NIS Agents Tearing Up the Japanese Empire - Chapter 59



Only Krnovel

– 3

They succeeded in stopping the moving train by pretending to be a train robber and stealing items from the luggage compartment.

But what came next was the problem.

The guns and explosives prepared by the Uiyeoldan were in the amount of dozens of large wooden boxes, and were simply too much to carry and move by hand.

“The four of us… no, including this teacher, it’s impossible for us to run away with all this luggage.”

“I guess so.”

“Then let’s just take as much as we can and run away!”

“If we keep moving like that in this heat, it won’t be long before it spreads, and the Japanese police and soldiers who came after us after receiving the report will capture us.”

“Wouldn’t that be a big problem?”

“This is a big deal.”

Kim Won-bong turned his head and looked at me.

“Isn’t that right, Mr. Lee?”

“······?”

Kim Won-bong looked at me with anticipation, wondering what I should do.

Then he started talking to me in a tone that I couldn’t tell if he was calmly explaining his situation or if he was trying to burden me.

“I got my body out safely and got my stuff back, but now the problem is how to get out.”

“······.”

“If we just keep wasting time on the streets like this, eventually the enemy soldiers will come swarming in.”

“······.”

“It would be perfect if there was something like a truck… Do you have a truck hidden somewhere?”

“······?”

Kim Won-bong gave me a look full of anticipation.

It felt as if there was a firm belief that the ghost of Gyeongseong would be able to create a neat truck even in a forest like this.

“Even I don’t have the talent to build a truck in these steep mountains.”

“really?”

“Yes, really.”

“What a pity.”

Kim Won-bong looked genuinely sorry, but he did not feel sad or frustrated.

“Then, I guess we should move on to the next plan.”

“You had plans for the next time, too.”

“The wise rabbit.”

“Yes, I dug three holes.”

“You know a lot!”

He stood up from his seat with a confident expression.

Then he looked around at the other members and said.

“Now that it has come to this, it is unfortunate that the assassination attempt on Governor-General Saito seems to have failed.”

“So that’s what happens in the end···.”

“So the operation is on hold here?”

“It’s a complete scrapping.”

The plan to assassinate Governor-General Saito was an operation that members of Uiyoldan worked on for several months to eliminate the vicious colonial governor-general, Saito Makoto, who had been oppressing and dividing fellow Koreans in the name of cultural rule.

However, Kim Won-bong discarded this too easily.

“Comrade Captain! Discarded?!”

“It’s too hasty to give up on a great undertaking that took months of work just because of a few variables!”

“We are prepared to risk our lives to execute Governor Saito!”

Naturally, party members opposed Kim Won-bong’s arbitrary decision.

However, among the members here, there was no one who could break Kim Won-bong’s stubbornness, which even the Japanese Empire could not break.

“If we proceed with the operation like this, we’ll all be captured and killed before we even reach our objective.”

“If Saito dies, I will die smiling even if I have to die like a dog.”

“No way.”

“Captain!”

Instead of appeasing the disgruntled members, Kim Won-bong turned his head and looked at me with a burdened look.

“I know it’s a bit embarrassing to ask you this, but could you buy us some time to get out of here?”

“That’s not difficult.”

It is welcome news that the Uiyoldan is giving up on assassinating the Governor-General, but seeing them say it so openly, and so suspiciously, I couldn’t help but think this.

‘Did you notice?’

Of course, that is unlikely.

Even though I was Kim Won-bong, who had been evading the Japanese Empire’s persistent pursuit and making high-ranking Japanese government officials gnash their teeth in real time, it was absurd to suspect me out of the blue without any information.

“What are you going to do with that explosive?”

“For now, I’m going to bury it somewhere suitable. If one of our members comes to Joseon, we can dig up the bomb and get things moving again.”

Explosives aren’t like kimchi, and burying them in the ground doesn’t keep their original power.

Especially in the Korean peninsula, where the seasons change constantly, it was obvious that if gunpowder was buried in the ground, it would immediately become covered in moisture and become unusable.

“In that case, just hand it over to me.”

“You want me to hand it over? Heh heh, you said earlier that you didn’t have the means to move all this stuff.”

“That meant there was no means of transport to get them to a safe place.”

“It wasn’t there a moment ago, but now it is? That’s interesting.”

Kim Won-bong’s expression did not look funny at all.

Should I say that he rather looks as if he is suspicious of me?

“Why do you look at me like that?”

“No, by the way, I didn’t tell you specifically, but I was just curious as to why you were chasing us.”

“It’s a trade secret, so I can’t tell you.”

“Um… That’s right, I said that last time too.”

The other members of the Righteous Army also noticed the subtle change in their leader and rolled their eyes diligently.

Their expressions couldn’t be seen clearly because their faces were covered by masks, but it wasn’t hard to tell that they were nervous.

‘Everyone doubts me.’

Well, even I thought about it and there were a lot of suspicious things.

Kim Won-bong and his subordinates each asked me to join them in this project, but I refused every time because I didn’t want to get involved with them.

But the guy who had always refused showed up on the train to Gyeongseong, having knocked down a Japanese policeman, and caught the spy.

I wonder how many people would see this and think it was just a coincidence.

‘Wow… It seems you were a bit impatient.’

To begin with, unlike other independence activists, I did not come from a prestigious family or have a name that was gradually becoming known through this connection.

From Kim Won-bong’s perspective, he was a man who had appeared in Gyeongseong a few months ago, left the place in ruins, escaped, and joined the Provisional Government in Shanghai.

And I don’t know if Kim Won-bong knew this, but he was also suspiciously frequenting the Japanese Consulate General in Shanghai and frequently meeting with high-ranking detectives there.

‘Anyone can tell that he’s a spy?’

Although independence activists in Shanghai paid attention to news from Gyeongseong, few people actually knew clearly what was happening there.

There were newspapers in Joseon, but the newspapers in Gyeongseong had to go through censorship by the Governor-General, so unless there was a local source of information like the Provisional Government, it was very difficult to obtain information.

Since the situation between Uiyoldan and the provisional government was not good to begin with, there was no way that they could exchange information with each other. So most of the information that Uiyoldan heard from Gyeongseong was probably information that was influenced by the Government-General of Korea.

It was also suspicious that I, a person with no family background, was spreading money around in Shanghai based on an enormous amount of financial power that was unimaginable to me as an individual.

A guy with no particular background and who doesn’t seem to work spends money like water?

There’s a guy with so much money who’s so ignorant of the ways of the world?

This was suspicious enough.

Even in modern times, don’t leaflets that describe spies or armed guerrillas from the North always include things like ignorance of the ways of the world and ignorance of the value of money?

As these small doubts piled up one by one, the person I see myself as from Kim Won-bong’s perspective was…

‘He looks like a special agent sent by the Governor-General of Joseon to split the provisional government.’

By roughly fitting together the puzzle pieces, the result was astonishing: a secret investigation.

“I know what you’re thinking right now, but it’s probably not what you’re thinking, Comrade Captain.”

First, I tried to have a conversation.

Then Kim Won-bong also answered.

“I suddenly don’t know what that means.”

“I have nothing to do with the Japanese.”

“······I just asked about transportation, and what are you talking about right away?”

Now that I think about it, it looks like I was stealing a bomb from the Uiyeoldan that had infiltrated the Korean Peninsula.

Moreover, just a little while ago, they said that they had no means of transport to transport the explosives, and now they are even saying that they will transport the explosives… It was a situation where it was impossible for Uiyeoldan not to be suspicious.

It wasn’t my intention, but the way things turned out really drove me crazy.

“I just told you so that you would know.”

“Huh, did I seem to doubt you, sir? If so, I feel a little sorry.”

Kim Won-bong said that, but his face was completely different from his words.

His expression was sharp, and his gaze toward me was still filled with suspicion.

‘This is driving me crazy.’

The more I tried to make excuses to try to handle the situation, the more complicated it became.

If it had been normal, I would have been able to neatly untie the complicated Gordian knot with a few bullets before the situation got this complicated, but unfortunately, Kim Won-bong was still on our side.

So, we had to put the bullets aside for a moment and resolve the issue through dialogue like gentlemen.

“I think there is a misunderstanding.”

“What on earth are we misunderstanding?”

“Meaning of transportation.”

“Yeah, you said you didn’t have a means of transport to move those explosives, right? Now that you’re saying you’re going to bury them in the ground, you say you do.”

“Yes, Comrade Captain, you asked me to buy you some time to get the body out. So I just thought of a way to do that.”

“What is that?”

I raised my hand and pointed to the train behind me.

“That’s it.”

“train?”

Kim Won-bong and the group glanced back at the train we had come on, then shook their heads.

Since it seemed difficult to resolve this situation through dialogue, it seemed that now was the time to take action.

“You said that the next station would be swarming with Japanese police and soldiers like ants. So moving explosives there means that you’re offering them something to sacrifice?”

“Hmm… It’s similar, but the method is different.”

“Different? How is it different specifically?”

“I’m going to blow it up.”

“what?”

I gestured to the mountain of explosives with my chin.

******

“You’re late.”

In the series of incidents that occurred in Gyeongseong recently, the Jongno Police Station was blown up, and high-ranking police officers died one after another, were injured, or resigned on the pretext of chronic illness.

Thanks to this, Inspector Miwa Wasaburo, a high-ranking detective from Jongro, was promoted to superintendent to fill this gap and is now the chief of the high-ranking police department in charge of Gyeongseong.

Although those around him congratulated him on his promotion, Miwa, who had now become a constable, was not very pleased with the situation.

In the end, this position was not one he had risen to through his own abilities, but one he had been forced into because he had failed to properly control the ghost of Gyeongseong that was wandering around.

What’s worse is that we haven’t even caught the ghost of Gyeongseong who did this and we’ve let him go.

The last news of him was that he had escaped from Gyeongseong to Shanghai.

Now that he had run away to a place where he couldn’t catch her even if he wanted to, there was nothing he could do.

Thinking about it that way, I can no longer chase after the criminal as energetically and persistently as I used to.

Now, all I did was stamp my attendance card every day, produce shit every day, and kill time.

“Manager.”

“Oh, okay.”

Even today, I was dispatched with the police in response to a request for support from the Hamgyeong Province branch, which had received intelligence that Uiyoldan was infiltrating Gyeongseong.

However, even though they were a group of righteous men, they could not rekindle Miwa’s passion that had already died out, so he sent his subordinates away and hid far away to quietly pass the time.

“Did the train come?”

“Yes! They say they are slowly moving in.”

“It’s pretty late.”

“I think there must have been a minor problem on the way here.”

“It’s not surprising that a train can cause trouble at any time, so it’s understandable···. Okay, I understand.”

Miwa waved her hand as if to tell her subordinates to go now and sent them away.

Any moment now, the police will storm into the train and arrest the Uiyeoldan members inside.

Then, he and his subordinates would take over those evil spirits, lock them up in a detention center, wait for a suitable trial date, and then hand them over to the court. That would be the end of it.

“It’s easy. It’s easy~”

Things went as planned, but Miwa couldn’t be as happy as before.

‘The Ghost of Gyeongseong… What would it have been like if that guy had been there?’

Miwa imagined the train station far away exploding.

If that happens, this area will probably fall into chaos.

The police and soldiers deployed there will not be able to avoid death or serious injury.

Fortunately, the station had been closed to the general public in order to arrest Uiyeoldan, so there would be no civilian casualties. However, on the other hand, if any harm occurred there, it would mean that the police and soldiers, who could be called the center of the Japanese Empire, would be killed or injured.

‘If it’s the amount of explosives that can fit one train…’

Miwa and Kyungbu closed their eyes.

That was because when I closed my eyes, I still remembered the moment when the Jongno Police Station exploded.

At that time, the amount of explosives that destroyed the Jongno Police Station was equivalent to the amount of one storage container.

But what if it’s the length of a train?

“hmm.”

Miwa got up from her seat and looked around.

Then I roughly estimated the explosion radius.

‘If it were an explosive that could destroy a building made of sturdy concrete… everything within 400-500 meters would be blown away without a trace.’

Moreover, the damage would have been even more severe because there were no large buildings or sturdy concrete structures in the area that could have reduced the damage from the explosion.

Maybe the place called Geumchon itself will disappear…

“huh?”

At that moment, a light flashed in the distance.

Then a small mushroom-shaped cloud appeared.

“What is this···.”

Miwa jumped up from her seat, but was soon pushed back by the wind pressure and sat back down.

As I sat there and looked around, I saw the buildings surrounding Miwa flying across the sky, carried by the wind.

In a situation that seemed unbelievable, Miwa instinctively repeated a name.

“ghost···!”

As far as he knew, there was only one person in Joseon who could do such a crazy thing.

“If I’m not possessed by a ghost….”

The ghost of Gyeongseong has returned.

“He’s back! He’s back!”

Miwa jumped around with the small mushroom cloud blooming in the distance as the background.