I put a leash on Catastrophe

Surprisingly, the pharaoh turned out to be an interlocutor one could communicate with. However, not knowing when his mood might change again, Zhi-wu hurriedly pulled out his clothes from the wardrobe and handed them to him.

There was nothing special in the wardrobe, so it was a regular T-shirt and pants. The same as Zhi-wu wore.

However, the length was very short.

“……”

Maybe due to the height difference of about a head, the sleeves of the long-sleeved raglan T-shirt only reached halfway up the forearm.

The pants were even worse – the buckle wouldn’t fasten, and the length barely reached the knees, so they could be called shorts. Moreover…

“Very… uncomfortable.”

Zhi-wu didn’t want to share even underwear, so he gave him new ones, but for some reason, the pharaoh was very uncomfortable.

The pharaoh silently looked at him with an expression as if asking if this was correct, but Zhi-wu had nothing to say. He just frowned.

“Nothing can be done.”

The pharaoh took off the clothes he had struggled to squeeze into. Thinking he wouldn’t bear it and would go out naked, Zhi-wu didn’t have time to say it wasn’t allowed when black flames enveloped the pharaoh’s body.

“Ugh!”

Although it didn’t look hot, Zhi-wu flinched from surprise.

When the flames that flared up above his head disappeared, the pharaoh was dressed in a purple T-shirt, over which was a windbreaker with a camouflage pattern, and black jeans.

Notably, the red Converse sneakers he was wearing didn’t look new at all, but rather quite worn.

Zhi-wu curiously examined them, as none of these things belonged to him, but the pharaoh just shrugged.

“These are clothes from memories. Saw them there.”

Martin answered Zhi-wu’s question. He pointed his finger at none other than the TV.

Since Zhi-wu didn’t watch TV at home, he thought that perhaps Martin was talking about what he saw in America.

Zhi-wu was curious how one could create a material object just by seeing it with the eyes, so he reached out and grabbed the windbreaker with his fingers. He opened his mouth in surprise, feeling the characteristic texture of the windbreaker fabric – smooth and a bit rough, but the pharaoh sharply pushed his hand away.

“Hmph, don’t touch me as you please. You, lustful creature.”

Zhi-wu was a bit angry at being called lustful just for touching the clothes, but since he really touched without permission, he decided to consider them even.

Anyway, the clothes looked quite normal, so Zhi-wu nodded.

“Okay, now we can go out.”

Strictly instructing them not to hit people, break things, or kill living beings, Zhi-wu left the house with them.

Although he was tired after returning to the country today, and time was approaching evening due to all the affairs, it seemed that postponing work would be difficult.

‘Anyway, it will be cramped for three in my room……’

Although the pharaoh’s grumbling could be ignored, the problem was Martin.

He was the largest of the three, so he seemed to feel awkward. His large body, curled up in a ball, looked quite pitiful.

‘Maybe sell the current apartment and stay in a hotel until I find a suitable house?’

In a normal situation, he would tremble, saying it would be better to be homeless than spend such money, but somehow he didn’t feel any burden from spending money obtained for free.

‘When money appears, it will have to be spent on various things…… Well, it’s okay. After all, I still have a lot of it.’

Zhi-wu thought about this easily and headed to the main street near the house. To catch a taxi.

Although the destination could be reached by public transport, he was afraid that something unforeseen might happen if they jostled among many people.

‘The pharaoh, squeezed in a crowded subway or bus……’

Considering that he got angry just from touching the fabric of clothes, it’s unknown how he would react to people pressing against him.

Images of an angry pharaoh, a pharaoh grabbing a passenger by the throat, a pharaoh running through the streets against the background of a burning bus and attacking passersby sequentially appeared in Zhi-wu’s head.

Shuddering with horror, he thought that everything possible should be done to prevent this from happening, and raised his hand to stop a passing taxi.

“Welcome.”

“Hello, please take us to Insadong.”

Seating the two in the back seat, Zhi-wu sat in the front and said this. The taxi was cramped but comfortable, and perhaps because the passengers looked like foreigners, the driver refrained from talking to them.

Thanks to this, they could calmly head to their destination.

* * *

One might think how such a sinister place can exist in the very center of Seoul, but according to Grandpa Kim, the owner of this place:

“To hide a tree, you need to hide it in a forest.”

This meant that if it were located in a deserted mountain village, it would be easy to hide, but the problem might be that many people would come there.

Especially considering that not only Koreans use this place in Korea, places where a large number of foreigners wouldn’t arouse suspicion can be counted on one hand.

Zhi-wu, hearing this, just thought “I guess so” and ignored it, but fortunately, this meant that getting there wasn’t difficult.

Since the place was not far from the subway station, Zhi-wu got off near the station.

The two seemed interested in the view of Insadong, which was different from New York and had an exotic look, but obediently followed Zhi-wu without unnecessary words.

So they headed to one shopping center. Perhaps because it was a weekday, it seemed a bit deserted.

As the three progressed deeper inside, there were fewer and fewer people, and by the time they reached the entrance to the emergency staircase, no one else was in sight.

Zhi-wu checked a small mark at the entrance and opened the door, entering inside. Going down one floor, they saw a metal door with the sign “Staff Only”.

‘The door…… is open.’

Although he worried that it might be closed, fortunately, the door wasn’t locked. When he slightly turned the handle and opened it, a long corridor with white walls and white tile flooring appeared.

Although he had heard about this many times, he was seeing it for the first time, so Zhi-wu looked around as he entered.

As soon as he took a step forward, a quiet sound of a working mechanism was heard.

‘Surveillance cameras……’

There were cameras in the corridor. From visible ones to small, hidden, and inconspicuous ones.

They were distributed everywhere, so there were no blind spots throughout the way. If even the weakest of the three, Zhi-wu, noticed them, then the other two certainly also noticed the presence of cameras. Martin pressed even closer to Zhi-wu, as if protecting him, and the pharaoh, who seemed to dislike the gaze of the cameras, quietly clicked his tongue.

“You can’t cause trouble here.”

“I know, tsk.”

The pharaoh clicked his tongue again in response to Zhi-wu’s words. Although he didn’t like it, he endured because it had already been drilled into his head several times before coming here, but Zhi-wu still didn’t seem calm and opened his mouth again.

“If you cause trouble here, you’ll immediately be blacklisted.”

Being blacklisted didn’t mean one couldn’t use the black market. However, if someone ended up there, it meant they didn’t follow the black market rules and couldn’t use its protection.

For example, if a conflict arises with another client, in a normal situation, the black market would intervene before things get serious, but…

‘For those on the blacklist, there’s no such thing.’

Not only mediation, even if someone kills a person from the blacklist, it won’t be considered a problem. Rather, they might even help clean up the traces.

‘Of course, that won’t happen.’

Zhi-wu’s eyes followed the face of the pharaoh, who still looked displeased with this situation.

He was more worried about people who might be torn apart by this handsome man’s hands than afraid of being attacked due to lack of black market protection.

Nevertheless, he wanted to avoid creating unnecessary enmity, especially considering they came here for help, so he just followed the rules.

After walking a bit, they saw the end of the corridor. At the end was a metal door, larger than the one they entered through, and a panel was attached to it. It was a panel for entering a password.

‘Oh…… Completely contactless.’

In addition to the entire corridor being studded with surveillance cameras, one had to overcome another mountain in the form of a password to reach the real black market – this seemed to Zhi-wu a very thorough approach.

The panel was touch-sensitive, where one could both type text and write with a finger.

Zhi-wu touched the panel a bit to check it, and then drew the password with his finger.

One large inverted heart and four small circles. The shape people call a cat’s paw.

He immediately pressed the send button and waited for the door to open, but strangely nothing happened.

‘Was it a lie?’

Zhi-wu felt cold sweat running down his back. He thought the password would be correct too, as all the descriptions and explanations he heard from Kim on the way here turned out to be true…

When Zhi-wu was already starting to doubt, thinking that maybe it wasn’t a cat’s paw after all, the metal door, which hadn’t reacted before, made a loud sound and opened.

“Ugh……”

When the tension that had gripped his body suddenly disappeared, Zhi-wu sighed with relief and entered the opened door. As soon as the three entered, the metal door that had opened automatically closed again automatically with a loud thud.

Zhi-wu had heard from Kim about the corridor leading to the black market, but he had never heard about what was inside.

Most likely, it wasn’t because Kim intentionally didn’t tell him, but because every time Zhi-wu asked, he just answered sharply.

He just said it was a large open space where different companies come and sell their goods.

‘Then I thought what kind of explanation is so careless, but……’

Surprisingly, it was exactly as he described. It looked no different from the shopping center upstairs.

‘Dasanda Pawnshop’,

‘Dokgodai Employment Agency’,

‘Hallim Commission Center’.

However, what was surprising were the things that were sold and bought in these shops. Although such shops exist outside, the goods they traded were different.

‘Pawnshop, welcome contraband and stolen goods. Employment agency…… recruits mercenaries?’

He had seen employment agencies that provided housekeepers, etc., but it was the first time he saw an agency providing mercenaries. Feeling his common sense crumbling, Zhi-wu continued walking.

Instead of being just one shop of each type, there were several shops of the same industry, so it seemed like a good idea to look at them all.

‘I wonder how this place will change when hunters appear.’

Now, when there are no hunters, this place is used only by people somehow connected to crime, but later everything will change.