Flowers Are Bait

“Hello?”

“So Lee-yeon?” Lee-yeon hit the brake suddenly, causing her to bite her tongue. She cursed under her breath. It was Kwon Ki-seok.

“Hello? What is the reason for your call?”

“Where is Chae-woo?” A large drop of sweat dripped off Lee-yeon’s forehead. He knows, she thought. He already knows everything.

Lee-yeon frowned at the inexplicable sense of defeat. It felt like shackles had closed on her lungs and started squeezing.

“Bring him,” the voice on the phone ordered. “If you break the contract like this, I won’t show you any mercy. I have been letting you do whatever you want, and you know that. Don’t make me angry. You know the consequences.”

Lee-yeon quickly turned the steering wheel and headed back to the dock, her panic growing.

* * *

A terrible smell of drugs, mixed with fish, leaked out from inside the cabin.

“So, who is it this time?” On the deck, a man with a cut across his cheek asked the youngest man before him. He nudged the prisoner with a dirty boot. “He’s pretty calm. Is he from the district office?”

Anyone brought to the ship usually cried and begged for mercy. But today’s guest is no fun at all, the scarred man thought

“I don’t know,” the younger drug dealer said.

“Well, it doesn’t matter. Whoever he is, he’s going to die with a hole in his head.” The scarred man, looked to the younger dealer. “Bring it,” he instructed him.

The scarred man raised his right hand, the ship’s lights suddenly turned off. The other fishing boats that surrounded them also turned off their lights. A heavy silence fell in the middle of the sea, as if to cover the sin that was about to be committed.

“What are you doing?” the scarred man asked as the dealer refused to move. “I said bring it. Don’t make me repeat myself.” He slapped the young man, who appeared to be in a daze. “What is wrong with you today?”

“Be careful,” the young man said.

“What are you talking about?”

“It’s a trap,” the young man whispered in the darkness.

Kwon Chae-woo, who had taken off the cloth from his head while the two dealers argued, was now standing behind the scarred man. He quickly stabbed the man three times, then threw him into the sea with a huge splash.

As if they’d just seen a ghost, everyone on the deck froze. There was a momentary silence.

“Catch him!” someone shouted.

Ten men rushed out of the cabin, and the massacre began. Amidst the stabbing knives, that seemed to come from every direction, Kwon Chae-woo’s hands moved rapidly up and down, left and right. He blocked the blades rushing towards him, knocking them out of the air as if they were toys.

His heart pounded fast, pumping hot blood throughout his body. Impossibly unable to make a single counterattack, the men on the deck fell into the cold sea one by one. In a matter of minutes, Kwon Chae-woo’s hands and face were covered with blood. It was something more than the madness that gleamed in his eyes.

With a loud explosion, a bullet clipped Kwon Chae-woo’s thigh and lodged in the deck. The young dealer was pointing the gun at Kwon Chae-woo with shaking hands.

“Don’t move! Or else I’ll shoot, you bastard!” he cried with a nervous voice.

Kwon Chae-woo turned. As soon as the dealer saw Kwon Chae-woo’s bloodthirsty eyes, the color disappeared from the young man’s face. Kwon Chae-woo approached him slowly and put his forehead against the barrel of the gun.

“Do it,” Kwon Chae-woo said, his voice unwavering. “You can’t be any older than twenty?”

The young man did not know how to respond, and just stood shaking in fear. Kwon Chae-woo grabbed the young man’s hand and repositioned the gun in it.

“Hold it like this,” Kwon Chae-woo said. “And pull the trigger.”

The young man hesitated, frozen in fear, so Kwon Chae-woo punched a fist into his throat. The young man fell to the floor, gasping for breath and his face turning blue. Kwon Chae-woo picked up the gun and entered the cabin. It was a workroom.

The first thing that he noticed were the skinny old men sitting at a table calmly, oblivious to the chaos outside. Their backs were curved over the tabletop, their hands moving non-stop blending and packaging the drugs. Various flasks, purification equipment, and plastic wrappers were scattered all over the floor. Kwon Chae-woo was speechless at the sight of not only the elderly but also children being forced to pack drugs.

A series of bullets fired into the cabin from somewhere outside. The windows shattered, and Kwon Chae-woo lowered his body to the floor, leaning his back against the wall. One of the packagers was hit and slumped dead in his chair. The rest of the slaves continued to process the drugs, regardless of the bullets flying around them.

Kwon Chae-woo checked the number of bullets left in the gun he had taken from the young man outside. Carefully raising his head to one of the broken windows, he scanned outside. In the moonlight, he could make out the shadows of snipers with guns standing on the surrounding fishing boats.

Raising his arm and taking aim, he took out each gun man one by one. As they fell, the remaining shooters started firing wildly, unsure of where Kwon Chae-woo was. Bullets ricocheted off the deck. The barrage slowly diminished as each gunman fell.

Last one, Kwon Chae-woo thought as he pulled the trigger. There was a click, but no discharge. Fuck! He crouched back down into the cabin, desperately looking for another gun. A loud explosion, as if from a collision, echoed from outside. The shooting stopped. Kwon Chae-woo crawled to the doorway to see the cause of the noise.