A pale, drained Yuhyeon approached the man with urgent steps. Seongjun’s posture was wrong — his upper body curled inward, one hand pressing down against his lower abdomen.
“Blood…!”
Thick blood was seeping from Seongjun’s abdomen. The red substance that had been coating the hallway, the bathroom, and the room — the answer came to him on its own.
“Sir, are you alright?”
His complexion was as white as a blank sheet of paper, the blood loss severe enough that it wouldn’t have been strange if he collapsed at any moment. Yuhyeon reached out with trembling hands and gently took hold of Seongjun’s arm. Seongjun, who had been exhaling labored, unsteady breaths, turned his gaze toward Yuhyeon. The moment those heavily unfocused pupils found him, Yuhyeon was struck with alarm all over again. He was not alright.
The table was littered with what appeared to be painkillers scattered in disarray. A few pills that had spilled and rolled to the floor crunched under his heel. And on top of everything else, liquor bottles were strewn about haphazardly — as if he had been drinking while already injured. Yuhyeon stared down at the empty liquor bottles and the painkillers, his mind reeling. This was a situation that called for 119.
“Just a moment — I’ll call an ambulance!”
He said that and lifted his phone, but his arm was suddenly yanked into the air. Seongjun had snatched it. The man was murmuring something.
“Sorry? I can’t hear you.”
He told him he needed to let go so he could call for help, but no matter how much he shook his arm, it wouldn’t budge. Then something heavy settled down onto Yuhyeon’s shoulder. Seongjun had abruptly pulled Yuhyeon into his arms and buried his forehead against the back of his neck. Yuhyeon froze in place, lips parting wordlessly, and patted Seongjun’s back as gently as he could.
“Sir, wait a moment. Ugh, you’re heavy…!”
“…Why… like that….”
“Sorry? What did you say?”
“I thought you… would….”
He gave up trying to make sense of the man’s words. It seemed his mind was clouded — a side effect of mixing medication and alcohol. Every time Seongjun’s consciousness flickered, his full weight shifted onto Yuhyeon. Yuhyeon hooked his arms around Seongjun — who was considerably larger than him — and dragged him, bit by bit, toward the sofa. He couldn’t do anything like this; his first priority was to get Seongjun lying down.
“Sir, can you hear me? I’m going to lay you down, so… please let go of my hand.”
A large man, completely oblivious to the difference in their builds, was leaning his full body weight onto him. He needed to act fast, but Seongjun was making it anything but easy. Yuhyeon managed to pry him off with sheer effort and got him down onto the sofa. They had only moved a short distance, but sweat was already beading at his temples.
He had tried to be careful, but there was some impact when laying him down. Perhaps because of that, Seongjun opened his eyes to slits and stared at Yuhyeon for a brief moment. Once, twice. His slowly blinking eyes closed again and did not open. How was he supposed to make sense of this situation. It was a mess — but keeping the man alive came first. Yuhyeon placed his hand on the hem of Seongjun’s shirt to begin applying pressure to stop the bleeding.
He carefully peeled the shirt away from where it clung to skin and lifted it up, revealing bandages wrapped around his lower abdomen. It looked like someone had already attempted to stop the bleeding once before. But it hadn’t worked — the cloth was soaked through with blood. The wound appeared to be wide and deep, and the bleeding simply wasn’t stopping.
“How did this even happen….”
The sight was devastating. Yuhyeon’s voice trembled.
“No… that’s not what matters right now.”
Even without any medical knowledge, he could tell this was beyond what he could handle on his own. What he needed right now — desperately — was an ambulance and professional help. Yuhyeon picked up his phone and connected to 119.
“Don’t… report it….”
“Sorry?”
“…I said.”
Seongjun kept spitting out fragmented words, but Yuhyeon had no time to pay attention to them.
— 119, how can I help you?
He had to answer quickly and accurately. Yuhyeon tightened the muscles in his tension-strained throat and spoke.
“There’s someone hurt at Glock, the bar in front of Seondae Intersection! I don’t know if he was stabbed or what, but blood keeps coming out of his stomach — it won’t stop, the bleeding won’t stop — he looks really serious. Please come as fast as you can!”
The dispatcher, hearing the urgency in Yuhyeon’s voice, told him they were sending an ambulance and began walking him through emergency first aid.
— Caller, is the patient currently conscious?
“Yes, yes. I think so.”
— Please keep checking the patient’s consciousness continuously. You mentioned the bleeding hasn’t stopped despite bandaging — what method was used to apply pressure?
“I didn’t do it myself — when I found him, he already had bandages on.”
— It appears direct pressure on the wound is necessary. If there is anything embedded in the wound, do not remove it under any circumstances — apply pressure with a clean cloth. Also, in the case of abdominal wounds, muscle contraction may occur, so….
He was moving frantically while listening to the instructions, when a blood-soaked hand passed right in front of his face. What — ? In the blink of an eye, Seongjun had snatched the phone from him. The man, veins straining in his neck, endured the pain and hurled the phone across the room.
It was astounding that someone who should have been on death’s door had managed to summon that kind of strength. Yuhyeon watched the phone slam into the wall and clatter to the floor, his expression hollow. He scrambled to pick it up — but the call had been forcibly ended, and on top of that, the phone wouldn’t turn on.
Yuhyeon’s eyes narrowed as he whipped his head around, ready to demand what on earth that was about. But Seongjun gave him no chance to get angry. The movement from moments ago had apparently burned through the very last of his strength — Seongjun had lost consciousness entirely. Yuhyeon’s pupils trembled uncontrollably as he stared at Seongjun’s face, slick with cold sweat, and his limp, collapsed body.
“…S— sir?”
It felt as though his heart had dropped to the floor. Terrified that he might have died, Yuhyeon pressed his ear to Seongjun’s chest to check for a heartbeat. Thud. Thud. Thud. Slow, but it was there. Relieved, Yuhyeon stripped off the button-down shirt he’d been wearing, wound it around his hands, and pressed it against the wound. He had no way to find a clean cloth, so he made do with what he had.
It nagged at him that the phone had shattered before he could finish hearing the instructions — but the emergency call had gone through regardless. The ambulance would arrive soon to take him, so the best he could do was make sure things didn’t get any worse.
The sensation of blood seeping between his fingers was vivid and inescapable. Yuhyeon tried his best to block it out.
“Stay with me!”
He bore down on the wound with his full body weight. Just what was the state of things beneath those bandages, that the bleeding refused to stop like this. Yuhyeon was terrified that Seongjun might stop breathing while he was still trying to help him. That was why he kept talking to him, even knowing the man was unconscious. There was a deep, gnawing fear that if he left him in silence, something irreversible might happen. Driven by a single, unwavering will to keep him alive, Yuhyeon forced his shaking body to still.
Not long after, the world around him stirred. Faint but unmistakable — a siren wailed, and the sound of multiple footsteps followed. It had to be the paramedics, so Yuhyeon pushed breath from his gut and called out.
“In here!”
Fortunately, they seemed to have been searching near Room 1 — people flooded in moments later. The paramedics crossed through the wrecked room and swiftly unfolded the stretcher. With several people working at once, it didn’t take long to transfer him onto it. Yuhyeon stood watching the flurry of movement all around him, when he felt something roll and drop near his feet. He looked down.
A ring?
A simple design set with a small diamond. What Yuhyeon had picked up was the engagement ring that should have been on Seongjun’s hand.
2. The Engagement Ring
Yuhyeon had made himself Seongjun’s temporary guardian and had arrived at the university hospital, where he now stood motionless in the bathroom, deep in thought.
“I wonder… how much it would sell for?”
The diamond ring, rinsed clean under running water, sparkled as though it had never been soaked in blood. But the phone Seongjun had smashed was not something water could fix. Buying a replacement would cost a considerable amount of money. Staring at the ring, he felt a sudden, reckless urge to just sell it and get himself a new phone.
But Yuhyeon let out a sigh and shoved the ring back into his pocket. He couldn’t just do whatever he wanted with the boss’s ring. And besides, once Seongjun came to his senses, surely he’d cover the cost of the phone. He’d also saved the man’s nearly-lost ring — that alone was worth expecting some kind of reward.
Yuhyeon returned to the waiting area and began thinking through how he could get in touch with the manager at Glock. Things had been so hectic right up until he got into the ambulance that he hadn’t even thought about tidying up. The inside of the bar was still covered in spilled blood, and he’d even left without closing the door. Setting aside the door — if he didn’t give the manager a heads-up about the blood, the employees who showed up for opening would walk straight into chaos. The current time was noon. Two hours until Glock opened. Someone needed to be there to clean up the blood-soaked interior before then.
My phone won’t turn on, so I have no way of getting the manager’s number….
If he asked someone else to look it up, he could probably find Glock’s main number — but calling it would be pointless when there was no one at the bar to pick up; it would just cycle to a voicemail announcement.
This… I wonder if it’s okay to use.
