-----------------------------------------------------------------
Translator: Vine
Chapter: 1
Chapter Title: A Second Chance
-----------------------------------------------------------------
It was a night of heavy snow.
*Thud! Tap! Thud! Tap!*
A long trail of tracks was left on the freshly fallen snow—one shaped like a boot, the other a mere point.
Do Tong-dal, a single man with two different footprints, walked slowly down the darkened street.
"Haa…! Haa…!"
Though the night was cold enough to turn his white breath to ice, Do Tong-dal felt nothing.
It was partly the liquor, but mostly the thick coat of remorse he wore. Especially today.
Sixty years of regrettable memories sprang forth like frogs breaking through ice.
If only he hadn't gone to the problem-solver's office back then. If only he hadn't gone to prison in Jo Pyeong-sang's place. If only he hadn't been sentenced to conscription, then his own leg would be attached below his knee, not a wooden stick.
*Thud! Tap! Thud! Tap!*
'I had a chance to save Wang Chil Hyeong-nim, too.'
The man had survived forty years in the underworld of Dosan-geomrim. He was the only person who had warmly embraced Do Tong-dal when he returned as a cripple.
Wang Chil's death was Do Tong-dal's fault. He had been stabbed after earning someone's enmity for trying too hard to protect him.
Remorse for what he hadn't done, and regret for what he had, piled up in his heart like the falling snow.
He knew. He knew what his greatest regret in life was.
'I should have gotten it back then. I should have been the one to get it, not that bastard Jang Jeong-baek.'
He'd had a clear chance to live like an emperor in Hangzhou, this heaven on earth.
That day, at that time, if only he had been the one to walk down that road instead of Jang Jeong-baek, it would have been his.
A futile regret.
*Scrape, drag. Scrape, drag.*
His knee was half-bent, the wooden leg scraping against the ground. He still had a long way to go, but his good leg wasn't strong enough to support his heavy body.
It wasn't that he couldn't go on if he had to. On the battlefield he'd been sent to after his conscription, he had once crawled for ten li while dragging his own intestines.
Back then, he had possessed a will to live that burned hotter than the sweltering heat of the southern lands. He certainly had, back then.
The hope of escaping his life as a worthless gangster and living splendidly like an emperor had kept him moving.
'I should have just died there. I should have left my life on that battlefield, not just my leg.'
Do Tong-dal had never managed to escape that worthless station in his entire life.
*Crack!*
His wooden leg slipped, and he tumbled to the ground. Do Tong-dal instinctively tried to get up, but then he stopped.
To live on from here, he would have to crawl like a worm again today. He wanted to finally put an end to this insignificant life.
Lying on his back, looking up at the sky, it felt as if all the snow in the world was falling just for him.
"A good day to die."
* * *
He wasn't certain, but it felt like he'd been struck on the back of the head. In any case, it was enough to jolt Do Tong-dal to his senses.
"You lazy punk, sleeping on the job at the office on your first day!"
A grating, metallic voice made his head ache.
"You bastard! Snap out of it!"
Do Tong-dal turned his head. The man's wide face, which looked like it couldn't be covered even with four palms, and his protruding belly seemed familiar.
'Where am I?'
He had been waiting for death, buried in the snow, and he had been sure he would die. He had lived a life of suffering; he thought he was at least blessed with a peaceful death.
But he was alive. Not in the afterlife, nor at a physician's clinic, but awake in a completely unknown place.
"The big boss will be here soon, so hurry up and clean!"
Do Tong-dal clumsily caught the broom the wide-faced man threw at him.
He was about to snap, 'You bastard! Weren't you raised by parents?!' He would have shouted it, too, if he hadn't seen his own right leg as he reached for the dropped broom.
"Huh?"
It wasn't a gaunt wooden peg. It was clearly a proper leg. It looked like one, and when he lifted his foot and rolled it on the floor, it felt like one too.
The miracle wasn't just that his leg was whole again. The hand he'd extended to grab the broom was smooth and taut, like that of a teenager.
"Look at you, just standing there gawking! You want me to beat you black and blue with that broom?"
The name of the wide-faced man suddenly came to mind.
'Jo Pyeong-do!'
It was from a long, long time ago, but the memory returned quickly because the man had made his life particularly miserable.
'But why does Jo Pyeong-do look like that? It's as if this was when we first met…'
With that thought, Do Tong-dal rushed to the polished mirror hanging on the office wall.
His reflection in the poor-quality mirror was young. Beyond young—it was childish. Late teens, at best.
Do Tong-dal pinched his cheek. It felt firm and supple, and it hurt.
'Is this real?'
Through the mirror, he could see Jo Pyeong-do glaring at him. Do Tong-dal turned his head and asked.
"Are you really Jo Pyeong-do, the Gwanghwa Mutt?"
It was Jo Pyeong-do's nickname, short for 'son of a bitch from Gwanghwa-ro.' Naturally, it wasn't a nickname he was fond of.
"Wh-what? You bastard, you must have a death wish today!"
He wasn't beaten to death. But he was beaten painfully enough. His face was swollen and his body was covered in bruises, but he didn't feel bad at all.
This vivid sensation—if he hadn't woken up even after a beating like this, it was certainly no dream. Do Tong-dal had returned to his eighteen-year-old self.
"Puhahaha—!"
Jo Pyeong-do, who had bent down to pick up the fallen broom to hand to Do Tong-dal, flinched back in surprise.
"Th-this bastard… I see now he's completely lost his mind."
"Senior, could you please give me that broom?"
Looking at Do Tong-dal smiling brightly with a swollen face made Jo Pyeong-do feel a creeping sense of fear.
"H-here…"
Taking the broom, Do Tong-dal began to clean, even humming a tune. He swept diligently, as if cleaning were the most joyful task in the world.
Do Tong-dal even washed a rag and wiped every corner of the office until it was spotless.
'This must be a gift from the heavens, as an apology to me!'
Just as Do Tong-dal finished cleaning, the door opened and a man walked in.
"Ooh! What's the occasion? The office is sparkling."
Large eyes, a button nose, a man with a bushy beard. The man who had willingly played the role of both a brother and a father to Do Tong-dal, and the man who had been stabbed to death because of it.
Wang Chil.
"Hyeong-nim—!"
Do Tong-dal ran and threw his arms around Wang Chil in a tight embrace. The man's characteristic stench of stale liquor filled his nose, but even that was a welcome scent.
Wang Chil looked down at Do Tong-dal, who was rubbing his face against his shoulder, with an expression of disbelief.
"Who… who the hell are you?"
"It's me, Tong-dal! Do Tong-dal!"
It was their first meeting, so of course Wang Chil wouldn't recognize him, and he would surely think him a madman, but he didn't want to let this joyous reunion pass him by.
"Get off me right now if you don't want to be sent to the asylum."
"Yes, sir!"
Do Tong-dal quickly backed away but didn't wipe the beaming smile from his face.
"What happened to your face?"
Jo Pyeong-do spoke up.
"As you can see, he seems to have lost his mind a bit, so I disciplined him."
"Don't ever become a teacher. It looks like his mind didn't come back, it just ran further away."
"What about Wang-su Hyeong-nim and the other rookie? Why did you come alone, boss?"
"They'll be here soon."
Wang Chil, who was about to walk to his desk, waved a hand dismissively at Do Tong-dal.
"You, stay at least five feet away from me."
"How about one foot?"
"You want a broken leg?"
He had no desire to become a cripple because of Wang Chil. Only after Do Tong-dal pressed himself against the wall did Wang Chil cross the office and sit in his chair.
Looking at the ledger on his desk, Wang Chil asked Jo Pyeong-do.
"Are the books finished?"
Jo Pyeong-do grumbled.
"That's no easy task. It'll take at least another four hours of hard work."
Just then, Seo Wang-su, the deputy chief of the Gwanghwa-ro Resolution Office, and Gang Bu-song, a rookie like Do Tong-dal, entered.
Do Tong-dal remembered the then twenty-five-year-old Seo Wang-su as a good person, and the eighteen-year-old Gang Bu-song as an idiot.
"It's getting hotter."
As Seo Wang-su wiped the sweat from his forehead with a rag, Wang Chil asked.
"What about that matter you went to handle?"
"They're pushing for a quick resolution… *Sigh*! Honestly, this is beyond my abilities."
Seo Wang-su noticed Do Tong-dal and asked, 'What happened to your face?', to which Jo Pyeong-do proudly replied, 'I disciplined him a bit.'
"You bastard. You've only been here two months longer than him."
"A day in the sun makes a world of difference, doesn't it?"
"By that logic, you should be crawling before me, you punk."
Wang Chil asked, just in case.
"Hey, you two rookies. Any of you know how to read?"
Nine out of ten of those who sought to become gangsters probably couldn't even get through the first hundred characters of the Thousand Character Classic. Among the remaining ten percent, you could count on one hand the number who had mastered it.
And any gangster educated to that level wouldn't come to a Resolution Office; they'd go to a branch or the main headquarters.
"I do."
The one who answered promptly was Do Tong-dal.
"Besides your own name, how many characters do you know?"
"I don't know."
Jo Pyeong-do misunderstood Do Tong-dal's words.
"You little shit, you said you knew and now you say you don't? You're telling a lie that'll be exposed in a second. You got the memory of a goldfish?"
"I meant I know so many characters that I don't know how many… sir."
"What? A little pipsqueak like you is running his mouth. How many characters of the Thousand Character Classic do you know? For your information, I know a hundred."
Do Tong-dal knew very well that Jo Pyeong-do didn't even know fifty characters from the Thousand Character Classic.
"I finished the Thousand Character Classic long ago and have a fair grasp of the Four Books and Three Classics as well."
Wang Chil, who had been about to light his hand-rolled cigarette, looked at Do Tong-dal with surprise.
"You finished the Thousand Character Classic? And that Four Books and whatever… sounds familiar. Aren't those some crazy difficult books?"
They were difficult. When Do Tong-dal had returned as a cripple, Wang Chil had suggested he take up work as a scribe. It was a job where he wrote letters for others or managed ledgers for merchants.
Do Tong-dal, who hadn't even finished the Thousand Character Classic, had no choice but to start studying. He had no other option if he wanted to eat.
He studied as if his life depended on it, and after more than a decade of working as a scribe, there were hardly any characters Do Tong-dal didn't know.
Jo Pyeong-do raised his voice.
"Where do you get off spouting such nonsense? Do you even know what the Four Books and Three Classics are?"
"The Four Books are the foundational scriptures of Confucianism, referring to the Great Learning, the Doctrine of the Mean, the Analects, and the Mencius. The Three Classics are the Classic of Poetry, the Book of Documents, and the Book of Changes."
"Hmph, looks like you've heard of them somewhere. You're saying you can read them?"
"I can write them as well."
"You bastard! Say something that makes sense! Why would someone like that come to a place like the Gwanghwa-ro Resolution Office!"
Seo Wang-su smacked Jo Pyeong-do on the back of the head.
"What's wrong with the Gwanghwa-ro Resolution Office, you punk?"
"No… that's not what I…"
"Listen here, you don't bad-mouth the place that fills your rice bowl."
"Y-yes, sir. I was just so dumbfounded by that bastard's lies…"
Wang Chil cut Jo Pyeong-do off.
"Rookie. What was your name again?"
"I told you earlier. It's Do Tong-dal."
"Right, Tong-dal. Do you know how to manage ledgers?"
"I've learned a little."
"Where would you have learned something like that!"
Jo Pyeong-do needlessly spoke up again and got another smack on the head from Seo Wang-su.
"You bastard! Why are you so worked up today?"
Jo Pyeong-do was getting anxious because his unique value was about to disappear.
Wang Chil pointed to the ledger on his desk.
"Then give it a try. Pyeong-do, you show him how it's done."
"That's alright. I can do it myself."
He had done nothing but manage ledgers until he was sick of it. Thanks to Jo Pyeong-do pushing all his work onto him, the smell of ink had never left him.
"That idiot! Does he think our ledgers are as simple as some street vendor's? Boss, are you really going to entrust this to him? If he messes it up, don't blame me. You know this ledger has to be sent to headquarters by today, right?"
The simple ledgers, organized every five days, were sent to the branch office, while the monthly ledgers, closed out once a month, were sent directly to headquarters.
Because it involved money, any mistakes in the ledgers would result in a severe reprimand.
As Wang Chil hesitated, Do Tong-dal spoke.
"If anything goes wrong, I'll take full responsibility."
Read More Chapters on Our Website:
- VineNovels.com
New chapters released daily — don't miss out!