“…Everyone go back inside. I’m fine. Executive Director Choi, come inside with me… and let’s talk.”
Barely getting up while clutching his struck jaw, President Lim ground out in a voice suppressed as much as possible. Blood was pouring from President Lim’s mouth and nose. Despite this, at the president’s calm attitude, the employees who had approached hesitantly dispersed, watching the situation.
However, Wookyung looked down at him and spat out in a contemptuous tone.
“I have nothing to talk about with you. Fuck, you disgust me.”
The surroundings became quiet as if cold water had been poured over them. Normally, Wookyung held a particularly trusted position, and rumors that he would become the next head of Daneum were public knowledge. For employees who didn’t know the circumstances, they could only be shocked. However, President Lim was calm. As if he was someone who had thought such a day would come sooner or later.
“Haa… Right now, instead of the tedious excuses I could make, you… want to hear where that omega is first.”
Wookyung glared at him silently.
“Right now, I’ll send people to Yeodanhwa. I’ll take responsibility and find him, so just listen to me for a moment.”
“You want me to listen to your words again now?”
Wookyung, approaching the fallen Lim Moojin, ground out coldly.
“Why? What are you going to do this time? Siphon him off in the middle and actually kill him? And then tell me that I got it wrong. Fuck, I don’t trust you anymore. It’s over between you and me now.”
“Just a moment. Executive Director Choi!”
“Don’t follow me before I kill everyone. I don’t need your people. I’m going alone.”
At the fierce threat like a wild beast, only his voice echoed in the corridor. Not a single person dared to step forward and open their mouth. The same was true for President Lim. He only bowed his head deeply at the icy voice while looking up at Wookyung.
Leaving them behind, Wookyung ran. Like a beast escaping a cage, his massive body nimbly crossed the corridor and descended to the underground parking lot in one breath. Minho followed him from behind, but he could only stare blankly at the back of the car leaving the parking lot with a vroom!
Starting the car, Wookyung contacted a close junior from university and sent Ido’s number. He too was someone in the same industry as Wookyung, specialized in finding people’s locations.
Not even five minutes had passed before Ido’s location was transmitted. The fact that it was neither the Yeodan organization building nor Yeodanhwa, but some luxury apartment in Hannam-dong further fueled his anxiety. He had to drive faster since he didn’t know where he had been dragged to or what was being done to him. He had to rush there even one second faster and confirm with his own eyes that the child was alive.
The gaze watching ahead from inside the speeding car was filled with all kinds of emotions. Betrayal, hatred, and murderous intent toward those who had deceived him for years, and more than anyone, contempt and self-reproach toward himself were boiling and overflowing inside.
He pressed the accelerator deeper and deeper. He couldn’t believe he had lived until yesterday, passing by the rapidly passing scenery indifferently. Like an idiot, he hadn’t known anything. The fact that everyone had been deceiving him was secondary. Since he had been foolish, the anger over the years of being deceived was nothing.
The fact that hurt his chest painfully was the trajectory of the three years that child had lived alone. The nightmare-like time that Ido must have spent alone, curled up and trembling with fear, and the fact that he couldn’t do anything about it now, was truly maddening—so frustrating, unfair, and sorry.
Working at Yeodanhwa, they said. How many men’s lust must he have received all this time? Every single day, to survive, he must have filled other people’s glasses, must have had to smile, must have spread his legs…
And… Dokyung.
You were carrying my child. How scared you must have been when you found out. While working at Yeodanhwa, you raised my child in your belly. And you gave birth to the child alone.
How much you must have wanted to see me. How much you must have resented me. How did you raise that little one this much all by yourself? During all that long time, how cold, hungry, scared, and anxious you must have been…
Suddenly, the words Yoonkyung had told him before came to mind.
‘On a cold winter day, the baby’s father was standing alone in front of the center holding the baby.’
‘Begging, please save this child.’
Just recalling those words alone, he could vaguely understand. How harsh the years they had lived through together must have been. Without even a single shade to protect the two, how they must have lived holding their breath as nonexistent beings in this world. During the cruel years when even tears would freeze, how many tears they must have swallowed while living unable to die for the sake of the child.
A sigh of “Kheuk” escaped from his clenched mouth. With hot breath, tears fell from his cheeks, wetting his knees. Along with sounds of “Aaaaah, aaah!” he spat out curses several times. Like a madman, he pounded the steering wheel with his fist, writhing.
Please, please, I hope you’re safe.
Wookyung glared at the front with a flushed face, grinding his teeth. His bloodshot hand gripped the steering wheel tighter and tighter. Just then, the phone rang noisily. Looking at the screen that read ‘President Lim Moojin,’ Wookyung ground his teeth. Thinking he might talk about Ido’s location, he answered the phone.
-Wookyung.
“……”
-Haa…, Wookyung. Just listen. Don’t hang up.
On the other end of the phone, President Lim continued speaking while breathing roughly.
-Give me a chance to apologize too. Just once… give me a chance to help you.
“Hang up, fuck.”
-Just a moment. Wookyung. The place you’re going now.
“……”
He cut off the front of the tedious words. Just as he was about to hang up, President Lim’s words about the destination clung like a tail. Unable to hang up the phone, veins stood out on Wookyung’s temples as he listened.
-That’s XX Party Assemblyman Kim Hyuncheol’s son’s house.
“So what.”
Ha, a cold sneer flowed from his mouth. Thinking that this was the purpose after all, heat rose to his head once again.
“Are you calling now to earnestly beg me not to kill that bastard?”
-That’s not it. I have materials on Assemblyman Kim’s corruption. Since Assemblyman Kim and the president of Yeodan have been close friends for a long time, I gathered them to keep Yeodan in check. So please, Wookyung, just don’t kill that son…
“You’re not in a position to tell me what to do right now.”
A short silence flowed over the receiver. Wookyung’s agitated voice echoed in the car.
“You said he died. That day, you said he died… you did!”
-……
“Fucking… only I didn’t know. I didn’t know that child was alive. Do you know how he’s been living alone? As a prostitute selling his body at Yeodanhwa, raising my child alone, fuck… that’s how he was living.”
Tears still flowed from his eyes. At the same time, a self-deprecating laugh burst out.
Yes, that’s how he’d been living. Ido had been living alone like that while raising his child. Even if it was President Lim and Kim Minho who deceived him, it was himself who didn’t know.
He didn’t know what he should have known. He’d left that child and his son in this harsh world for far too long. He even momentarily thought whether he had the right to be angry at President Lim. Right now, Wookyung’s mental state was so precarious it seemed like it would collapse entirely if even a single thin straw were placed on top.
Soon after, his laughter faded weakly. While Wookyung writhed in despair, President Lim remained silent.
“And even so, you’re saying that to me now? When that bastard who kidnapped Ido deserves to be ground up and consumed?”
—…….
“There’s more than one or two people I want to kill right now. You’re included among them, so stop giving me these pathetic orders and hang up.”
Throwing his phone, Wookyung ground his teeth with a grating sound.
Ido appearing suddenly at Yeodanhwa. And the three-year gap. What Ido had gone through during that time was now about to reveal itself in truly explicit outline.
He vaguely understood why Lim Moojin hadn’t eliminated Ido’s existence all this time. That’s why he felt like he was going even more insane. If Ido’s presence had been visible at Yeodanhwa from the beginning, Lim Moojin wouldn’t have let Wookyung go to Yeodanhwa for entertainment. Or he would have smuggled Ido out and really killed him. He was fully capable of doing that.
But the reason he left Ido alive without killing him was one thing.
Ido had been living somewhere Wookyung could never reach.
“…Haah….”
A sob escaped. It felt like someone was strangling his throat hard. Just the fact that Ido was alive was overwhelming enough to handle, but it felt like President Lim had thrust a dull, rusty shovel once more into the deeply carved place in his chest and scooped it out.
He knew that the level of establishments operated by Yeodan varied vastly. The reason President Lim deliberately left Ido alive without killing him was because Ido had been in the lowest, most wretched, most degraded place—not a club where political and business figures or even celebrities frequented like now.
There would have been no need to kill him. Since Ido, who couldn’t even go out freely, couldn’t possibly roam around freely in the outside world. And since Wookyung, who had lived entertaining or being entertained at high-class bars like Yeodanhwa, would never set foot in such a cheap brothel.
He agonized thinking of that child submerged alone in the mud. But as it turned out, the place that child had been submerged in wasn’t dark, damp mud. It was hellfire that he couldn’t possibly endure with a sound mind.
How on earth did you survive in the midst of those hot flames burning your entire body?
In a place where someone like me, who pretended to be noble while living like a human being with money earned doing dirty work, never even set foot in my entire life—being treated like a trash can by all sorts of lowlifes. How on earth… did that child survive?
Is that why he lost his voice? Because living was too hard, because staying alive was a hundred times harder and more overwhelming than dying. And the reason he still couldn’t choose death would be one thing. Because of Dokyung… because Dokyung was there. Because he couldn’t die leaving that young child behind….
