Chapter 1496 Connected (1)

“In any case, thanks, Yeong-Gi.”

Kang Jin-Ho groaned deeply.

Thanks to Ju Yeong-Gi’s timely phone call, they could now prevent the problem from spiraling out of control. It was hard to imagine what could have happened if it weren’t for him and Park Yu-Min’s involvement.

We almost ruined our business on the opening day.

Kang Jin-Ho knew how important the first impression was.

If the public’s first impression of the newly opened cafes was a meeting place for burly, scary men, the resulting catastrophe would’ve been indescribably horrifying.

There would have been opportunities down the line to fix the ruined public perception, sure, but it was always better to prevent such a problem in the first place.

Kang Jin-Ho curiously asked, “By the way, what were you two doing there so early in the morning?”

—I didn’t come here because I wanted to, you know? Awwooo! Yu-Min, that punk! He called me and said there’s something us two just had to do... Seriously, dude! You think I’m an unemployed bum?! Ah? I was working till ten last night, okay! So I figured I’d take it easy in the morning, but this bastard...! Why am I trying to make money for some other store instead of my own pizzeria?!

Kang Jin-Ho furrowed his brow. What are you getting mad at me for? Blame Yu-Min, not me.

—In any case! You gotta hand it to Yu-Min for being such a caring, nosy friend, man. He’s definitely a close second in the list of every meddlesome person I know.

“Huh. Who’s the first?”

—Are you asking me cuz you seriously don’t know?

Kang Jin-Ho calmly clamped his mouth shut. Indeed, he shouldn’t have asked that question.

—Whatever, man. You handle this one on your own, cuz we gotta bounce now. I gotta open my store soon, too.

“Got it. Thanks, man.”

—No need to thank me, you dummy.

Kang Jin-Ho chuckled softly after ending the call.

This feels so weird.

It had been a while since he got chewed out like there was no tomorrow, but the experience didn’t feel bad at all. He was getting used to everyone walking on eggshells around him lately, so conversing with Ju Yeong-Gi felt... refreshingly and strangely comfortable.

It’s probably because we’re friends.

Friends were not the same as one’s family or work colleagues. They might not be connected by blood, but their backgrounds had no bearing on this relationship, either. No, they simply hung out together because their hearts connected, that was all.

That was when Kang Jin-Ho suddenly realized something. Hadn’t he been rather negligent of his friends lately? Sure, he traveled to America to watch Park Yu-Min’s match, but the actual time he spent chatting with him was probably only around thirty minutes.

He couldn’t excuse this by saying he had been too busy.

Right. I should get together with them soon.

Kang Jin-Ho figured he better make time to hang out with his friends before Park Yu-Min’s new esports season began.

“Okay, that’s that, but... Mm.” Kang Jin-Ho sighed deeply again. “I hope Chief Lee can fix this properly.”

Maybe he should have consulted Lee Hyeon-Ju, not Lee Hyeon-Su, about this situation.

Riiiing~!

Kang Jin-Ho snapped out of his thoughts when his phone began ringing and reflexively answered the call. “Hello?”

Choi Yeon-Ha hurriedly asked.

—Where are you?

“Mm? I’m at the office.”

—Which office, though?

“The one in the Assembly. What’s the matter?”

—Are you crazy?!

“I’m sorry?”

Choi Yeon-Ha now sounded a little agitated for some reason.

—Did you forget what day it is today? Hurry and come back to Seoul.

“...?” Kang Jin-Ho wasn’t sure what today was supposed to be, but his instincts strongly warned him not to say no. “Got it. Should I head to MK, then?”

—No! Head to Gangnam!

“Huh? Sorry?”

Kang Jin-Ho grew dazed and confused just then.

***

“Thank you for your patronage! Please come again!”

While saying that, Yi Yeon-Sil craned her neck ever so slightly to watch the latest customer leave her clothing store.

“Huh... Is today some kinda special day?”

For some reason, strange customers kept showing up at her store for the last few hours. And they all...

“Uhm, excuse me...?”

Yet another burly man with a rough-looking face sheepishly entered her store. Despite the presence of this scary man, though, Yi Yeon-Sil didn’t panic. Maybe she might have if this was her first time, but she had already run into four other customers like him today.

“Hello, sir. Are you also looking for clothes that wouldn’t look out of place in a cafe?”

The burly man looked taken aback. “Heol? How did you know?”

“Well...”

A cramped smile floated up on Yi Yeon-Sil’s face. Well, sir? I’m also very curious. How could I have known that, I wonder?

“It’s because several other customers also made the same request, you see?”

“R-really? Oh, no, that’s not good! I mustn’t be late, you know...?”

Yi Yeon-Sil sighed softly. “Uhm, just in case... Do you mind if I ask you something, sir?”

“Yes? What is it?”

“Are you and your, uh, colleagues heading to the same place?”

“Yes, we are.”

“In that case, is it okay for everyone to wear the same thing?”

The burly man’s expression rapidly crumpled, although only subtly. “Can you hold on for a minute?”

The man hurriedly exited the store while pulling his phone out. He then chatted to someone for a while before re-entering the store.

“I’ve been told we must not look the same.”

“I figured as much...” Yi Yeon-Sil muttered. It seemed her troubles were only worsening.

What is this? Am I in Mission: Impossible, the fashion edition?

Even if this was a clothing store filled with various clothes...!

The mission, should I choose to accept it, is to take all these different men with roughly the same physique and hairstyle and ensure their fit looks natural and not forced. At the same time, they all must be different, too.

To make her mission even trickier, these men’s imposing physiques meant the clothes that would look natural on them were extremely limited in variety, too!

What a tough challenge this was!

“Fuu-woo... Dear customer?”

“Yes, miss?”

“For now, why don’t we try a few clothes first and see? I’ll need to see you in a few outfits first to get a feel for what might work best for you.”

The man blinked his eyes. “A few outfits? Does that mean I gotta change in and out of lots of clothes?”

“For now, let’s head to the changing room!”

“Yes, ma’am.”

The burly man groaned and trudged toward the store’s changing room.

What am I even doing here?

He couldn’t help but resent the higher-ups a little.

***

“Oppa, are you crazy?”

“...”

“Sure, you said you’d pay me, so I don’t care, but... The place you paid your little sister to come was just another cafe?”

The Martial Assembly’s “employee”, Gong Hyeok-Jun, frowned deeply. “Can I ask you for a favor?”

“What?”

“Can you, like, shut the hell up? You’re beginning to irritate me.”

“You think I’m happy about staring at your mug, too?”

Gong Hyeok-Jun urgently but sneakily clutched his thigh.

I’m dying here, goddamn it!

He and his little sister were currently in one of the newly opened MK cafes. The original idea was for the Assembly members to camp out in the cafes, but an urgent command from Lee Hyeon-Su arrived in the morning and threw a wrench into that plan.

—Instead of you rough-looking thug wannabes crowding together, each member must be dressed normally and accompanied by a woman! I don’t care if it’s your family member, a close acquaintance, a friend, or even a random person you’ve hired off the internet! Just bring a woman along!

Apparently, even one’s mother was allowed!

Trying to sort out the... definition of what it meant to dress normally caused a bit of commotion afterward, but even that got resolved eventually on its own. The real problem, however, was the “accompanied by a woman” bit.

Gong Hyeok-Jun fully understood the “why” of that order, though. The menfolk could be... No, not all men, but the male Assembly members specifically in this case, were all rough-looking, after all!

Since the Assembly members all boasted menacing appearances, four or five of them sitting together would have painted an intimidating picture to anyone with eyes. So, the higher-ups must’ve figured that disguising them as couples on a date, if such a concept was even possible, would be a great idea.

But the same higher-ups seemed to have forgotten that the Assembly’s menfolk were indirectly responsible for South Korea’s precipitously falling marriage rate. Not only that, but they were all unbridled failures in human relationships who had practically zero experience in dealing with the opposite sex.

Female friends? Of course they didn’t have any. That would be absurd! As a matter of fact, the creature called “female friend” was straight out of a fantasy novel to these men.

Gong Hyeok-Jun had no doubt that the concept of female friends was a mere fantasy, an illusion created by society.

Whatever the case might be, though... The mission of being accompanied by a woman still remained. And many of the Assembly’s menfolk had no women to turn to in order to fulfill this mission brief. As for Gong Hyeok-Jun, he was forced to admit that yes, the creature possessing the XX chromosome currently leeching off of him at his house qualified as a woman.

So, he confidently walked up to her and said: “Hey. Let’s go to a cafe together.”

The reply he got was extremely unsurprising, however.

“Did you bump your head against something? Get lost!”

Aha. Wow. What a big surprise.

Thanks to his situation, Gong Hyeok-Jun had no choice but to promise that dang lifeform a payment of two hundred thousand won for accompanying him to this cafe.

Dammit! That’s like flushing my hard-earned money down the toilet or something, isn’t it!

To think he had to pay money to such an abominable creature just so that she could accompany him to some bloody cafe! Was this some kind of perverse punishment game?

Gong Hyeok-Jun’s sister curiously looked around. “By the way, this place is pretty nice.”

He cocked an eyebrow. “You... think so?”

“Yeah. It totally doesn’t suit someone as drab and boring as you, though.”

“Didn’t I ask you a favor earlier?”

“What? Oh, the one about shutting up?”

“Yeah, that. Please?”

“I thought you brought me here for a reason? If you don’t need me to talk, can I be on my phone instead?”

“Urgh...!”

Gong Hyeok-Jun roughly scratched his head. Unable to sit still, he began scanning the situation all around him.

Yup, it's pandemonium in here.

On the surface, at least, things must’ve looked reasonably normal. The passersby looking through the front windows would most likely see a cafe filled by people intimately conversing with each other, after all.

But the thing about life was that when viewed from afar, it was a farce, but when viewed from up close, it was a tragedy. The spectacle inside the cafe, as far as Gong Hyeok-Jun could see, was more like mayhem.

Most of the Assembly members showed up here with their basically estranged little and older sisters, unable to think of anything to say, but... At least they were in a better position than the rest.

Damn. Some people actually came with their moms?

Wasn’t that like willingly walking into the flames of Hell?

The Assembly members had given up on living a life to focus on cultivation. Rather obviously, such people could never function as normal human beings.

I mean, think about it for a sec.

Kang Jin-Ho started this whole cafe franchise thing to help these misfits integrate somehow with the normal society and to turn them into a sort of respectable human beings while putting food on their tables at the same time.

Without martial arts, these people would’ve squandered all of their savings, no matter how many millions that was, and fallen to the pits of despair in no time at all. That was how pathetic they were, so it didn’t take a genius to figure out that their relationship with their parents was pretty terrible, as well.

Gong Hyeok-Jun could see words of nagging and complaints slamming into his comrades like machine gun rounds. In any other situation, these men could have come up with some excuses and urgently escaped from their mothers’ clutches, but today? They had no choice but to bear the brunt of the incessant nagging.

Sorry, guys. Do your best!

It wasn’t as if Gong Hyeok-Jun’s own situation was appreciably better, but at the very least, it was more bearable than those who came here with their mothers.

“Oppa? Looks like you have a lot of friends?”

“...”

“Although, Gangnam? Doesn’t suit you at all.”

“I didn’t come here because I wanted to, okay?”

Gong Hyeok-Jun’s home was in Seongnam, so why did he get assigned to a cafe in Gangnam? He had no idea, but at least it gave him a chance to enjoy the sights and sounds of Gangnam, so there was that.[1]

He glanced at his little sister. “So? What do you think? You think this place will do great?”

“Not sure. The coffee tastes good, but a cafe can’t survive on good coffee alone these days. You need a smart interior design, and the word of mouth needs to be good, too... But in my view? I think it’s alright? If a branch of this cafe is somewhere near home or where I work, I wouldn’t mind becoming a regular, I guess?”

“Really?”

Gong Hyeok-Jun nodded as relief washed over him.

He was worried that the whole business would go belly-up from the start since it was run by MK, but it sounded as if it had passed the casual observer’s evaluation. He might not have any discernment in stuff like this, but his little sister did, and she sounded rather positive about it. Wasn’t that good news?

There was also the fact that real customers had been entering the cafe for a while now. It seemed the strategy of making the cafes look busy had paid off.

What a bloody-minded mobilization drive that was, though!

Unfortunately for Gong Hyeok-Jun, he was scheduled to visit five different cafes today.

Lee Hyeon-Su produced a minor miracle of setting up a detailed hourly itinerary for every team. According to it, the Assembly members would be forced to spend the whole day half-filling up each and every MK-run cafe around the country.

“Listen up! If the cafe looks somewhat full, don’t stand around like a bunch of idiots and get your asses out of there, pronto! And when customers leave, slip back inside, okay!”

That was what Lee Hyeon-Su said. What a devil he was!

However, Gong Hyeok-Jun was not really dissatisfied. Because he knew the Assembly wasn’t trying to become rich by doing this.

Forget dissatisfaction, he was more grateful than anything else, really.

Didn’t it mean the Assembly was trying its best to set up an alternative path of survival even if its members had to quit after failing to endure all the harsh training? Seeing stuff like this unfold naturally fostered an even deeper loyalty to the organization.

Although, it didn’t feel like Lee Hyeon-Su had predicted such an outcome!

Just as Gong Hyeok-Jun’s thoughts reached that far...

Clink!

The cafe’s door opened, and two new customers stepped inside.

“...?!”

Gong Hyeok-Jun’s eyes bulged out of their sockets to resemble a toad’s.

The new customers were one man and one woman. At a casual glance, they looked like a couple out on a date.

A couple slipping inside a cafe shouldn’t have been anything special, but there was a slight wrinkle with that description. Because this pair was definitely not a “regular” pair at all!

“E-eh? T-the... The Assembly Master?”

What the hell? Why is the Big Bro suddenly showing up here?!

Gong Hyeok-Jun instantly froze on the spot at the sight of Kang Jin-Ho and Choi Yeon-Ha entering the cafe.

1. Seongnam is a city south-east of Seoul. In fact, they are pretty much right next to each other. ☜