Chapter 603
* * *
-As gambling addiction among teenagers continues to worsen, it has now gone far beyond simple juvenile delinquency and reached the level of crimes capable of destroying entire families. In a recent case in the Seoul metropolitan area, it was discovered that a minor had secretly stolen their parents' credit card and deposited tens of millions of won into illegal gambling websites.
Inside the subway, the screens on people's phones no longer displayed illegal webtoon sites.
Now they showed the news.
-An apartment in Seoul. Dozens of credit card statements are scattered across the living room table. They belong to an ordinary office worker couple, the Kim family. This month's total bill reached an astonishing 35 million won. Every charge was gambling money deposited through an unidentified online payment gateway. Their son had stolen his parents' credit card from their wallet and spent night after night playing illegal Ladder games on his smartphone.
Some passengers were reading an article reporting that four out of every ten teenagers had accessed illegal gambling websites.
-At first, I thought we'd fallen victim to voice phishing. There were hundreds of transactions every month, tens of thousands of won charged every night. When we grabbed our son and asked him while crying... he said he'd secretly taken pictures of our credit cards, figured out the PIN, and used them to deposit money into the site...
The evening rush-hour subway was packed.
There wasn't even room to stand.
People pressed against one another just to fit inside.
"Excuse me, I'm getting off."
"Hey! Let people get off before you get on!"
People poured out.
People poured in.
...
The father of the Ladder-game boy stood blankly beside the subway doors.
Even as people shoved his shoulders...
Even as they yelled at him to move...
He looked completely absent.
-Illegal gambling websites have extremely weak age verification systems, and many even allow payments using credit cards registered under other people's names. That's why parents often don't realize their children have been gambling until the credit card bill arrives.
His face looked exhausted.
No...
"Worn down" described it better.
Every morning he woke before dawn to go to work.
Every evening he came home late.
Even on suffocatingly hot days like today, when it felt impossible to breathe, he worked without a single day off.
That was how he earned his money.
-The government has pledged to eradicate illegal gambling among teenagers at its roots... including blocking access to illegal webtoon websites...
Beside the dazed father...
Someone else was browsing an illegal webtoon site.
Another person behind him.
Someone diagonally across.
Someone who had just stepped into the train.
Unlike fools...
They were "smart consumers."
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The night lights of Macau shone even inside the Korean subway.
The glowing signs reflected from people's phone screens.
The desire for wealth.
The illusion that it was only one step away.
It was an emotion frighteningly easy to succumb to.
* * *
The police were developing headaches.
"We're back where we started."
"This is driving me insane..."
The main servers of the illegal websites had been divided across virtual servers located in Eastern Europe, outside Korean jurisdiction—primarily Ukraine and Moldova.
Tracing them back was practically impossible.
"Forget that."
Detective Yoon walked in and dropped a thick stack of documents onto the Cyber Crime detectives' desks.
"What's this?"
"Focus your investigation on these people."
Even if they earned money entirely through cryptocurrency, they couldn't stay hidden forever once they entered Korea to begin their real operation.
Detective Yoon made aggressive use of social media.
"People in their twenties and thirties who got rich from gambling."
"They'll definitely be used to launder money through borrowed bank accounts."
Soon, enormous amounts of gambling profits would start circulating inside Korea.
They needed to trace the higher-ups by targeting domestic money-laundering operatives who manipulated purchase records through shell companies to evade taxes, uncovering even minor embezzlement and tax evasion.
"And I'm pretty sure their base is Macau."
"Macau? Because of the casinos?"
"No."
"I checked every person on this list."
"They've all been flying to Macau an abnormal number of times over the past few months."
"And their internet records show unusually long visits to those websites."
By then, Detective Yoon had already finished reviewing immigration records and related investigations.
His gaze remained cold.
"The boss is in Macau."
The Cyber Crime detectives nodded.
They finally had a lead.
...
But there was one problem.
"How is it possible that we don't even know who the boss is?"
Ironically, once they began investigating under the assumption that Macau was the base, everything became even more complicated.
"We don't know where he came from."
"We don't know his name."
"We don't know his age."
"Why don't we even have basic information like that?"
Gong Mujin reread the character description written in the synopsis.
Chen Wei: One day, he suddenly appeared in this world.
That single sentence summarized Chen Wei's entire life.
In the blink of an eye, he had taken root in the dim midnight streets of Macau.
Chen Wei's goal was the Macau of high noon.
Or perhaps something even greater.
If he could make use of the internet lying beneath everyone's feet...
Couldn't he turn the entire world into Macau?
A man hidden within the fog.
A man about whom almost nothing was known.
Yet everyone possessed two sides.
Despite the meticulous precision with which he handled his work...
He genuinely enjoyed gambling.
Once someone climbed that high, every decision became a gamble in itself.
Naturally, no one could uncover any information about Chen Wei.
Because he officially did not exist.
He had no legal identity.
Detective Yoon sighed before speaking through gritted teeth.
"It's about to happen."
Bang!
"Detective Yoon!"
As if his words had been a prophecy...
They immediately came true.
"The sites just went down!"
The festival was over.
No one could withdraw their money anymore.
[Bye Bye :D
Good Luck!]
That empty popup was the only thing left on both the illegal webtoon sites and the gambling websites.
"Huh?"
"Huh?"
"What?"
"What the fuck?!"
"My money!"
From teenagers browsing their phones late at night...
To adults...
Everyone screamed.
"They'll come to Korea now."
Detective Yoon crossed his legs.
His expression made it clear.
The moment they entered this country, he'd personally put handcuffs on their wrists.
"Huh? Wait."
"Something's strange here..."
The Cyber Crime Unit found a tiny clue.
A hint secretly left behind by one of the developers inside the popup.
Leopard
Upper-left corner.
There were three icons.
Close the popup.
Minimize it.
Or refresh the page.
After a site had already crashed, no one would bother minimizing the popup.
People either desperately refreshed the page or closed it.
One of the two.
"A leopard?"
But when they clicked the minimize button...
The orange icon changed.
Instead of a minus sign...
It became leopard.
"...Find every casino in Macau that uses a leopard as its symbol or theme!"
Detective Yoon immediately changed the direction of the investigation.
"And bring in every single person connected to Korea!"
* * *
"No, seriously..."
These people were even more hopeless than the teenagers.
The people in their twenties acted as though they had absolutely nothing to fear.
"I'm already pissed because I lost money."
"Does the government seriously think it can treat its citizens like this?"
"If you do it mindlessly, it's gambling."
"If you do it intelligently, isn't it just a game?"
"A healthy hobby?"
"If casinos were really that illegal, the government would've shut them all down."
"But they haven't."
"So clearly it's legal within certain limits!"
Once people had tasted easy money...
Many had already accumulated personal debt.
Naturally, they were furious that the government had shut down the illegal websites.
"If you old guys hadn't stuck your noses into this, I wouldn't have lost my money!"
"What are you going to do about it?!"
"I'm suing the government!"
"Seriously!"
"I can just win it back!"
"Why is this even considered debt?"
"I'll just win it back!"
"I'll win it back!"
"I'll win it back, okay?!"
To them...
Debt was no longer real money.
Their brains had melted to the point where it was practically just another kind of in-game currency.
After hearing "I'll win it back" over and over again, Detective Yoon finally snapped.
He threw the file straight at the young men's foreheads.
Always calm and composed...
He dropped all formal speech.
"You idiots whose brains don't work on a normal day."
"If you do it mindlessly it's gambling, but if you think while doing it it's a game?"
"Hey."
"Do you even know the odds of getting a straight flush?"
"...What, like five percent?"
"Don't talk bullshit."
"0.0032%."
"What about four of a kind?"
"...Two percent?"
"0.17%."
"You'll see it once every six hundred hands."
"Full house, 2.60%."
"Flush, 3.03%."
"Straight, 4.62%!"
Having investigated gambling crimes for so many years that he'd memorized every probability...
Elite Detective Yoon shouted as though possessed.
"But odd or even is just instinct, right?"
"It's fifty-fifty."
The moment someone argued back...
Detective Yoon became even angrier.
"You little bastard!"
"If they don't pay you, then the house wins one hundred percent of the time!"
"Do you seriously think they'd play fifty-fifty with you?!"
"Stop!"
"Stop!"
"AAAAAH! You brain-dead idiots! AAAAHHH!"
Detective Yoon punched the young men in the head.
Detective Kwak quietly placed his empty coffee can in front of the CCTV camera.
"Ah..."
"Looks like the trash can's full."
"Nothing we can do about that..."
A little while later...
After finally calming down...
Detective Yoon sat back in his chair and caught his breath.
"If I hear one more person say 'I'll win it back,' every single one of you dies by my hands."
"Understood?"
"...Yes..."
"Too quiet."
"Understood?"
"YES!"
"Send the next one in."
A moment later...
...
...
...
Silence filled the Violent Crimes Unit.
"It's... been... a while?"
Influ 1 sat in the chair.
Detective Yoon and Detective Kwak crossed their arms and stared directly at her.
"Why are you here?"
"Hey!"
"Did someone bring in the wrong person?"
"What's she doing here?"
"Ah..."
"It all turned out to be connected."
"You've been living quite the glamorous life."
"Visits to Macau casinos."
"Records of using the websites."
"First roulette."
"Then Ladder."
"Then odd-even..."
"And yes."
"Recently you've even been playing Hwatu."
"Do you even know how to count the score in Hwatu?"
"...I learned recently..."
"Well."
"That's a useful thing to learn."
Influ 1's voice became tiny.
"And above all..."
"Cryptocurrency!"
...
"You also recently took out a student loan."
"Hahaha."
The more the youngest detective spoke...
The smaller Influ 1 became.
"...Could it be..."
"You borrowed that student loan just to gamble?"
Detective Yoon stared at her.
"Well..."
"I mean..."
"You have to study life somehow..."
"Have you lost your mind?"
"You've got no idea how terrifying debt is."
"Come on..."
"Debt comes and goes."
"Sometimes you have it."
"Sometimes you don't."
The opening sounded strangely familiar.
...
Behind Detective Yoon...
Detective Kwak and the other detectives all prayed together.
'Please.'
'Please.'
'Anything but that.'
'Please don't say it.'
But their prayers went unanswered.
"It's called 'I'll win it back' in professional terminology."
...
"You just win it back and everything gets fi—"
The camera zoomed in on Detective Yoon's face.
"Sigh."
"I keep telling these idiots to empty the trash can..."
Detective Kwak placed a cola can in front of the CCTV camera.
* * *
"Waaahhh..."
The police station had become a complete disaster.
Sheets of paper—obviously thrown by Detective Yoon—covered the floor.
One lonely page still floating through the air landed gently on top of Influ 1's head.
"Raise your hands properly."
"Hic..."
Influ 1 was kneeling with both hands raised high as punishment.
"You idiots."
"Go kneel beside her."
"Move."
"While I'm still asking nicely."
The young adults waiting to be questioned also lined up beside Influ 1, knelt down, and raised both hands.
"From this point on..."
"Anyone who says 'I'll win it ✧ NоvеIight ✧ (Original source) back' dies."
"Understand?"
"Yes!"
Detective Yoon resumed the interrogation.
Influ 1 slowly began lowering her arms, hoping no one would notice.
The moment Detective Kwak clicked his tongue...
She hurriedly stretched them straight back up.
"Hmph..."
She lowered her head in misery.
The sheet of paper resting atop her head fluttered to the floor.
The casino buildings of Macau.
And the single character written above them.
Leopard.
"Why do idiots always trust their own brains enough to gamble?"
"Huh?"
Influ 1's eyes suddenly lit up.
"B-But..."
She cautiously spoke to Detective Yoon.
"I have a question."
"Don't casually lower one hand and pretend you're raising it to answer."
"Keep both hands up."
...
Influ 1 obediently raised both hands again.
"Could it be..."
"Did you gather all of us here because of... this Chinese character?"
Her intelligence suddenly increased dramatically.
After all...
Every now and then, gamblers experienced a sudden flash of inspiration.
Maybe they spotted a new way to make money.
Maybe they thought of another scam.
Or...
"You know something, don't you?"
"...Hehehe..."
"You do?"
"Could this leopard-themed casino... be connected to the website that stole all my precious money before shutting down?"
"Exactly."
Sometimes...
That flash of inspiration simply pointed them toward the person who had swindled them instead.