Chapter 5. You Shouldn't Threaten an Old Man
Even after ending the call, I stared at my phone for a long time.
The number wasn't saved.
But the voice I'd just heard remained clear in my memory.
Low.
Rough.
The voice of someone accustomed to threatening people.
"Don't come back to the waters around Sinan."
And then the final warning.
"Next time, you won't come back alive."
I raised my beer and took a sip.
As the cold drink went down my throat, a laugh escaped me.
"'Won't come back alive,' huh?"
At least, that wasn't much of a threat against the current me.
Bullets didn't do anything.
I could survive underwater without breathing.
And even I thought my strength was completely ridiculous.
But my smile soon disappeared.
The problem was that I wasn't alone.
My daughter.
My son.
My family at home.
No matter how strong I became, my family didn't become strong with me.
If those bastards had somehow discovered my phone number, then sooner or later they might learn where I lived and who my family was.
I put down my phone and stared at the old lamp on the dining table.
"Hey, Bob."
No answer.
"Did you expect something like this?"
Still silence.
I tapped the lamp with one finger.
"You know, granting wishes is nice and all, but shouldn't you at least give me a manual? What exactly makes the powers disappear?"
Naturally, there was no response.
"Seriously annoying."
Then I heard my son shifting around inside his room.
I quickly pushed the lamp deep inside a drawer.
After that, I picked up the gold coin I'd brought back from the waters of Sinan.
One tiny gold coin.
Yet simply looking at it made my heart race.
It was proof that what I'd experienced wasn't a hallucination or dream.
There was definitely something beneath the sea.
And I could find it.
The problem was that treasure wasn't the only thing waiting in those waters.
Guns.
Drugs.
A smuggling organization.
A threatening phone call.
And now there were people looking for me.
I rolled the coin between my fingers.
Clink.
"All right."
I'd be lying if I said I wasn't afraid.
Especially if they went after my family.
Then it became an entirely different matter.
But I had no intention of backing down.
I'd gone to the sea looking for treasure.
Those bastards were the ones hiding guns and drugs there.
And now they had the nerve to tell me not to come back.
"It's not even my ocean, so why am I so pissed off?"
Chuckling, I turned on my computer.
I didn't sleep again that night.
I searched:
Sinan smuggling.
Drug smuggling.
Illegal firearm imports.
Maritime crime.
Then I searched small fishing boat registrations, suspicious abandoned vessels, local news, fishing forums, diving communities, even tidal-flat gathering forums.
There was far more information than expected.
Stories that had never appeared in the news were scattered throughout obscure corners of the internet.
Posts about strange boats traveling every night.
Warnings not to approach certain islands.
Rumors that Coast Guard inspections had recently increased.
Stories about outsiders renting rooms and heading out by boat every night.
I pulled out a notebook and began writing everything down.
Near ○○ Island, Sinan.
1:00 to 3:00 a.m.
Small fishing vessels.
Outsiders.
Possible underwater cave.
Smuggling route.
Signs of treasure.
After writing everything down, I couldn't help laughing.
"Am I a detective now?"
I wasn't a detective.
I wasn't an investigator.
I was just a potbellied middle-aged man working for a heavy industries company in Ulsan.
Except now I was a superhuman.
That difference turned out to be much bigger than expected.
At four in the morning, my work alarm rang.
I turned it off and stared at the screen for a while.
"I'm not going today."
It wasn't because I hated work.
The situation in Sinan was becoming much bigger than I'd expected.
The smuggling organization knew my phone number.
They even knew I'd been the one to report them.
How had they found out?
My phone?
Some trace I'd left on the boat?
Or was information leaking from the Coast Guard?
The more I thought about it, the worse it felt.
Eventually, I texted my foreman.
[I'm not feeling well, so I'll take the day off.]
A reply arrived shortly afterward.
[All right. Go see a doctor.]
It was funny that I'd taken sick leave when my body was probably healthier than anyone else's in the world.
"Doctor, my ass."
I washed up and changed clothes.
Black T-shirt.
Old jeans.
Sneakers.
Standing in front of the mirror, I looked nothing like a man about to go hunt down a criminal organization.
I looked like an ordinary middle-aged guy heading to the market for a bowl of gukbap.
"Perfect."
That was actually an advantage.
Nobody would suspect me.
At around seven, my wife returned from her night shift.
"You're not going to work today?"
"Not feeling great."
She looked me up and down.
"Where does it hurt?"
"Just feeling a little off."
"Want to go to the hospital?"
"No. I'll be fine after some sleep."
She didn't ask anything more.
In the past, that might have hurt my feelings.
Now, it was almost convenient.
Soon my daughter came out wearing her school uniform.
My son wandered out with messy hair, looking for breakfast.
It was an ordinary morning.
Watching them gave me a strange feeling.
I wanted to protect this ordinary life.
Yet at the same time, I desperately wanted to escape from this ordinary life.
It was funny.
"Dad, you're off today?"
My daughter asked.
"Yeah."
"Lucky."
"Lucky? I'm sick."
She carefully studied my face, then tilted her head.
"But you look pretty healthy."
I flinched.
"Your dad has always been handsome."
Her face immediately twisted.
"You ruined my appetite."
My son laughed so hard that rice fell from his mouth.
I laughed too.
Right.
If I wanted to protect this...
I needed to deal with those bastards first.
After the kids left for school and my wife went into the bedroom to sleep, I took the lamp from the drawer and placed it in my bag.
I packed the gold coin separately in a small plastic bag.
I had three things to do today.
Confirm whether the coin was real.
Find the tail of the organization in Sinan.
And cut off any trail that could lead them to my family.
I almost teleported immediately, then stopped.
Getting into the habit of disappearing anywhere I wanted was dangerous.
There were no cameras inside the house right now, but I never knew when or where someone might record me.
So I took the elevator like a normal person and left the apartment complex.
Then I entered an empty alley.
Whoosh.
The scenery changed.
I was at a small harbor near Sinan.
The smell of the sea rushed over me.
The harbor in the morning was completely different from at night.
Fishing boats returned.
Seagulls cried.
Fishermen moved busily everywhere.
I pulled my cap low and found a nearby restaurant.
Food first.
I received a traditional set meal with doenjang soup, grilled mackerel, kimchi, and rolled egg.
I ate like a starving man.
Ever since my body changed, I had been getting hungry much more often.
I didn't know whether it was because of the regeneration or the strength, but two bowls of rice vanished quickly.
The woman running the restaurant smiled.
"You here for work?"
"Yes. Came to look into something."
"Fishing?"
"Something like that."
She briefly looked around, then lowered her voice.
"Be careful around the sea at night these days. Heard there are some strange people around."
My chopsticks stopped.
"Strange people?"
"Outsiders. They take boats out every night, make trouble at the bars. The locals don't like them much."
"Where are they staying?"
"Seems like they move between a few guesthouses."
One piece of information.
Outsiders.
Guesthouses.
Boats moving at night.
After leaving the restaurant, I decided to check the coin first.
There was an old antique shop in an alley a little way from the harbor.
The sign was almost completely faded.
Inside, the shelves were packed with ceramics, old kettles, coins, and worn paintings.
The owner looked to be in his sixties.
"Can you appraise something?"
"Depends on the item."
I took out the plastic bag and showed him the gold coin.
At first, the owner looked uninterested.
The instant he saw the coin, his expression changed.
"Where did you get this?"
"It was at home."
Even as I said it, I knew it was a ridiculous lie.
The owner clearly didn't believe me either, but he didn't push further.
He examined the surface with a magnifying glass.
Measured the weight.
Held it beneath a light.
After a long time, he spoke quietly.
"There's a high chance it's genuine."
My heart began beating faster.
"How much would it be worth?"
"I'd need a proper examination. We have to identify the period, and provenance matters. As gold alone, it might not be extraordinary. But if it has historical or artifact value, that's an entirely different matter."
"Roughly?"
The owner stared at me.
"This isn't something you can estimate roughly."
I put the coin away again.
"I'm not planning to sell it."
"Then why bring it here?"
"Just wanted to know whether it was real."
The owner remained silent for a moment before handing me a business card.
"If you find anything else, bring it in. But don't casually sell things like this. It can cause trouble."
"Why?"
"It might be cultural property."
I already knew that, but nodded as though it was new information.
If possible, I really did want to keep things legal.
But if I handed everything over to the government, how exactly was I supposed to make a living?
I'd think about that problem later.
As I started to leave, the owner spoke one last time.
"Be careful."
I turned.
"Of what?"
"If something came from the sea, the people around it can be more dangerous than the object itself."
I chuckled.
"That's true."
Not long after leaving the store, I really did feel eyes on me.
One person.
No.
Two.
Pretending not to notice, I walked through the market and headed toward some warehouses where there were fewer people.
Footsteps continued following me.
That was fast.
Maybe they had been watching the antique shop.
Or perhaps the men who called me yesterday already knew my face.
I stopped in an empty lot behind a warehouse.
"Come out."
After a moment, two men appeared.
One was thin.
The other was large.
Both wore ordinary work clothes.
But their eyes weren't ordinary.
The thin man spoke.
"Old man. Did you not understand what we told you yesterday?"
"Are you the one who called?"
"We ask the questions."
"Oh, really?"
I scratched my head.
"But I'm kind of busy right now."
The large man stepped forward.
A folding knife was in his hand.
"Come with us."
I looked down at the knife and sighed.
"Put that away. You'll get hurt."
"What?"
"You."
The large man charged.
I reached out and caught his wrist.
This time, I didn't break it.
I controlled my strength enough to make him drop the knife.
Clatter.
The blade hit the ground.
I lightly pushed his shoulder.
Very lightly.
Yet the huge man stumbled backward two steps and fell on his ass.
"Ah, sorry. I'm still bad at controlling my strength."
At that moment, the thin man pulled a handgun from inside his clothes.
I frowned.
"A gun in broad daylight?"
