Once word got around that we’d been claiming our territory the inevitable happened—that is, the other gangs started attacking us. By all normal odds we should have been utterly destroyed by these bullies who were older and more experienced than us, but we surprised everyone including ourselves by winning and reclaiming our rights. This may sound like bragging but fighting comes very easily to me. I once fought six guys simultaneously on my own and they had long Japanese swords but I ended up putting my knife straight through their leader’s left palm. He dropped the sword from his right hand and before it hit the ground I grabbed it and sliced off his ear with it and said next time I will strike off his head instead. No one challenged me after that and even the police stayed away from threatening my group.
Some people can’t hide their surprise when they see that I, the skinny and short one, am the chief and the best fighter in the whole district. They started saying that this was because I was the son of a tiger hunter who used to kill beasts with his bare hands, which of course wasn’t true but I didn’t exactly deny it. What I am is just faster than anyone else and I know how to use my opponent’s own power and weight against him and most importantly I am not afraid of sticking things into people if they get in my way. But I didn’t have to resort to such extreme measures to get the owner of that Chinese restaurant to “rent out” his back room to us for free and I settled several small groups in similar places nearby.
Pretty much overnight, we’d gone from sleeping outside to having a floor and a ceiling over our heads. This was actually not easy at first. It was hard to fall asleep at night with the walls that seemed to close in on me. It was so hot that I actually missed sleeping under the bridge and even those nights when you’d have to wake up every hour and shake the snow off the tent so it doesn’t collapse. The others also felt the same way and some kids actually ran away. YoungGu was shocked when I told him he couldn’t bring the dog into the room and that they’d have to sleep separately for the first time in years. The dog was tied to the chestnut tree in the back courtyard by the outhouse and for a good while it howled for entire nights. YoungGu thought I was sleeping but I know he snuck out in the middle of the night to go snuggle the dog and calm it down. He has always been and still is a complete mush. I can’t even believe that he was chief before I replaced him because despite being almost a head taller and broader than I am the guy has zero meanness inside. He’s not bad at fighting but I know he would rather do something else—perhaps become a Chinese restaurant owner himself.
In the past three years I’ve been expanding our territory as much as possible while not upsetting the careful checks and balances of the Jongno underworld. Every day I send out my guys in groups of three or four. They hit up the same joint about once a week and we’re careful not to bleed anyone dry because that’s when real resentment sets in and you have to know how to not make people desperate. That’s another thing that makes me a great fighter and if you’re interested in learning my secrets to winning every fight then forget everything else and just remember that desperate people are the most dangerous.
Occasionally some owner of a bar or an apothecary will refuse to pay up and that’s when I’d be called in to put him in his place. There was an unfortunate instance of an old and rich herbalist who somehow believed that I wouldn’t actually dare harm him and after my guys repeatedly failed to get paid I had to show up to his joint. The old man had a snowy white beard and was dressed in a traditional white jacket almost like a gentleman. He looked at me straight in the eyes and shouted something about how he was old enough to be my grandfather and how he had no fear of hooligans like us. Behind him stood his son with his young and pretty wife and their little child. A handsome and prosperous family. But if I didn’t make an example out of him then all the neighborhood joints would defy me and we’d go back to living under the bridge or worse. With a flick of my hand all of my guys picked up and smashed the jars of herbs and medicines on the ground and the pretty daughter-in-law and her baby started screaming at once. The son threw himself in front of the wall of little wooden drawers, which I took to mean that they held the most expensive ingredients. I knocked him down to the ground with a single punch to his nose which broke with a satisfyingly loud crunch. Then I started pulling out the drawers and dumping their contents on the ground as the old herbalist stared with his mouth open. Even I knew that some of these leaves and tiger bone powder and bear gallbladder and wild ginseng were worth their weight in gold. Before long the old man was on his knees begging me to stop while the daughter-in-law scrambled to get us the money.