The hours bled into one another, marked only by the changing view of the city outside the anonymous office window. The initial frenzy of deployment settled into a tense, waiting quiet. It was a strange, liminal state for Yoo-jin. His wars were usually fought at the speed of light, in stock market fluctuations and viral social media posts. This was different. This was slow, patient, predatory work, a hunt conducted in the shadows while the rest of the city slept.
Min-ji sat hunched over her laptops, a silent whirlwind of activity. She was a digital spider, spinning a web of surveillance over the city's underbelly. She monitored communications from the ground teams, cross-referenced license plates from cars parked near the target locations, and sifted through hours of grainy security footage she'd pulled from nearby convenience stores. Go Min-young sat on a small sofa in the corner, a silent, judgmental vigil, her disappointment a palpable presence in the room.
One by one, the targets on the map were crossed out. A high-end suite in a Gangnam hotel turned up empty. A smoky backroom in Hongdae was full of college students losing their tuition money, but not their man. A warehouse poker game in Mullae-dong yielded nothing but grizzled old men. The city was full of sin, but Jo Min-su was proving elusive.
Yoo-jin paced the room, the inaction gnawing at him. He felt powerless, a general forced to wait for reports from a distant battlefield. He was used to being the one in control, the one manipulating the variables. Now, he was just waiting for a desperate gambler to make a mistake.
Then, just as the first grey hints of dawn threatened to break the eastern sky, a call came in on the secure radio channel. It was a rough, staticky voice, one of the contractors.
"Team Alpha. We have a positive ID. 'The Palace' casino. It's a front for a laundromat in Itaewon. He's here. In the VIP Baccarat room. It's him. He's losing big time. Watched him drop at least twenty million in the last hour."
A jolt of adrenaline shot through Yoo-jin, clearing the fatigue from his mind. "Status?"
"He's agitated. Arguing with the pit boss. Looks like his credit has run out. He's getting desperate."
"Maintain surveillance," Yoo-jin commanded, his voice sharp and clear. "Do not engage. I want eyes on him at all times. I'm on my way."
He grabbed his coat and turned to Kang, who had been standing silently by the door the entire night. "Let's go."
Go Min-young stood up. "I'm coming with you."
"No," Yoo-jin said immediately. "You stay here."
"You hired those… people," she said, her voice quiet but firm, her gaze unwavering. "You set this in motion. I need to see what it is you've done, Yoo-jin. I need to see what this company has become." He saw in her eyes that arguing was useless. She was determined to bear witness.
They arrived at a discreet parking garage a block away from the laundromat. Inside a black, featureless surveillance van, one of the contractors sat before a monitor, watching a live, grainy feed from a button camera another team member had managed to plant inside the illicit casino.
Yoo-jin slid into the van, his eyes immediately locking on the screen. There he was. Jo Min-su. ShadowBroker. He looked even more pathetic in motion than he did in his photograph. He was a wreck. His clothes were rumpled and stained with sweat, his hair was a greasy mess, and his eyes were wide and bloodshot with the manic fever of a gambler on a catastrophic losing streak. He was arguing with a large, impassive man in a cheap suit—the house manager. He gesticulated wildly, pleading for another marker, another line of credit. The manager simply shook his head.
Yoo-jin watched the man who had served as the instrument of his company's public humiliation. He had expected to feel a surge of righteous anger, a cold satisfaction at seeing him brought so low. Instead, he felt nothing but a hollow emptiness. This wasn't a villain. This wasn't a mastermind. This was just a pathetic, desperate addict, a disposable tool that a true monster like Ryu had used and then callously discarded. Jo Min-su wasn't the enemy; he was just another piece of wreckage left in Ryu's wake.
As they watched, the situation inside escalated. The house manager grew tired of the argument. He gave a curt nod. Two large, thuggish-looking men materialized from the edges of the room. They were the casino's own enforcers, their faces blank, their bodies built for brutal, efficient work. They grabbed Jo Min-su by his arms, their grips like iron vices. He struggled feebly, his pleas turning into panicked yelps.
"He's tapped out," Kang observed grimly from beside Yoo-jin. "He's gambled away all of Ryu's money and more. The house is coming to collect its debt."
The enforcers began dragging the terrified man out of the main room, not towards the public exit, but towards a metal door at the back marked 'Staff Only.' Towards a back alley where debts were settled in bruises and broken bones.
Kang turned to Yoo-jin, his expression unreadable. "Sir? My men can intervene. But it will get messy. The house enforcers won't go down easy. It will be a violent confrontation. It could attract police attention. What are your orders?"
Yoo-jin was faced with a stark choice, a new kind of Producer's Eye calculation based not on data, but on violence. He could let the casino's thugs have him. They would beat him, possibly cripple him, but they wouldn't kill him—he was no use to them dead. But he might disappear into their system of debt collection for days or weeks before Yoo-jin could get to him. By then, the trail to Ryu would be ice cold.
Or, he could unleash his own thugs. He could order his men to intercept, to take Jo Min-su by force. It would be a direct act of gang violence, a crossing of a moral and legal line from which there was no easy return. It would mean embracing the very tactics of the underworld he was fighting.
He watched the live feed as Jo Min-su was dragged through the metal door and into the darkness of the alley. He saw the pure, animal terror in the man's eyes. This pathetic, broken man was his only link to Ryu. He was the key. He couldn't lose him.
He turned his head slowly and looked at Kang, his own face set like stone in the dim light of the van. He gave a single, two-word command, the words tasting like ash in his mouth, sealing a new, darker chapter for his company and for himself.
"Get him."
On the screen, the grainy feed from a camera positioned in the alley showed the two casino enforcers throwing Jo Min-su against a brick wall. And then, from the deeper shadows at the end of the alley, three figures emerged, blocking their path. It was his team. A silent, brutal confrontation was about to begin, and he was the one who had just given the order.