CHAPTER 177: CHAPTER 176. LEAVE IT TO THE EXPERT

"What are you planning this time?"

Instead of getting annoyed that he had additional work to do, Sol looked intrigued when Sarah and Hajin went to Helios--she still needed to look like a partygoer and club frequenter every now and then. They went to the calmer second level and headed to a private room with all kinds of experimental mocktails that Sol had concocted out of boredom.

"I need someone to guard and watch my camera bearer inside a drug party," Sarah replied while looking fascinatedly at the rows of mocktails to choose from.

Sol arched his brow. "Not even a spy?"

"That insinuates the person is on my side, so no--a camera bearer," Sarah sneered. If she had a choice, she would ask Sol’s guy for that instead of someone she couldn’t trust. But someone new could only come when a regular introduced them, and they would be under strict observation from the host, so...she had no other choice. "Can your guy do that?"

"Sure," Sol shrugged, shoving a glass filled with weird brown liquid before Sarah. "But...are you going to record it only? If there are a lot of public figures involved, the media and authorities won’t be moved easily."

"Yeah, so I plan to bust the place," Sarah said while bravely trying the brown drink.

"What?" Sol turned his head toward Hajin, eyes widened in surprise that the bodyguard even allowed it. "Not...by yourself, right?"

Hajin, sharing the same sentiment as Sol despite everything, sighed in response. "We’re going to be at the back door--although I still think you shouldn’t come, Princess. At the very least, wait somewhere safe."

Sarah shuddered at the spicy tingle on her tongue and blinked in fascination. "Hey, this one is nice," she said with a laugh, before turning toward the exasperated bodyguard. "But how rare...You used to tell me you hate being away from me."

Hajin groaned. "This is different."

He didn’t want to be away because he feared someone would harm Sarah. Taking Sarah to the nest of the people who could harm her was even worse.

"He’s right. Daesung is behind this, right? So there will be a lot of...bouncers, you could say," Sol said. "Some of them are skilled fighters, I bet. No matter how strong J is, someone could always sneak around and get to you."

Hajin nodded firmly. "I rarely say this, but he’s right, Princess."

Sarah was trained, but realistically speaking, using self-defence against a skilled fighter is impossible. It was meant to defend herself against regular sexual offenders, drunkards, or robbers. Against people who had been fighting on the streets for years and probably knew martial arts? Unless she had a weapon, it would be impossible for a petite woman like her to overpower a trained man triple her weight.

And it wasn’t like she didn’t know this.

"What if I stay in the car?" Sarah raised her hands to calm the two anxious men. In the first place, she never planned to dive in herself. She just wanted to make sure that everything turned out all right. "If it turned bad, I can at least lock myself in until you come, or...you know, just run away with the car."

"Hmm...not bad, I guess?" Sol tilted his head.

"It’s something," Hajin said, sounding every bit skeptical, as if Sarah had the self-preservation level of a hamster.

...maybe she was.

Sarah rolled her eyes while groaning inwardly. "You’ve been talking as if all of them will come at us all at once, but the one who will do the busting is someone else," she clicked her tongue and downed the brown mocktail. "All we’re going to do is make sure the camera bearer and Sol’s guy escape safely."

"Oh, right!" Sol hit his palm. "But who are you talking about? No one is crazy enough to go against a whole gang with a legal company as a front."

Sarah flicked the straw on another glass of mocktail--a virgin pina colada something--and smiled refreshingly. "What about someone very eager for a promotion in the prosecution office?"

Sol raised his brow. "You know someone like that?"

"Maybe," Sarah leaned back--or rather, leaned against Hajin--recalling something from her previous timeline.

It was something that would happen in a few months--just a few days before her death--so Sarah remembered it well. A prosecutor under the wing of the current chief, but did not come from a prestigious university. To cover for his lack of background, he sought big cases--the more controversial and pleasing to the public, the better.

Naturally, busting a drug party attended by celebrities and public figures would propel his name and put his name on the news for months. If there was one weakness...

"But he’s a cautious person, so if he’s not sure he’ll win, he probably won’t move," Sarah said.

While he was backed by the Chief, he had no powerful backer like a conglomerate family or generational politician.

"That’s just human instinct," Sol shrugged. "You can’t really win against a crime group with just the prosecution office and a corrupt police force."

"What about another crime group?" Sarah smiled.

The good news was that this person wasn’t overly righteous or rigid. If anything, he could resort to any method if it benefited himself. Still, he had some kind of principle at least, and from the information Sarah gathered, the prosecutor wasn’t the wicked or corrupt kind.

Good enough for her plan.

Sol blinked. "You want to move another group to tackle Daesung’s sub?"

"Gangs are territorial, right? Every gang must have an enemy salivating upon another’s territory," Sarah licked her lips, eyes curling at Sol. "And you, Mr. Manager, must know who is eyeing Daesung’s market."

Sol pulled away and squinted his eyes. "I’ve been thinking this, but...I feel like you think I’m a robot with a magic pocket or something."

"But you do know the group, right?" Hajin smirked. He only worked under Sol for a little while, but Aegis often cooperated with Sol and his bands of skilled individuals. "One decent enough not to cause chaos and can cooperate with authorities?"

"Will the prosecutor be willing to work with such a group?"

"I told you, didn’t I?" Sarah took a white card from the side table and wrote down a name on the plain side before flicking it to the manager. "This one is thirsty."

In a few months, he would manage to do a drug bust in another place. All Sarah did was change the place and up the ante a little bit. The celebrities and the public figures weren’t part of the Circle anyway, so their protection wasn’t that big.

Twirling the card between his fingers, Sol twisted his lips and hummed. "So...you want me to be a middleman between the group and the prosecutor?" he looked at Sarah, who, instead of answering, was looking back at him keenly, as if observing his reaction. "What?"

"Is this alright? I’m planning to bust out a pretty big operation," Sarah said, the mood shifted slightly--more serious, more cautious. "I know you guys don’t fuck with drugs, but I also know the underworld has its own rules."

And while Yonghwa stood above them, he couldn’t move in the open. For anything related to the dark side of the country, Sol was in charge of the capital city. If he screwed up the balance of power, even by Sarah’s request, he would be the one deemed responsible. Failure to fix any error would lessen his worth in the calculating eyes of the Flower of Disaster.

After working with the man for a while, Sarah couldn’t just see him as a tool. He was an ally, if not a friend, and she wouldn’t be able to bear the guilt if this man were to take a fall because of her request.

Sol, however, nonchalantly started to mix some mocktails together. "The rule is survival of the fittest," he said, watching different colors dancing inside the glass like the colorful gangs coexisting across the nations. "An all-out war is prohibited because no one benefits from it. Taking over someone’s territory, as long as it doesn’t involve damage to another gang’s turf is just normal."

"Can’t say I understand..." Sarah muttered. It always fascinated her, however, how the balance was built upon a feat of mutual destruction--kind of like states that owned nuclear in a way.

"Don’t," Sol smiled, stirring the mixed concoction and winced after sniffing it. "So, you’ll crash the party and my guy will escape in the middle of chaos?"

"Uh-huh."

"We’ll need a thorough floor plan and a safe escape route," he slid the weird concoction away and took out his encrypted phone to make a note in his already very full schedule. "Do you know where--what?"

Sol narrowed his eyes at how Sarah looked at him--full of amusement. "You look excited," she said with a chuckle.

"I’m not allowed to be in the field directly anymore," he shrugged. It sounded as if he was being grounded or something, but it actually meant Yonghwa considered him too valuable to get hurt. "Planning an operation is the most I can have fun these days."

"That’s what a battalion commander felt, I heard," Sarah nodded, while Hajin patting the unamused manager’s shoulder. "Well then, Captain--please arrange things neatly as always while we have fun in the art exhibition."