Although a Villain, My Wish is World Peace

Knock, knock.

“Hyung-nim*, may I come in?” (tl/n: while ‘nim’ is honorific word and ‘hyung’ means older brothers/family members/friends, – but ‘hyung-nim’ is used as a term for calling one’s ‘mob boss,’ ‘crime boss,’ or ‘Don’)

“Not hyung-nim, team leader. And what’s the point of asking after already coming in?”

“Sh, should I leave?”

Choi In-hyeok frowned as he looked at Kim Du-sik hanging on the door, with a flustered expression. It was downright creepy for someone not even remotely cute to act like that.

“You’ve already come in, so what’s the point of leaving now.”

“Hehehe.”

No matter how cutely that burly, nearly 190cm tall man with a crew cut laughed, it was just gross.

Choi In-hyeok didn’t particularly like people who tarnished the company’s image like that. If he could, he would have kicked those unsightly faces out of this establishment, but for Choi In-hyeok, who was under his father’s tight control, that was impossible.

Even after carefully selecting and bringing in the more decent ones, if this was the result, Choi In-hyeok couldn’t help but lightly grumble as he looked at Kim Du-sik’s face, which was as swollen as if he had been submerged in water for three or four days.

“I told you not to come in here as much as possible. It’s an eyesore.”

At Choi In-hyeok’s words, Kim Du-sik pouted as if offended.

That might have earned him some ‘cuteness’ points in the field, but Choi In-hyeok found this uncalled-for coyness extremely displeasing.

“Just state your business.”

At Choi In-hyeok’s irritated voice, Kim Du-sik quickly got to the point.

“You approved that guy’s loan application earlier. I was wondering if there was perhaps a good reason I didn’t know about.”

“Why, did you think I handed out loans willy-nilly?”

“No, sir, no, team leader! It’s not that I don’t trust you! But he just looked like a total scammer at first glance…”

With a skinny build like he hadn’t had a proper meal, shabby attire, and those elongated eyes that just looked delinquent, to Kim Du-sik, who had been in this business for years enough to ‘recite poems of the pleasures of the flesh’, the guy seemed to have highly suspicious credit.

And yet he had been loaned over 100 million won.

Of course, even if they lost all that money, it wouldn’t lead to the downfall of ‘Push N Cash’, but Kim Du-sik just couldn’t understand why the boss, who usually screened others so well, had lent money to a guy like that.

Unable to just ignore it, thinking the boss who valued him so highly would scold him, he had no choice but to bring it up.

Fortunately, instead of getting angry, Kim Du-sik’s boss Choi In-hyeok let out a chuckle.

“Well, that might be the normal way of thinking. But my eyes saw something different.”

Saying that, Choi In-hyeok asked Kim Du-sik, “Did you see what was around his neck?”

“Yes, I saw it.”

The shackles worn by awakeners who had manifested psychic abilities. Kim Du-sik wasn’t an awakener himself, but he was well aware of them. These days, wasn’t the electronic collar seen as more dangerous than electronic anklets?

Then a thought crossed Kim Du-sik’s mind.

Aha!

“You’re going to sell him off in the black market?”

At Kim Du-sik’s refreshingly straightforward words, Choi In-hyeok made a disgusted expression.

“Who do you think engages in human trafficking?”

“Oh, but last time you said…”

He was pretty sure he had been told to sell off the guy who couldn’t pay his debt.

“He’s still our valued customer, our customer. We can’t just sell off a customer.”

“Then why the heck…”

So he didn’t expect the guy to be unable to repay the loan when he lent it out?

“Guys who wear those things usually have that look of having given up on life, you know? Well, they can’t really do much with those things on, can they?”

Choi In-hyeok’s words made Kim Du-sik nod his head. Just by wearing the identification tag, non-awakeners saw them as potential criminals, making it impossible to get a normal job.

“But that guy’s eyes were different. They were so brazenly defiant that I almost felt like gouging them out.”

“Sir! Even so, if you gouged out his eyes…”

“Don’t worry, I don’t just gouging out eyes willy-nilly either. Like they’re that cheap to gouge out.”

Nonchalantly telling a horrific tale, Choi In-hyeok curled his lips as he recalled the face of the ‘valued customer’ who had been sitting here just a moment ago.

Like Kim Du-sik, who had led countless customers to the entrance of this bottomless pit, Choi In-hyeok, seated on the throne of this swamp, had a sense for distinguishing those who would make money from those who wouldn’t.

And that sense told him that the guy in front of him was someone who would become big.

“I don’t know what he plans to do with that money, but it seemed like it would be interesting.”

The common folk who borrowed money for mundane reasons like medical bills or living expenses for the next month were just tedious.

But that guy was different.

130 million won.

It was a large sum to blow on mere entertainment, but Choi In-hyeok wasn’t worried.

“Well, even if he can’t repay it, we’ll just get it back our way, won’t we?”

If the guy turned out to be too small-minded to meet his expectations, as Kim Du-sik said, they could just strip him down and sell him off somewhere.

Choi In-hyeok had no idea how much this debt of 130 million won would fray his nerves in the future.

* * *

I smiled as I looked at the bag in my hand. Finally, I had secured the funds to put my plan into action. Still, I didn’t feel completely at ease.

Nothing good comes from getting entangled with loan sharks. Especially for a bad customer like me, who planned to embezzle the borrowed money.

These folks are relentlessly tenacious. More than the money itself, having a precedent of a customer ripping them off was a fatal blow in their business. If such an unfavorable precedent was set, they would be looked down upon in the area, so they would become obsessed with finding the person who embezzled their money, no matter what.

If they were this intense over a mere million won loan, I, who had swindled 130 million won, would probably be hounded by them for debt collection even in the afterlife.

But I had a plan of my own.

With the funds secured, I moved forward without hesitation.

The scenery of the long-abandoned subway station was downright eerie. Peeled paint revealing rusted pillars, broken sidewalk tiles, and trash strewn about – in this dilapidated space, I searched for the entrance leading underground.

After the appearance of gates, most subway systems were shut down.

There were various reasons for this. First, if a gate emerged underground, it would be catastrophic. Second, with monster attacks constantly severing routes, there weren’t enough resources to maintain and repair them. There were probably other reasons too, but essentially, it was because of the gates.

In any case, subways and underground passages ended up becoming relics of the past.

But for everyone, subways didn’t become relics of the past. Although officially shut down, there were still many who used these subway lines.

From those who had lost their homes and jobs for various reasons and become homeless, to runaway teenagers.

Even dropouts from life who didn’t want anyone’s attention.

But no matter what anyone said, the ones who utilized this underground space the most were criminal organizations.

It was only natural for a black market to emerge in this ant colony-like maze of spaces, where people needed to avoid prying eyes.

The black market inside the subway lines periodically changed locations to avoid crackdowns. But there was still a central core station.

The path leading to the black market started from Gasan Digital Complex Station, where I had just entered.

The gate break incident near Daelim Station was recorded as the disaster that caused the most casualties in South Korea.

The gate just happened to appear underground, and it went unnoticed by anyone until it broke, releasing insect-type monsters that were venomous, to make matters worse.

The insect-type monsters burrowed into the underground area and multiplied before swarming out.

Resembling queen ants, the insect-type monsters turned that entire area into a wasteland through sheer numbers. Thanks to the weakened ground, the area around Daelim Station completely subsided over 2 meters, causing property damage in the billions of won.

Fortunately, the awakeners managed to exterminate the monsters, but the problem was the venom from their corpses. Even ten years after the incident, the Daelim Station area was still a no-entry zone.

Of course, there were those who didn’t care about the contamination and came and went as they pleased.

In any case, after being devastated like that, all sorts of criminals engaged in illegal activities started congregating in this area. Being officially prohibited from entry due to toxic substances meant this place was unofficially a ‘free zone’.

Naturally, the area around Daelim gained the stigma of being a crime-ridden area, which was enough to drive ordinary citizens away. The Gasan Digital Complex Station area I was walking through now was similar.

The unmanaged interior of the subway was utter darkness.

I pulled down the baseball cap I had prepared and turned on the flashlight hanging from my jacket.

A flashlight was essential in this pitch-black darkness where you couldn’t see a palm in front of your face.

Unlike the relatively intact exterior, everything inside here was in complete disarray. Mud that had flowed in whenever it rained, discarded objects left shattered and broken, were strewn about haphazardly.

I descended from the platform where people used to line up and began walking along the railroad tracks.

With each step I took, my footsteps echoed within the railway. At intervals, I shone my flashlight on the walls to check them. Various scribbles covered the walls.

Meaningless propaganda slogans like ‘Government, awaken!’ or ‘Awakeners, begone!’, amateurish graffiti, and among them, arrows that caught my eye. These arrows were the signposts leading to the black market.

The arrows, drawn with a dye that would fade after a certain time, pointed to the current location of the black market.

To be precise, its entrance.

What the arrows pointed to was a solid wall with nothing else. The black market was right behind this wall.

The way to enter was simple.

As I raised my hand and knocked on the wall, it began glowing blue.

A new technology that emerged in this world after the appearance of gates – magic engineering. For first-timers to the black market, just this entrance alone would make them wet their pants (not that I did when I first came here in the past).

This was a kind of show.

That this black market was under the management of someone who could casually use such technology.

A hidden space began to reveal itself, glowing. I quickly stepped inside.

The wall that had swallowed my body closed up tightly, as if it had never been open.

I walked along the wall. Unlike the completely unlit railway, the inside here was so bright it was almost blinding. I turned off my flashlight.

The faint signs of people I had sensed earlier were now drawing closer. Boisterous chatter and commotion. Well, that’s how markets are, black market or not. Since it was fundamentally a place where people gathered, this din was unavoidable, like any marketplace.

Following the sounds of people for a while,

The black market came into my view.

Even called a black market, its appearance wasn’t anything special. It closely resembled the night markets of Southeast Asia.

The scattered lights, the stalls lined up in rows, and so on.

Of course, the items being sold were vastly different from those night markets.

Teeming with criminals from all over the country and hunters looking to buy goods, the black market was bustling with commotion.

“Whew.”

Now, the real thing begins.