Heung-sam is finally released from his interrogation by the prosecutors office (aw, the disappointed look he gives his brother on the way out makes me actually feel bad for the puppy-face Se-hoon). Back in his penthouse, the sounds of the Vienna Boys Choir begin to soothe him as Tae-ho tells him that it will be contractually impossible to get enough investment for the Mi Rae City project to continue.
In retaliation, now that Han Joong Group’s stocks have taken a nose-dive thanks to the recent scandal, Heung-sam plans to buy as many as possible while they’re still dirt cheap. Tae-ho points out that you need money to buy stocks, and even if they used up every cent Heung-sam has, it won’t be enough to out-buy President Yoon and his son. Heung-sam just chuckles, because he’s got another source of stocks in Jung-min, his brother’s girlfriend.
Tae-ho still doesn’t think Heung-sam has enough funds to put his plan into action — he’ll still need at least 140 billion won. But Heung-sam isn’t worried. After all, he’s still got his connections.
Or at least a connection with a loan shark who agrees to give the money (at an outrageous interest rate) provided that Heung-sam puts up everything he owns as collateral. Since that isn’t much, he also requests Heung-sam to put himself up as collateral.
But Heung-sam confidently signs the agreement, although his confidence sags slightly afterwards when Tae-ho points out that if he fails, Heung-sam will lose everything he’s worked so hard for all these years. As for Tae-ho, he’s not afraid — he’s already hit rock bottom, so this is his last chance to get his life back.
Praying Mantis is still alive (whew!), lying on the floor of the abandoned factory, his hands tied behind his back. When Heung-sam stops by, Praying Mantis asks Heung-sam for another chance.
While Tae-ho and his band of merry men set their plan in motion, Heung-sam drinks alone with Mi-joo. She wonders why Heung-sam doesn’t seem nervous about gambling with so much money.
He still needs her help, though, to see the plan through to the end. Tae-ho knows too much, so he’ll have to be eliminated. He orders her to spike Tae-ho’s drink tomorrow — and Praying Mantis will take care of the rest.
That night, Mi-joo visits Tae-ho. He has a passport and airplane tickets, but he hasn’t yet told Nara that he’s leaving. He says he doesn’t have the right to say “good-bye.”
As they get ready, Tae-ho quietly tells Young-chil to put the same fake stock program on Heung-sam’s computer. That’s the easy part — the hard part will be getting out of the building if Heung-sam finds out the truth.
The stock markets open, and the men stare intently at the chart as their plan begins. They’re not the only ones — Se-hoon is keeping an eye on the charts, as is President Yoon. The stocks shouldn’t be rising this quickly before Han Joong Group announced their revitalization plan. He orders Jung-min to look into it.
Meanwhile, the Chairman, Hae-jin, and Foreman Oh go to their respective financial offices, each with a dozen homeless men in tow, ready to take out loans against the stocks that had been purchased under their names. Despite how the men look, there’s no denying that they’re customers, and so the financial offices start processing the loans.
Heung-sam is exultant that their plan is working, since according to his computer, the stocks are jumping through the roof. The clock ticks down until the market closes, and the second it does, Heung-sam cheers. His life-long goal to destroy everything of President Yoon’s has finally come to fruition. Or so he thinks, because he’s not the only one celebrating as Hae-jin, the Chairman, and Foreman Oh have reunited, and all the men now carry full bags of money.
Mi-joo and Praying Mantis arrive at the penthouse just as Young-chil scurries away, and Heung-sam says that it’s perfect timing for a celebratory drink, and it will taste all the sweeter being poured by the beautiful Mi-joo.
As Mi-joo readies the drinks and, under Praying Mantis’s watchful gaze, pours a capsule of white powder into one of the glasses, Heung-sam tells Tae-ho that he’s must be very unlucky to have ended up in Seoul Station and met Heung-sam. Yet he somehow managed to turn it all around by becoming Heung-sam’s right-hand man, so perhaps he’s exceedingly talented.
Tae-ho says it has nothing to do with talent or luck — it’s simply survival instinct. That instinct had better kick in soon, since Mi-joo hands him his glass and, after toasting with Heung-sam, he downs the drink in one gulp.
Leaning back and sipping his drug-free drink, Heung-sam asks Tae-ho if he remembers when he first came to meet him, and discovered that in order to avoid the fox, he’d climbed into the tiger’s cave.
Under Mi-joo’s reproachful gaze, Heung-sam nonchalantly asks if she wants to rebuke him. She simply says that she did as she was ordered, then stands up to take her leave. Heung-sam tells her that it’s now all over, and she’s the only one left for him. She turns back, quietly affirming that yes, it’s all over.
At a stoplight, a van pulls up alongside Praying Mantis. It’s Hae-jin and Foreman Oh, and Hae-jin waves to get Praying Mantis’s attention, revealing that he was the one of the masked men who’d taken President Choi. It’s just a distraction, though, to allow the totally-not-drugged-after-all Tae-ho to grab Praying Mantis from behind.
He’s angry that Mi-joo used a fake drug, and warns him that Tae-ho will die by his hands for betraying his boss. Except he’s no match for Tae-ho’s strangle-hold and Hae-jin’s knock-out punch to his head.
A happy Heung-sam reports to his brother about the success of his plan, but Se-hoon yells at him that it was an utter failure — they’re totally wiped out. Heung-sam rushes to check his bank account (or, rather, the many accounts he used by taking the homeless men’s IDs), but none of the passwords work.
Praying Mantis arrives, and when he sees the hallway littered with the dead bodies of the homeless men who were there to protect Heung-sam, he rushes in, screaming for Heung-sam. Rage fills his eyes, and he easily takes out one of the thugs, grabbing a discarded knife to use as a weapon.
But they’ve all got knives, and they know how to use them. When Praying Mantis sees one of the thugs attempt to attack Heung-sam, he flings himself in front of the knife, taking it in his stomach. He still manages to fight off the man, but soon another thug puts a knife in his back.
The man who’d been so deadly with a knife succumbs to the blade himself as another thug twists a knife into his stomach, and Heung-sam furiously beats the thug to a bloody pulp. He then rushes to Praying Mantis, embracing the bloody man in his arms. Ever the loyal servant, Praying Mantis’s last words are “I’m sorry.”
Heung-sam does not take his death well, and orders Poison Snake and Crocodile to get Tae-ho. They proceed to hunt him down, destroying the office and Jong-gu’s bus. But Tae-ho is with his men in an abandoned factory, making sure that the homeless men they used today are far enough away (and have enough money) to avoid Heung-sam’s wrath.
But Tae-ho also knows Heung-sam won’t last long, since the same greed that made it so easy for Heung-sam to destroy President Jung is the same greed that will destroy him, too.
After realizing that Mi-joo has disappeared, too, Heung-sam is more determined than ever to ferret out Tae-ho. But instead of trying to find him, they’ll make him come to them by using Nara as bait. He sends Poison Snake to the free clinic to kidnap her.
At the airport, Tae-ho waits for his flight to New York when Mi-joo finds him.
As she stands to leave, Mi-joo admits that she misjudged him. She originally thought Tae-ho was like Heung-sam, but now she realizes that he’s more like Jong-gu, who couldn’t leave when he had the chance and instead, like a fool, returned to Seoul Station.
The conflicted Tae-ho finally makes his decision, tossing his passport and plane tickets in the trash as he resolutely walks away.
But Heung-sam’s got a single-track mind and is determined to focus his revenge on Tae-ho. He knocks Se-hoon down with a punch to the face when he tries to intervene, angrily yelling that yes, he’s crazy, because you have to be crazy to become Seoul Station’s Number One.
Meanwhile, the homeless men are having an out-and-out brawl. It’s utter chaos as they fight each other, but it looks like a pretty even fight (and possibly even beneficial to Hae-jin and the rest) until Heung-sam arrives with Poison Snake and his men, all of whom who are armed with pipes and wooden sticks.
Heung-sam watches quietly as Poison Snake and his men beat up the other homeless men, easily overcoming them. They drag Hae-jin to Heung-sam, since they know he’s closest with Tae-ho, forcing him to kneel down. He asks Hae-jin where Tae-ho is, and Hae-jin stubbornly tells him Tae-ho is long gone, sarcastically telling him to take his pick of countries.
Even when Heung-sam stabs him in the leg, Hae-jin refuses to answer. But it doesn’t matter anyway, because Tae-ho finally arrives, yelling out Heung-sam’s name. Heung-sam greets him, telling him that’s the Tae-ho he knows. Tae-ho challenges him to a fight, saying they should end it right here and now. All the man step back to form a ring around them, and without hesitation, Tae-ho and Heung-sam begin their battle.
Foreman Oh and Young-chil find Nara in one of the nearby buildings, and they easily take out her “guards.” She’s astonished to discover that Tae-ho returned, and even more worried when she realizes he’s fighting Heung-sam.
It’s raining buckets as Nara pushes her way through the circle to see Heung-sam and Tae-ho brutally fighting each other. They’re fairly evenly matched — those injuries Heung-sam endured at the hands of Chairman Wang’s men put him on the same level as Tae-ho.
Police sirens make the men panic, and most of them scatter so they won’t be taken to jail. But Poison Snake is loyal to Heung-sam, just as Hae-jin, Foreman Oh, Young-chil, Nara, and others are loyal to Tae-ho, and they stay behind.
Exhausted and bleeding, Tae-ho and Heung-sam lay gasping on the ground as the police cars drive up. Tae-ho says that it’s time for both of them to give up, but Heung-sam reaches for a knife, taking a few swings until he has Tae-ho pinned on the ground.
The policemen yell at him to drop the knife or they’ll shoot, but Heung-sam tells Tae-ho that he doesn’t regret what he did — he only regrets what he wasn’t able to do. He raises the knife, telling Tae-ho “Let’s succeed in our next plan,” but before he can lower the knife, the policemen shoot him in the chest.
As Heung-sam collapses, dying from the gunshot wounds the images of his lifelong pursuit of revenge flash over the vinyl record he holds so dear.
A year later, Tae-ho sits in jail, reading a letter from Nara who updates him on all the goings-on of everyone. Young-chil returned to college; the Chairman now lives in a recuperation hospital, but still occasionally wanders by Seoul Station handing out “checks;” Hae-jin and Foreman Oh went into business together selling produce from a truck; and Grandma got to keep her restaurant.
As for Nara, she’s still working long hours at the clinic. She doesn’t understand why Tae-ho refuses any visitors, and even though she knows that he won’t answer her letter, she still wonders what he’ll be up to once he’s freed next year.
The next summer, Tae-ho is released from jail. Nara finds him standing on top of a rooftop, staring down at Seoul Station, and, much like their first meeting, she cheerfully asks to serve him a meal, for free :)
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