Busan
Busan Station's exits were always loud.
Baki walked through the ticket gate with his bag, and the crowd parted around him on both sides, not out of courtesy. But they recognized him. A few young people pulled out their phones and whispered among themselves. A middle-aged woman pulled her child back.
The news about the Charles Choi murder case had spread across the entire country.
Baki didn't pay attention to any of it. He looked around for the taxi stand.
"Hey."
He stopped.
Choi Bongpal was leaning against a pillar near the exit with a cigarette between her lips, watching him. Her black hair moved slightly in the sea breeze coming off Busan.
Baki looked at her once. "What are you doing here?"
"Waiting for you." She exhaled a breath of smoke. Her tone made it sound obvious.
"How did you know I was coming?"
Choi Bongpal blinked slowly. "Busan is my city. I know who comes in and who goes out." She paused, as if giving him time to absorb this.
Baki thought for a second and chuckled. "Weren't you the one running from goons all over the streets before?"
Choi Bongpal's stoic expression cracked. She pulled the cigarette from her lips and flicked the ash. "That was the past."
"Was it?"
"I'm with the Jinrang faction now." She looked at him directly. "Under the King of Busan."
Baki shrugged. "That doesn't change the past, does it?"
Choi Bongpal tactfully ignored his question. She stepped on the cigarette and put it out, then changed her tone. "Actually, your timing is perfect."
"How so?"
"Word came from Jinrang's gang," she said. "He's getting out in a few days. Last time you came to Busan you didn't get to meet him. This time is different."
Baki was quiet for a second. He had come close to meeting the King of Busan on his last visit. It hadn't worked out in the end.
But the mention of the man stirred something in him. Jinrang was Gapryong Kim's disciple. Gapryong Kim of the Fist Gang. A man personally chosen by someone like that would not be ordinary.
What would it feel like to exchange moves with someone like that?
He just nodded and pressed the anticipation back down.
Choi Bongpal tilted her head and looked at him, something different in her eyes now. "You didn't come to Busan just for him, did you?"
The ease left Baki's expression. "I need to see Sang Baek."
---
Choi Bongpal had a base in the south of Busan, tucked at the end of an old alley inside a three-story building whose outer walls had long since begun to peel. The inside was clean and spare, nothing unnecessary. That was her way of doing things.
Baki waited on the ground floor while Choi called over one of her subordinates and gave him a few quiet instructions. The man nodded and left.
Baki sat in a chair and listened to the sound of Busan's sea wind coming through the window. "You're having them come to me?"
"Jinrang's people took a bad beating from you last time." Choi Bongpal sat down across from him and lit another cigarette. "Sang Baek included. When word gets out that you're back, they'll come looking for an explanation."
"You're not taking me to them directly?"
"If I take you there myself, they'll think I'm taking your side." She said it without any particular feeling. "That doesn't benefit me. Why do you need to meet him anyway?"
Baki looked at her.
"A dangerous enemy is coming," Baki said, "I need to warn Sang Baek about him."
The hand holding Choi Bongpal's cigarette paused.
"Busan's Wolf," she said. "Can this enemy face the Wolf?"
---
The sea wind tasted of salt.
Baki stood at the very edge of the dock, hands in his pockets, watching the horizon. The sun hadn't fully set yet. It had set the water burning in the color of broken copper. The silhouettes of fishing boats blurred in the orange light, like sketches abandoned halfway through.
The wind came in off the water and pushed his hair loose.
He didn't bother with it.
---
He heard the footsteps behind him before they were close.
Not one person, but two. Neither of them was trying to go unnoticed.
He didn't turn around.
"We meet again."
Sang Baek's voice wasn't loud. He walked to Baki's right and stopped three paces away, looking at the same stretch of sea.
Hwang Jeong-seok took Baki's left, slightly behind.
The silence held for a moment.
Sang Baek spoke again.
"Last time we met," he said, his tone flat, "we weren't exactly on friendly terms."
"We weren't enemies either," Baki said.
"No."
A short moment of silence followed Baki's answer.
Sang Baek reached into his pocket and produced a cigarette. He didn't light it. He turned it between his fingers once, then put it back. He glanced sideways at Baki, direct, no wrapping around the question.
"You're back in Busan," he said. "Is it for Jinrang?"
---
Baki turned his head and looked at him for a moment. Then he returned his gaze to the water.
"No."
"Then why?" Sang Baek asked again, his voice landing somewhere between a question and a demand.
Baki was quiet for a moment.
"There's a monster," he said, his voice lower than usual, "coming to Busan."
---
Another gust came in off the water.
Neither Sang Baek nor Hwang Jeong-seok moved.
"Monster." Sang Baek repeated the word, no mockery in it, no surprise either. He was simply confirming what he had heard.
"Kitae Kim," Baki said.
Baki continued, steady, without emphasis.
"He's coming to take Busan. I don't know when, but he'll definitely come. I thought you guys should know that." He paused. "That's the second reason I'm here."
"And the first?" Sang Baek said.
Baki didn't answer immediately.
He looked back toward the horizon. The sun had sunk past halfway now, and the last strip of orange-red hung at the edge of the sky, the final color before something burns itself out completely.
"Between him and me," Baki said at last, "there's something that's mine. Nothing to do with Jinrang, nothing to do with Busan." A beat. "It's mine."
---
No one spoke after that.
Three people stood at the edge of the dock and looked at the same stretch of water. The fishing boats were coming home slowly, their engines rolling in from a distance, folding into the sound of the wind and then dissolving.
Sang Baek glanced at Baki again. He held his gaze a moment longer than before.
Then he looked back out at the sea.
"Understood."
One word. That was all.
Hwang Jeong-seok pulled his gaze from Baki and turned it toward the water too.
The sun finished going down.
The dark came in gradually, and the dock lights switched on one by one, cutting the surface of the sea into shards of light and shadow. The wind kept moving. It had never stopped.
Baki pushed his hands back into his pockets and stood there, like something the sea wind had been working on for a long time and had not managed to carry away.