Siyeon didn’t get up until he’d spent one more day bedridden. He’d been luckier than feared given the overdose, but his fingertips still trembled intermittently and his fever continued to rise and fall.
Of course, there was no guarantee the next heat would pass as safely as this one, so he resolved not to try it again.
I think I can move around now.
Having spent most of his time sleeping, he’d recovered to a reasonable degree, and the aching in his leg was also improving.
“Thank you so much. I really would have been in serious trouble if you hadn’t looked after me.”
“Next time you’re sick, make sure you go to the hospital first. Don’t be stubborn and try to tough it out.”
Now that he’d come to his senses, Siyeon expressed his gratitude to Deaconess Kim once again. At the same time, he wondered if he might be able to stay a little longer before finding another place to settle — but Deaconess Kim had mentioned she was planning to pack up and leave within a day or two as well, so he had to give up on that.
It wasn’t that the main character didn’t want to come to Nakwon-dong — it was that he couldn’t.
Perhaps that was why Nakwon-dong had been excluded from the original main character’s list of escape options. The lingering unease hadn’t fully cleared, but he didn’t want to treat the kindness Deaconess Kim had shown him over the past few days as something insincere.
“Siyeon, the pastor is coming soon — would you like to stay and greet him before you go?”
“Yes, of course. I should say hello before I leave.”
The pastor, who had been away this whole time, was apparently out looking at potential sites to relocate the church. There was no reason to wait and greet a pastor he had no memory of — but given how much he’d been indebted to this place, it was only right to observe that much courtesy.
“Can I…… take this with me, Deaconess?”
“That photo?”
“I thought it’d be nice to have at least one.”
In exchange, Siyeon accepted as a parting gift the childhood photo of Hong Siyeon and Yohan that had been hanging on the church wall. Since he’d brought no belongings with him, there was nothing else to prepare for his departure.
I think I’ve got everything I need. Now, what’s left is……
He might as well take the opportunity to confirm the main character’s unresolved past himself. Since he had to wait for the pastor who was expected to arrive today or tomorrow anyway, Siyeon decided to head out for a short walk to clear his head.
***
Even though the swelling in his ankle had gone down, a faint pain lingered with every step. Moving at a slow pace, Siyeon turned his gaze toward the source of a commotion growing louder nearby.
“Stop this redevelopment that’s killing the residents!”
“Corporate tyranny! Beomyeong, who bought their redevelopment rights through corruption and backdoor deals — get out!”
The area outside the church, where he’d headed out lightly prepared, was still in the thick of a protest against demolition. Bold red lettering scrawled across signs read things like ‘Against Redevelopment’ and ‘Illegal Occupation Without Resident Consent.’
Of course, the ones staging the sit-in weren’t only Nakwon-dong’s residents. Whether the construction company had hired men for this or not, a car door slammed shut with a bang. From the vehicle, a cluster of imposing figures dressed in flashy attire stepped down from the truck.
Tense atmosphere.
Getting caught up in something that had nothing to do with him was the last thing he needed. He was already busy enough evading the alpha couple and Manager Kang — he had no desire to add any more headaches on top of that.
Maybe it was his imagination, but one of the large men who’d gotten out of the car was staring fixedly at him. The man murmured something into a walkie-talkie, and Siyeon quickly slipped away from the protest site.
“Hah…… this godforsaken neighborhood.”
A strangely familiar, unsettling place. Picking his way through a redevelopment zone strewn with chunks of concrete was no easy feat.
Climbing the steps at a pace that wouldn’t strain his body, he soon found himself at the top of the hillside neighborhood — a panoramic view of Nakwon-dong spreading out before him in one sweep.
A peaceful scene unfolded that seemed almost impossible to believe he was inside a melodramatic novel. Siyeon traced the route of the local bus he’d taken here with his eyes and took in the neighborhood.
The bus stop, the church, a small convenience store, a hair salon with its sign fallen off — it was a place that carried the feel of somewhere time had frozen in the past. Then again, perhaps it felt more that way because demolition was already halfway underway.
What’s that?
In the midst of it all, Siyeon spotted a line of black sedans pulling up in front of the protest site from earlier and furrowed his brow.
He had a bad feeling about this.
“……Didn’t they say Beomyeong was behind the Nakwon-dong redevelopment.”
The company of the Beom family — one of the main leads. The Beomyeong Group, true to the nature of a melodramatic novel, was frequently entangled in dirty business.
Most of the major incidents in the story had taken place within Beomyeong, so there was no need to panic just because they were involved in this redevelopment project. After all, this world wasn’t exactly built on meticulous plausibility.
Still…… it can’t hurt to be careful……
Siyeon kept his eyes on where the black sedans had gathered and slowly made his way back down the steps. He didn’t want to leave even the smallest margin for things to go wrong, so he resolved to stay cautious.
By tonight, he’d be leaving this place — and until he scraped together enough travel money to leave Korea, he planned to hole up in some quiet countryside village and work himself to the bone.
Whether it was the alpha couple or Manager Kang — he’d aim for a second life in a safe place where no one could find him.
If I work at a greenhouse farm, I’d probably get to eat as many strawberries as I want.
He’d never farmed a day in his life, but if someone showed him the ropes, he was confident he’d give it everything he had. He’d always been naturally quick with his hands, so there was nothing to worry too much about.
Nothing had actually been resolved — and yet, the simple act of thinking positively lifted his mood considerably. That was when it happened.
“……Ugh!”
Siyeon had been humming to himself, walking with a relatively light step, when someone suddenly seized him by the back of his neck.
“Just like the boys said — you were hiding here, Hong Siyeon.”
The moment that familiar, grating voice reached him, Siyeon was hurled down with a crushing grip. Bang! He’d had no chance to brace himself, and he went rolling straight down the stepped drop below — one side of his face scraping clean against the asphalt.
“Ngh, what the f——”
The world caught up half a beat late. A high-pitched ringing bored into his right ear.
His leg, which had been steadily on the mend, was one thing — but from the impact of tumbling down the steps, his entire body throbbed, face included. As Siyeon curled in on himself, too stunned by the pain to get up, Manager Kang grabbed him by the hair.
“Did you really think you could just pull that and run off and live in peace?”
“……Let go, let go!”
“Let go, my ass. Because of you, I almost had both my balls blown off.”
Manager Kang seemed to be seething with fury over Siyeon striking him in the groin with the mop. He began to threaten Siyeon with a far more vicious edge than before.
“I’d been cutting you some slack because you were paying the interest on time and staying in line. Does that mean you see me as some kind of pushover now, you little shit? If you borrowed money, you pay it back on time.”
Siyeon steadied his trembling body and glared up at Manager Kang. That scamming bastard — there was no way he was going to just take this lying down.
“……Is that debt actually mine? Are you sure you didn’t just pin someone else’s debt on me?”
“Did you hit your head when you went rolling just now? You’re talking nonsense.”
“Then what reason would I have to owe you hundreds of millions!”
Siyeon cried out, voicing his outrage. The last thing he needed was his life being ruined over a debt he never even borrowed.
“You really don’t remember.”
But Manager Kang lowered his voice to a murmur, his expression one of absolute certainty. In a direction Siyeon had never anticipated.
“Hong Siyeon, you killed someone. You borrowed the settlement money because you didn’t want to go to prison — and now you’re wiping your mouth clean like nothing happened.”
A dark entryway sensor light. The cold sensation of grabbing someone’s wrist and pulling. Brief scenes that overlapped through the pounding in his skull — memories he was certain he’d never known. Then whose memories were they?
There was no way of knowing whether what Manager Kang said was true or a lie. He wanted to shoot back that this was absolute nonsense — but the faded photo tucked in his inner pocket pricked at his heart again and again. The moment a flicker of what if took root, the rebuttal dried up in his throat.
“Now that that’s settled — come along nicely. I’m holding myself back from beating the shit out of you right now.”
The cold of the cement seeped up his spine. His mind was screaming that this couldn’t be real — yet for some reason, his body wouldn’t move. As he hesitated, Manager Kang wrenched his arm and yanked him forward.
“……Let go — ugh!”
The moment his body buckled under the intense pain, an unfamiliar low voice settled over him from above.
“What exactly is going on here.”
“None of your business. Move along. Don’t go sticking your nose in where it doesn’t belong.”
Manager Kang waved him off with an irritated flick of his hand. Siyeon didn’t let that opening go to waste — he scraped together his voice and forced the words out.
“……P — please, help me!”
“Shut the hell up, will you?”
“Ugh…… please, I……mph!”
He hadn’t been certain whether the man at the top of the steps would get involved in this chaos. He’d called out without much hope — but the man, unexpectedly, strode straight down the steps without a moment’s pause.
His eyes were too wrecked from the fall to see clearly, but the man was enormous — built like an athlete, and incredibly tall. He came to a stop close by without a word and looked down at both Siyeon and Manager Kang.
“You’ve become quite a mess in just a few days, Hong Siyeon.”
Was this someone who knew him? Siyeon’s name had just come out of this suspicious man’s mouth. As the man took one step closer and the backlight no longer obscured his face, Siyeon finally recognized that he’d seen him somewhere before.
Right — for instance, the man he’d bumped into in the elevator. The moment that connection clicked, he was able to piece together who this person was. Even in a melodramatic novel, there was no way coincidences could keep repeating themselves at every moment of crisis with zero narrative logic behind them.
Beom Yisu. He was Chae Yuno’s spouse — and without a doubt, one half of the alpha couple.
