I Returned as a High School Girl - Chapter 229: Mortal Enemy’s Invitation (5)

Multiple people wearing the exact same masks as the masked woman appeared before Kim Han-Gyo, whose head hurt just from looking at the masked woman. Han-Gyo couldn’t not scowl from the sight. The items that Kang Ra-Eun had told the men to bring before were these masks.

Ra-Eun softly laughed and asked the bewildered Han-Gyo and his gang, “Did you seriously think I came here alone?”

No matter how proficient she was in combat, she couldn’t fight all these people on her own. Hence, she had decided to bring Ma Yeong-Jun and his men with her. They already knew the location, so all they needed to do was to wait for the right chance to ambush them.

“But I’d never expected you to be here,” Ra-Eun mentioned. She was obviously referring to Han-Gyo. “Who would’ve thought that someone like you, who hates nothing more than getting your hands dirty, would show up here personally?”

Han-Gyo despised the way she spoke as if she knew absolutely everything there was to know about him. He felt as if she was looking into his very soul. However, he had no intention of answering Ra-Eun’s question.

“I think you’re gravely misunderstanding something,” he remarked. The game was not over yet. “We have the advantage in numbers.”

Han-Gyo was right; his gang overwhelmingly outnumbered the men that Ra-Eun had brought by roughly twice their number. Having the numerical superiority, Han-Gyo’s smile returned.

“I’ll rip that mask off your face myself.”

He gestured to his gang, who then all began to move. However, Ra-Eun did not shrink down. Rather, she only scoffed at him.

“If you’re asking for a whooping, I’m more than happy to give you one,” she said.

“What the hell are you talking about, you bitch?!”

Two gangsters wielding lumber ran toward Ra-Eun, but they were stopped by Ma Yeong-Jun and Park Du-Chil before they could reach her. Yeong-Jun’s giant fist smashed one man’s right cheek, while the tip of Du-Chil’s toes struck the other man’s solar plexus. The two men fell forward.

“Hurgh… Kurgh…!”

The man that had been hit on his solar plexus by Du-Chil seemed to have trouble breathing. Their flawless attacks had neutralized the men instantly. Du-Chil held in his laugh. Compared to the countless beatings that he had suffered from Ra-Eun…

“Your fists are nothing more than child’s play, dammit!”

Yeong-Jun agreed. Although Han-Gyo had the advantage in numbers, Ra-Eun’s men overwhelmed his men in terms of individual combat prowess. This had all been part of her plan. The gangsters’ morale plummeted due to Yeong-Jun and Du-Chil’s swift neutralization.

Han-Gyo exclaimed in irritation, “What the hell are you doing?! Eliminate them!”

“Y-Yes, sir!”

“No need to fear, men! Kill them all!”

The gang fight commenced. However, it was only a gang fight in a literary sense; it was more akin to a one-sided massacre. With Yeong-Jun taking the lead, whose fists were weapons in their own right, they neutralized Han-Gyo’s men at breakneck speed. Team Leader So Ha-Jin also joined in.

“Watch your back,” she warned Yeong-Jun.

“I know.”

Yeong-Jun raised his arm as a gangster swung a baseball bat at him from behind.

Crack!

The baseball bat lost the battle between arm and bat.

“Impossible…!”

The man looked down at his broken bat in disbelief. Meanwhile, Yeong-Jun was completely fine.

“Is that it?” he asked.

He then grabbed the man’s hair with one hand and yeeted him across the construction site as if he was a paper doll. As the gangsters hired by Han-Gyo were busy with Yeong-Jun, Ha-Jin immediately carried out her rescue operation of Reporter Ahn Su-Jin.

Bash! Wham!

Ha-Jin swiftly neutralized the two men standing left and right of Su-Jin and took out a knife from her waist to cut the rope.

Su-Jin said to Ha-Jin, who was wearing a mask, in a daze, “Th-Thank you.”

“You can thank me later. Getting out of here takes priority.”

Their primary goal above all else was to rescue Su-Jin. They had accomplished their goal, but Ra-Eun felt like it was too much of a waste to just withdraw.

“Mister!” Ra-Eun called out to Yeong-Jun and exclaimed as she pointed at Han-Gyo, who was falling back, “Clear a path!”

Yeong-Jun nodded, picked up a lumber that was on the ground and mercilessly swung it around.

Whoosh—!

The cutting of the air with each swing sounded life-threatening. The gangsters frantically ran away with fear that they would die if they were hit by it. A path toward Han-Gyo miraculously opened.

“Nice assist!” Ra-Eun praised.

She ran toward her target at frightening speed, but one man blocked her path. He was in his mid-thirties, wearing a suit unlike the other gangsters. It was a face that Ra-Eun knew very well. He was Park Eun-Soo, the leader of Kim Han-Gyo’s security team when she had first become a member of the team. He stretched out his arm to snatch Ra-Eun’s slender wrist.

‘It’s game over the moment he catches me!’

Eun-Soo was a judo expert; he was skilled enough to have dreamed of becoming a national representative in the past. Even Ra-Eun couldn’t let her guard down against him. Rather, if she tried to face him head on…

‘I’d lose.’

She had never once beaten him back when they used to be on the same security team. The overwhelming gap between their practical experience had not been something to be ignored.

‘But wouldn’t I have a shot now?’

Ra-Eun continued to land blows on Eun-Soo while keeping out of his range. She stretched out her slender legs and aimed for Eun-Soo’s head. It had been a sharp and accurate kick, but Eun-Soo was not one to be defeated so easily. He took a large step back to barely dodge Ra-Eun’s attack. He could instinctively tell from Ra-Eun’s movements that she was an extremely skilled fighter. Ra-Eun also got back into a fighting stance and glared at Eun-Soo.

‘Like I’d thought, he’s a tough opponent.’

Ra-Eun considered Eun-Soo her mentor of sorts since he had taught her several different martial arts, how to deal with various different situations, as well as the proper mindset of a bodyguard. She was happy to see him after so long, but she could not stay that way because she was unable to approach Han-Gyo because of him.

Eun-Soo clenched his fists and warned Ra-Eun, “I suggest you withdraw.”

Ra-Eun knew better than anyone else that his warning was by no means a bluff. He was not one to make jokes.

“I should be saying that to you,” Ra-Eun responded.

Eun-Soo clicked his tongue from hearing her voice that had been changed through a device.

“What has the congressman done to you for you to go this far?”

Eun-Soo had been curious about this for a long time. Ra-Eun’s answer was concise yet extremely memorable.

“He killed me once.”

Of course, Eun-Soo had no idea what she was talking about.

Soon after, they could hear police sirens from a distance. Someone had heard the commotion from the construction site and had called the police. Neither Han-Gyo nor Ra-Eun could afford to let it be known to the police that they were here.

Ra-Eun clicked her tongue and shouted to Yeong-Jun and Ha-Jin, “We’ve done enough! Let’s get out of here!”

They had already accomplished their primary goal of rescuing Su-Jin. Ra-Eun quickly withdrew from the construction site with her men. Eun-Soo fell into deep thought as he watched her get further away.

***

After escaping from danger, Su-Jin barely managed to calm her rapidly beating heart in the car that Yeong-Jun was driving. She had almost been killed by Han-Gyo. If Ra-Eun had been any later…

“…”

She did not want to imagine it. Meanwhile, Ra-Eun, who was sitting right next to her with her mask still on, finally spoke.

“You don’t need to worry. That bastard Kim Han-Gyo won’t be able to touch you from now on.”

“What… Do you mean?”

Ra-Eun pulled out a USB flash drive from her pocket.

“I filmed you getting kidnapped and being threatened by Kim Han-Gyo.”

Su-Jin forcefully laughed. She found it absurd that Ra-Eun had been leisurely filming the most life-threatening moment of her life. However, she had no intention of resenting Ra-Eun because she would have done the exact same thing in her shoes.

“As long as this video evidence exists, he can never touch a single hair on your body.”

If he did, this video would be spread throughout the public. The fact that a member of the National Assembly kidnapped and threatened to kill a reporter would cause a massive storm.

“Are you going to leak it right now?” Su-Jin asked.

Ra-Eun shook her head to answer ‘no’.

“Do you know what the thing you need most for fishing is?” Ra-Eun asked back.

“Fishing skills?”

“Wrong. It’s patience.”

A fisherman mustn’t carelessly move the hook even when they could feel the fish touching the bait. Only after the fish had completely bitten the bait should the fisherman reel it in to catch it with certainty.

“I’ll dispatch some bodyguards around you just in case,” Ra-Eun said.

Su-Jin replied while smiling lifelessly, “Thank you.”

“My pleasure.”

Ra-Eun had not done this because she liked Su-Jin; it had solely been for the sake of her revenge.

***

Jung Hun-Seong, who had become a sports star after winning an Olympic gold medal and becoming the face of the Korean judo world, was focusing on his training despite not having any matches for a while. It was so that his senses wouldn’t dull. He arrived at his regular judo gym at 10 AM like always, but today was very different from usual.

“H-Hyung!”

Hun-Seong’s junior, who was also a judo athlete, ran toward him.

Hun-Seong asked while tilting his head in wonder, “What’s wrong?”

“Y-You have a guest!”

“A guest?”

“Hello,” the guest greeted Hun-Seong before he even had a chance to ask his junior who the guest was.

It was a woman whose elegance did not match the sweaty judo gym, Kang Ra-Eun. Hun-Seong doubted his eyes from the moment he saw her.

“R-Ra-Eun, why are you…?”

She smiled and answered, “I want to get stronger.”