Park Jangseok had already endured the humiliation of being held hostage in his own house and didn't think it could get worse. He was wrong because they even abducted his top player right in front of his eyes.
He couldn't fight them, as almost all his men were currently unresponsive, so he resorted to whining like a child.
"Mr. Chen! How dare you?! If the rest of the underworld hears about this, how will they think of you?!"
He cried out after Kamman and his men emerged, an unconscious Asia dangling from Rei's shoulder.
"Mr. Park, don't get so worked up. I might give him back," Kamman said, smiling so softly as if he weren't in the middle of abducting someone.
"You might?!" Mr. Park almost had a stroke. He clutched his chest and stumbled back as his few functioning men rushed to steady him.
Kamman was done with the conversation. Jangseok had no bargaining chip, which was the norm. No bargaining chip, no right to speak. He solemnly watched as they carried a man he had spent fortunes to acquire out of his den, untouched. He swore to get them back for it.
Asia's body was not as tough as he made himself appear to be. When the drug was used on average people, they normally took at most six hours to come around. Twelve hours had passed, and he still wasn't awake. This wasn't favorable for him because as hours went by, Kamman's mind continued to evolve into an even crazier state.
He had only wanted to question him, but his demons were not that easy to please.
Every time he looked at Asia's sleeping, angelic, extremely pretty face, worlds collided, and every single demon broke out from the hell he had locked them in. Some sought his father's vengeance; some sought accountability for years of betrayal and torment. The familiarity brought with it an immense kind of torture, and he could not stand it. Finally, he exploded.
"Rei, get the car. We're going out. Take him with us."
A couple of half-naked women were clinging to him on all sides when he got up from bed. He carelessly shoved them aside without paying them any attention. While he waited for Asia to wake up, he had tried drugs and women, but if that single person was in close vicinity to him, how could he settle down?
Bronze Orchid owned large commercial buildings, placed strategically in multiple cities of various countries. That particular one in Seoul had its tallest point almost threatening to pierce the sky. It was quite tall and magnificent, famously known as the Sanctuary Tower.
They drove there and carried Asia all the way to the rooftop, his body still limp.
Then his craziness came to life. He ordered his men to tie Asia to the steel cable dangling from the crane's arm, positioned on the roof, so that he was suspended in literal air, hundreds of feet from the ground. It had a thick hook, appearing like a metal claw attached to it.
The wind fluttered Asia's hair, howling into his ear. Strapped tightly to the rusting crane hook, his body dangled over a thirty-plus-story building. The constant air hitting his face woke him up, and his eyes blinked a couple of times. He wondered why his muscles were so tight and his body was swinging until he looked around.
First, his eyes landed on the Phoenix boss, seated a slight distance away from him. Kamman's men stood over him like a shield, all in dark, mysterious forms. Asia had not yet processed it completely, and his eyes struggled to adjust. He then tried moving, but he felt his body give in easily, swinging back and forth. Then he looked down, and all the blood in his body instantly rushed to his brain.
"Oh sh*t! F*ck! What the hell?!"
He cursed as panic engulfed him in multiple waves. His body instantly reacted as well, jolting and shaking tremendously.
Kamman, seeing he was awake, smiled for the first time that day.
"Our sleeping beauty is finally awake?" he said.
Asia was quite confrontational, but he was dealing with a lot at the moment, so he did not respond to his question. Kamman didn't mind and continued.
"Let's continue our conversation from where we left off last time. See this remote control? An unpleasant answer could make my hand slip and hit a button. Then you'll be falling from a very high place. So let us be careful. Okay?"
He said this while feigning a soft voice, full of gentleness and warmth. Asia's body visibly shook, almost to the point of convulsing, but it was dark, and Kamman didn't really notice it.
"Who are you?" Kamman started off simply.
"I'm..." Asia wanted to reply, but his air was limited, struggling to keep him conscious, so he could hardly let out complete sentences.
"Who is Dian Aoki to you?" Kamman went on, rambling and jumping through questions like he was afraid of the answers he might get. He was afraid.
'If he is Dian, then he would be most scared of heights. Does this one look scared to you? We'll only find out if you press the button!' A devil whispered on his shoulder.
'If he's Dian and you put him to that kind of test, you could kill him, for the second time.' An angel on the other side intervened. His devil side was loud and persistent, and it won.
"Fine, since you won't respond to any of my questions, which I find rather unpleasant, then don't blame my hand for slipping."
He pressed the button, and the steel rope unwound, dropping him at an incredible speed, but shockingly, Asia didn't let out a single noise and silently fell downwards.
The questions he wanted to ask were clogging his brain.
"What happened that night? Are you really Dian? If not, why do you have his face? Why do you look exactly the same? You really don't know who I am?"
One of them could not think straight enough to respond, and the other was not stable enough to take an answer, so it was quite confusing for the audience.
If one could get access to Kamman's brain at the moment, they would find millions of fragments, all in disharmony with one another. What his heart wanted, his brain passionately refuted.
Even those without the phobia would scream their lungs out at being dropped from such a high point, but this one, assumed to have a height phobia, did not let out a single reaction.
His answer came soon enough.
Asia did not react because he had passed out long before the drop. He was not responding to his questions because his fear had finally driven him to unconsciousness. Kamman's men pulled up a limp body dangling from the steel rope.
If Kamman wanted closure, this matter ended up confusing him even more and adding more questions than answers. Nevertheless, he got to confirm what he wanted to confirm. Their biggest fears also matched.
Kamman turned to leave, too tired to think anymore. He let out an order, so low and weak it sounded like a whisper. Only Rei, who was close to him, could hear it, and even he had to lean in.
"Send him to a hospital. After he wakes up, send him back."
Rei was confused. This was because Kamman had put in some effort in getting him, but he was just going to let him go easily. He, however, read his eyes and understood that it was not the time to be asking questions, so he nodded and transferred the order.
Asia woke up in a hospital bed a couple of hours later, his head a collection of drums beating continuously. His memory was not that distorted, so he remembered most of the events from the night before. He was dangling in the air. Did he fall? Was that why he was in a hospital?
A nurse was passing by, and he stopped her. "Could you kindly tell me why I'm here?" He asked politely. It sounded weird in his mouth.
The nurse bent over to look at his records attached to his bed, then said, "Oh, some men brought you in last night. They said you passed out from an accident."
Asia sneered at that. An accident or an abduction?
"Ah, okay. Thanks. I'd like to be discharged."
"That's okay. You have no major injuries, so you're good to go."
The kind nurse smiled at him and offered assistance, going over the processes with him until he was discharged. He later found out that his entire hospital bill had already been settled.
This phoenix was starting to make trips in his mind, and his subtle curiosity grew tremendously.