Chapter 101
Chapter 101: Traveling Is Easy For The Poison Demon (1)
"Aaaargh!"
The gypsy who had tried to pickpocket me crumpled to his knees in pain as I grabbed his wrist.
"Let's go over there."
I dragged the bushy-bearded guy into a corner.
"Hand over everything you've got."
I held out my hand and waved it in front of his face.
The guy didn't react.
"Gimme all dat money!"
Only after I spoke in fluent English did the guy pull out a worn wallet and hold it out to me.
A moment that made all those hours of studying foreign languages feel worth it.
I opened his wallet to find 400 euros inside.
With the Golden Tower appearing in France, everyone was in a festival mood.
With people spilling out onto the streets, it was equally a festival for the pickpockets.
"Good haul today?"
"Yes."
"……Huh?"
"Boss! That hurts!"
Suddenly, Korean came out of the guy's mouth.
Before I knew it, I was so startled that my grip tightened.
"Aaaaagh! My wrist, my wrist! It hurts hurts hurts!"
Oh goodness.
I let go of his wrist.
The guy clutched his aching wrist and looked up at me.
"You know Korean?"
"Little bit."
"How?"
"Me, before coming France, worked at Korean factory."
Good grief.
"Why France?"
"My hometown, Syria. Korean factory bad."
"And so?"
"Korea dangerous. Came to France."
From what I could piece together, he was originally from Syria and had worked in Korea as a foreign laborer.
As the Murim Tower's time started running out, he'd decided it was too dangerous and came to France.
Of course, he hadn't managed to gain citizenship and was a refugee.
‘He must've come before Golden Tower appeared. Hmm.’
His line of work: pickpocketing.
"Boss?"
"What's your name?"
"Omar."
"Omma?"
"No. O-mar."
"Omar. You speak French, right?"
"Speak well."
"You're casually dropping formalities on me."
"Speak well. Sir."
I should call this lucky. Finding a translator right here like this.
I dangled Omar's wallet in front of his face.
"Stick with me for a bit. Translate and do whatever I tell you, and I'll give the wallet back. On top of that, you'll get a daily wage."
"Really?"
"……"
"Sir?"
"Yeah."
Omar looked back and forth between the wallet and me.
He seemed unsure whether he could trust me.
"What if I don't listen to boss?"
"What did they do at the Korean factory?"
"They hit me."
"……That's right."
Good old K-factory work culture.
He learned well.
Omar let out a short sigh, then nodded.
"What do I do, Boss?"
"Let's eat first. Take me somewhere good."
"Good food! Full course tour of Paris, let's go."
The restaurant Omar took me to.
It was a halal restaurant.
After eating something, the sense of alienation that came with being in a foreign country eased up a bit.
I sat Omar down and ate together with him.
Sharing a meal is how people get closer, after all.
After eating our fill, I pulled money from Omar's wallet and paid.
"Boss, that money is mine……"
"Yeah, no it's not."
"Korean people. Ssi-pal."
"What was that?"
"Boss. Thank you for the meal."
I let it slide as if I hadn't heard.
Honestly, I nearly burst out laughing and had to clamp my lips shut to hold it in.
Once I felt we'd gotten a bit acquainted, I asked Omar.
"Omar, can you convert this into cash?"
What I pulled out was a thick gold ingot.
The moment Omar saw the gold, his eyes lit up.
"Gold!"
"Right. About 200 grams. Thirty million won in Korean money. How much would that be in euros?"
"Eighteen thousand five hundred euros."
"……How do you calculate that so fast?"
"Me, smart head. Boss."
He shrugged.
He seemed like the real deal.
"It came out of the Tower. Then what?"
"Forty thousand euros is possible."
"You've got a place to fence the stuff you pickpocket, right?"
"Stolen goods?"
Oh! He even knows the word for stolen goods?
I grew more and more curious about this guy's past.
Without letting on, I asked him.
"If you exchanged this gold right here, how much do you think you'd get?"
"Twenty-five thousand euros."
"You just said forty thousand euros."
"Tower items cost a lot in authentication fees."
"Twenty-seven thousand euros."
"Ah, Boss. That's hard."
"Just bring back twenty-seven thousand euros. Whatever's left over is all yours."
At that, Omar shot up from his seat.
"Follow me."
He was more quick-witted than I'd expected. Not bad at all.
Sharp too.
He didn't even ask whether any of this was legal or illegal.
I followed Omar as we walked for quite a while.
The area was packed with shops.
There were in particular shops selling items from the Murim Tower, and France was entirely different from Korea.
They were selling Tower items at street stalls.
Ceramics. Weapons.
Even gold and silver ingots.
I was glad to see the rare items on display.
"Hey, isn't that a tea set?"
"Boss. That's fake."
"Fake?"
"There are some real ones, but most are fake. Gold ingots are gold-plated. Get scammed. Be careful."
As we wound through alley after alley, the people got sketchier and sketchier.
Not that I was scared, but people kept pulling their eyes into slits at me and throwing out words like ching-chong, and it grated on my nerves something awful.
"I should round them all up and give them a good thrashing."
While I was muttering to myself, we arrived in front of a shop.
It was a currency exchange.
Omar walked up to the counter and said something in French, even pointing at me at one point.
And shortly after.
He came back with 27,000 euros.
I asked him.
"There's more, isn't there?"
"Ah Boss. The promise from earlier."
"Tsk!"
"Korean people, really……Ssi!"
I silently held out my hand.
Omar turned his pockets inside out and produced 1,000 more euros.
"Is this all of it?"
"Yes. Boss."
At that, I pulled 1,000 euros from my own stack of bills and placed it in the guy's hand.
I'd given Omar a total of 2,000 euros in commission.
"Boss?"
He looked at me in surprise.
"Earlier, Korean people ssi-what?"
"Ssi-pal Japan."
"Pfuhahahah!"
This time I couldn't hold back and burst out laughing.
I had him take care of a few things.
First, a prepaid phone.
Being in an alley where gold got exchanged for cash, Omar quickly came back with a prepaid phone.
Phone sorted for now.
"Omar. Save your number in this."
"Yes. Boss."
We saved each other's numbers.
"Next, let's go get some dessert. Lead the way."
They say France is best for sweets.
I walked behind Omar as he led the way.
It had grown late into the night, but many shops along the street still had their lights on.
"I heard shops in Paris close early."
"Today total festival. That's why they opened, I guess."
Like the shops I'd seen in the alleys earlier, here and there were shops selling Murim Tower items.
Among them, some shops even sold replicas of the Iron Instrument God's Sword.
"Wow. Those look convincing."
To me standing there in admiration in front of the shop, Omar said,
"French people, their wish is to have the Iron Instrument God's Sword. They call it a masterpiece of death and art and aesthetics."
"Oh ho."
"They say they'd trade it for the Mona Lisa at the Louvre."
"Impressive."
There weren't many Iron Instrument God's Swords in the world.
Yet every known sword was being mass-produced as a replica and sold in shops here.
We entered a dessert shop.
The sweet fragrance made me hungry again despite having just eaten.
The shop was full of white people.
When I, an East Asian, and Omar, a Middle Eastern man, walked in, everyone stared.
"We should order."
I raised my hand to call the waiter over, but Omar stopped me.
"Hey. Boss. Here in France it's different. Can't just throw your hand up and order like Korea. You have to make eye contact with the waiter, and then wait until they come."
"Since when does ordering at a dessert shop require all that."
"Boss doesn't know. There's a pastry chef here who graduated from École de Cuisine. Very high-class dessert shop."
École de Cuisine.
The place Min-jeong got into.
"Alright, fine."
"You're a reasonable person. Boss."
Moved by my character, apparently, Omar stuck close to my side.
Telling me things like he was 28 years old, that he had 4 family members to support, things like that.
Omar had worked at some industrial complex in Korea 2 years ago, and apparently one of the factory owner's family members was an absolute menace.
He demanded an enormous workload every single day.
"Why didn't you just refuse and hold your ground?"
"Me, undocumented. The menace threatened to report me."
Even when he did overtime, if he didn't meet the quota, verbal abuse and beatings followed on a regular basis apparently.
"Why did you come all the way to Korea from Syria?"
"Wanted to become a Climber. Syria has no Murim Tower."
"So to Korea?"
"Actually, they said they'd send me to Japan, so I got on a ship. Totally tricked. Arrived and it was Korea. Broker scammer bastard!"
"Goodness."
"Became an undocumented immigrant! Couldn't become a Climber either, got dragged straight to a factory. That's how the owner got me. Really bad. Didn't even get my full wages, and the owner reported me and I got kicked out! Total bastard owner!"
Omar got angry and clenched his fist.
I could see a crescent moon tattoo on his wrist.
"Back to Syria?"
"Right! Got back to Syria, and oh man, totally hopeless! War every day. So came here to France."
"Sounds rough. No wonder you dislike Korea."
"Still, there were good people. Some older guy at the factory. Treated me well. Sent me to hospital, gave me money too."
Omar said that he had ended up leaving Korea, but if he'd known Korea would become a safe country for the Murim Tower like it had, he would've stayed.
"Any regrets?"
"A little. But no regrets now. France is now the Golden Tower. Korea is done! Omar's choices are always right."
Beyond that, Omar talked about all sorts of things.
He had wanted to become a Climber in France and thought he had the talent for it.
But citizenship applications and refugee recognition all got rejected, and he ended up living as a gypsy like this—that sort of mundane story.
Then he casually asked.
"That gold earlier, is it stolen goods?"
I pulled out another gold ingot and briefly showed it to him.
"Oh! More? Wow."
Omar's eyes lit up.
"What's that tattoo? On your wrist."
"Ah, it's nothing."
The crescent moon mark tattoo.
He pulled his sleeve down to hide the tattoo.
Come to think of it, the corner of the sign at the currency exchange shop we'd visited earlier had the same crescent moon mark.
I didn't press any further.
"Anyway, we haven't been served."
Several times, Omar and I tried catching the waiter's eye, but they flat out wouldn't come take our order.
Omar said quietly to me.
"This is racial discrimination too."
"Really?"
"Deliberately not taking our order. Nasty bastards."
In the end Omar raised his hand, and only then did the waiter come over to take our order.
And after quite a long wait, he brought cake, coffee, and refreshments.
"Is this what we ordered?"
"Ha. This is racial discrimination too. They brought the wrong thing."
"That's awful."
"Since the Murim Tower appeared, the world got even nastier. Hard to live."
At least the dessert was absolutely delicious.
Ah, I could genuinely just stay and live here forever.
I said to him.
"Omar. Go find me a house. Bring a car too if you can find one."
"Why?"
"I need somewhere to stay. And I need a driver who doubles as a translator."
"And that's me?"
"That's right."
"Come on, Boss. Our connection ends here."
Huh?
An unexpected response.
"Boss, you seem kind of dangerous somehow. Carrying around gold ingots from the Murim Tower and all. Don't look like an ordinary person."
"I'll pay you generously."
"……How much? Omar needs lots of money."
"Enough."
Omar thought about it for a moment, then shook his head.
"Still don't want to. Can't get into more danger here."
Nothing to be done about it then.
"Alright. Let's pay and head out."
I received the bill and handed the waiter cash.
But a good while later, the waiter came back not with paper bills but with a heap of coins.
"What is this."
"Ha……"
"This too?"
"Yes. Racial discrimination."
"This won't do."
A feeling of irritation bubbled up inside me.
"Omar."
"Yes?"
"Go smack that waiter upside the back of his head."
"……What?"
"I'll give you this."
I placed 1,000 euros down on the table.
But Omar just scratched his head.
"Why, scared?"
"Lots of people here, and if something goes wrong, deportation. Me getting deported can absolutely never happen."
"How about this?"
Thud.
I placed one gold ingot down.
At that, Omar grabbed the gold ingot and jumped to his feet.
He immediately ran over—Crack!
"Aagh!"
The waiter who'd taken a hit to the jaw collapsed, and Omar sprinted out of the shop.
The people inside the shop made a fuss shouting to catch Omar, and in the meantime I slipped out quietly.
I had reached the pinnacle of Transcendent Peak.
At this level, I could reduce my presence even without the Dark Moon Mask.
"Huhuhuh."
Beyond the alley, I could see Omar running away and the people chasing him.
"See you around, Omar."
He would come back to me.
Because.
The gold ingot I'd given him was a gold-plated fake.
Greed sometimes blinds people.
And it makes a better fishing hook than just about anything else.
‘Where else am I going to find a translator this good?’
Without Omar, I walked alone through the night streets of Paris.
When I'd been in Korea recently, there were always people around me.
Going through one thing after another had made me weary at times, and sometimes even annoyed.
"Alone really is more comfortable, I have to admit."
The night air was cool.
‘Didn't they say Bo-reum is in the 7th arrondissement of Paris?’
I pulled out the prepaid phone to check the map—it was roughly over toward where the Eiffel Tower stood.
"Expensive area to be in. You."
I could have taken a taxi, but I decided to walk slowly.
I shoved both hands in my pockets and deliberately walked along the Seine River.
The Eiffel Tower was sparkling, and still, all around me, crowds of people shouting with joy swept past.
The buildings looked worn but had a graceful antiquity that was beautiful.
My mind drifted to the ruined Sacheondang Family estate.
"Phew."
I was watching such beauty, here alone.
Someday when I go to the afterlife.
It seems I'll have a lot to say to my parents.