Notes

Soundtrack (Dong Soo's part this time, with a more electro vibe)

Shadows (The Midnight - rain, synthe and saxophone, that thing is TV opening title material + one of my main Modern AU theme for them)

Takeaway (The Chainsmokers, Instrumental - main theme for the whole story, the sweetness of love and friendship with the bells and the violence of mafia with the drop)

Enjoy the silence (Depeche Mode - Trevor Something Remix)

After Dark (Mr Kitty - Depeche Mode vibes, but with soft piano at the beginning)


ACT TWO : THE KNIGHT


PART ONE : CRYSTALLIZATION


« Shadows in the city
I'm a stranger to myself
On these streets I'm someone else
Shadows in the city
Like a demon in the dark
Come to tear us apart
»

(The Midnight, « Shadows »)


Hong Dae Ju's big guys had done enough to hurt him, and Dong Soo could feel the acidity of his cuts on his face and chest, the burning of his swollen eye, and the bitter throbbing of his stomach that they had had fun kicking. He thought he had a broken rib, maybe two, because he felt that something was viciously plowing his skin, and was a little afraid that the fragments of one of them, if truly broken, would end up piercing a lung. Unless one of them is already punctured, he thought with alarming pragmatism, without further alarm for his state of health.

On reflection, his face wasn't just swollen, it was literally on fire, as if some guy with a completely fucked-up sense of humor had decided to pour lava on it, just to pass the time. His nose had bled so much, thanks to the delicate and attentive care of the gorillas who had questioned him, that his shirt was ruined : he was almost certain that he would never be able to get it back, even after two or three washes at a specialist's (if you live long enough to take it to the washing machine, smart-ass).

The blood was a plague on cotton, and usually remained permanently imprinted on it. He had known this since Woon had made the remark to him once, after splitting the palm of his hand half open while trying to peel a carrot in an attempt to prepare lunch (Woon almost never hurt himself when he was doing something dangerous, only when the situation was totally insignificant and that nothing threatened his existence, and Dong Soo remembered having told him that it was a kind of lame superpower), and having stained with blood one of their dishtowels, which he was finally obliged to throw away afterwards, as it had turned crimson and was lost for good.

It wasn't the first time he had been confronted with the vice-minister of defense. Their paths had crossed many times since Dong Soo was twenty years old. Hong Dae Ju had attacked him as soon as he had sworn allegiance to the president's grandson, Lee San, who was to take over the functions of the president after his death, and kept a tender memory of his father, influencing his political views.

When Woon had wanted to assassinate him, Dong Soo had been on the spot, as an NIS agent, and the mafia chief had locked them both in the same cell, letting them debate about the first one's betrayal and get lost in misunderstandings. Dong Soo knew that Hong Dae Ju was close in his opinions to the president's wife, who had interests in China, and that he was behind the ginseng affair of 2008, during which President Yeoning's wife had fainted after drinking a tea with ginseng in it, which was believed to be an attempt to poison her.

He had also taken part in the ambush of the presidential convoy shortly afterwards by Heuksa Chorong as the president's grandson was on his way to his father's grave to pay his respects. Finally, he had always been opposed to Dong Soo's trainer, agent Kim Gwang Taek, who had died indirectly because of him in the summer of 2008.

After the meeting, he was taken back to his cell, if one could call that way the four walls that were so close together that you could hardly spread your arms in it, and which had an incredibly uncomfortable chair as furniture, but above all a dreadful design that would have given jaundice to anyone with a minimum of good taste. All the time he had spent with his butt resting on it, in other words at least three hours, ever since Hong Dae Ju's henchmen had caught him leaving the NIS offices at the end of the day, he had almost suffered physically as well as morally, knowing that he had been installed on this kind of insult to interior decoration.

He had painted in the warehouse the day before, and hadn't expected Woon's subordinates to find the portrait so quickly, as he had became accustomed to days, weeks, sometimes months of waiting in the early years. He sometimes obtained information about Heuksa Chorong's transactions in dribs and drabs, making it difficult for him to find a place nearby where he could leave his paintings : he certainly had his own methods for checking them, including long-time partners, wonderfully anonymous, well-versed in the art of finding what you wanted just by typing a few lines of code on a computer screen, but all methods had their limits, and the Mafia organization's computer files were sometimes coded in too sophisticated and personal a manner for him to decipher, or they lacked information, and simply gave transaction dates that were of no interest to Dong Soo if they weren't accompanied by a location.

He didn't know that the warehouse contained Hong Dae Ju's treasures. However, by the time he had chosen its walls for canvas, he was well aware of who the owner was. And so what, my dear ? Frankly, I don't give a damn. He had driven there with his brushes, his sketches, the camera he was planning to install once his work would be done, and his sticks of dynamite carefully hidden in plastic bags concealing their true nature. They were supplied to him by a contact living in the shallows of Seoul, where the inhabitants, unable to live, survived in slums that threatened to fall into ruin at any moment.

He had, in other words, followed all the usual steps that had made up his painting routine for a little less than a decade, when Woon had (left) betrayed him, or at least it was what he had believed at the time, during the Yungneung mission, leaving him facing a corpse and endless questions, a misunderstanding, a pantagruelic confusion and pain that had gently and patiently nibbled away at his nerves for months after the disaster, for which Sa-Mo had used the term "nervous breakdown", while Dong Soo, who had emerged physically unharmed from the confrontation, had been sent back to his uncle and aunt by his management, after having been absent from the NIS for more than a month and shut himself up in his apartment.

He had taken his car, as usual, an old model that he couldn't bring himself to sell even though it was good for the junkyard and his salary as a tenured agent had been doubled by the little extras of hacking and, at times, when he was desperate to keep his mind busy so as not to sink into much more muddy and cloudy waters, of mixing. He hadn't been in a nightclub since a very long time (you're too old for that, Cho-Rip had pointed out to him sternly, even though half of their former classmates from the orphanage still went to nightclubs without the slightest concern for decorum), but he always had his mixing console and his table, and he liked to bring them out sometimes, in the grip of a melancholy of infernal sweetness, thinking of before, of raves parties, of one in particular and (of the sound Woon had made when he had kissed him).

He had driven for an hour, being careful not to be too abrupt in his swerving, cause you never really knew with nitroglycerin, and he had already had one or two stupid incidents in this way, and then had reached the completely lost location indicated to him by his sympathetic collaborators. The place was monitored with a small, simple network of cameras that Dong Soo had made sure to hack into before showing up.

He always proceeded the same way, as soon as he set foot on the territory of a mafia boss : in addition to the information that Woon had given him over the years, he also had the data accumulated by the NIS, to which he had largely contributed, helped on the sly by Heuksa Chorong that Woon had made available to him as much as he could, and the magic of his fellow hackers, who knew how to disregard geographical distance (some of them were thousands of kilometers away, on other continents, in countries whose names evoked conflict, technological progress, elegance, landscapes, a unique way of life) to lend a hand and ensure his safety.

In all, there were about thirty of them, spread across a surprising number of different countries around the globe. Some were also members of larger groups, such as the Chaos Computer Club in Europe, or Anonymous. They came from a variety of ethnic backgrounds, and moralities were all over the place, going from white hat to black hat, sometimes without any transition at all.

During a very serious discussion they had had one evening on World of Warcraft, as they were being laminated by a team of beginners while doing something less benign, like a little sniffing on the right, hijacking data on the left, one of their own, whom they affectionately called the "Antique", and who in fact wasn't probably older than forty years old, had told them that all manicheism had to be avoided in their activities.

"There's no white hat, there's no black hat," she had asserted firmly. "It's all bullshit. We're grey hats. I don't even see why we're arguing about this."

"Yeah, but none of us is looking for glory," another had objected, based in India, whose accent was a delight of spices and colors to Dong Soo's ears. "Grey hats are known to be just here for fame. I'm sorry, but we all use aliases, clearly that's not the best for fame."

"And anyway, a famous haker is a hacker who didn't understand the job basics," a third one had added, this time in England, and whose voice vibrated under the impulse of the cockney, the typical way of speaking of the East End in London, with nuances that were much more catchy than those of the higher classes.

In addition to the ethical side of their activities, the group had been characterized over time by a certain activism, catapulting them irremediably in the highly controversial category of hacktivists, essentially centered on mafia organizations and some specific underground networks with appallingly sickening mores, which the world authorities were tracking down like the plague.

These tendencies hadn't been driven by Dong Soo in particular, but he had helped to set them up, and it had the merit of bringing back a little on the right track some of their colleagues whose habits were more often turning towards cybercrime and the crasher genre than towards more praiseworthy intentions. Among them, some of them were above all in love with chaos, and never resisted the opportunity to make holes in a structure. Nevertheless, they generally managed to agree on common fights, and remained overall united in their affection for searching for sensitive data, unknown to the general public, and for infiltrating people's private files.

Isn't it nice, though, to have a hobby ? one of the hackers Dong Soo worked with most often had once joked. Her code name was Yongwang, referring to the myth of the dragon king of the seas, and she was also based in South Korea. The group had finally taken a name after six years of collaboration, during which, in addition to the rules, language and codification that had been put in place, its members had sometimes been replaced, had stopped their activites, or died in some of the most tragic cases.

"Atlas?" The Antique had first suggested.

It was quickly agreed that Greek mythology was full of metaphors and allegories in sufficient quantity to allow them to find something decent. Moreover, it had been the only one on which the members hadn't argued about, maintining that their country's mythology was better.

"No," one of them, in Saudi Arabia, had said. "Too megalomaniacal. We don't carry the world on our shoulders, after all."

Several names had followed one another in the conversation. Eris, the goddess of discord. The Parcae, mistresses of destiny. Nemesis, the goddess of revenge ("Bullshit, none of us is specialized in vendettas", one of the European hackers, ironically Italian, had protested).

At each proposal, each and every one had made his or her own little comment, and the deliberation had thus dragged on for several days, had lagged in lenght, had become so complex that fights had sprung up over anything and everything, but above all over anything. In the end, it had been Dong Soo, weary, who had finally settled the debate.

"And what about the Nephelae?" He had suggested, his microphone as close as possible to his lips to make sure he could be heard in the tumult of the others' disagreements.

"The nephe-what?" Another, taking advantage of the impromptu silence, had repeated. "Did you just sneezed, man?"

"Nephelae. The nymphs of clouds. A cloud is neutral. It brings rain, it protects from the sun, it does pleasant and unpleasant things," he had explained. "It has no face, no particular meaning, no purpose. It's between the sky and the earth. At first glance, it has no intention."

(it's the meaning of Woon's name)

They had officially opted for the name in June 2011, and had been acting under the protection of the latter ever since.

Contrary to the other better known nymphs, such as the naiads or the oceanids, the Nephelae didn't have any representative whose name they could have taken as an alias, but the issue, in the end, didn't bother them so much since they had simply used the types of clouds, and integrated the vocabulary reserved for the phenomenon into their activities.

They had thus taken the names of the clouds of the different categories A, B and C for their aliases, declining them if needed according to species and varieties (they had drawn lots for the names, and Dong Soo still blessed the chance that had brought him upon the species "Nebolusus", which was nowhis code name after years spent under the much less subtle "NintendoDS"), then used the names of particularities, colors and associated phenomena to designate certain missions and activities.

Thus, the Virga code, among others, referred to buffer overflow, or BOF, type bugs, while the Cavum code indicated denial of service operations. The list was long, but now everyone was familiar with it, and it was a perfect match for the passwords they had developed before and mobilized during their exchanges, or with potential partners who belonged to the field.

On the deep Web, they had built themselves a reputation as solid as those of the largest groups, by intervening on the issue of mafias at all levels it could cover, and by taking part in general mobilizations of hackers in the international political framework, through some of the most active members in the field. Dong Soo, while he initially had little taste for government issues, had nonetheless willingly let himself be drawn into anti-corruption movements, often beyond the strict borders of South Korea.

He and Yongwang, like the other members of the group, were primarily concerned with national issues, but as their clan had gained new members through word of mouth and especially through the media, which had covered their protests on several occasions, they had been able to diversify their activities somehow, and, like their colleagues who came to their aid on internal difficulties in the land of the morning calm, they themselves would return the favor when they solicited them through their common network, called the Cyclone Eye, to solve this or that problem they encountered either personally or collectively.

The golden rule of their cooperation was not to give details about the situation, but simply about the task to perform, allowing them to maintain their status as "gray" hackers. It dated back to the early days of the group, with which Dong Soo had been first affiliated after its twentieth anniversary, when the organization had already celebrated a year and a half and was becoming an old hand.

They didn't really have a code of conduct or very specific regulations to follow. Most of them came and went, often busy with other tasks, other roles. They all had a much more public and socially visible profession outside of their hacking activities, and usually acted during the evenings or at night. Since they were in different countries, the exchanges were sometimes complicated, but they had quickly opened up a peer-to-peer network to solve the problem, and they had all connected both to their telephones (all, according to the second rule of absolute caution, had two, one official, for their daily identity, and another for the Nephelae) and to their computers.

In that way, the time difference was easily circumvented, or limited, and all were sure to be able to receive the requests of the others in time. Simultaneously, they had begun to sell their services. The decision had matured over a long period of sometimes tense conversations and questions about potential risks and morality, and they finally agreed to divide the network into two collectives, the first accepting outside requests, and the second remaining confined to more private use.

In fact, the Nephelae in the second group were the minority, as the possibility of additional remuneration, of hard cash, had been a strong argument for many. Dong Soo himself had already carried out a few interventions for individuals, the first of them being Woon, although he had never asked for it. The members made themselves available according to their obligations, and usually took only one "client" at a time.

When Dong Soo had gone to the warehouse, he had just finished a "man in the middle", stretched over several days, for a private individual who had compensated him generously. He had put the money aside, as he did every time. Of all the members of the Nephelae, he was among those who hadn't touched the hacking gains, who had simply deposited it in an anonymous account while their colleagues spent for some on housing, for others on placement, for those on equipment, and for those on family assistance.

They didn't talk about their private lives, as a precautionary measure, and modified their voices when they exchanged directly, but elements during the conversations, a particular vocabulary, an accent that persisted despite the vocal distortions, background noises, methods used, traced, once put together, lifestyles, existences behind screens and microphones. And if they didn't talk about their families or their jobs, they sometimes mentioned what they were planning to do with the money they had earned from hacking. Dong Soo had been saving for almost eleven years.

At first, he had bought everything he could think of, and then he had finally calmed down and understood the value of a longer and bigger saving. On his secret account, there had to be enough money to go live in another country, to buy a house by the sea, and to eat in luxurious restaurants for more than a year, once a day. He didn't touch it.

He kept the money, imagined, and thought about clouds.

x

It wasn't because of the warehouse cameras he had been busted. It was Hong Dae Ju's men, who were watching the building from a distance, who had seen him go in and out. He had made a beginner's mistake on this one, and totally unforgivable after years of practice, but in his (meager) defense, he was then all at his painting, his mind fixed on the drawing of Woon's profile, on the shape he was going to give him despite the ideas that sprang up daily and sometimes haunted him, seemingly harmless under their black lines, but which knew how to hang on, how to persist, whose borders were sewn with hooks that were stuck in the slightest of his reflections.

Moreover, he was usually not obliged to take such precautions to carry out his small business. There had indeed been one or two times when he had had to lay the groundwork before showing up on the territory of another mafia leader, checking the camera networks and possibly the potential visits planned on the places he chosed, but he usually traced his paintings in neutral locations, whose explosion wasn't likely to trigger a gang war.

And even when he had eventually decided to blow up the property of a South Korean mafia baron, none of these places had been subject to surveillance as thorough as that of the warehouse, which had allowed him to erase the traces of his passage and to preserve himself, as well as Woon additionally, since the latter always ended up visiting the place after Dong Soo had sent the coordinates. The locations he favored for his paintings were deserted for a good reason. He felt stupid, now, on the floor of this gloomy parking lot, surrounded by two of Hong Dae Ju's henchmen, not to have thought that the latter could have had the same thinking process in order to protect his treasures.

His whole day seemed to be spent in parking lots only, which wasn't particularly pleasant. After his little escapade to the warehouse the day before, Hong Dae Ju's guys had bumped into him in the NIS parking lot as he was walking to his car and waiting, almost anxiously, for Woon's answer about the painting. He hadn't even had the time to say something : the five of them had came, had tried to convince him first with a good beating up by the book and then, encountering resistance from the target, who hadn't been through a training in martial arts for nothing, let alone the fact that it was practically indispensable to the forces of law and order curriculum, ended up resorting to the old infallible Magnum argument.

Dong Soo, who had just finished his service, had left his gun wisely in his locker, as the rule stipulated so, and he had found himself being aimed at by one of the guys he had thought he had knocked out, but who had in fact been lucid enough to retrieve his gun, leading to an imitation movement on the part of his colleagues. If negotiation was possible with a knife or with bare hands, it became tragically obsolete as soon as it involved bullets.

He had submitted, not without visible annoyance, which had earned him a punch from the leader of the gang, who happened to be none other than Hong Dae Ju's son, Hong Sa-hye, an awful caricature of a rich kid whose face expressed discontent all the time, and who then had personally taken charge of his interrogation with a sadistic jubilation whose origin was obviously genetic.

He would have lied if he had said that he somehow liked the offspring of the politician on the surface. It was much more accurate to say that Dong Soo hated him with frank stubbornness, even without the countless blows he had given him on the chair in the cell where he had been dragged after his capture, and a short ride in the sedan with tinted windows that he and Hong Dae Ju's employees used profusely.

They had handcuffed him immediately after his surrender, so much so that red marks were now printed on his wrists, and they had also seen fit to gag him just in case he had decided to scream in the car. All the vehicles owned by the vice minister of Defense were soundproofed, but one of the main principles in both politics and the underworld was not to take any risks.

Once they had entered the parking lot of the Yanoi Tower, they had led him to the elevator, holding him as if he had been going to melt, which had almost pushed him to make a very bad joke, and had taken him up to the top floors, where Dong Soo now assumed that Hong Dae Ju had a whole bunch of little cells like the one he had had him locked up in. He had also come to see him before the beginning of the interrogation, for a courteous little one-to-one discussion, as Dong Soo already had lots of them with other leaders of his kind, but in his NIS uniform.

"Imagine how surprised I was," the politician had cooed, leaning towards him (Dong Soo had hesitated to hit him with a violent headbutt, and had calmed his ambitions by remembering that the maneuver had absolutely no interest in his situation). "When my men told me that they saw you coming out of the warehouse, I almost didn't believe them."

"Is that all the credit you give your guys?" He hadn't been able to help himself, replying in a mocking tone, even though he knew he was going to regret it (and perhaps precisely because he knew he was going to regret it). "Poor little things. I would be hurt, if I were one of them."

"That's it," Hong Dae Ju had mocked him, without letting go of his smile. "Try to play smart. We'll see how long the narcissistic sheen will last in this room."

"Oh, not long. It's so ugly I could cry. If your whole tower has the same decoration, no wonder your last coup d'etat failed so hard."

To be perfectly honest, it was primarily the politician's lack of foresight that had did him considerable harm, in addition to his fatal underestimation of the NIS forces and Woon's loyalty to Dong Soo, despite Heuksa Chorong and the Yungneung mission.

One of the guys (soldiers, darling, that's what we call them in the hierarchy, Woon had told him one day by phone, when they had called each other initially for a completely different reason, which probably had something to do with NIS, or hacking, or the mafia, or maybe just to check up on each other, Dong Soo didn't remember very well, and his concentration always had a few misfires whenever Woon decided to give him pet names), a soldier, had given him a punch on the jaw to reward his disrespect, but Hong Dae Ju had told him to relax.

"Come, come," he had said in a caressing tone, indicating with a gesture to his henchman to go easy on the correction. "Mr. Baek says what he thinks, we cannot reproach him that. I like honesty, you know ? It's a very rare quality in politics, but probably because it doesn't allow you to go very far. Your comrade Hong Guk Yeong learned it well. In your profession, of course, I understand the need for sincerity, and yet, as far as you are concerned, something escapes me."

Dong Soo had bitten his tongue so as not to make jokes (the situation ? ). Hard.

"Really?" He had articulated instead, jaw still stiff from the blow received.

"Yes," Hong Dae Ju had continued. "I guess no one knows about your little explosive painting activities, right ? At the NIS, I mean. And yet I see you sitting there in that chair telling me the truth about what you think of my interior design. You will understand my confusion. Especially since this kind of secrecy is rather badly perceived by South Korean intelligence, isn't it ? That's why you're hiding them, right?"

(and here we are)

The little game of the vice minister of Defense had ended without real surprise on a threat of blackmail, underpinned by the possession of a message which, if Dong Soo wasn't cooperative enough from his point of view, would be automatically transmitted to all the country's authorities and would reveal his identity as an artist and arsonist, but also that of Woon as the leader of a mafia group involved in the death of the president's son, behind the Sky Corporation.

After exposing the warning, with supporting evidence on the phones of all the guys in the cell, Hong Dae Ju had then moved on to questions about Dong Soo's links (especially the explosive kind) with the leader of Heuksa Chorong. He assumed, albeit with some legitimacy, that they had been working together for a long time, and that Dong Soo had been instructed by Woon to blow up specific places.

The politician also believed, again with good reason given the assassination attempt that Woon had carried out against him a dozen years earlier, that the latter had expressly ordered Dong Soo to blow up the warehouse in minders would punch or kick him when he was pulled out of his chair, probably to make sure he heard the questions better.

Hong Dae Ju stayed for maybe half an hour with them, at one point taking out his pocket knife, having fun making cuts, almost giving him in passing a glasgow smile after a pun Dong Soo hadn't managed to hold back (in stressful situations, it was a fact, his nerves plunged into the abyss of a distressing humor) and had finally left the room without the confession he had wanted, for the simple reason that his beliefs were completely wrong (at least about Woon and Dong Soo's collaboration regarding the warehouse), leaving his henchmen to proceed with the rest of the interrogation.

When they had taken him out to a meeting room on the same floor, Dong Soo had thought they were getting down to the nitty-gritty, with all the tools that the media so loved to talk about in grim reports of torture sessions, which however were a little less picturesque than the sessions practiced during the previous centuries. Today, there were drugs, and Dong Soo had been injected with a mixture that had fogged his mind to the point where he had been strictly unable to formulate even the slightest thought, but also a coherent response.

On second thought, which no one was asking him, the strategy was inherently counterproductive, since it was impossible to get a confession from someone in such a confused state, but he had feared that making that remark it out loud would get him a scathing response, such as "but you don't know anything about it anyway, dumbass", the kind of response given by guys who had thought about the method but not its effectiveness, let alone its logic. Hong Dae Ju's son was the one who had broken him a rib (or two), but his face had mainly borne the cost of the other soldiers's treatment, including one who wore a signet ring, and those things always hurt like hell when someone punched you in the face with it.

In the meeting room, where Hong Dae Ju and several of his other associates, probably those whom Woon called "lieutenants" and who held the highest positions in the Mafia hierarchy, were already sitting, he had been put on a chair that looked much more decent than that abominable catastrophy in the cell, and he had only begun to come to his senses when Woon's face had appeared before his own, with his hollow cheeks, his stern mouth with plumb lips, his beautiful eyes dark as storm clouds, always a little sad, and his ebony hair, the same color as the lines of his paintings, which curled elegantly at their ends. My cloud king, Dong Soo had thought with the same devotion that he had inspired in him years before, and which had never gone away, my shadow king.

He had seen Woon, had understood what was happening from his carefully controlled expression and the fire smoldering in the abyss of his eyes, and had smiled at him, hoping to be able to express his embarrassment at the thought of having caused him trouble.

x

Woon and his lieutenants showed up at the appointed time. Hong Dae Ju had gone down there with far too many men to make him look really confident about the outcome of the meeting, and he had brought Dong Soo, who was lying on the ground, sitting cross-legged, his hands handcuffed behind his back (his shoulders were starting to seriously hurt him), his face swelling at the speed of a supersonic train.

Woon's Genesis, which Dong Soo now knew to recognize after having seen it on a thousand security cameras, slowly entered the parking lot, with a deliberate caution, but also with a somewhat disconcerting tranquility, and vaguely offensive to Hong Dae Ju, whom it made look harmless and like someone so unimportant that there was no need to hurry to come and meet him. The vehicle came to a halt just in front of the small gathering of the vice minister of Defense, and a first man quickly got out of the vehicle to open the rear seat doors.

Supplely, Woon left the interior of the car and walked with a phlegmatic, even more disrespectful pace towards his opponent. He was visibly dressed according to his mood, all in black, from his long coat to his brogues, which, thanks to his well-cut pants, showed his milky ankles. His tight turtleneck sweater lengthened his slender neck, turning him into a dark, menacing swan of lethal elegance.

Dong Soo thought that he looked even thinner than the last time they had actually seen each other, and not through a screen or a phone, when Woon had wanted to dismantle Heuksa Chorong before realizing afterwards that it was much too deeply rooted in the South Korean ground, and that the best solution for all was for him to keep its control.

He had come to see Dong Soo at his appartmen one evening, without being accompanied by his men, to warn him of his decision ("I cannot come back, Dong Soo-yah, I'm very sorry"). Since then, Dong Soo was putting aside every pay he received for his hacker services, and repeated the scene in his at each payment on his account, seeing again Woon's eyes, vulnerable and powerful at the same time, which reigned over him, for whom he knew he could have done anything, including preparing a secret bank account to allow them to leave the country and live very, very far away, without anyone around to cause them problems, but also including burning down the city, the country, the world, if Woon asked him to do so (my king).

No, it wasn't excessive, he remembered having once told someone whose name and face he couldn't recollect. It was simply the basis of a very intense friendship.

Woon, according to what his valid, unswollen eye indicated to him, had respected Hong Dae Ju's instructions, which Dong Soo found to be both a good and a bad sign. A good one, because such a submission could imply that Woon had prepared something else, and if so, that they were both safe. He had already seen him extricate himself from some particularly delicate meetings, but the fact was that this one promised a degree of complexity never really faced by Heuksa Chorong before.

Ji-Seon was usually the one who had been kidnapped or threatened, as she had been three or four times, he had lost count since then, back when she still had that tattoo. Dong Soo had always been protected by the ignorance of Woon's enemies, both regarding the nature of their relationship and his illegal activities. For the other mafias, he was above all an NIS agent like any other, and he was one of the closest to the presidential family. Woon's obedience was also a bad sign since it also could indicate a certain desperation, linked to a lack of alternative solutions and possible retaliation.

Needless to say, Dong Soo was less enthusiastic about the latter perspective, and as he watched the chief of Heuksa Chorong approach, hands in his coat pockets, looking somber, his mouth twisted into a faked smile, he began to look for elements, signs, which could have been evidence of a trap on Woon's part or of a possible defense.

Two men accompanied Woon, as requested by Hong Dae Ju, and Dong Soo quickly identified them for having already crossed paths with them. He had met the former on numerous occasions during the confrontations between the NIS and Heuksa Chorong, especially since Woon had been in charge of the leadership.

As for the second, Jang Tae San, he remembered him for the role he had played in the assassination attempt on Cho-Rip, but also for almost confronting him during a cover-up in a Seoul hole in the wall, whose basement was reserved for clandestine fighting punctuated by illegal and rigged bets, and where Woon, who had come one evening with Hong Dae Ju, who had a financial interest in the case, had demanded from his lieutenant, then still unofficial, that he register to get an idea of how the establishment functioned, and what the vice minister of Defense could gain from it.

The man, presented as a bounty hunter, had nonetheless appeared to be almost respectable to Dong Soo, insofar as such a qualifier could be used to describe the individuals who made up the underworld, and if it hadn't been for the intervention of a yakuza that Hong Dae Ju was receiving at the time to win the friendship of the Japanese mafia, he was almost certain that his fight with Jang Tae San would have ended in a better way than the other, during which he had earned a shoulder wound that had taken several weeks to heal.

"Hong Dae Ju wanted to use it to blackmail me," Woon had confessed to him when they had spoken on the phone, more than a year after the abortive coup of the other mafia leader. "He knew that my loyalty wasn't secure, so he arranged to force it."

"Like with Ji-Seon?"

He had waited for a moment, suspended at the end of the phone, listening to Woon's breath bounce against the handset, hesitating.

"Yes," he had finally answered slowly, and his voice had wavered (like at the rave party). "Yes, like with Ji-Seon."

Since the tattoo on her back had dissolved in a tide of acid, inflicting excruciating pain that had left her unconscious for a full day, which Dong Soo had spent by her hospital bed, Ji Seon had firmly rejected her political liabilities, closely linked to that of President Yeoning's son, and set up her own business in collaboration with Jin-Ju. They now ran a small interior design empire, which in ten years had become the new trend for all social classes, promoting local craftsmanship, and which had just opened a branch in China, where they had been dazzlingly successful.

We bought an apartment with a bay window so big that it feels like we're living in the sky," Jin-Ju had told him the last time he had gone to eat with her, scrolling through the pictures of her new home with Ji-Seon with an air of immense pride. Dong Soo had told her to be careful never to turn her back on the window, because it was the rule in poker. Jin-Ju, who had already heard the joke half a thousand times, had rolled her eyes, falsely exasperated. She had been more of a tomboy when she was younger, but while pants were still her preference, she now wore richly cut and unmistakably chic suits under Chesterfield coats, and had fingers full of sparkling rings.

Woon and his lieutenants stopped just in front of Hong Dae Ju and his henchmen, and Woon's eyes briefly fell on Dong Soo, quickly assessing his condition, the nature of his wounds, and his level of consciousness. Dong Soo knew this, because Woon always did so, as he had seen him act like that at the NIS when he was still an apprentice agent, and even before that at the orphanage, gauging situations calmly, promptly, and then calculating the best strategy to adopt.

In the context they were in, the choices were relatively limited and, above all, risky, but Dong Soo had lived and interacted with Woon enough to be able to guess certain choices and reflections, and when he looked up at him, meeting his eyes, he found something that reassured him, without being able to explain exactly how, but which reflected an unexpected control of the situation as well as suggestions that Dong Soo had learned to decipher from his first days with Woon, when they were twelve years old.

Hong Dae Ju stepped forward to meet Heuksa Chorong's titled Sky Lord, his own hands carelessly planted in the pockets of his suit pants, his big guys just behind him, lined up like toy soldiers, carrying guns and knives in their jacket lining, then gratified Woon with a bow too low not to be mocking.

"Right on time," he observed with appreciation.

"You know that I keep my promises," Woon replied dryly.

"As far as the schedules are concerned," the vice minister of Defense conceided him with a painfully fixed smile. "For the rest, I stand by my conclusions."

Woon said nothing, but his grin was almost as cold as that of his opponent. The latter, suddenly throwing himself backwards, resumed his talking after a short moment of heavy and disturbing silence.

"I suppose you would like to see the state of our bargaining chip?"

Dong Soo found the nickname somewhat misplaced, and frankly hurtful, but refrained from any comment that might have ruined the whole implementation of a possible rescue scheme. Woon made a face as well.

"Is that what he is now?"

"Like all hostages," Hong Dae Ju pleasantly pointed out to him. "What ? Did you think I was going to bring you here just to shoot you in the head and be done with it?"

Woon tilted his head to the side, with an admirably feigned expression of confusion (for those who didn't know him well) on his face.

"I must admit I've thought about it.

"My apologies for this disappointment," the other said, his smile widening and his courtesy increasing as the conversation was tipping in his favor. "But in the end, be assured that no, my plan was never to murder you cowardly in a parking lot. We are partners, after all. Almost friends, if I dare say so. What friend would dare to plot the death of another?"

The barb was obvious, vulgar, lacking in subtlety and elegance. Dong Soo had suspected that Hong Dae Ju was holding a stubborn grudge against Woon since the latter's attempted murder, but he hadn't expected it to come back to the forefront so early in the conversation, given how long the slightest exchange with the vice minister of Defense usually could last, both in public and underground affairs.

He had done so in the course of his trial following the failed coup d'état, diverting so much the attention from himself and drawing it on the culpability of his henchmen, that he had sent them to the slaughterhouse without batting an eyelash, while he was managing to tear himself away from the clutches of Justice, and to become almost the victim of a conspiracy, through a skillful manipulation of speeches and ideas.

Woon's two men were surrounding him, a few steps away, and seemed ready to act at the slightest sign of their leader. Their eyes turned almost nervously to him after Hong Dae Ju's remark, probably fearing what the reminder could trigger.

But Woon smiled softly and complacently, and nodded like a man who had lost the game and was willing to acknowledge the superiority of his opponent.

"You're right," he said pleasantly. "I would be interested to see the bargaining chip."

Hong Dae Ju willingly stepped aside, clearing the view of Dong Soo, of his shattered face, and of his ruined shirt.

"Hi, honey," he almost felt obliged to say while Woon was looking at him up and down, especially his handcuffed hands.

"You okay?" he asked him, his voice not betraying an ounce of emotion.

But his eyes fixed on Hong Dae Ju, like a torpedo launched at full speed on an enemy submarine, and Dong Soo almost felt sorry for the man.

"Oh, wonderful," he said ironically. "As you can see, I've made a lot of friends."

"I hope you will understand the necessities my men had to resort to to settle this matter," Hong Dae Ju intervened. "Your boyfriend can talk a lot, but only of unnecessary things, it was a bit frustrating, in the long run."

"He's not my boyfriend," Woon objected.

"He just called you 'honey'."

"He calls his computer the same way," Woon simply replied, shrugging his shoulders. "It doesn't mean he's dating it."

Hong Dae Ju's expression was worthy of the greatest national comedies.

"Interesting," he ended up saying, having found probably nothing else more eloquent.

He then placed himself in front of Dong Soo, signing the end of the examination, and the real beginning of the negotiations he was planning with the Mafia organization he had been working with more than a decade earlier, and which had betrayed him during the most ambitious and risky political movement of his career. Dong Soo had wondered, looking back during his interrogation, if Hong Dae Ju had not been jubilant when he had discovered him, because he could finally see a possibility of dragging Heuksa Chorong and his rebellious leader through the mud once and for all.

The man had always been more or less aware that Woon had remained attached to Dong Soo, more than to the NIS, because of their common adolescence and proximity of yesteryear, but it was likely that Woon's words had first led him to believe that all his attention had to be focused primarily on Ji-Seon, whose protection Woon had demanded on numerous occasions ("I should never have done that, I just put her in danger", he had admitted on the phone while Dong Soo was trying to proove him the opposite) and which seemed to be the key to an efficient blackmail in order to keep Heuksa Chorong under his control at the time when Woon was still a lieutenant, or "Human Lord", but also when Chun, the official leader, had disappeared in the wilderness, leaving the leadership to his heir.

Subsequently, however, when Woon had taken over the organization after the death of its previous leader, Hong Dae Ju's interest in his relationship with Dong Soo had increased, and he had to understand that he had played the wrong game in using Ji-Seon, and that there was perhaps more to be gained by using Dong Soo, who had otherwise been in his way to power so to speak since his birth.

"Well," he began. "I suggest we get to the heart of the matter, if you don't mind?"

Woon nodded his head, but he was visibly annoyed.

"First of all, I must warn you that the slightest sign of recalcitrance on your part will cost to your...friend, a small correction to encourage you to adopt a more flexible attitude towards the terms of our deal."

"Oh, seriously?" Dong Soo protested, but without thinking about it.

And immediately, he received a punch that stunned him for a few seconds and made him think of another situation, which had occurred eleven years earlier, in which In Dae Un, one of the leaders of Heuksa Chorong then in decline, had kidnapped Jin-Ju and her adoptive father, Hwang Jin-Gi, and beat them savagely before using them as bait to try to kill Dong Soo, whom he had targeted after the latter had partially paralyzed his only valid arm, making him unable to hold a weapon and perform his former duties as he wished, during an attack on Ji-Seon.

"Like that," Hong Dae Ju was visibly enjoying himself a lot. "A small preview. Don't worry, he's gotten used to it."

"Get to the point," Woon urged him curtly, and Dong Soo saw the anxiety on his face, in the pinch of his lips, the nervous movement of his fingers in his coat pockets.

Hong Dae Ju raised his hands in front of him as a sign of appeasement.

"With pleasure," he said. "I want Heuksa Chorong's complete submission, starting today and for the rest of my life, both as a partner and as a subordinate. I've seen enough of what you were capable of in the 2009 coup, and I think you are well aware about my mistrust in you. I want to have total control over your activities, over your movements, over your budget. I also demand that you hand over the presidency of the Sky Corporation to me. It's a compensation that seems to me perfectly natural, after two betrayals on your part, including an assassination attempt, don't you think?"

Woon remained silent. Hong Dae Ju concluded that he could continue without fear of protest.

"I also want a list of your staff, both public and mafia, and to have full control over recrutments and firing. You will owe me absolute obedience, and you will not be able to refuse the orders I give you. I also expect you to change your attitude and tone in my presence, and to behave in a manner more suited to your inexperience, your place and your youth. At the slightest opposition, at the slightest wrong word, I will spread the message to the media and the authorities, and Heuksa Chorong, as well as your friend, will be doomed, and the world will come after you, definitively preventing you from ever being able to live in peace one day. Have I made myself clear?"

"Perfectly," Woon articulated without showing how much of an calamity such a deal represented for his organization.

Hong Dae Ju's son looked like a kid discovering presents at the foot of the tree on Christmas Day. Dong Soo, in spite of his aversion towards the family, had to admit that they had played remarkably well so far, and that he and Woon were completely stuck, except for the glow he had seen in the first one's eyes a few moments before, which signaled another option, another possibility to the ultimatum presented to him by the vice minister of Defense.

"Wonderful," the latter said. "I'm delighted that we can finally get along. To be completely honest, and to make sure that everything is clear between us, I took the liberty of putting together a few contracts, which are in my office on the top floor. I would like to submit them to you, if you don't mind. In order to seal our agreement in due form."

We can see him coming, like an angry bull in a china shop, thought Dong Soo. Once the contracts would be signed, it was obvious that Hong Dae Ju would have almost total control over Heuksa Chorong, and that the Sky Lord would then be only an obstacle in his way, which he would have to get rid of as soon as possible to keep his newly acquired authority and power. He had indicated that he had no intention of killing Woon directly, but he was planning to do so, and you had to be dense as the day is long not to understand that it would take place in his office after the signing, as an ironic parallel to Woon's attempted assassination.

It seemed impossible to Dong Soo that Woon hadn't suspected at least partially of Hong Dae Ju's plans, but he nevertheless saw him obediently acquiescing to the latter's proposal. What are you thinking about ? he thought then, almost desperately. What are you up to, my love ? Tell me you're up to something. Hong Dae Ju didn't hide his joy at the total resignation of Heuksa Chorong's leader.

"Good!" he said in a triumphant tone. "In that case, let's go together to my office. Your men can't accompany you, however. You can see why. Precautionary measures."

"Of course."

"I'm just going to ask you before we go up," Hong Dae Ju warned him, to comply with the security protocol. "It's not a big deal. My men will just search you to make sure you're not carrying anything dangerous on you. I'm sure you understand. Would you raise your hands, please?"

Woon nodded in response, and signaled to his men to obey, raising his slender hands with their long pianist fingers up in the air. The sleeves of his coat and sweater came down on his wrist, and Dong Soo saw, reflected in the neon lights of the parking lot, the tattoo Woon wore on his wrist, the one with the milk-colored sea, the cloud above it, and the sun setting in the east, which he must have made after joining Heuksa Chorong in 2009, after the coup.

He had told him that the organization wasn't very focused on physical symbols or tattoos as opposed to yakuzas, which was probably due to his Chinese affiliation, and that except for the official tattoo on the back of his left collarbone, which had been done when he was twelve, and which was simply the name of Heuksa Chorong, no other was imposed, and members were free to make their own choices in this matter.

He had concealed his own, which wasn't so big, for years, covering it with medium sized bandages, saying that he had injured himself there as a younger boy, but also avoiding as much as possible to undress himself, which nobody had found shocking given his reserved temperament. Dong Soo had once seen the tattoo when they were living together, and hadn't asked him any questions, because he didn't know at the time, and had thought it was none of his business. But seeing it had been very far from having awakened the same turmoil as the one on Woon's wrist did.

"I got a tattoo," he had told him three days after the coup. "On my wrist. A white sea, with a cloud floating above, and a sun setting in the east."

And I called my secret network the Nephelae in homage to the nymphs of the clouds, for you, Dong Soo had almost answered him. The skin of the wrist was the thinnest, the most sensitive, the most fragile. The left wrist was that of the wedding hand. Hong Dae Ju's men were approaching, still armed. Woon met his eyes.

Dong Soo understood in a split second.


« Before I love you

I'm gonna leave you

Before I'm someone you leave behind

I break your heart so you don't break mine

Before I love you

I'm gonna leave you

Even if I'm not here to stay

I still want your heart, your heart for takeaway »

( The Chainsmokers, « Takeaway » )


Woon's eyes were saying two things, which Dong Soo managed to isolate during the very short time it took for Hong Dae Ju's henchmen to join them and start the search. The first was "be ready". He had already seen it hundreds of times since they knew each other, and knew exactly what to expect : in other words, it usually meant that Woon was going to try something dangerous, about which he wasn't completely sure, and for which he couldn't exactly determine the percentage of success.

The last time Dong Soo had seen this look, he and Woon were jointly repelling the soldiers of the vice minister of Defense, inside the Blue House compound, disturbing the calm and harmony of the ancestral hanoks erected between the Bukhansan, Namsan and Naksan mountains, and the perfect regularity of the presidential lawn by shooting and blood splashes.

Until then, Dong Soo had only set foot in the presidential residence to meet the president and his grandson, Lee San, in private encounters or with other NIS agents. There had been only two exceptions. The first was the Yungneung mission. The three of them, he, Woon and Cho-Rip, who had already been spotted by the president's son because of his academic career, had been brought in to be informed on the mission and to select a lure among them in case an attack was to occur. They were then among the most promising future agents, and Cho-Rip had expressed such well-argued and documented support for Jangheon's campainh that the latter had specifically requested for him to be included in the mission.

Two cars were thus to leave the Blue House : the first had been planned to transport the bait and to focus the attention of the opponents to Jangheon, while the second was the one with which the real son of the president would be taken to another airport than the one traditionally favoured for government travel. At first, Dong Soo had offered himself as a lure, which moreover had provoked a lively argument between him and Woon, whose real reason he had understood only after Jangheon's assassination (you could get killed, Woon had protested in a dry, guilt-ridden tone, to which Dong Soo had replied that it was his duty, and they hadn't spoken to each other for three hours after that, brooding each on their own as they were used to doing).

In the end, Cho-Rip was given the role, as he had discreetly negotiated with the president's son's advisers in order to preserve his comrade. After learning it, when it was already too late, Dong Soo, furious, had caused a scandal in one of the corridors of the Blue House. Woon had said nothing. Cho-Rip could very well take care of it, he had affirmed a few hours before, shocking Dong Soo by his selfishness and his cold calculation of the alleged level of importance of their three existences, whereas the latter had previously applied the same strategy to make his candidacy accepted.

Perhaps it was the reason why Dong Soo had resented him so much during the first months after his betrayal. Because Woon knew, and he had tried to protect him only, while sending Cho-Rip to get killed without too much remorse. Maybe that was also why Dong Soo had wanted so much for him to come back to him, extracting from the deepth of this protection the implicit, the unsaid, the flattery, the happiness of the importance and love Woon felt only for him, and no one else.

The second thing he read in Woon's eyes was of a familiar, violent, ruthless sweetness. They were saying "be careful," almost begged him. He had seen it too, one day when, as they were twenty years old, and, having been sent in training under the direction of an old retired NIS agent, or rather fired for disrespect, Dong Soo had jumped off a cliff directly into a stretch of river in order to go and transmit an emergency message from a small radio station isolated in the mountains, one very difficult to access to ("it's a shortcut, Woon-ah, I swear ! " he had defended himself once soaked and hilarious, looking at Woon's face above him).

Years later, in the parking lot of the Yanoi Tower, Woon's gaze turned sharply to one of the huge spherical pillars that supported the ceiling of the parking lot, the closest in this case to Dong Soo, indicating a possible shelter, an opportunity to be seized at the right moment. The tension that was already reigning since the beginning of the meeting between the two mafia bosses was now looking like quicksand, like a muddy and impassable path, where no sensible individual would have bothered to engage. Dong Soo, waiting, tensing up from second to second, his body prey to the adrenaline rush that characterized each risky situation, each perilous movement.

His probable broken rib was hurting him, his brain was still suffering the nebulous effects of the drug, and he was having trouble breathing thanks to Hong Dae Ju's beefcake cares, but he tried to gather his spirits, and looked attentively as one of the men stopped in front of Woon, stretched out his hands and began to search his sleeves, the barrel of his weapon pointed at Woon's temple, his two comrades doing the same with his lieutenants. The search was always the classic mistake, the perfect opportunity. Dong Soo stopped breathing.

Woon's eyes, on him, suddenly fell on the man who was searching him.

(now)

Woon suddenly bent down like a cobra before biting, escaping his opponent's grasp, raising his arm and hitting the man's neck. Dong Soo heard the gunshot, and while gratifying one of his guard dog with a trip, frighteningly simple but always so effective in spite of the seniority of the technique when one knew how to make good use of it, which revived the pain in his ribs as a bonus, then taking advantage of the general chaos and the attention of all Hong Dae Ju's men pointing at Woon and his lieutenants, pushed himself, or rather slid as fast as possible in the direction of the pillar suggested to him a moment earlier by Heuksa Chorong's chief.

His hands were tied, his sense of balance was impaired, and his vision was damaged by the punches he had received, and bullets grazed him during his short trip, but none hit him seriously, and he soon had his back against the cold, blue, screaming surface of the pillar, its thickness momentarily protecting him from adverse attacks. All he could hear were the shots, the bullets going into the walls, into the ground. Before disappearing behind his shelter, he had had time to see Woon who had managed to seize his opponent's weapon, and the paralysis of the latter, caused by the needle that Woon had stuck in his neck.

He must have had one between his fingers, that's why he didn't spread them while raising his hands, Dong Soo thought stupidly as he remembered the scene and admired the trick. Woon had always had a special fondness for needles, and for the wonders they could do when placed correctly. Later, Dong Soo had also studied them under the guidance of a former NIS agent, Kim Gwang Taek, to perfect his training. My Cloud King and his metal lightning bolts, he thought affectionately, praying to the sky to be left alone behind his pillar.

He looked briefly how things were going. The guy who had wanted to search Woon was dead, probably riddled with bullets from his colleagues in their immediate retaliation for having served as a shield for the Heuksa Chorong chief. Those who had tried to deal with the two lieutenants were also lying on the ground without their weapons.

Hong Dae Ju's men had already suffered losses, and the remaining men had scattered in the parking lot, their guns brandished in front of them, shooting on sight, while the vice minister of Defense had also taken refuge behind a pillar. The anarchy was formidable, the deregulation absolute. Dong Soo had already experienced similar situations, but never a real confrontation between two mafia gangs, and even less so close.

"You've made a mistake, Sky Lord!" he heard Hong Dae Ju shout. "A terrible mistake!"

A bullet was sent as a scathing answer. Dong Soo looked for Woon, didn't see him, forced himself not to imagine him, lying on the ground, his beautiful face pierced with a bloody hole, but felt a shiver of blind anguish running through him. He spotted one of his lieutenants, Jang Tae San, but he was too busy hiding behind a car to pay attention to him.

He didn't find the second one, but was only moderately worried about his fate. He knew from Woon's confirmation that the men and women of his organization were undergoing a tough, military, severe and demanding training, that had proved its excellence more than once during other confrontations with opposing mafias and the South Korean law enforcement agencies.

His little haven of peace behind the parking pillar had never been destined to last, and he suddenly found himself face to face with one of Hong Dae Ju's henchmen, or more exactly with the barrel of his very pretty Desert Eagle, which Dong Soo remembered was no less than the most powerful gun on the market, with a detonation that promised to blow his brains out in a quite remarkable way (shit).

He stood still, looking for a way out (Woon), his thoughts following one another at full speed and in vain when he understood that unless a miracle occurred, it was strictly impossible to get out of it alive or totally unharmed, but above all alive. For a moment, the least of his thoughts rushed towards Woon, hung on to him, and there was no scrolling of all his childhood memories, no long corridor with all his life experiences to come and bring him comfort, but just Woon, and his black eyes, and the image that Dong Soo had always kept of him since it had imposed itself on him, which had become embedded in his nerves and bones on the night of their eighteen-year old rave party, of the (pole dance bar), of his smile at that time, of the power he had displayed (ravage me), of his body on his bed, arched, royal.

The barrel of the gun was a black hole, bottomless, soulless, imperative, and Dong Soo looked inside counting (one two three), while the guy's finger pressed the trigger a little more, he didn't see it very well to be totally honest, but when he reached five, another shot rang out, and Dong Soo noticed that it hadn't been directed at him, but at the man who was threatening him.

The guy, with the gun still in his hand, his index finger clenched on the trigger, but fortunately not enough to trigger the detonation mechanism, collapsed to the ground, his eyes still wide open, and the clear, bloody trace of a bullet on the side of his head.

Dong Soo turned his head, following the direction from which providence had come. It appeared before him in the guise of a man impeccably dressed, in a suit and tie, his hands clasped around what he recognized as a good old Beretta 92, and followed by several other heavily armed companions.

"Nice shot," Dong Soo said, also because it was true.

He didn't know the identity of the man who had just saved his life, but thought it wise to classify him as a "one of Woon's henchman", otherwise the result of his shot would probably have been very different. The other simply shrugged his shoulders, without taking a look at him, too absorbed by his surveillance of the surroundings and the shooting that rained down all around.

A woman, with long black hair carefully tied in a ponytail, knelt down beside him and ordered him to turn around, so that she could help him get rid of the handcuffs.

"And Woon?" he asked, expressing his concerns from the beginning of the fight.

"Is doing perfectly fine," the woman answered, before handing him a Glock whose marvelous heaviness signaled it was loaded. "He has just told us to look after you. He should join us soon."

"Does he need help?"

She stared at him as if he had insulted her whole family and Woon's as well.

"Not at all," she said afterwards. "Anyway, the boss told us that you should stay safe, not play superman."

"And if I refuse?"

"Well, my gun's loaded," she told to him, with a smirk that reminded him of Woon's smile at times. "And the bullets in the knee, I'm told, hurt a lot."

"Right, I get it."

So they stayed together, Dong Soo surrounded by five bodyguards all wearing Heuksa Chorong's tattoo, shooting at Hong Dae Ju's men, and who were trying really hard not to let him take the slightest risk. That's because Woon thinks you're made of glass, the voice from the closet deep inside him intervened, with its rocky, mocking tone. The closet voice was an old friend. Woon had the same one. And it had a monumentally catastrophic sense of humor.

The shooting kept going on during as least five minutes, during which other members of Heuksa Chorong entered the parking lot. The woman had explained to Dong Soo that Woon had warned his network of hackers before leaving, and that they had friendly ("for old times' sake and for friends," the woman said, mimicking quotation marks with her fingers) interrupted the surveillance camera system, but also the communication system, to allow them to sneak three more cars, loaded with weapons and reinforcements, into the second level of the Yanoi Tower parking lot while their leader was diverting and dealing with Hong Dae Ju on the first level.

They hadn't encountered any particular difficulty in neutralizing the parking control officers, and then went back up as soon as they heard the first shots, a sign that the altercation had started.

"And the rest, you know about it," the woman, named Kim Yihwa, ended while coldy shooting down one of Hong Dae Ju's men who had found it clever to attempt a breakthrough.

"And then what?" Dong Soo asked her. "Do we kill everyone and go home?"

(Hong Dae Ju's message)

"No," she replied, changing the magazine of her gun for a full one with a graceful and precise gesture. "The boss thought this could be an opportunity to settle our score with Hong Dae Ju. He wants to take advantage of it to kill him. That's why we came in such numbers."

"What, here, now, right now?"

"Why not ? He's on his territory with a nine-millimeter caliber, so we might as well make the most of it."

"This is a bad idea."

They had advanced behind another pillar and were trying to attack a group of three men hiding behind a bugatti, whose body had been pierced by stray bullets.

"Why?" The woman asked. "Do you like being kidnapped and beaten up ? It's your hobby?"

"No. But if Woon kills Hong Dae Ju now, he will just make him look like the victim of a conspiracy. He's too well positioned in the government for people to see his death as anything other than an assassination."

"Maybe because it will be an assassination," Yihwa reminded him, annoyed.

"Yes, I know, but no, not like that," Dong Soo resumed, more awkwardly than he had wanted to. "It will serve Hong Dae Ju more than anything else, and put Woon in danger, and all of you too. All of Hong Dae Ju's actions in the Mafia will be easily evaded this way. I say, be more vicious. He tried to blackmail us with information, and we should do the same."

There were two guys left behind the car. They could see the arm of the third one, hit by the shot of one of Woon's men.

" 'We' ? You're part of Heuksa Chorong now?"

"If it involves taking down Hong Dae Ju, I'll part of whatever the fuck you want."

Yihwa stared at him, and Dong Soo felt like he was the most insulting thing she had ever encountered in her life.

Dong Soo was about to resume his argument when Woon appeared to the right, accompanied by Jang Tae San and his other lieutenant, making him momentarily lose the thread of his speech and, more broadly, of his reflections. The two men looked down when they saw Dong Soo, because they knew that Woon had informed him of their responsibility in Cho-Rip's attack ten years earlier.

Woon, for his part, looked radiant despite the traces of blood that had splashed on his face, and admirably disheveled. His gun was like an extension of his arm. He saw Dong Soo, and smiled at him. Dong Soo was unable to respond other than in the same way.

"Does it hurt really bad?" He inquired about his wounds as he reached his height, exhaling of battle, of lead and blood, wildly beautiful, brutal and powerful.

In those moments, Dong Soo was always caught in a kind of unreasonable urge to ask him to marry him, which made absolutely no sense at all, unless admiration and devotion were legitimate enough feelings to formulate such a proposal in a totally haphazard way (they are, the voice from the closet assured him, and one of these days you really should ask him, otherwise it's going to get boring).

"No more than before," he replied instead. "I may have a broken rib, but otherwise, I'm okay, it's just routine. You?"

"Not a scratch," he said triumphantly. "Hong Dae Ju's guys are novices, I don't know where he recruited them, but it's ridiculous. Most of them are already dead, and the rest are protecting their leader."

"In his defense, you're more numerous."

"Only in the parking lot," Woon remarked, kneeling beside him and forcing him to lift his chin, frowning at the extent of the damage. "Oh, my poor love, they really hurt you, I'm so sorry."

By the way, the pet names also didn't really help to temporize his desire for marriage.

"It's my fault," Dong Soo replied. "I blew up the warehouse. I should have been more careful."

"Did you bury the dynamite all around?"

"Yes, in plastic bags, as usual, everytime I took a break from painting. It still amazes me that they didn't think to dig to check."

"They were watching you from afar, and there were no cameras outside. And then you had covered everything with the cans and these boards. Personally, if I didn't know you, I wouldn't have suspected anything."

Dong Soo nodded, granting him the argument. Woon put an arm around his waist to support him in case his ribs had actually sustained the damage he suspected, letting him wrap his own arm around his gnarled shoulders, and his whole body was cold and tense, vibrating with violence and tension. Dong Soo was always a little moved when the slightest touch reminded him of their height difference, for Woon, taller than him at twelve years old, had ended up losing his advantage over the years and as Dong Soo was reaching six foot, while he stagnated five centimeters lower.

On the other hand, the change in size hadn't in the least affected his superiority in combat, which remained undeniable and unchanged even after twenty-three years.

"Are you going to kill Hong Dae Ju?" Dong Soo asked him the moment Woon was pressed against him.

"It's part of the program," the head of Heuksa Chorong calmly confirmed. "He went back up to his tower, I'll go with Tae San, Joo Bong and the other soldiers. I wish you could come, but in your condition, it's not reasonable. Yihwa and the others will take you to the hospital. I'll come and see you later."

Dong Soo forced him to slow down, as Woon was dragging him towards the Genesis, surrounded by his subordinates who threatened every nook and cranny of the parking lot with their weapons.

"Woon-ah, darling, listen to me for five minutes," he articulated with a grimace as he felt Woon's hand pressing against a rib. "This isn't a good idea. Not at all. If you go at it head-on, you might get killed, you don't know how many guys are in there. And then, no, let me finish," he gently urged him as Woon was opening his mouth to defend his decision, "if you ever succeed, and you kill Hong Dae Ju, you'll just make him look like a martyr. In the eyes of the public and the government, and given the lack of evidence for his involvement in the coup, he's clean."

Woon's expression lost its softness.

"It's my only chance, Dong Soo-yah," he remarked a little curtly.

"I know, sweetheart, I know," he temporized (one day you should also seriously discuss this pet names thing, because this is becoming ridiculous). "But if you do that, you're going to become the number one public enemy. Hong Dae Ju still has the message, and in my opinion, now that you've cornered him, he sent it. If I were him, that's what I would do. Everyone knows about you, about me, about Heuksa Chorong and the Sky Corporation. You're going to be hunted down even more than the Holy Grail."

"All the more reason to get rid of Hong Dae Ju."

"No," Dong Soo replied, shaking his head as Woon helped him lean against the car door. "Because you're just going to give him what he wants. I don't think he cares if you kill him. He just wants to make sure you pay for what you did to him on the day of the coup."

Woon then looked at him attentively, and Dong Soo realized that, for once, the roles were reversed between them. Usually, it was him who would foolishly run into the pile without thinking, and Woon who was more measured in his actions.

But in recent years, and the events that had punctuated them, had tended to cause a shift in trends and patterns, to the point where, to compensate for the other's absence, they had developed traits and behaviors that were opposite to their own temperaments.

"What do you suggest ?" he asked him after a moment of silence.

Dong Soo straightened up, albeit with a bit of pain, as his side was hurting, against the door of the Genesis.

"Tell your men to just go and make a little trouble on the ground floor, no more. Tell them to find a single employee, and ask him for the tower's Wifi password. Check with him."

"Why ? They cut you off?"

"Very funny," Dong Soo sighed. "No, it's just to let others in."

"What others?"

"Mine. The hackers. If we have the Wifi code that is necessarily common to all the devices in the tower, we'll be able to access practically all the files, and we will be able to hack remotely to get the rest."

"And then?"

"And then, Woon-ah, love of my life, it means we'll be able to see everything Hong Dae Ju is secretly up to, under his mask of a nice vice minister of defense. And get it all back. And send it all in an anonymous email to whoever we want."

Woon's lips then formed a smile.

"You want to expose Hong Dae Ju," he understood. "And destroy his political career."

"If you and I are going to fall, we should at least take him with us," he simply remarked. "I don't see why it should always be the same people having fun."

Woon then grabbed his face in his cold hands and almost rose to tiptoe to kiss him firmly on the forehead.

"You're a genius," he murmured, his voice quivering with joy.

Oh, they were so far away from the Yungneung mission, from Woon's betrayal, the orphanage, the rave party of their eighteen and youth, but Dong Soo felt his cheeks burning at the contact of Woon's lips, just like when he was younger, and a dense, cuddly warmth languorously clutching his entrails, and saying "yours, yours, yours forever".

Woon gave the new instructions to his subordinates, and Dong Soo took the opportunity to borrow his phone and transmit his new request to the Nephelae, who were wide awake and visibly enthusiastic about the idea of contributing to the overthrow of a mafia organization disguised as a political enterprise.

They even asked about him, which touched him a little, before promising to keep him informed of their progress and future discoveries in Hong Dae Ju's computer files. Then, once his briefing was over, Woon turned to him again.

"I'm going back to the tower," he said. "You go to the hospital."

His tone was irrevocable. Naturally, Dong Soo protested.

"Bad idea too. If Hong Dae Ju has already sent his message, the NIS is on its way. You should hide for now, lie low and wait and see how the situation goes."

At the same time, Jang Tae San came to stand in front of his chief, looking gloomy.

"Boss, Baek Myun just told me that the tower was overrun," he said.

"By whom?" Woon pressed him, inexpressive, as if the news had been banal and long expected.

"The NIS?" Dong Soo suggested.

Jang Tae San shook his head.

"Men from Hong Dae Ju."

Dong Soo saw the irritation appear very clearly on Woon's face.

"How much?"

"A lot. Much more than we are here."

Woon didn't answer, but Dong Soo almost heard him curse in his head.

"Could he have known that you were planning to come here with reinforcements?" he asked him.

"Perhaps. I don't know. He may have foreseen the possibility, if that's what you want to know."

"That's what I want to know. Don't look any further. He must have sent some men to the tower, and he was going to use them after making you sign those damn contracts. But when things didn't go as planned, he took the lead, thinking that if you decided not to cooperate, he could always take advantage of the situation to get in your way."

Woon's men looked at him patienly, waiting for orders from their leader, indications on how to proceed, a plan of attack.

"I have to go back to the tower," Woon concluded, and his voice had become tired, sluggish, like the mornings he had just woken up and had not yet fully emerged from his night's sleep.

"No," Dong Soo intervened. "Too dangerous. I told you the NIS would surely come. You're going to be overwhelmed, and arrested, with a bit of bad luck."

"What, then?" Woon hissed, looking at him with a polar, aggressive look. "Do you want me to tell them to run away?"

"Exactly. It's the best thing to do for now. Hide, lay low, let the hackers do their thing. He played well, Woon-ah, but not that well. Don't put yourself in danger when we can take him down another way."

Woon was visibly hesitant, torn by his need to go and defend his territory and probably by his survival instinct. Dong Soo held his gaze (please), defying him without malice to find a better defense, a miracle parry in the second, which could have preserved Heuksa Chorong from the raid to which she was subjected by the men of Hong Dae Ju but also the authorities of the country.

Finally, his shoulders loosened, imperceptibly, and he agreed with Dong Soo.

"All right," he said. "We're hiding."

"Boss," Jang Tae San called at the same time. "They also broke into your penthouse."


Indications :

- And so what, my dear ? Frankly, I don't give a damn = this is an obvious one, but one of the most famous lines of the "Gone With the Wind" movie.

- Chaos Computer Club, Anonymous = two of the biggest hackers associations

- Black hat, white hat, grey hat, hacktivistes = hackers "types" according to the nature their activities.

- Sniffing, "man in the middle" = to be short, hacking strategies.

- Brogues and Richelieu = just specific types of shoes.