NIS Agents Tearing Up the Japanese Empire - Chapter 32



Only Krnovel

Age of emotion – 4

The consulate was turned upside down.

Sasaki, who had returned from a brief outing with a severely injured right hand, immediately called for a gathering of all the soldiers and detectives in the consulate.

And then he suddenly said this.

“I think everyone has something to say to me.”

“······?”

“???”

Everyone’s faces were filled with question marks at the sight of Sasaki suddenly speaking incomprehensibly.

“What do you mean?”

“Huh… Do you know what you did today?”

“Even if you suddenly say that···.”

The soldiers and detectives were busy looking at each other’s faces and guessing what the topic of the meeting was today.

“Last time when we were organizing documents, Iwamura accidentally copied the same paper twice. I took care to educate him well…”

“no!!!”

“······.”

At Sasaki’s scream, people’s mouths fell silent and they all locked their mouths.

“What did I tell you? I told you to wait in the cafe just in case you were going to meet a spy this morning. Didn’t I? Huh?!”

Then one of the group, who was very brave and yet had a wit that seemed to have eaten ochazuke as a side dish, opened his mouth.

“That’s because Inspector Sasaki personally gave the order to cancel the operation···.”

“When did I!!!”

Everyone’s faces darkened as they gasped at Sasaki’s heated reaction.

“That, that···. Didn’t Inspector Sasaki say that the operation was canceled because he sent a Korean named Hyunbae that we saw last time···?”

The detectives complained of injustice.

Clearly, they had returned to the consulate because Sasaki had ordered them to stop the operation.

And it wasn’t something that came from some random person, but from the mouth of Inspector Sasaki’s most trusted spy, so how could one not believe it?

“When did I say something like that!! When!! These kids···. Didn’t you guys do whatever you wanted without checking properly because it was annoying?!”

“No, that’s not it.”

However, Sasaki, whose right hand was already shattered, was not at ease enough to consider their circumstances.

“What do you mean, no?! Crush them all right now.”

“Your Majesty···.”

Some people with higher rank tried to stop Inspector Sasaki, but there was no one, at least within the Shanghai consulate, who could stop him since he had already lost his mind.

“Smash my head!!!”

As his angry voice rang out, army officers from the consulate who had been doing their business outside came in.

“What’s going on that makes you raise your voice like that?”

“This has nothing to do with you, so please leave.”

“No, you’re saying that you brought our children here and are doing something unrelated? Then we’ll take our children.”

At the officers’ words, thick veins stood out on Inspector Sasaki’s forehead, and a chilling anger that had surged from deep within his danjeon burst out through his mouth.

“I told you it had nothing to do with you!!!”

The officers were slightly taken aback by the sudden shout.

The relationship between the high-ranking detectives and the army had not been very good, but it was not so bad that they would openly yell at each other like this.

“Is something wrong···?”

“Work? Of course there was! Do you think I would have held those kids back when I had nothing to do?!”

“Then why···?”

After hearing Sasaki’s angry explanation of the situation, the officers all coughed and turned away.

Now that the intruder was gone, Sasaki’s pent-up anger was about to raise its head again.

“Hey, sir! We’re in big trouble!”

“······what?”

Something happened that made Sasaki angry.

“A huge explosion and flames reportedly erupted at a port warehouse on the outskirts of Shanghai!”

“What?! Why over there···. Ah!”

A person appeared in Sasaki’s mind.

******

“Last night there was a huge explosion in a Japanese-owned warehouse, killing and injuring several people and apparently burning things.”

“Is that so? That is truly unfortunate.”

Kim Gu came to visit us early this morning.

Unlike his usual practice of leading his pride with bodyguards, he came alone as if he were out for a walk and had a drink with me early in the morning.

“The Republic of China Military Police have begun an investigation, and according to reports, there were large quantities of opium piled up in several Japanese-owned warehouses.”

“저런! 아주 개새끼들이었군요.”

“Haha… That’s right.”

Kim Gu smiled happily and took out a bottle of alcohol.

“This is a gift from someone I know.”

“Is that so? It looks precious at first glance.

“It is a very precious thing to me.”

Kim Gu opened the lid and filled the glass with alcohol.

“Should we have a drink on a happy day like today?”

“Drinking during the day is bad for your health.”

“It’s a life where you never know when you might die.”

“At least I don’t want to die from drinking.”

“Hey···. That’s harsh.”

Kim Gu put the alcohol aside and asked me with a much calmer face.

“My subordinate said that he heard gunshots at this teacher’s house a few days ago.”

“It’s a golden poem.”

“This is probably the first time you’ve heard of it.”

“You can call it that too.”

Kim Gu smiled as if to say, “I know everything, but I will ask only this much out of consideration for your face.”

“Not long ago, the whereabouts of several children, including Jaehwang and Hyeonbae, became unknown.”

“I took care of those kids. I put them to work and they turned out pretty well.”

“okay?”

This was not an empty promise.

Even now, I was busy cleaning the basement, preparing the space where the ordered machine tools would be placed, and erasing various traces.

“You are taking those kids with you…”

“It just so happened.”

“You can’t just hand it over to me, can you?”

“Please speak sense.”

Kim Gu wanted to take the children with him.

What he wanted, it seemed, was to close the National Assembly and expel those who were negative toward the provisional government.

It seemed like he was asking me to hand them over to him because he had been doing that all along.

But I had no intention of handing those guys over.

I would have been in favor of quietly dealing with them and throwing them into the West Sea, but I didn’t think Kim Gu would handle things so cleanly.

“Ugh… That’s too bad.”

“That’s true.”

Kim Gu expressed his regret.

There were no harsh threats to hand them over quickly or to wake up in the surging West Sea the next morning if they didn’t do it right away.

“It’s too bad… It’s too bad….”

I was just expressing excessive regret.

If it had been someone else within the provisional government instead of me, the conversation would not have even taken place.

Kim Gu was a man who preferred guns to dialogue.

The fact that we were able to have this conversation was all thanks to the money that had been scattered here and there in advance.

“I wonder why there are so many things that are wrong here···.”

“Just as the provisional government has its own rules, my house has its own rules.”

“What are the rules between us?”

“That’s why we have rules.”

As I said that, I took out an envelope with money.

“What is this?”

“The Japanese consulate will go crazy over the warehouse building. It’s better to hide and prepare for a strong defense when a typhoon hits.”

“Is that warehouse that important?”

“Yes, it was a very important item from their perspective.”

It wasn’t just any opium, it was opium that the Black Dragon Society was trying to sell to China to raise funds.

The opium I burned wasn’t just any opium.

It was an item prepared by the Black Dragon Society, which controlled the Japanese behind the scenes, to raise funds.

Since Britain began smuggling opium into the Qing Dynasty, China has been rife with opium addicts.

If you walk down the streets of Shanghai these days, you can often see opium dens or people smoking opium on the streets.

During the Qing Dynasty, the central government at least pretended to control it, but as the era of the emperors ended and the era of the Republic of China began, the opium problem in China became more serious.

The central government that was supposed to control opium and treat and protect addicts disappeared, and warlords who ran rampant throughout the country actively encouraged opium, rather than restricting it, and filled their pockets.

When they heard that opium was selling well in the neighboring country, the Japanese Empire, which had just discovered the true taste of capitalism, and especially the Black Dragon Society, which was drooling over the vast Manchuria, could not just sit back and watch this happen.

“That was this warehouse.”

“Um… Black Dragon Society… It’s the first time I’ve heard of the Black Dragon Society.”

“That would be true. It hasn’t been that long since I first heard of their existence.”

“Black Dragon Society… I should remember that.”

“It’s not something you can remember.”

“Huh? Why?”

“It’ll be gone soon.”

“······?”

Kim Gu looked at me with an expression that said he didn’t understand English, and I sipped the drink he had brought.

“Ugh… One sip of alcohol is really strong.”

“Originally, when you drink one glass of alcohol, it’s only real alcohol if it makes your head hurt like it’s going to burst.”

So, I stayed up late at night drinking with Kim Gu and chatting about various things.

I’m talking about things like the current situation of the provisional government and its future direction.

But when alcohol came into the picture, the conversation usually went like this.

“It’s a mari -ya that’s the one?

“Oh my… That guy is really bad.”

“Really? Really? Do you think so too?”

“Okay then.”

“An Chang-ho, Park Yong-man… Those two guys are bad guys who want to tear the provisional government apart and do whatever they want with it!”

“Oh, like that.”

A few glasses of strong white liquor loosened Kim Gu’s tongue and oiled the tightly shut lock in his heart, loosening the bonds.

Thanks to that, Kim Gu, while drunk, told me all the stories he had been keeping inside.

“Teacher Lee, I want you to remember that you are the only one I trust in this Shanghai.”

“Of course. I know.”

“Hehehe… Everyone acts like participating in the independence movement is some kind of official position….”

“Oh, like that.”

As someone from the side encouraged him, Kim Gu became more excited and talked more passionately.

Information about the differences in opinion and issues of the various political forces within the provisional government that I had wanted to know about was easily extracted.

Of course, most of it had Kim Gu’s personal views added to it, but that didn’t matter because I just had to listen to it with a moderate amount of filtering.

“Whew… In the end, no matter what, the biggest problem right now is the communists.”

“Are the commies at fault again?”

“No, their very existence is an accident!”

Kim Gu seemed reluctant to join the Communist Party.

One of the reasons may be that relations with communists have become very uncomfortable due to the recent Kim Lip murder incident and the International Communist Party funding incident.

“The Soviet Union also outwardly talks about independence and freedom for all and says they will support us, but… I doubt how pure their intentions are.”

“It’s hard to trust the Reds in Moscow without any guarantees.”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying! Who are they? They’re the ones who overthrew the government and seized power, even though it’s confusing! They’re talking about freedom and equality, and they’re supporting us? They’re ready to fight with the Japanese?”

“It certainly sounds suspicious.”

Kim Gu drank alcohol one after another.

“This teacher, this teacher, stay away from the communists. They are like a plague, lunatics who gradually try to dye others with their colors.”

“Oh···.”

I wasn’t a big fan of communists either, but Kim Gu was even worse than me.

Moreover, this was a time when Lenin had taken power in Russia and founded the Soviet Union, and was supporting various independence movement groups by advocating the principle of national self-determination.

In other words, the number of people within the independence movement group who are favorable toward socialism is gradually increasing.

In this situation, Kim Gu was hostile to socialism and advised people to distance themselves from it.

‘Now that I think about it, I guess you weren’t drunk to say that, you were just pretending to be drunk?’

At some point, Kim Gu’s pronunciation returned to normal, and his previously erratic behavior seemed to have returned to normal.

I thought I was still acting, but… it was quickly apparent that I wasn’t used to this kind of thing.

“Oh my! It’s already time···”

“Huh? Why the time?”

“Isn’t it dinner time soon? You should hurry up and go back and have dinner.”

“Can’t we just eat here? I don’t really like what’s on the menu tonight.”

“······.”

It was hard to tell if this was an act or sincere remark.

“Ugh… By the way, what do you think will happen in the future with the Black Dragon Society or whatever you mentioned?”

“I won’t do anything immediately noticeable.”

“So is this just going to be glossed over like this?”

“That’s probably not it either.”

Considering the amount of opium I burned, the economic damage they suffered must have been considerable.

Since I’m not familiar with the prices here, it was hard for me to estimate exactly how much damage there was…

“They blew up about five large buildings, so they’re going to try to retaliate in some way.”

“Is that so?”

Kim Gu seemed to have little interest in this matter, as if he was watching a fire across the river.

Rather, he was busy moving his chopsticks while eating the codfish stew that was served as a drinking snack.

“That’s a big deal.”

“······.”

I was speechless at the sight of Kim Gu eating deliciously the food that was brought out on purpose to drive me away.