Ch.45Chinese Iced Tea 3

“Sister, why did you suddenly want to go to Chinatown?”

Sangmun asks while turning the steering wheel.

He carefully observed Jeoksa, who was sitting with her arms crossed.

Her expression is unusually fierce, unlike her normal demeanor.

This is probably the first time she’s looked like this since the war with the Association.

“I think something’s happened to Siho.”

“What? To Miss Siho?”

Sangmun turns his head to look at Jeoksa.

She pushes her subordinate’s face to make him focus on the road ahead.

“Just concentrate on driving. The roads here are a mess.”

The large man takes a deep breath.

Steam blows from his nostrils on his bull-like face.

Sangmun checks his subordinates’ cars in the side mirror.

Behind their black sedan follows a line of various Starex vans and SUVs.

“Still… I didn’t expect you to call almost the entire staff…”

Sangmun clears his throat as he turns a corner.

Jeoksa calmly pushes up her sunglasses.

“She’s a business partner. If I don’t save that child, what businessman would seek our protection?”

The red-eyed woman speaks calmly to her subordinate.

Sangmun mutters to himself, seemingly impressed by his superior’s words.

“I see—so that’s why you called her a business partner.”

He nods with a slight smile.

Jeoksa turns her gaze to the window, as if displeased by his comment.

The complex slums and tall buildings rising between them.

Despite it being only May, residents of Chinatown are walking around in t-shirts.

Among them, a woman dressed entirely in black catches Jeoksa’s eye.

Focusing her gaze on that woman, she taps Sangmun’s shoulder.

“Wait a moment.”

Sangmun responds by driving toward the sidewalk.

This causes the subordinates’ cars to uniformly slow down like a funeral procession.

“Anna!”

At Jeoksa’s call, the woman wearing a hat stops in her tracks.

She was holding clothes in her hand.

The same clothes that Siho had worn at the department store…

The moment she realized this, Jeoksa’s face transformed frighteningly.

She gets out of the car before it even stops completely and approaches Anna.

“You, bastard…”

Jeoksa grabs Anna by the collar.

The woman’s tight-fitting tank top stretches out.

“What did you do to Siho?”

Anna looks at Jeoksa with an expressionless face.

The killer’s face was covered with traces of dried tears.

Jeoksa was inwardly taken aback by Anna’s unexpected appearance.

Meanwhile, Anna easily shakes off Jeoksa’s grip on her wrist.

“The kid left their clothes behind.”

Anna speaks to Jeoksa in a hoarse voice.

She shows her Siho’s clothing.

“I’m looking for them to return the clothes.”

“Return the clothes? So they were at your place until just now?”

“That’s right.”

Jeoksa snorts at the implication that they were together and even changed clothes.

She thought Siho had gone home quietly after disappearing from the department store… but they had followed Anna instead.

They’re even sharing clothes?

“They’re probably in pajamas now.”

“You let the kid out in pajamas in this weather?”

Does this girl have any sense at all?

Jeoksa places her hands on her hips, exasperated.

As much as she’d like to carve out all of Anna’s flesh and make a pile of it, she had to be satisfied with just letting out a deep sigh.

Finding Siho comes first.

“Fine, whatever. I’ll hear about what happened at your place later. How did the kid disappear?”

“I told them to leave, and they disappeared.”

A very straightforward answer.

The red-eyed woman regrets what she expected from this psychopath.

This is Chinatown, the most dangerous place in anarchic Korea.

Disappearing here is practically the same as being dead.

Jeoksa thinks deeply.

When she received the phone call, Siho clearly said they didn’t know where they were.

After being kicked out of Anna’s place, they must have said that because Chinatown was spread out before their eyes.

So they called me, and disappeared right after hanging up.

That means they vanished near Anna’s home, where they first encountered Chinatown.

Having finished her thought process, Jeoksa asks Anna:

“Anna, where is your home?”

“Home? Why are you asking about that?”

Anna glares at Jeoksa suspiciously.

A hideout is important to a killer, after all.

“If I’m right, Siho definitely disappeared near your home. Let’s start tracking from there.”

After pondering for a moment, Anna finally points to a building.

It’s a particularly tall officetel even within Chinatown.

It has the feel of a place frequented by women going out for business entertainment.

Jeoksa lowers her sunglasses briefly and surveys the surroundings with her naked eye.

Suddenly, a back alley catches her attention.

Two women in flashy qipaos giggle as they enter it.

Women entering such a seedy back alley.

Jeoksa is certain that there must be another bustling area behind that alley.

The red-eyed woman takes out a cigarette.

An expensive one.

The kind she usually smokes before carrying out a mission.

Having found a lead for her search, Jeoksa calls out loudly:

“Everyone, park the cars.”

While her subordinates park, she enters the back alley with Anna.

Soon, men in black suits follow behind her.

The Chinese residents glance furtively at the sudden appearance of the organization members.

But soon, they hide in their homes, avoiding the intimidating organization members.

Cigarette smoke rises.

Jeoksa carelessly flicks the cigarette butt to the ground.

“We’ll start the investigation from here. Find anyone who’s seen a girl about 160cm tall with short hair and a mole under her eye. Bring them all in.”

“Ilshim!”

The men shout in unison, loud enough to drown out the voices of the Chinese residents.

The organization members begin to move busily.

They enter shops and even randomly grab drug dealers from back alleys for interrogation.

Meanwhile, their leader looks down at the discarded cigarette butt.

She slowly pushes the still-smoldering butt toward a drain.

“…?”

Something is visible beneath the drainage.

A mobile phone.

Jeoksa’s eyes are drawn to the familiar design.

“This is…”

She takes out leather gloves from inside her suit jacket.

Putting them on, she slowly lifts the drainage grate.

She retrieves the phone and examines it carefully.

Anna approaches, seemingly interested in her actions.

Soon, her eyebrows flash as she speaks:

“This… belongs to Siho.”

“I know. The question is why it’s in here.”

There’s no way Siho would have thrown their phone into a drain themselves.

And if they had dropped it by accident, it wouldn’t be turned off like this.

They would have kept it on to wait for Jeoksa’s call.

Someone deliberately turned off their phone and threw it away.

Jeoksa raises her head and slowly surveys the area around the drain.

Soon, she notices a nearby brothel.

There are two prostitutes soliciting customers.

They were covering their mouths with fans while looking for potential clients.

Then they encounter the two women approaching from a distance.

“Oh my, we don’t have male attendants here…”

One woman says to Jeoksa in broken Korean.

The qipao-clad woman beside her giggles and pokes her colleague in the ribs.

“You never know. They might prefer our kind.”

They snicker among themselves, finding the two killers amusing.

Jeoksa, who wanted to be as “gentlemanly” as possible, hid her twitching fist.

“—.”

But there was no need for her to hide her fist.

Before Jeoksa could move, Anna took the initiative.

Anna dashed forward like lightning and grabbed the prostitute’s neck.

The woman’s face contorts in sudden pain.

Enough to crack her carefully applied makeup.

“Siho. Where are they?”

“Si… who’s Siho?”

The prostitute asks, choking.

Her colleague is startled and flees into the establishment.

“Short hair. A girl with a mole under her eye. Have you seen her?”

Jeoksa asks instead of Anna, whose communication skills are somewhat lacking.

However, the woman gives no answer to the question.

Despite her eyes clearly indicating she knows something.

Anna’s hand begins to twist the prostitute’s neck more.

Jeoksa watches the scene leisurely and takes out her cigarette case.

It’s empty.

Realizing this, the red-eyed killer feels disgusted.

As she holds the last cigarette in her hand, a large man emerges from the establishment.

The man is wearing a sleeveless shirt, with a large tiger tattoo on his shoulder.

“Who the hell are you… to lay hands on our people?”

Anna looks at the man while still gripping the prostitute’s neck.

The man swings his massive fist to stop her.

In that moment, the white-eyed killer carelessly releases the prostitute.

Then she grabs the man’s flying arm and immediately twists it.

“—!”

Faced with a combat technique he’s never seen before, the man collapses like a beast.

He cries out in Chinese, expressing extreme pain.

Noisy.

The red-eyed killer exhales cigarette smoke and speaks to the silver-haired killer:

“Anna.”

“What?”

“Kill this bastard.”

“I was planning to.”

Anna takes out a dagger with her free hand.

And mercilessly stabs it into the man’s body.

The remaining prostitute covers her face at the brutal sight.

Even she, who has seen all kinds of cruelty in Chinatown, is just a frightened woman before Anna.

Jeoksa asks her:

“Tell us what you know. Otherwise, you’ll end up like him.”

Anna hasn’t stabbed all the man’s vital points yet.

In the past, she would have slashed his throat without hesitation, but she deliberately kept him alive.

Has she changed a bit since I last saw her?

“I… I saw her.”

“That’s right. Tell me slowly.”

Jeoksa speaks in a gentle voice, as if to reassure her.

While smoking her last cigarette.

“Mr. Wei Qingshan took her to his establishment.”

“Wei Qingshan?”

Jeoksa’s eyebrow twitches at the unfamiliar name.

She’s never even been to Chinatown before.

“He runs the biggest brothel in Daerim… Every woman in Chinatown respects him…”

The prostitute muttered, trembling.

Jeoksa couldn’t hear her clearly, so she crouched down to face her.

The beautiful-faced killer asks again:

“Where is this brothel?”

“It’s the Hong Jie Lou…”

The prostitute, as if enchanted by her beauty, points to a building.

It’s an elegant tavern with Chinese-style roof tiles.

“Anna, let’s go. We’ve located them.”

The silver-haired killer takes a deep breath.

She pulls the dripping dagger out of the man.

Thanks to this, the large man could finally collapse to the floor.

His weight breaks an innocent signboard.

“Send him to a hospital. He might live if he’s lucky.”

Jeoksa puts on her jacket that was hanging on her shoulder.

She calls Sangmun and orders him to gather all subordinates at the Hong Jie Lou.

Meanwhile, Anna hurriedly heads toward the tavern.

Jeoksa hangs up and immediately follows her.

“—.”

The sound of Chinese opera can be heard from a distance.

Following the music up the hill, an imposing tavern gate unfolds before them.

A faint smell of herbs wafts from inside the establishment.

Jeoksa recognizes this smell.

It’s a drug that Chinese organizations once proposed importing to her company, Ilshim.

A disgusting aphrodisiac that excites women and clouds their judgment.

Ilshim’s chairperson refused, saying she wouldn’t buy such filthy items.

But it seems illegal immigrants have secretly brought it into Chinatown.

Is Siho, who has no combat ability, really here right now?

Jeoksa furrowed her brow and sighed deeply.

Just imagining what kind of humiliation that helpless child might be suffering here was horrifying.

“—!”

While she was briefly considering her next plan, Anna recklessly kicks down the establishment’s door.

The mountain-like gate shatters like a reed, and fragments scatter throughout the brothel.

The counter staff turn pale at the sight.

“——, —.”

They back away while muttering in Chinese.

Anna ignores their words and walks forward.

She’s a weapon from Russia, after all.

She doesn’t know Chinese.

“Siho!”

The white-eyed woman calls out loudly.

Jeoksa thinks as she watches Anna.

That she’s become more emotional than before.

Anna is angry now.

Jeoksa couldn’t tell if she was angry at Siho or at herself.

But what’s certain is…

Today, everyone in this establishment will die.

Because Jeoksa, too, was in just as bad a mood as Anna.