Chapter 228: Mortal Enemy’s Invitation (4)
It was almost midnight when Ahn Su-Jin finally got up from her seat at the office. A tsunami of fatigue swept over her.
“Urgh... My shoulders are killing me.”
Not only her shoulders, but her neck, limbs, back and everywhere else on her body was aching.
‘I would’ve bought a massage chair if I had enough room in my apartment.’
Su-Jin swallowed her disappointment and took off her slippers to put her shoes back on.
“I should call a taxi since it’s late.”
Su-Jin walked up to the side of the road as soon as she exited the office building. There just happened to be a free taxi stopped in front of a red light one block away.
‘Oh, lucky me.’
She had not expected to find a taxi so quickly. She raised her arm to signal to the taxi. The male taxi driver in sunglasses stopped near Su-Jin.
“Where would you like to go?”
Su-Jin placed her handbag on her lap and answered, “In-Seong High school, please. The front gate, not the back one.”
“Understood.”
The taxi departed as soon as the traffic light turned green. It took around ten minutes for Su-Jin to feel that something was off.
“Um, sir? I think you’re going the opposite way.”
They should be going down Olympic-daero[1], but the taxi driver was driving somewhere else entirely. Su-Jin felt uneasy. She finally began to notice suspicious aspects about the taxi; the man was acting far too awkwardly for a taxi driver, and neither the taximeter nor GPS was on.
Su-Jin was struck with fear, but she purposefully did not show it because she knew that she would be giving the other party the upper hand the moment that she showed fear.
“Who are you?” she asked.
She could see the man’s sharp gaze through his sunglasses. He smiled wickedly.
“There’s someone who’d like to meet you.”
“I don’t know what sort of invitation this is, but I have no intention of accepting it.”
“I’m sure you understand that you have no right to refuse.”
“...”
Su-Jin tried to escape out the car door as soon as the car was stopped by a red light, but the man was not that careless. The closed door did not open. Su-Jin swallowed her saliva.
‘I thought I could finally go home after working overtime... I can’t believe I’m being kidnapped.’
She felt like she was being dragged into a tiger’s den.
***
Ra-Eun had been given a report by So Ha-Jin that Reporter Ahn Su-Jin had been kidnapped by a suspicious man. She was obviously not pleased. She was waiting in her office for someone with one leg over the other. Ha-Jin’s eyes reacted first to the sound of the office door opening.
Park Seol-Hun, Ma Yeong-Jun and his subordinates cautiously entered. Ra-Eun stared daggers at Yeong-Jun and his men. Their shoulders flinched repeatedly. She looked far more frail than any of them, but her glare was overpowering. It felt like the eyes of an apex predator staring down its prey.
“What the hell were you all doing while Reporter Ahn was getting kidnapped?”
“...”
“...”
“...”
None of them were able to speak up. Ra-Eun pointed at Yeong-Jun.
“Tell me, mister.”
Yeong-Jun nodded with difficulty and forced his mouth to open. “I thought she was getting on a taxi to go home like always, but... I never thought the taxi itself would be the method of kidnapping.”
“In other words, you were sloppy.”
“...”
Yeong-Jun couldn’t refute Ra-Eun’s words since they were true. Su-Jin was someone who would become... No, it was safe to say that she had already become a key individual to Ra-Eun’s plan. To Ra-Eun, Su-Jin was a gun that could fire ammo that was information that could be used against Kim Han-Gyo. But if Ra-Eun were to lose Su-Jin...
‘I’ll have to find another reporter.’
If that happened, it would throw a wrench in her plans.
Ra-Eun said to Yeong-Jun while boiling with rage, “Drop down.”
Yeong-Jun unhesitatingly assumed a downward stretch position with just his head and toes supporting his body[2].
Ra-Eun asked the men blankly standing behind Yeong-Jun, “What’s taking you so long?”
“A-Apologies, ma’am!”
Ra-Eun was not an angel; she was a demon. Every single one of Yeong-Jun’s subordinates in the room assumed the same position.
“At one, you’ll say ‘Get your shit’. At two, you’ll say ‘Together’. One!”
“Get your shit!”
“Two!”
“Together!”
“One!”
“Get your shittt!!!”
“Two!”
“Togetherrr!!!”
The Levanche employees glanced at Ra-Eun’s office, wondering what was going on inside. Seol-Hun stood there awkwardly and also tried to get into the same position.
But then, Ra-Eun asked, “What are you doing, mister?”
“W-Wasn’t I supposed to do it too?”
“You can if you want.”
“...”
There was no way he wanted to. He stood back up while laughing awkwardly.
Ra-Eun sighed and said to Yeong-Jun and his men, “Get up.”
“Yes, ma’am!”
Punishing them wouldn’t change the fact that Su-Jin had been kidnapped. The tea had already been spilled, so they needed to figure out how to clean it up.
“Mr. Ma. Do you know where Reporter Ahn had been kidnapped to?” Ra-Eun asked.
Yeong-Jun stiffly nodded.
“Where?”
“I heard she’s been taken to a certain construction site between Seoul and Dongtan,” Yeong-Jun answered.
“A construction site, huh...?”
Ra-Eun had a bad feeling. There was only one person who would be aiming for Su-Jin at this time.
‘It can only be Kim Han-Gyo.’
Han-Gyo’s greatest enemy at this time was not members of the opposing political party nor big names in the financial world, but the ‘masked woman’. He was likely thinking that it was Ahn Su-Jin, who had reported scoops regarding himself and his son Kim Chi-Yeol. From what Han-Gyo knew of the masked woman, she was young and possessed all kinds of information, and there was only one person that could fit the bill.
‘It can’t be anyone else but Reporter Ahn Su-Jin.’
Ra-Eun would have also thought the same if she had been put in Han-Gyo’s shoes.
“What should we do now?” Yeong-Jun asked.
However, he already had a rough idea of what Ra-Eun would say.
“What else? Tell everyone to grab their gear.”
She answered exactly how Yeong-Jun had expected her to. If her opponent used public opinion against her, so would she. And if they resorted to kidnapping and violence, she would also reply in kind.
“Oh, right,” Ra-Eun said. She had almost forgotten something. “Don’t forget about ‘those’. I think it’s the perfect time to give them a try.”
Yeong-Jun, Ha-Jin and Seol-Hun nodded simultaneously.
***
Ahn Su-Jin barely managed to open her eyes. She remembered up until being kidnapped by the man posing as a taxi driver. The taxi had kept driving further and further into a deserted territory, and then she had suddenly lost consciousness.
‘Did he use sleeping gas or something?’
It honestly did not matter what the man had used to force her to lose consciousness. The situation she was in right now was the real problem. She was by herself in a huge construction site while tied down to a chair.
‘This reminds me of when I had first met the masked woman.’
However, Su-Jin instinctively knew that the masked woman was unrelated to this kidnapping, since the masked woman no longer needed to use force to take her somewhere. Su-Jin was already willingly doing her bidding by reporting articles containing information given by her.
‘Which means I was kidnapped by someone other than the masked woman.’
Her hands were tied behind her back, so it was almost impossible to loosen the rope. She had been completely bound to the chair; it was safe to say that it was impossible for her to escape on her own. Su-Jin thought about who she could have possibly pissed off to be in this situation, and could only think of one person.
‘It can only be him.’
Just as she had come to a conclusion, her kidnappers began to appear at the construction site one by one. She could tell just from a glance that they couldn’t be further from honest people. Each of them had weapons like lumber and wooden bats in hand, likely to scare Su-Jin.
She unknowingly swallowed her saliva. She had faced countless dangerous situations in her career as a reporter, but she had never faced such a life-threatening situation other than her first encounter with the masked woman.
One of the men looked familiar. Su-Jin said to the man in sunglasses, “Is this really the front gate of In-Seong High School? I don’t think we’re in the right place.”
The man who had posed as the taxi driver chuckled in bafflement. “I don’t think you’ve fully realized the situation you’re in.”
He was about to approach Su-Jin with a knife, but she threatened them instead.
“You’d better let me go if you don’t want the public to find out that Congressman Kim Han-Gyo has you in his pockets.”
Su-Jin was trying to use the fact that they were being backed by Han-Gyo to make a deal with them, but her attempt had become meaningless as a man showed himself from among the gangsters.
“Do it. I don’t care.”
Han-Gyo made his appearance right in front of Su-Jin, which not even she had expected.
“I thought you’d be keeping yourself hidden behind them, but I guess not,” Su-Jin remarked mockingly.
However, Han-Gyo simply laughed in response. “Do you know why I showed myself to you? Because you won’t be getting out of here alive anyway.”
“...”
Su-Jin couldn’t help but be stricken with terror.
“Great job blackmailing me all this time, ‘masked woman’.”
“Me?”
Han-Gyo seemed to be certain that Su-Jin was the masked woman. She was flabbergasted.
“I think there’s been a misunderstanding. I have nothing to do with the masked wo—”
“I don’t have the time to humor your lies.”
The men began to approach Su-Jin once Han-Gyo raised his hand. Just as Su-Jin was in a crisis, the men froze once they noticed the moonlit shadow of a woman stretching over them.
“Were you looking for me, you sly snake?”
“...!”
Han-Gyo’s eyes popped out at the appearance of the masked woman that he had been desperately searching for.
“How...”
He had finally come to realize that Su-Jin was not the masked woman. However, it did not matter. Although it had not been intentional, he had successfully lured the masked woman here.
“Kill her.”
The men changed their target from Su-Jin to the masked woman.
Just then, the masked woman raised her hand and exclaimed, “Here come the secret royal inspectors[3]—!!!”
Men wearing the exact same white mask as Ra-Eun simultaneously showed themselves out of hiding. The unidentified gangsters instantly surrounded Han-Gyo and his gang.
Han-Gyo scowled. “You bitch... Just who the hell are you?”
Ra-Eun smiled, which Han-Gyo couldn’t see behind her mask, and answered, “Didn’t you hear me? We’re secret royal inspectors.”
1. This is the name of an eight-lane highway in Seoul. 👈
2. This is a disciplinary position commonly used in Korea. 👈
3. Secret royal inspectors were undercover officials back in the Joseon Dynasty, who were directly appointed by the king and sent to local provinces to monitor government officials and look after the populace while traveling incognito. The phrase that Ra-Eun used is one that a royal secret inspector says to reveal their identity after they discover corruption to bestow punishment on the official. 👈
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