Chapter 4. A Fortuitous Encounter in Beijing
The Chinese Public Security officers were terrifyingly effective.
The men realized they'd been caught, dropped their weapons, and raised their hands.
But there was no mercy.
The two officers swung their batons and mercilessly smashed them over the men's heads.
I'd heard those were wooden clubs reinforced with metal cores.
At the very least, those guys probably lost three years' worth of memories.
Hearing the Chinese men screaming, Kim Min-jun ran over.
When he saw them sprawled on the floor like fallen leaves, he covered his mouth in disbelief.
Since he hadn't actually seen what happened, he probably thought the police and I had each taken down a few of them ourselves.
In reality, it was less of a fight and more of a brutal suppression.
The officers radioed someone, searched the men's belongings, then spoke with Kim Min-jun.
It was a fairly long conversation.
Later, Kim Min-jun explained what they'd said.
"They said they need to investigate whether these guys are part of a professional kidnapping ring or just hired thugs. Apparently that chemical over there is called... Lupin? Some kind of anesthetic."
"Lupin? Like Arsène Lupin?"
I crouched down and examined the container.
There was nothing written on it.
Maybe it was what the Chinese called something like chloroform.
The kind of anesthetic you pressed over someone's mouth and knocked them out with in five minutes.
"These guys were seriously dangerous. Since I even called the police and saved you, you should at least buy me a cup of coffee."
The GIF incident had been successfully handled.
So, just like the Euljiro Fire Incident, it was time to look forward to some kind of fortuitous encounter.
"They said someone else reported it. They're going to investigate that person next."
"Someone else made the report?"
Hadn't the officers just happened to be patrolling nearby?
Come to think of it, I hadn't actually done anything to bring the police here.
The elevator had already been on the fifth floor from the beginning.
Even if I'd done nothing, those men would've been arrested eventually.
Had I simply arrived a few steps earlier and prevented Kim Min-jun from getting injured?
Just then, I received a message from Dae-hun.
[Did you meet the police? I was worried you'd go causing trouble alone and come back with a nail-gun wound like former CEO Oh Su, so I contacted the local police.]
So Dae-hun was the one who reported it.
I excused myself from Min-jun for a moment and continued texting him.
[How did you know where I was?]
[You said you could see the Forbidden City diagonally from the window at the end of the hotel hallway, right? Hotel hallways usually have rooms on both sides, so the Forbidden City had to be visible from the narrow end of the corridor. There aren't that many candidates. Most roads around there are laid out in grids, so there aren't many buildings positioned diagonally like that.]
[Oh...]
[And more importantly, the destination appears on the company-card taxi payment record. I immediately called the translator over there and asked her to report it.]
He'd listened like an idiot when I explained everything earlier, and now he was pretending to be clever.
So in the end, he found it through the taxi payment record.
I'd felt guilty about making the driver take me to two different destinations, so I'd paid him a generous amount with the company card.
That generosity had apparently saved both my skull and Kim Min-jun's.
This was why it always paid to have a good heart.
"We're both Koreans meeting in a foreign country, and we just went through something like this together. We can at least sit down and talk, can't we?"
Min-jun looked me up and down warily.
"I'm grateful you helped me, but I want to move somewhere else first. I don't know if more of those guys are coming."
So someone was after him.
Those men must have just been underlings.
If I followed him, I'd probably hear the full story.
We moved all the way to a countryside inn on the outskirts of Beijing.
Once he was out of the concrete jungle of downtown Beijing and somewhere with actual nature, Kim Min-jun seemed to finally relax.
He lay back on the bed.
"It feels kind of weird being alone in an inn room with another man. At least get off the bed."
"Ah, let me rest."
I'd even paid the taxi fare all the way here.
When exactly was I going to get the chance to brag about that?
"You might think I have some grudge against you, Min-jun, but I really don't. Company problems are company problems. You're you. From what I've seen, you don't seem like a bad person. Unless you've got some private-life scandal I don't know about?"
"What are you talking about?"
Only then did Min-jun turn his head toward me with interest.
I'd practically torn his company apart.
Did he seriously not know my face?
"You haven't asked my name even once. I'm Do Jun-hyeok from Universe."
"D-Do Jun-hyeok?! No wonder you looked familiar! What the hell do you want from me? Why did you follow me all the way here?!"
Min-jun shot upright, covered his body, and backed away.
"I told you, I don't have anything against you. I'll be satisfied as long as your CEO ends up in prison."
"R-Really?"
He seemed to be the type who became suspicious easily, then trusted people just as easily.
I hadn't lied about anything yet, so there wasn't an immediate problem.
Still, after spending years as a manager, I couldn't help thinking that he seemed exactly like the type who'd be easy to lure into a slave contract.
"Whew... I've watched some of your livestreams. Change your webcam. You look way better in person."
"Everyone says I look good on camera."
"I'm not exactly an actor who survives on his face either, but even I'd look like a squid in front of that camera. People are only saying that to be polite. Universe's webcam is absolute garbage."
It wasn't Universe's webcam.
It was Aran's personal laptop.
When filming Blue Moon, of course we used professional equipment.
But when I appeared on a livestream myself, I had no intention of wasting serious camera work on my face.
"Anyway... Is it true that you'll be satisfied as long as our CEO goes to prison?"
"It is."
"What if he doesn't go to prison this time? Do you have another way?"
I didn't know why he was asking, but there was no chance the CEO was escaping prison.
"Yes. I'll make absolutely sure he goes in. Anyway, what exactly happened with those men? I heard you have a shoot in Tongzhou soon. Aren't you going?"
I'd already guessed that some kind of lobbying advertisement was scheduled, but I decided to start with the basics.
"I'm not going. I'm human too. This is too much. Do you know how much I was looking forward to that Bohol vacation? I've worked like a dog for seven years, and this was the first real vacation I've ever gotten in my life. And even that..."
"You're saying they suddenly shoved another schedule onto you and you snapped? So you ran away without any plan?"
"What plan can I possibly have against a contract? And there's more... It's so humiliating I don't even want to say it."
I didn't need to hear it.
It was probably exactly what I expected.
Turb's CEO needed money to grease the right palms and get his drunk-driving case smoothed over.
Collecting money in Korea would be too obvious, so he was trying to route it through overseas payments.
What better way to launder money than to wash it across the ocean?
"You've stayed quiet all this time, so why did you suddenly become righteous?"
"Ha... Entertainment-industry people really are scary."
Kim Min-jun sounded disgusted, but he still told me.
"I saw you biting hard into our CEO this time, so I figured I'd start preparing my escape too. I've wanted to leave because they work me to death, but every time I mention it, they start talking about how much I owe them for raising me and then hit me. Always in places where bruises won't show."
"..."
"So I thought maybe I'd finally be able to escape if the CEO went down. It's not because I suddenly can't tolerate injustice or because I'm trying to pretend I'm a good person or anything like that. My contract's almost over."
"What? Then you've actually been benefiting from me."
