Yeon Cheonguk left the warehouse with a hardened face. Hwang Jegu, who leisurely followed behind and forcibly stopped Yeon Cheonguk with strength, was arrogant. He gripped the back of his neck so he couldn’t move and stuffed something into Yeon Cheonguk’s bag. He could tell without looking that it was a wad of bills.
It was fucking awful. A silent physical struggle like one-sided bullying continued, but he couldn’t beat the guy with physical strength.
Hwang Jegu talked on the phone with someone for a while, then roughly dragged Yeon Cheonguk. Yeon Cheonguk, kidnapped in a taxi, was soon dragged to an officetel in a residential-commercial complex near the school.
He didn’t know who owned the place, but inside it was cleanly empty.
“Go to school from here.”
With that, Hwang Jegu closed the door and disappeared, which was the end of that day’s conversation.
***
That day, Yeon Cheonguk looked at the moon from someone else’s house.
Did he wake up around 3 AM? It wasn’t a new moon, but the night sky was pitch black.
He repeated falling asleep and waking up, and when he looked at the clock it was 7:09 AM.
7 and 9.
These days, those two numbers seemed to catch his eye particularly with an ominous premonition.
I should be careful today. Regardless of being tired, somehow I feel shitty from the morning.
He deliberately showered carefully and looked carefully both ways when crossing the crosswalk. The first thought that came to mind as he passed through the school gate without incident was whether Hwang Jegu had come to school.
When he dawdled into the classroom, his classmates greeted him differently than usual.
“Oh, Yeon Cheonguk! You’ve become a celebrity from the Migliore outdoor stage!”
“But are you really not debuting?”
It was strange. Usually these guys would gather in the back of the classroom and chatter whether Yeon Cheonguk came to school or not. Moreover, Yeon Cheonguk had never brought up the debut talk at school. He thought there was nothing good about rashly talking about the fact that he’d just contracted with an agency and started vocal lessons.
He sat down in a puzzled state about what was going on. Before he could even catch his breath, the homeroom teacher threw open the back door.
The teacher, who knocked on the wall with a rod and shouted Quiet!, called Yeon Cheonguk.
“Is Cheonguk here?”
“Yes!”
“Come here for a moment.”
The ominous premonition began to grow. Yeon Cheonguk left the classroom with a hardened face. Even while entering the teachers’ office, the gazes of the teachers following Yeon Cheonguk were unusual.
Did the runaway story spread? That was the extent of the misfortune Yeon Cheonguk could anticipate.
The homeroom teacher who sat down turned the monitor toward Yeon Cheonguk.
“Now, read this.”
A cafe post was open on the monitor. He frowned at the cafe name that said something about teenage pretty faces and hot girl student council.
His gaze gradually moved downward. The post Yeon Cheonguk was to read was the most popular post with tens of thousands of views. The title alone was ominous.
[Repost] ★Stories of Seoul’s Top 3 High School Fighters of the 21st Century★ Long.Post.Warning
Yeon Cheonguk froze in place at the first name that appeared. It seemed like he could hear ringing in his ears.
- Hwang Jegu
Honestly, everyone who knows, knows, right? The assessment is that there probably won’t be a replacement of this class for the next half century. If you don’t call him Your Majesty, you’ll die that very day..
Compared to the Incheon wrestling athlete 000, he’s a bit inferior in terms of bulk.. But still, he’s so tall and has such a good back that 000 is no match? The anecdote of subduing 000 who was causing a disturbance at an Apgujeong Rodeo bar in 5 minutes and beating him like a dog is also famous.. When he got caught up in a dozens:1 gang fight with technical high school guys in Myeongdong, he just trampled them all. Haha.
He’s learned Muay Thai and mixed martial arts, so he’s known to fight very technically.
His principle is strong against the strong, weak against the weak, so he’s famous as an apostle of justice(?) who doesn’t touch weak guys.
He has incredibly wide connections and is good at maneuvering, so I know he handles money too, but it’s not certain..
Anyway.. if you meet him, bow your head first.
People cheered at the childish gangster story. Because it was stimulating. The childish yet earnest post received an explosive response.
Aside1) It’s said he’s also friends with the handsome guy famous for singing in Myeongdong every Thursday, Seolyun High’s Yeon Cheonguk. Someone witnessed him helping out at the butcher shop run by Hwang Jegu’s grandfather too!
His mind turned pure white. What his parents, the detective, and Manager Kim had worried about had happened. Yeon Cheonguk’s name was permanently preserved next to Hwang Jegu’s name. There were no lies in the content of the post, and the internet was forever. From now on, Hwang Jegu would follow Yeon Cheonguk’s future path at any time.
And Hwang Jegu’s future was as a gangster. There was no other future path imaginable.
In the shock of seeming to have lost everything, his breathing rather slowed down.
This was something Yeon Cheonguk had brought upon himself. There was no need to resent anyone.
Yeon Cheonguk asked without moving.
“What about Hwang Jegu?”
“He didn’t come. He’s been absent since yesterday.”
“……”
He had two days left until expulsion.
The back that had turned away for the last time flickered. At dawn when the thin moon rose, where was Hwang Jegu?
Hwang Jegu sat in the police station civil complaint room, glaring at a distant place.
Was he arrested? No.
He came to report and find the bastard who wrote that fucking post.
Hwang Jegu didn’t go to Cheonggyecheon at dawn yesterday.
It meant he didn’t do what the committee representative ordered. At the time when he should have mobilized subordinates to assault merchants and threaten to harm their families to get settlement agreements, Hwang Jegu was at home.
A young old man was fast asleep in the narrow room. The moonlight was dark. Stars were particularly visible in Yeon Cheonguk’s dark dawn.
When he brought the runaway Yeon Cheonguk to an acquaintance’s empty house and went to the committee office, Hwang Jegu happened to sit in front of the computer. He turned on the internet while worrying about whether to go to Cheonggyecheon and do hired gangster work. It was to search for ‘hired gangster.’ Then he received Gakseori’s call and read the post that had set the internet ablaze.
The incident had already occurred and Hwang Jegu had only one choice.
— Still, there must be a reason for being born into this world. For me, that’s singing.
He couldn’t even deliberate.
Yeon Cheonguk was branded as a person friendly with Hwang Jegu in front of the whole world.
Hwang Jegu, who knelt and sat properly in the darkness, made his decision. When he looked at the clock, it was 7:09 AM.
Hwang Jegu’s choice was the new moon where stars could be seen.
He didn’t consider this a forced decision or think of it as a sacrifice.
He just went the way he had to go.
So he didn’t go to Cheonggyecheon. Instead of the redevelopment committee, he went back to find the butcher shop truck.
He washed the truck that had been stuck in a nearby public parking lot for a long time.
He would no longer do work that stained his hands with blood. He couldn’t live like before anymore.
He went to Detective Lee and demanded that he find the distributor of the cafe post. The police answered that it was difficult to launch an investigation because it ambiguously avoided defamation. Hwang Jegu insisted he wouldn’t leave the civil complaint room until he knew the post author’s identity.
In the meantime, he closed the butcher shop and sent Gakseori to the abandoned warehouse instead to remove the standing microphone and sofa.
5 PM. It was the time when the committee representative would have noticed Hwang Jegu’s withdrawal.
5:07:09.
Hwang Jegu, who was blankly staring at the police station wall clock, suddenly looked outside.
It seemed like there was a fishy smell of blood from the burning summer sunset. Even when he looked at the phone number on his cell phone right after, the mysterious hallucination continued.
From beyond the phone, a friend cried out in a voice engulfed in madness.
– Sangwon… Sangwon got slashed.
The crimson sunset still blazed in the sky.
– They say several people were hiding on the hiking trail, grabbed him and stabbed him. Fuck, he was discovered late… ah…!
Was it a foreseen misfortune? Was it something that could have been prevented?
Hundreds of thousands of words of regret bound his soul.
– We called an ambulance…. He’s breathing…. Fuck, he’s a bloody mess! Fuck!
