I Became a Black Market Tycoon with an Inventory - Chapter 23

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com

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023-Return from Leave
23.
Lee Won-jun is a peculiar man.
He always seems somewhat irritated.
His speech is rough.
He curses frequently.
Based on my extensive experience,
violence or fists should follow such behavior.
When someone is angry, curses, and speaks harshly,
isn’t it the default that a punch comes flying?
Yet that never happens.
He does get angry,
but he merely grumbles about it in words.
In fact,
on my first day after transferring in,
he hid behind a curtain,
and without warning, I took a reverse shot
and was thrown over his back—that was Lee Won-jun.
I naturally expected retaliation or harassment,
but he never brought up that incident again after that day.
Rather, the Team Leader kept bringing it up to tease Lee Won-jun about it.
Lee Won-jun specializes in intelligence and operations, just like me.
So I inevitably spent considerable time with him.
Our team has twelve members,
but due to Congo’s circumstances, we’re divided into Teams 1 and 2, six members each.
We can’t have two people with the same specialty in one team.
I’m in Team 1; Lee Won-jun is in Team 2.
As an intelligence and operations specialist, I conducted operations separately from Lee Won-jun,
and after operations concluded, we reviewed what we’d executed
and learned from our shortcomings.
This repeated throughout the past year.
During reviews,
he’d look at me and say I was frustrating,
ask if I didn’t know such basics,
demand what I was doing instead of studying in school,
and hit me with facts—though it never hurt.
Yet in that exasperating voice, he taught me very patiently what I didn’t know.
Ninety percent of what I know now, Lee Won-jun taught me.
Not just intelligence and operations specialties,
but society, culture, life, and human relationships as well.
He explained things I didn’t even know.
I wouldn’t know since I don’t have one,
but I’ve wondered if this is what having an older brother would feel like.
Even when I make a mistake, he threatens as if he’ll kill me on the spot,
yet he handles all the cleanup alone.
Whenever I get into trouble with another team or unit, Lee Won-jun goes in my place and raises hell on my behalf.
I didn’t know this,
but when I took a ghost hit last time,
it was Lee Won-jun who shot out both knees of the bastard holding the anti-materiel rifle.
I liked Lee Won-jun for that.
It wasn’t because he didn’t hit me.
No one on our team ever hit me anyway.
It was just that
when I’m with Lee Won-jun,
I felt like a normal person.
It felt like I was being protected, and I kept wanting to lean on him.
.
.
.
“Where are you?”
“At Lee Won-jun’s place, sir.”
“Why’d you go there?”
“He called me over, sir.”
“But why didn’t you come to my house?”
“Sir?”
“Sir? You oblivious bastard. Come to my place today.”
.
.
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“In-bae? What are you doing?”
“I’m at the Team Leader’s place, sir.”
“Why’d you go there?”
“He called me…”
“Don’t you have any sense? He’s on his honeymoon with only a month of leave, and you go there? What were you thinking?”
“I’m sorry. I was being thoughtless.”
“So come to my place today.”
.
“You’re not answering?”
“Understood, sir.”
.
.
.
“Oh~ Gong In-bae, you look like a model in that outfit! You look incredibly sharp.”
“Thank you.”
“You look so good! Should I get one too? Where did you buy it?”
“I picked it up while passing through Namdaemun.”
“Really? I should grab one before I return. These are my parents.”
Oh Jae-beom introduced me to his parents.
Were they around fifty?
Oh Jae-beom’s parents looked remarkably young.
“Hello. I’m Gong In-bae.”
“You serve in the military with our Jae-beom?”
“Yes, that’s right. Oh Jae-beom has been very helpful, so I’m managing comfortably.”
“Our Jae-beom would never do that, would he?”
“Ah~ Mom.”
“Haha. Our Jae-beom has many shortcomings. Please help him out a lot.”
“Not at all. I’ve been receiving far more help from him.”
“That deployment zone is dangerous, you know. So always be careful.”
“Yes, I understand.”
“I’ve been talking too much. Please have some of this. Even though it’s simple, please accept it as a token of our sincerity.”
“Not at all. It looks absolutely delicious. I’ll eat with gratitude.”
“Try the bulgogi and short ribs. The seasoning turned out really well on these.”
“It’s delicious.”
.
.
.
“Go safely and visit us anytime.”
“Yes, I’ll definitely visit.”
“Where are we going now?”
“We’re going to Moon Chang-wan’s place.”
“Chang-wan?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Chang-wan’s a heavy drinker. If you match him drink for drink, you’ll be passed out the next day. So drink moderately.”
“Yes, I understand.”
“Have a good time, and I’ll see you on return day. Contact me if anything happens.”
“Yes, understood. Unity.”
“Unity is… yeah, go safely.”
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.
.
Has word spread that I don’t have a home?
I receive calls every single day.
They insist I stop by their place,
and whenever I hesitate even slightly,
they ask if it would be fine to return without visiting their home,
if I could make the rest of my deployment spectacular.
It’s coercion disguised as something gentler.
So in the end, unable to refuse, I show up at their doorstep with beef in hand.
Their coercion is endearing,
and I’m grateful for their invitations.
I was simply grateful.
Grateful to them for caring for me—abandoned and alone without family.
Grateful for how they looked after me when I had nowhere to go, hesitating even to leave the hotel.
Their kindness meant everything.
.
.
.
Except for that grueling first day, which felt impossibly long,
time flew by after that.
Visiting my seniors’ homes meant staying at least one night.
Sometimes it stretched to three days.
On that first day, I genuinely wondered how I’d endure twenty-eight more nights,
and I even considered returning to Congo early.
But when only three days of leave remained, I felt a twinge of regret.
Now I understood why my seniors refused deployment extensions
and insisted on returning home—seeing their families made it clear.
Especially Lee Won-jun.
He’d acted as though Congo itself were his home,
moving through it like a local,
but when the topic of extension came up,
he flatly refused—which struck me as odd at the time.
Yet after spending time with him and his family at their home, I understood completely.
With a wife and child like that,
having already been separated for a year,
counting the days just to see their faces,
it made perfect sense to refuse another year’s delay.
This leave had taught me to understand my teammates.
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.
.
Ndadaye International Airport.
Stepping out, the familiar landscape greets me despite the subtle changes.
Neglected, potholed roads,
Lake Tanganyika, tropical rainforest.
The oppressive heat and humid air.
I feel it viscerally—I’ve returned to Congo.
“Did you rest well?”
“Yes, sir.”
“This is the field, so stay sharp. Take tomorrow to recover, then we resume operations the day after.”
“Understood, sir.”
I reported my return from leave to the Battalion Commander,
then headed to the container barracks we’d been using.
One month.
After twenty-nine nights and thirty days away, the container felt simultaneously familiar and uncomfortable.
When I first received this accommodation a year ago, I never thought it was shabby.
Sleeping in hundred-dollar hotels each night,
rotating through my teammates’ homes—
this place now felt somewhat cramped.
Had I really lived here comfortably before? It hardly seemed possible.
But it doesn’t matter.
Our team has grown even more tightly bonded.
Our team proved the nickname “Okapi Sting” was well-deserved.
The moment we returned, we demonstrated flawless teamwork.
We were undoubtedly the finest unit in the entire UN Peacekeeping Force.
“Hey, take it easy. If they ask you to stay another year, that’ll be genuinely problematic.”
“Haha, understood.”
******
“Poapi, you need to use your hips. Don’t just extend your fist.”
“Like this?”
“Good. That’s it. Transfer the rotational energy from your upper body into your punch.”
“Yes.”
“Keep your fist compact, traveling the shortest distance to your target.”
I was teaching Poapi boxing.
Poapi was the younger brother of that young man who’d been captured and tortured by Rebel Forces,
the one who came to the mobile hospital.
Ever since that day,
whenever Poapi saw me, he’d ask me to teach him martial arts that could kill anyone.
Instead of martial arts, I gave him a chocolate bar each time.
“A balloon doesn’t hurt no matter how hard you hit it. You lack the strength. That’s your problem now—you’re weak. That’s why even special forces techniques or Krav Maga won’t help you.”
“I still want to learn.”
“You need to grow now. Growing comes first.”
I lied to Poapi.
Killing someone has nothing to do with size or strength.
A gun is all you need.
Without a gun, a blade will do.
Without a blade, anything nearby can be turned into a weapon.
Every tool that enriches our lives can become an instrument of death.
Even a pencil.
Physical confrontation comes last,
only when there’s truly no other choice.
I didn’t teach Poapi martial arts because
of the look in his eyes.
The eyes of someone who’d lost his brother—
consumed by rage.
At any moment,
if I taught him even a basic one-two combination,
he’d charge straight into the Rebel Forces base with nothing but that.
He needed time for his anger to subside.
So I told him he needed to grow taller,
that his body needed to develop,
that his muscles needed to grow.
What Poapi really needed
wasn’t martial arts—it was time.
Instead, I gave him a chocolate bar each time.
Whenever he helped us in our patrol zones, I gave him another chocolate bar.
It was my way of saying thank you.
Money would be stolen, but chocolate bars weren’t.
He ate them right here.
In front of me.
Poapi seemed comfortable with me, so he shared all sorts of stories.
When he spoke, if there was anything I was curious about, he’d tell me.
The information from Poapi, being a local, was quite accurate and valuable.
Based on Poapi’s intelligence, I was even able to intercept Rebel Forces crossing the border.
I maintained a good relationship with Poapi.
One day, Poapi’s face looked remarkably at ease.
So from that day on, I taught him boxing.
Boxing is the best for street fights.
.
.
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“Candy boy~ give me candy.”
“Say please. You have to.”
“Please~”
“With both hands.”
“Please.”
“Here you go.”
I handed out lollipops one by one to the children who called out “please” with both hands raised.
When I returned from Korea,
I had packed an enormous amount of candy and snacks into my inventory.
The Mart didn’t have the quantity I wanted to purchase,
so I went to the Wholesale Market instead.
Living out here on deployment, I inevitably encountered countless people.
Adults had their own circumstances, certainly,
but seeing the children was truly heartbreaking.
I grew up in hardship myself,
but the situation of Congo’s children made me feel like royalty by comparison.
Those children should have eaten better,
learned better, and become Congo’s future,
but the reality was that they had to be grateful just to survive another day.
There was nothing I could truly give to Congo’s children.
That was something the nation and society should provide.
That’s why nations exist.
What I could offer
during patrol operations,
during Mobile Hospital operations,
was simply handing out a piece of candy to each child I encountered.
It was merely letting them taste sweetness, if only for a moment.
Whenever I saw children, I gave them candy.
During every operation, whenever I saw children, I gave them candy.
As this repeated,
they began calling me Candy Boy when they saw me,
and asked for candy.
Some days I simply gave it to them,
but other days I felt like playing around,
so I’d make them say things like “please” with both hands raised.
Sometimes I’d give them candy after a high-five,
and sometimes after teaching them Korean.
“Say hello, thank you.”
“Hel-lo, thank you.”
“Oh, you’re good at this.
“Thank you.”
“Oh, you’re really good at this. You get two candies.”
“I’d like some too.”
“Then you try saying hello.”
“No.”
“Well done. You get two candies as well. Yours are specially mint-flavored.”
“I don’t like it~”
“Then you won’t eat it?”
“No. I will eat it.”
“Good. Since you were honest, I’ll give you one mint candy and one lemon candy.”
“Thank you.”
“Yes, you’re a good child.”
That was all I could do.
Give candies to the children and offer them praise.
That was all.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com

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