgment Day glance at him over the screen of his phone.

Jun had participated, in her own way. All cats had a Judgement Day look in general, but Woon's, with her big green eyes and her tendency to open them wide, all with that very particular head shape of the breed she came from, was something elese, and took on strangely pharaonic proportions.

Hong Dae Ju looked more honeyed than usual, more irritated too by extension. His network was a sinuous, sprawling, mute thing that had been able to slip through the cracks of authorities and police suspicions for years, while Heuksa Chorong was known by the international police services, and Woon, following the Yungneung mission, had been forced to hide under the face and name of another, relegating his command of the Sky Corporation to the shadows.

To the public, the company was headed by CEO Kim Han-Joon, who posed very well in front of the cameras, had a beautiful plastic, and whose history, that Woon had invented for him to take his place, was clean and smooth. Coming from a good family, he had become passionate about jewelry at a very early age, and had been hired at the Sky Corporation where he had climb the ladder to the top, replacing the former CEO and deputy director Kang Moon-Sik, who had resigned overnight due to a sudden illness, and who had actually been forced to give up his own mask duties following Chun's death.

Heuksa Chorong had always functioned this way because of its double appearance, and the mafias having public affairs often used the same process : the leaders of the organizations reigned in the background, holding the position of chairman without ever showing up or giving their names or aliases, and had the CEOs in front of them in the crosshairs, who were usually also discreetly in the picture, but didn't take part in illegal activities.

Their only role was to be seen and known by the general public. Most often, they were penniless, unknown, invisible men who were recruited by lieutenants in poor neighborhoods, who were then offered a fortune if they kept their mouths shut and did what they were asked, which was to wave their hands and answer questions from the media.

Kim Han-Joon had changed his name, his wardrobe and his way of expressing himself in order to better fit his character. He knew the organization by heart, attended all the meetings, chaired them, but never really said much, while Woon pulled the strings and made him dance like a puppeteer. Moreover, the guy was perfectly happy with his situation, and all the more malleable because he had developed a taste for luxury and his role.

Woon backed up against the back of his chair, watching Hong Dae Ju's puffy face, trying to figure out where the trap was.

"You mentioned a problem, I think," he said, rehashing on the inital subject, and unwilling to beat about the bush.

He wanted to go home, take off his shoes, take off his Heuksa Chorong leader's coat, a thought that had almost never left his mind for ten years, although it was sometimes very tenuous and thin. Hong Dae Ju smiled again, joined his hands together like a professor about to make a well-argued presentation on some long unresolved issue.

"You're thinking correctly," he remarked. "We had a transaction a few days ago, the Rembrandt we had talked about before. Do you remember?"

"Perfectly."

The "Landscape with Cottages", a piece that had been stolen and moved from one underground network to another since 1972 following a robbery at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the value of which was estimated at twenty million dollars since 2003, was a dull, depressing, sinister, singularly precise work, but whose brushstrokes reeked of desolation and isolation, blackness of soul and mood.

Woon had had it briefly before his eyes a month earlier, when they had brought in from Busan the specialist with whom they had been in business for a little over fifteen years, and who was their reference for verifying the authenticity of the artworks that passed through Heuksa Chorong's greedy hands. In ten years of management and a little more in the organization in junior positions, Woon had laid eyes on a significant number of master paintings, including some remarkably executed forgeries, but none had seemed to him until then so disastrous and gloomy. It was like watching Baudelaire's spleen or a landscape by Edgar Allan Poe, come alive as a picture.

The painting had attracted the interest of Hong Dae Ju, who had a fondness for the works of the great names in painting, no matter the subject or style. He was Heuksa Chorong's main client in the field, while he expressed little taste for sculpture or rare books, which were highly prized by experts.

Woon had already negotiated with him a Veermer whose alleged original on display in a museum was in fact a forgery whose perfect execution had literally killed off the artist, and a Monet that the world thought was lost, but which had actually remained in a double wall for years, until some clever kids had found it fun to make holes in it, triggering an intensive hunt in the underworld, culminating in Italy, where Heuksa Chorong had finally got his hands on the painting in question after a particularly delicate, but almost honest haggling with their European colleagues.

"My men told me everything went well," Woon said quietly. "And you had confirmed having received the painting."

"To some extent," the other gang leader objected more curtly.

"I don't understand," Woon assured him. "You have the painting."

"No."

Woon hid his astonishment, barely allowe himself more than a slight inclination of the chin.

"My men assured me they had given it to yours," he said. "And I still have your confirmation on file, in case you doubt your own words. Besides, you know my reputation as well as my level of demand regarding my subordinates. If there has been a problem, forgive me, but it can only come from your side."

"I admire your self-confidence," Hong Dae Ju said, still smiling. "I really do. Critics can say what they want about you, but it takes courage to look your enemy in the eye and lie to him the way you do."

Next to him, Woon almost felt Go Hyang become tensed and his lieutenants frowning.

"I'm not lying," he assured him in his most sincere tone. "Whatever may have happened, I promise you that I didn't know anything about it."

"The warehouse."

(shit)

"What warehouse?"

"You know perfectly well what warehouse, don't play dumb with me," Hong Dae Ju hissed. "You're insulting yourself, and me as well."

"Although it may surprise you, Heuksa Chorong has several warehouses. I'll need you to be more specific, if you want me to understand what you're telling me."

He saw the man scowl, raise his eyes to the sky, pinch his lips in exasperation. Woon wondered whether Hong Dae Ju's anger was related to a real attachment to the painting, or to the juicier role it could play in the deployment of a possible bribe that had long been planned and would supposedly give him the support of a prominent politician or business leader.

"Let me refresh your memory," Hong Dae-Ju snarled. "This afternoon, you went to visit a warehouse in the middle of North Chungcheong, a deserted and abandoned warehouse that seemed to be of no interest to you and your organisation."

"It's a matter of opinion, but never mind," Woon replied coldly, thinking of the (crown). "What about it?"

"Well," Hong Dae Ju's expression became that of a bird of prey. "This warehouse mysteriously exploded after you left."

"These things happen," Woon replied laconically, shrugging his shoulders as if it wasn't serious. "And I can assure you I had nothing to do with it. You know that explosives aren't Heuksa Chorong's ways."

"Everyone changes," his opponent objected. "Of leadership, of ways. Does it really matter ?"

"That's what I was wondering," Woon told him.

"The warehouse."

"Yes?"

"It was mine."

(shit shit shit shit shit)

"Yours?"

"Don't be a parrot. Yes, mine. For years, I've been storing under its ground the valuable gifts that I have destined for my bribes. And this Rembrandt, my dear associate," he added, lowering his voice, making himself feline and threatening, "was destined for a very, very big bribe. And now it's gone up in smoke, all thanks to you."

Woon moved imperceptibly on his seat, while his lieutenants didn't dare to turn their heads towards him for fear of betraying their thoughts. Go Hyang alone deigned to look at him, and she knew, and the fact that she knew made things even worse.

"I had no idea about all this," he said calmly. "I swear it on my honor."

Hong Dae Ju burst into a beastly, victorious laughter.

"Your honor?" he repeated, giggling again. "And what honor, please ? In organized crime, there is no honor. We use pretty words to give ourselves a genre, but business is business, and in business there is no holds barred."

"Then let's say my word," Woon proposed without flinching. "I give you my word that none of this was planned, neither by me nor by one of my men."

"You won't mind if I don't believe you. My men around the area saw you coming out of the warehouse. You were there for only a few minutes, and the explosion occurred shortly after you left."

"A coincidence."

"Perhaps. But you will admit that it doesn't work in your favor, quite the opposite."

Woon was forced to concede him the point, and made it known with a light nod.

"And that's why you wanted to see me ? To get everything clear?"

"Oh, things seem very clear to me, even perfectly so," Hong Dae Ju replied, lengthening his "oh" as if the word had been made up of several letters. "You have destroyed a good part of my artistic capital, for a reason that I don't quite understand yet, but which doesn't really matter and doesn't interest me. I wanted to see you to let you know that I have decided to return the favor, so that we can start again on a healthier and fairer basis."

Woon didn't like the tone nor the suggestion, and tension suddenly fall on the meeting room, like a thread of raw nerves that characterized situations in which a group, from the mafia or not, suddenly found themselves at a disadvantage after thinking they would win the game.

"Which means?" Woon encouraged him, suspecting that the question was going to lead them straight to the edge of a precipice well known to the underworld, and which bore the name "settling of scores".

Hong Dae Ju smiled with a disgusting smoothness, and then gestured, probably to one of his men, to turn the computer camera to the right corner of the room where he and his lieutenants were gathered. There, collapsed on a chair, his hands tied behind his back, his face swollen and his shirt bloody, surrounded by men built like a tank and dressed in black suits with long ties, but whose faces weren't shown, was Baek Dong Soo.

Seeing him, Go Hyang immediately looked at Woon, while he was experiencing exactly two reactions.

The first one, instinctive, wild, desperate, aggressive and madly worried, made him simultaneously want to scream, to throw something fragile against a wall, to rush to Hong Dae Ju's tower and to skin his laughing, sulking face in order to turn it into a lampshade.

The second, towards which he painfully forced the train of his thoughts and attitude, made him simply nod his head and urged him not to look too closely at the cuts on Dong Soo's face, the blood dripping from his eyebrow arch, the purple of his eye or the red tint that had taken the top of his shirt (my god I hope he's not hurt inside please I'm begging you).

"I see," he said, because he had to say something, otherwise the camera might stay pointed at Dong Soo, and he wasn't sure how strong his nerves were, had never been everytime Dong Soo had been involved.

In spite of his appallingly banged up look, Dong Soo smiled at him behind the camera screen, a little contrite, penitent, almost innocent (sorry honey), like a kid who would have been caught putting his hand in a pack of forbidden candy. My poor love, thought Woon as he contemplated him, vulnerable and bruised, what a mess you've gotten yourself into.

In his defense, it was a bit Dong Soo's specialty since Woon knew him, but it had to be admitted that since the latter had definitely joined the mafia, leaving his childhood friend alone at the NIS, he had multiplied his reckless movements and, both as a painter and a shadow hacker, but also as an agent of the South Korean intelligence services, he had more than once titillated the patience of the mafia groups, putting him in the forefront of the list of the people the organized crime in South Korea needed to get rid of.

"This is your artist, I believe," Hong Dae Ju told him, bringing the camera back on him, while Woon was letting out a discreet sigh of relief. "Very nice brushtroke, by the way. I told him so. My men also saw him leaving the warehouse a few days ago. You'll notice that we left you the painting."

"How kind," Woon replied, with a hint of irony.

"I didn't think it would be him," his opponent said, "but it's even better than I imagined. An NIS agent getting jiggy with a mafia boss is worth a lot of money as an information. More than a painting, I'd say. I asked myself a lot of questions, you know. How long had you two been working together, who initiated the idea of the explosives...I guess he did, didn't he ? He wasn't very talkative during our little interview. Worse than you, if you don't mind my saying so."

"He doesn't work for me," Woon said abruptly. "I didn't ask him for anything. You've got the wrong scapegoat. I'm the one who set up the explosion."

His lieutenants and Go Hyang turned their heads towards him, as discreetly as possible, surprised by such a turn of events on his part.

"On the contrary," Hong Dae Ju replied, smiling up to his ears. "If I needed proof that my choice was wise, your reaction was more than enough. When I send my men for him, it was just to ask him some questions about the warehouse and the painting at first, why he had done that, why here, and my plan was to confront you about it as well, but then it exploded, and I understood what you two were up to. You attacked a stock to which I was very attached, I just do the same with yours. How long have you two been at it ? Not the professional relationship, I mean, but the romance."

Woon replied with a smile that he wanted to be engaging, but the corners were rigid, and the overall structure flickered (calm down calm down calm down).

"You're mistaken," he said, but without specifying how, which greatly weakened his argument.

Hong Dae Ju burst out laughing for the second time since the beginning of their meeting.

"If you say so," he taunted him in a tone that suggested otherwise. "If so, you won't mind if I improve his profile a little more. Nobody at the NIS knows anything, right ? It would be terrible for his career if the information leaked out, and it would draw all the attention to him, including that of your enemies."

"What do you want?" Woon cut him short, as he was becoming weary of verbal dodging, on edge, and above all worried, unable to get rid of the image of Dong Soo and his face damaged by the blows.

Hong Dae Ju stood up fully on his armchair, and for a moment, he looked like a huge buffalo about to charge, which awakened in Woon the powerful desire to shoot him between the eyes with twenty-two long rifle just to relax.

"We're meeting each other tonight, face to face," he said. "On my territory, in the parking lot of the Yanoi Tower. In one hour. You will come unarmed."

"Alone?"

"You can bring two men, no more. Disarmed as well. No tricks, I warn you," he scolded him. "You're not in a favorable position, Sky Lord."

Woon stood up in turn, looking the other one straight in the eyes.

"I'll be there."

Then he added, pro forma.

"And the title of Sky Lord died with Chun."


« We were the rebels, lone survivors

We were the cult of deep sea divers

We were young once then we grew old

We were shining, we were fool's gold

Hold me till I'm not lonely anymore

It's only the crashing of the ocean to the shore »

( The Midnight, « Lost Boy » )


The Yanoi Tower was the headquarters of both Hong Dae Ju's government occupations and his more illicit activities. Like the skyscraper that housed the Sky Corporation, many of the metal and glass titans had two sides, one reserved for the general audience, and the other turned to other projects, other ambitions, and carefully kept behind a one-way mirror.

Unlike most of its sisters, however, whose foundations and heights had risen in the heart of the Gangnam neighborhood, creating a compact mass of towers whose thickness and density made them all invisible, lost among their peers if you didn't look close enough, the one where Hong Dae Ju had set up his offices and employees was in Myeongdong, less than a kilometer away from the popular Lotte Hotel.

The two buildings seemed to measure themselves against each other, to observe each other through their glazed eyes, to probe each other, although they weren't exactly opposite each other. The mafia boss's tower, older because it had been built at the end of the sixties, more imposing, larger, brighter, always seemed ready to devour the other, to fall on its white and ingenuous facade of a still maiden, but the latter firmly stood its ground despite the risks, and its perseverance looked like an insult, a provocation (crush me if you can old pal), so much so that you ended up not knowing exactly who was the dominant and the dominated.

Woon's first problem, once his meeting with Hong Dae Ju was over, was to prepare a plan of attack, retaliation and escape in a very short time, since the Yanoi Tower was across the Han River, and required about thirty-five minutes of car travel, adding the losses due to traffic jams which, at that time, were congesting the main avenues of Seoul. Half of his lieutenants, when he summoned them urgently, believed that the opposing leader would try to kill him.

The other half, no doubt more pragmatic, or less optimistic depending on the point of view, thought that the latter would first want to play with him, through blackmail, torture, or any other means promising memorable festivities, and then try to kill him.

In both cases, they agreed that the outcome of the meeting would be unfortunate for him, and therefore strongly encouraged him to take reinforcements with him, but they were unable to come up with an acceptable solution so as not to betray their presence when he would confront Hong Dae Ju.

"If he spots them, he'll kill Dong Soo," he told his men.

They had joined him in the meeting room immediately after his screen discussion with the other Mafia leader, and now stood in a circle around him, serious and ceremonial like a coven of witches before a Sabbath, meticulously looking at a plan of the Yanoi Tower that one of Woon's lieutenants, with nimble and furtive fingers, had stolen from the architect's very office years earlier, on Woon's orders, shortly after the latter had made the decision to attempt to assassinate Hong Dae Ju directly in his modern two hundred and thirty meter high fortress.

The plan included a detail of all the floors, all the forty five of them, and of the two levels of the tower's underground parking lot where the vehicles of the subordinate (second level) and responsible (first) employees were located. The parking lot, although it was full of surveillance cameras like all the skyscrapers in the capital, was incidentally the best access to the building, due to the low number of visitors it recorded, and the most secure.

After Heuksa Chorong's last infiltration and having almost finished with his head skewered on an authentic katana that Woon, separated from his old Ruger for having greatly underestimated the liveliness of his opponent, whose reflexes remained more than correct despite his age, had recovered in the latter's office in order to continue the fight on a more traditional note, Hong Dae Ju had now guards installed in the parking lot, eight in all, four per level, all members of his network and comfortably armed. Despite their small number, they were a sufficiently effective defense mecanism and above all a way to save time in order to set up a counteroffensive.

In itself, hacking into the camera network to allow a team of reinforcements to sneak into the parking lot was still feasible, despite the armada of firewalls and anti-malware that computer specialists, probably a little more specialized than the average, had implanted in them. Woon had already used the method on his first attempt, was in contact with hackers whose skills had overcome much more complex systems, and had another advantage that laid in the hostage-taking of Dong Soo, whose own knowledge in the area, both in terms of people and computer skills, made him quite close to a serious digital threat.

On several occasions, without saying that they had worked together, some of those whom Dong Soo called his "teammates" and Woon had been brought together, by Dong Soo, in a common mission, most often favorable to Woon's business, but also to the moral values of the former and to the profession of his friend. If you ever need a hand, send this message to this number, he had warned him, following his text message with a Latin quote "Carthago delenda est", literally "Carthage must be destroyed", and a totally aberrant number that changed almost every day, and from which Woon was continuously receiving messages with the new coordinates in order to maintain the connexion.

"Why not the 'Deus ex machina'?" He had asked Dong Soo out of pure curiosity, when they had a chat on the phone a few weeks later. "It was just as appropriate."

"Too classic, too cliché," Dong Soo had answered casually. "We had also thought of 'Vox Populi', but it sounded too gossip-like, so we gave up the idea."

"And half of the people consider you as scraps of society," Woon had added, nibbling on the hwajeon Gu Hyang had brought back to him after an easy negotiation that had taken place in the middle of the Shangsi festival, near Jeongju.

"Oh yes, that too," Dong Soo had noted evasively.

Spending time with Dong Soo, even from afar, always made him hungry. When they were living together as roommates, Dong Soo usually took care of the cooking, when they didn't order ready-made meals or eat in restaurants, because Woon, despite having more than enough theoretical knowledge on the subject, resulting from his upbringing by a father who could barely put one foot in front of the other to cook rice, was only moderately fond of cooking (probably because he had associated it too closely with his jagged childhood), and only started cooking for his own survival.

In addition, Dong Soo did much better than him in many ways, and he enjoyed the activity, which made the food better. He was generally much more impulsive than Woon, but the latter had discovered that he could be remarkably patient with certain occupations, including drawing, hacking, and preparing meals that were more or less healty depending on his mood.

Since Woon had left their apartment, not because he had wanted to but because of his return to Heuksa Chorong, he had lost nearly five kilos, which, considering his overall build, put him in the category of the scrawny looking, and most of the time only pecked at what he found in his fridge or had ordered, if he was really hungry. He ate a little more when he was on the move, but his appetite was still not much bigger than that of a bird. It was only when Dong Soo was calling him that his stomach suddenly seemed to double in size, and he always spent half of their conversations guzzling like a junkie, rediscovering after months of withdrawal the extravagant sensations of a heroin shot.

He finished working out the final details of the maneuver with his lieutenants. None of them was particularly optimistic about its success rate, but they didn't contradict him, suggesting instead alternatives and complementary options in case the situation were to degenerate rapidly. Woon had decided to take Joo-Bong and Jang Taesan, who was more accustomed to inter-clan riots than Baek Myun, with him. The second would also drive the car.

At Baek Myun, and because time was running out, Woon provided the number and password to contact Dong Soo's hackers clique, and ordered him to specify that the request was part of an attempt to rescue one of their own. Hong Dae Ju wanted a safe, unarmed meeting, and had assured Woon that he and his men would not carry weapons. In more concrete terms, such an insinuation usually implied that the entire opposing gang would be armed to the teeth.

In this case, Woon could hardly apply the same procedure : normally, for a completely different negotiation, he would have had no qualms about carrying a full arsenal of weapons hidden in the false bottom of the Genesis trunk to give more weight to his arguments, but Hong Dae Ju had Dong Soo, and Woon could not, or rather wasn't willing to take the slightest risk. He almost forced his lieutenants to leave their guns behind, and even refused them the blades.

"Boss, are you sure you know what you're doing?" Taesan then questioned him, as the lack of security caused by the absence of his Glock made him nervous, and with good reason.

"No," Woon replied dryly, without saying anything else, because there was nothing more to say.

Jang Taesan and Baek Myun were among those Heuksa Chorong recruitments for which he had personally invested himself. Both had been independent gangsters, excelling in their respective areas, one as a receiver of counterfeit and forged identity documents, and the second as a bounty hunter. They had crossed paths with Chun while he was still alive, and had distanced himself from the organization for a kind of initiatory trip during which he was hoping, in his own words, "to be able to think in peace, without the buzzing of others".

He had then fulfilled a long-time planned contract for Hong Dae Ju, and for some time now he had been talking about leaving Heuksa Chorong, and going to meet the "best of their generation" to confront them. He had made a list of them, on which Jang Taesan and Baek Myun were named, and he had opposed both of them, during street fights first in Wonju, where Baek Myun was, and then in Gwangju, where Jang Taesan had his own headquarters. He had never seen them again after his victories, and it was four years later that Woon, having found Chun's list, had decided to rally them to his cause, finding it more appropriate to engage their talents rather than trying to diminish them.

Nevertheless, he had met them personally, in his office in the Sky Corporation tower, and offered to confront them to demonstrate his goodwill and the utility in joining the organization. They had been loyal to him for eleven years, and had contributed to enriching Heuksa Chorong probably more than any of Woon's other lieutenants, except Joo-Bong.

At the appointed time, the three of them went down to the parking lot, completely stripped of their usual weapons, and Woon took a seat at the back of the Genesis while Taesan and Joo-Bong sat in the front. The car started off softly, silently, like a ghost, and slid towards the exit as quietly as a cloud moves across the sky.

x

At the age of twelve, Woon had followed Chun rather than wisely return to his drunken father's house, and had accompanied the self-proclaimed "Sky Lord" of the South Korean mafia group Heuksa Chorong, to carry out the "business" he had to do in a tiny, shabby noodle restaurant, with a black and white tiled floor, and where the man had found another guy of the same age, who had welcomed him as an old friend, with a burst of laughter and a handshake, and who had cast a slanting glance at Woon as if he had been an exotic curiosity.

"What are you bringing here?" He had asked Chun.

"Don't worry about that," the other had advised him in a harsher tone. "He's with me, that's all you need to know."

"Are you babysitting now?" His companion, who was also wearing a jacket, this time in brown leather, and black pants, had laughed. "The mob really leads to everything!"

"And bad jokes lead to the cemetery," Chun had replied with a sinister grin. "So change the subject and tell me what I want to hear, if you don't want me to send you there prematurely."

The other guy had burst out laughing, as if Chun had made a huddle pun, then had nodded his head and cautiously put aside Woon's presence. They had sat at a table, Chun inviting the boy next to him on the bench with his back to the wall, while the other sat opposite the restaurant window, with his back to the counter.

One of the first rules, in both poker and mafia, was to never to turn your back on your opponents. In the case of both Chun and his companion, theirs were more likely to come from the outside than from the kitchen, and they adopted their placements accordingly.

"Are you hungry?" Chun had asked Woon.

The kid was hungry, but he had shaken his head as a precaution. He was already feeling a kind of uneasiness at having followed a stranger under the lame pretext that the latter had been nice to him, and was planning to seize the slightest opportunity to run away. Chun had ordered beef noodles for him, and the other guy had taken dangmyeon.

While waiting for their food, they had started a discussion in a low voice, the exact content of which Woon had forgotten, but which he vaguely remembered was about territorial disagreements between several small gangs, from which Heuksa Chorong and the other man's group could benefit, in the Guryong slum, which should have disappeared in 2015 under the impetus of a large real estate project but which nevertheless still existed, greedily stirring up misery and suffering in front of the luxurious skyscrapers of Gangnam.

The two men had talked for a long time, and Woon hadn't said a word, sitting next to Chun and watching the interaction unfold in nuances of tone and moods, jokes and threats. At some point, Chun, after something his "friend" had said to him, which Woon couldn't remember despite his best efforts, had pulled a gun out of the pocket of his leather jacket, under the table, and pressed its barrel against the other man's knee.

The latter had smiled in a completely demented, unjustified sway, and he had finally sighed as if the whole story had bored him more than anything else, as if there had never been the slightest danger for his knee, and had taken out of his own jacket pocket a sheet of paper folded in four, before handing it to the other man, telling him not to look at it until he was alone, away from prying eyes.

Then the conversation had drifted to another subject, and Woon had lost track of it, even though the content had seemed interesting, but his hunger and growing anxiety at the prospect of going home, seeing the night fall, and whether the man would let him go, had finally taken up all the nebulous space of his thoughts.

It was completely dark when Chun and the other man, whose name Woon wouldn't know until years later, had ended their discussion and separated with a less warm handshake than when they had first met.

"I'm going back to Gangnam," Chun had said, and his companion had nodded approvingly, while reminding him of the conditions for consulting the document he had provided ("alone, with no one around, it's very important, it's a matter of national security"), which Chun had acquiesced to summarily, punctuating his confirmation with a nod of the shoulders.

After the other man had left, he had again given his attention to Woon, although he hadn't spoken to him during the entire meeting in the restaurant.

"Do you need a chaperone to take you home or are you fine on your own?" He had asked him.

"Who was it?" Woon had replied, pointing to the back of the guy who was walking down the street, disappearing smoothly between passers-by.

"Someone. A friend. Do you want me to help you get home or not?"

"Where are you going?"

Chun had thrown his head back, sighed towards the sky, visibly weary of the child's questions and his tendency not to answer his own.

"I'm going home," he had said. "Well, at my company, I have one, in a tower in Gangnam."

"Where?"

"In Gangnam. It's the business district in Seoul."

Woon, who never had set a foot in Seoul, had no mental image to associate with the name Chun had evoked.

"Is it far?" he had inquired, with a real curiosity and a bit of interest.

"From Yongin, it takes about one hour by motorcycle, when there aren't too many people on the road."

Woon had then added nothing more, having formulated another request in his mind, but not daring to express it aloud, because it had seemed unreasonable, dangerous, highly imprudent on the part of a twelve-year-old boy, even though he had been perfectly warned of the fact that his father, when he would come back, would probably beat him again for being so late, which was a remarkable paradox given that Yeo Cho-Sang was able to hit his son to death, and not regret it.

"Well, I'll let you go home," Chun had said, offering him a youthful, strangely compassionate smile. "It was a pleasure to meet you, kid."

He had ruffled his hair, a silky black mop that Woon had never paid attention to, and the child had tried to remember the last time his own father had touched him like that, without giving him any bruises, broken bones or cuts. One day he had hit him in the stomach so hard that he had vomited, and then his stomach had hurt for several days afterwards (you're going to be a killer).

Another time, he had dislocated his shoulder by pulling too hard on his arm, and Woon hadn't seen a doctor until two days later, when his teacher had made a remark during class and sent him to the infirmary, where, after a very short and worried examination, the young woman on duty there had called the emergency services. She was also the one who had accompanied Woon there since she hadn't been able to reach his father, either at work or getting drunk in a bar or apartment, and had felt terribly guilty about letting an eight-year-old child go off on his own.

Woon had told her that he could manage alone, but she had stayed with him anyway, held his hand when the doctor had put back his shoulder, the pain of which he remembered vividly and unpleasantly, and had gone to get him some cookies and water while he was waiting. Years later, as head of Heuksa Chorong, Woon, who had never forgotten her name, had a monstrous check deposited on her bank account and had send a card with, as the only explanation, "my shoulder wanted to thank you".

Violence had become commonplace in Woon's life, it composed it, gave it rhythm, dominated it, and hardly did anything to him anymore. But kindness, gentleness, tenderness, understanding, were bullets hurled at full speed at his defenses, digging deep holes, painful abysses, noisy and desperate yearning, and they had on him the effect of a trauma that the brutality of existence usually inflicted on others.

Chun's silhouette had begun to move away in the street, and the phoenix was still burning in his back. Woon's hand had then gently manifested itself, with a delicate throb, like a secret call, a language of flesh and blood. He had run, caught up with Chun, and started to walk next to him. The man had turned his head towards him, with a slightly surprised but happy smile.

"What?" He had asked Woon. "Don't tell me you want to come with me?"

Woon hadn't said it. He had thought it, and Chun had guessed it.

"What about your father?"

"No ones cares," Woon had said.

Chun's smile had became huge.

x

Through the window of his car door, Woon admired the night glow of the city, of a contemporary capital that was one of those metropolises that never really slept, and the neon lights, the illuminated shop windows, reflected on his face and on his memory. Chun had taken him back to the Sky Corporation tower on his motorcycle with Woon cramped behind him. It was the first time he had ridden on such a machine, but it had not been the last, especially since Dong Soo had learned to ride at sixteen, and he had regularly borrowed Sa-Mo's little Honda for excursions around the village, always accepting a passenger behind him, and even more so when this passenger happened to be Woon, who clutched his arms around his waist and let him drive with confident, carefree abandonment.

Dong Soo had a rather cautious, but firm driving style. Chun, on the other hand, wasn't afraid to go fast, to pass cars on the highway, to somehow make his way between vehicles twice his size and width. He had taken his motorcycle across the countryside between Yongin and Seoul as if it had had the whole road just for it, and Woon had been afraid of falling several times. Chun didn't have a second helmet, but he had lent him his. The younger one should have it, he had noted, and even though the helmet had been too big, Woon had been relieved to wear it.

He was almost certain that his father would hardly notice his absence, but would rush at him on his return, in a kind of parody of paternal anxiety that was expressed mainly with loud punches. He had put aside the tension he had felt during Chun's meeting with the other guy at the restaurant, and felt nothing but apprehension and impatience.

When he had first seen the skyscrapers of Gangnam, he had spent five minutes with his nose up in the air, forgetting about the road, forgetting about the bite of the wind, forgetting even Chun, just to enjoy the dizzying heights of the iron mastodons, which contrasted so powerfully with the aging and miserable buildings of the neighborhood he was living in at the time.

As they had ridden along a road that seemed to have no end, and gradually brought them closer to the blinding lights of the towers, Chun had the motorcycle turned off, taking an exit to their right, and had continued straight on to another fork in the road, and if the path would eventually become routine in Woon, it had seemed to him at that point the equivalent of a maze.

Then Chun had led them into a square surrounded by skyscrapers and into a tunnel that was descending to an underground parking garage, the entrance to which was near one of the towers. On the facade of the tower, Woon had had time to read "Sky Corp. Luxury Jewelry". The tunnel had swallowed them afterwards, and Woon, in a way, had never really come out of it.

Chun had parked the bike between two black sedans that looked a bit threatening, and had signaled to Woon, without a word, to accompany him to the elevator. Woon almost refused for a very brief moment, but then finally changed his mind, thinking it was stupid to be recalcitrant after following the man there. In the cabin full of mirrors, which ascended slowly, Chun had asked him "do you like martial arts ? "and Woon had answered with a single nod in the affirmative.

He had been training on his own since he was nine years old, not being able to afford to join a club, but having developed a strong interest in routines and techniques. In addition, there was a small association in the neighborhood where he lived that taught hapkido, and whose owner, who had a soft spot for him, had agreed to let him watch the sessions as long as he didn't disturb the participants.

They were held in an old hanok that had an inner courtyard, and Woon often sat on the terrace after school to watch the fighters and teachers. He had always had a good memory, and reproducing the movements had become instinctive in him, especially since he saw no particular difficulty in doing so. Several times, the owner had asked him why his father didn't pay him a registration fee, and Woon would answer evasively, lie, make up excuses, and continue to watch the sessions with envy and concentration.

At the Sky Corporation, he had discovered that combat arts were taught between setting diamonds on necklaces and rings. The contradiction had surprised him when Chun had told him about it in the elevator, but it had also raised a hope in him that he had ended up relegating to a fantasy after his father's willingness to forbid him from any leisure activities that other children his age collected, unknowingly providing a welcome respite for their parents, who would drop them off with both intense separation anxiety and equally deep and perhaps more heartfelt relief.

As his father was convinced that he was going to become a monster, he had decreed that Woon shouldn't participate in any workshops or entertainment outside of school, on the pretext that they could develop his murderous potential. He had also blamed him for years for his mother's death.

"She died giving birth to you," he said, venom coming out of his words. "You killed her."

Woon had lived with this abominable guilt on his child's conscience for twelve years, sometimes thinking about it for hours, for whole nights, terrorizing himself at the thought that his mother could blame him for murdering her even though he hadn't wanted to, until his father finally told him the truth.

It was probably the only true act of love he had ever performed during Woon's childhood, taking the burden off his shoulders and putting it back on his own, a place where it had always been in the end.

The elevator had opened onto a corridor. That's where my office is, Chun had told him. It occupied a large room with eccentric, unusual decoration, full of strange objects whose meaning was known only to their owner, and furniture that Chun described as having "a temper", far from the glass surfaces with simplified lines that offices generally tended to favor. Chun's furniture was made of wood, broken, worn, had seen the decades go by, for some the centuries.

He had a collection of swords of all shapes displayed against the wall behind his desk, and he had once told Woon, on his return to Heuksa Chorong after the Yungneung mission, that they represented "all the ancient sky lords of Heuksa Chorong". In truth, most of them had traded their swords for semiautomatics at every opportunity, but Chun had an I-love-old-things side, and was a bit melodramatic on the edges. Once in the office, he had filled a glass of water for Woon, who was thirsty, and brought up one of his men, a lieutenant.

"I want you to take care of this kid," he had ordered him. "He has a potential. I want you to treat him with respect and teach him everything you know."

It was with these words, pronounced as a sentence, that Woon had begun his education in the South Korean underworld.

It had lasted four months, during which time his new instructor regularly picked him up for classes from the Chun penthouse, which had previously belonged to the previous ruler, and which the Heuksa Chorong chiefs had obviously passed on to each other since it had been brought, and where Woon had taken up residence throughout his training, with the Sky Lord as his roommate, after categorically refusing to return to his father's house. Chun had insisted, at first, saying that he had no idea how to take care of a kid, that he had a lot of things to do, and that his father could call the police.

"He won't do it," Woon had replied, while eating an ice cream in a jar that Chun had put in front of him, for lack of something more suitable for growing teenagers. "He doesn't care."

"What about your school?"

"I was expelled," he had confessed.

For a silly story, on top of that. His classmates had insulted him during recess, and he had retaliated by breaking the noses of two of them and the wrist of a third. In his defense, the boys had been harassing him for weeks, and they had simply ended up getting a taste of their own medicine, but the school's management hadn't seen it that way, especially since Woon had already been involved in other violent episodes.

As a result, Chun had ended up taking him home and giving him one of the four rooms in the apartment, one of the most luxurious places Woon had seen so far. As an adult, he occupied exactly the same room, while he had turned Chun's room into a library, where he kept safes stashed behind the shelves and filled with contracts and particularly sensitive documents, including the one that the man in the restaurant had given to Chun, which confirmed the corruption of several ministers in the government and their involvement in major Middle Eastern conflicts, where they had presumably contributed to the spread of guns and disagreements.

Chun had been a gruff, absent, and not very talkative roommate, or at times too talkative, especially during those times when he would engage in soliloquy about the importance of his organization in the country and the greatness of his role, but he was nonetheless considerably easier to live with than Woon's father. He didn't hit him for a yes or no (he didn't hit at all, by the way, preferring verbal threats to punches), didn't drink excessively, let him do what he wanted, sometimes cooked, and even asked him to tell him about his days and seemed to take a genuine interest in it.

Woon still found difficult to understand, even now, the concern that the mafia leader had shown him, but he had ended up blaming it on shared life experiences, and a transfer, according to which Chun had seen some of what he had been as a child in Woon's attitude. He had told him that he himself had been spotted by the previous boss of Heuksa Chorong, and that he had followed the same training as Woon, climbing up the ladder to take the leader's place.

During his "courses", which had covered a wide range of subjects, from the handling of weapons, both knives and guns (Woon kept an imperishable memory of the recoil of the Glock with which he had fired for the first time), to the arts of combat, including techniques of theft, tough negotiation, sneaking infiltration, and the knowledge of the various mafias present on the territory and elsewhere, their traditions, their operations, their relations with Heuksa Chorong.

His instructor took him from class to class, and many were led by others who looked at Woon with pride when he asked them questions and tried to understand their functions. In parallel, other less illicit subjects had to do with the business aspect of the organization, the design of jewelry, the different steps that animated the process, the operation of a sale and contracts, and the professions grouped together by the sector.

Woon, who had been taken to the store several times to see the models and hear about how they were made, was never tired of contemplating their fires, and still liked to get lost in the reflections of the gemstones whenever he could.

x

After four intense months of learning, he knew almost everything there was to know about the organization, both on the public and mafia sides. Originally formed to serve Chinese interests, to which it always remained loyal, it was governed by Chun, who was the chairman, but whose face and name were not known by the media. Beside him sat two other leaders, bearing ancestral titles that Woon had wiped out when he had taken power, and whom Chun called the "Human Lord" and "Earth Lord".

The first was a nervous, bloodthirsty man managing guns sells, named In Dae Un, who was missing an arm as a result of an explosive confrontation with the NIS, who pursued all the mafias without exception, and one agent in particular, Kim Gwang Taek, whom Chun could talk about without interruption whenever the subject was brought up, and whom he considered both a friend and a kind of rival. The second was a woman by the name of Ga-Ok, and practically the only one in the whole organization, of an icy and stern beauty, remarkably good with their partners in China and art trafficking, who happened to be the daughter of the former head of Heuksa Chorong.

Both of them held positions of power in the mafia organization, but also in the company. It was from Ga Ok that Woon had learned the details of the handover ritual, consisting of the assassination of the current leader by the pretender to the throne. Around Ga-Ok, Chun was sweating something like bitterness, regret, desire. According to Dae Un, they had dated for a long time, before Ga Ok had preferred Kim Gwang Taek, with whom she was always in contact.

It's because of her father, he had noticed in a mocking tone, she is still angry with him for that, even though she knows the rules. She was dead now, killed by Heuksa Chorong's men as she was trying to escape with her daughter, Jin-Ju, and Chun, who had thought he was the father, in order to leave the country and send the organization to hell.

One of the other traditions to confirm one's entry into Heuksa Chorong, and to which all novices, or future soldiers, were subjected, was of an equally macabre nature, as it involved signing the contract by killing a loved one. Generally, the test deterred a large number of candidates, who then remained in the simple state of associate and quietly went about their little business, staining their hands with the blood of others.

Woon, once confronted with the three chiefs of Heuksa Chorong, had paradoxically dropped his father's name, and he had returned to the apartment a few days later, accompanied by Chun, who had remained in the corridor with a Browning. When he had entered, his father, unsurprisingly, was drinking, and for a second he had seemed relieved to see him (is that you, Woon ? he had mumbled, pulling his nose out of his soju bottle), but his semblance of affection had been swept away by the blow he had immediately inflicted on his son.

Woon had then aimed the barrel of the gun at Yeo Cho-Sang's moon-shaped face, but Yeo Cho-Sang, who had kept reflexes from an old military training (Woon had later discovered that he was also a member of the NIS, and from the same class as Dong Soo's uncle and father, as well as agent Kim Gwang Taek), had struggled, and finally succeeded in disarming him, taking advantage of his surprise and indecision, and then threatened him with the same weapon that had been intended to kill him. Without the intervention of Chun, who had stuck his penknife in Woon's father's back, Woon was certain that Yeo Cho-Sang would have shot him without the slightest hesitation.

He had believed for years that he had killed him, that he had actually grabbed his pocket knife and stuck it into his father's belly, just as he had believed he had killed his mother. He had fainted afterwards, in shock, and lost all memory of that night, so much so that Chun, once back in Heuksa Chorong, had to tell him what had happened after he had woken up and that Yeo Cho-Sang had been executed, without specifying by whom, in order to nourish the spirit of revenge in the kid and to rally him more to Heuksa Chorong.

Woon had regularly asked him about the identity of the murderer, and Chun had had a lot of fun answering him in riddles, at least with metaphors that told the truth, but that Woon had not been able to interpret. It is someone higher than a mountain, higher than the sky, he liked to tell him, watching him fill himself with more anger, more frustration, more Heuksa Chorong. Neither Ga-Ok nor Dae-Un had said anything. When he was twenty years old, Chun had given a first piece of evidence, claiming that Woon was the one who had killed his father, and then calmly watching him put the barrel of his gun against his own temple.

He had admired, like a rare painting, the way the child raised in anger and brutality, who had both loved and hated his father, and who had sworn the death of his murderer, had digested the information and then concluded that the vendetta had to be carried out in spite of everything. By his murder, his father had become a victim in Woon's mind, and therefore more loved, more understood, more excused. Woon had transferred all the anger he had felt against his father, which had become embarrassing in the latter's maintenance in the role of a martyr, to the search for the guilty party. And when Chun had given him his name, naturally, anger and hatred had turned against him.

It was only before their confrontation for the title of leader of Heuksa Chorong that Chun had agreed to reveal the truth to him, either to purge a conscience that had become too heavy, or because maintaining the illusion was no longer of any real interest, since Woon was then all acquired to Heuksa Chorong and the underworld, or because he had developed a form of real and filial attachment to him, in his own shapeless and incongruous way.

As he was gazing at the peaceful surface of the pond at Changdeokgung Palace, where Woon had joined him, officially for a casual discussion, unofficially to agree on the terms of their upcoming confrontation, he had told him offhand that he hadn't killed his father, but that the latter had committed suicide, stabbing himself with the blade that Woon had never been able to direct at his entrails.

"You were never destined to become a killer," Chun had told him, stroking his beard, without looking at him. "That was just bullshit. It's always been bullshit. You knew it, deep down."

And the anger, good companion, sweet, daily, that rumbled in his belly, planted its claws in his thoughts, had wandered elsewhere, had changed its line of sight, as it had always done, and had fixated on Chun.

"Too late," Woon had answered, looking at the man, the chief, and then he had been an old man, and Woon had thought (my turn my turn my turn it's my throne now).

In the meantime, there had been the sending to the orphanage which was run by friends of Kim Gwang Taek, there had been the others (Cho Rip Jin Ju Ji Seon Min So), there had been Dong Soo, every day, for eight years, there had been the entry to the NIS, there had been the coded messages of Heuksa Chorong, the night meetings with Chun who wanted to see how his student was doing, the high school, the diploma, then the university, the apartment with Dong Soo, the unbearable sweetness of what they were together, and that even the Yungneung mission, although having tainted it, had not succeeded in reducing to nothing.

During all the time that Woon had grown up in the orphanage, hiding his true belonging by creating another, more terrible, more visceral one, Heuksa Chorong had worked in concert with Hong Dae Ju, and prepared the killing of the president's son, Jangheon, who was threatening the entire underworld of the country by his will to increase the number and means of the police force.

He was almost acting as the head of the NIS, and had attracted the wrath of his father by pursuing an aggressive policy against North Korea, which he wanted to regain and free from the domination of his dictator, while erasing the threat it posed to South Korea. At the time, he was claiming to have a detailed map of the opposing country, through a tattoo.

Few people had believed him, but Woon was one of them, for having seen the drawing in question printed with an ink that was frighteningly difficult to remove on the back of Yoo Ji-Seon, a young girl he and Dong Soo had known in the orphanage village, where she lived with her father until the latter's shady death, and with whom they had both been a little in love, at least too slightly for it to be real.

She had been the companion of the president's son, and was to marry him before he was killed by Chun. Her back had been the object of repeated covetousness, and betwenn her twenty and twenty four years, until Dong Soo decided to remove the tattoo radically with large blows of acid, burning the skin of her back completely in the process, she had been threatened by all the national mafias, in particular Heuksa Chorong and Hong Dae Ju, who had her kidnapped frequently to get what he wanted from Woon.

With a significant number of mafias doing business across the borders, including Hong Dae Ju, the total sum of their plots against the president's son had culminated with the Yungneung mission, during which selected NIS agents, among them Woon and Dong Soo, had to ensure the expatriation of the son of the country's leader to Italy, where President Yeoning was hoping his fervor would subside.

Things hadn't gone according to plan, and the next day, while listening to the news of Jangheon's death in an ambush, Woon, who had been wounded during his escape, hadn't been able to get up, and had cried while feeling the bite of the bullet that Dong Soo had fired in his left flank, which was nothing, compared to what he felt when he was thinking of the expression on his face when he had found Woon, kneeling next to the dead politician, killed by Chun's own hand, unable to move or explain what had happened, his nerves torn apart by a conflict of loyalty, by doubt, by what had replaced violence in contact with Dong Soo.

They had come a long way since that night, and little by little, overcoming the cat-and-mouse game, the resentment, the incomprehension, the bitterness caused by their separation, both friendly and fraternal and romantic, although they had never said it to each other, their relationship had recovered everything that had characterized it before Woon's betrayal, as Dong Soo too was beginning to doubt and question himself, to understand, to adopt another point of view as an NIS agent, then hacker and underground painter.

Since the Yungneung mission, Ga-Ok had died, agent Kim had died, also at the hands of Chun, and Dae Un had died as well, not without having criticized at length the change of leadership of the organization when Woon had taken over the reins from Heuksa Chorong, after a petty attempt by the former to put in his place a leader from the Chinese mafia, with whom he had cozied up during a forced confinement with their neighbors resulting from a failed mission, during which he had wanted to take the lead on Chun and kidnap Ji-Seon, then held captive by the organization after Jangheon's death, which she had witnessed because she had been in the same car that was taking them to the airport, in order to take her by force to China and present the tattoo to the leaders of the Communist party. They had indeed expressed an interest in the latter, whose reasons they had refrained from explaining.

"People can say whatever they want about Chun," he had pointed out to Woon, crammed in an armchair, one day while the latter was reproached him his incompetence of the last weeks. "But when the old guy was still alive, he knew at least how to liven things up. Since you've taken over, we've entered an era of monastic rigidity, and let me tell you, kid, that there's nothing funny about that."

A few months later, he had succumbed to serious injuries inflicted during an attempted coup initiated by Hong Dae Ju, who had wanted to seize power using the combined forces of his network, his underground organization, and Heuksa Chorong. The coup was a complete failure, partly because of Woon's about-turn in assisting the NIS forces deployed that day, of which Dong Soo had been part of, and partly because Hong Dae Ju had underestimated the means of protection of the president and his government.

Saved by the fact that he had not revealed himself, the defeat and trial he had nevertheless undergone, from which he had triumphantly emerged, having turned the heads of the juries, had struck a major blow to his illegal activities, and had forced him to retreat into the shadows, waiting for a more interesting opportunity.

Ten years later, Woon, in the back seat of the Genesis, was watching as the slender, tall silhouette of the Yanoi Tower was drawing closer, and as he thought about Chun, Heuksa Chorong, everything that had happened in the last decade, and all the paintings that Dong Soo had left him, all over the country, he was remembering at the same time the parries he had learned first in hapkido, then in all the other martial arts that his training had approached, and, just like when Chun had told him the truth about his father, he repeated to himself, tirelessly, "it's my turn it's my throne". More secretly, more deeply, an echo responded within him, brandishing the image of Dong Soo's bloody face.

He raised his left arm to his face for a moment, pulled the sleeve of his coat and of his sweater down, and released the only tattoo he had, a drawing, executed with great finesse, of a milky white sea under a fluffy cloud, completed by half a setting sun with copper reflections. The sun was setting in the east. My white sea of the east, Woon thought, pressing the tattoo against his lips, breathing in the scent of his own skin, of his perfume with notes of nectarine, jasmine and vanilla, and whispering oaths in his head, a promise.

Passing his hand under his coat, he also went to touch, like he had often done for the past ten years, the scar he wore just below his heart. Dong Soo, or rather his knife, had gave it to him when they were twenty-four, in a fight during which Woon, cornered, had wanted to end it. Dong Soo had saved his life.

Woon wore the scar like a tattoo, a symbol of belonging, and sometimes, when it hurt him, he thought of a wave, and Dong Soo's hands on his hips.


Indications :

- Yanoi = the name of one the Warrior Baek Dong Soo OST song.

- Jangheon, Lee San, Yeoning = birthnames of Crown Prince Sado, Crown Prince Yi San and king Yeongjo (I thought using their royal names could be disturbing)

- The Rembrant painting was truly stolen during a robbery and belongs to the "List of stolen paintings" available on Wikipedia.

- The name "Baek Dong Soo" means "white sea of the east", or something close to it. That explains the tatoo with the cloud ("Woon") above it ;).