“Daerim.”
“Yes.”
Daerim, who had been waiting behind, pushed past the organization members at Siwon’s call. In the meantime, Siwon, who couldn’t hold back and took out a cigarette from his jacket, lit it and pointed straight ahead with the hand holding the cigarette.
“Can you fix that quickly?”
For a moment, Daerim didn’t recognize that the man covered in dust was Seongyeom. When he belatedly realized this, he hardened his expression and nodded.
“Of course.”
“Good, go ahead and prepare.”
“Yes.”
Until Daerim pushed through the organization members and went outside, Siwon took a long drag of his cigarette leisurely. Gold Tooth watched this with a dumbfounded face and eventually couldn’t hold back and giggled.
“Hey, Kwon Siwon. You’re still wasting time on useless things, huh?”
“Really? Did it look that way?”
Siwon smiled faintly and flicked the hand with the cigarette. Frustrated by his leisurely attitude showing no intention to fight, Gold Tooth shook Seongyeom by the hair.
“Ahuk…!”
“You motherfucker. Hurry up and pull those bastards back and take out a gun or a knife. Otherwise this bastard really dies.”
“Huuk!”
Even when Seongyeom’s sobs could be heard, Siwon only glanced at him once. With one hand in his pants pocket, he took one last long drag and crushed out the cigarette.
“Today was a really important day for me.”
“What?”
“It was just one single day in the whole year.”
Siwon seemed to be organizing his thoughts while looking at the air for a moment. At the appearance that felt somewhat desolate, Seongyeom captured Siwon’s image in his blurring vision. Even in the anxiety that felt like he might suffocate, Siwon’s expression was clearly visible.
What kind of day is today that he’s making such a sad face?
“Not my problem.”
When Gold Tooth firmly shot back, Siwon chuckled and nodded. He took his hand out of his pocket and received a steel pipe that a subordinate behind him handed over.
“Right, sons of bitches don’t usually know their own faults.”
At Siwon’s provocation, Gold Tooth’s face turned red and blue as he wrapped his arm around Seongyeom’s neck.
“Kuk! Uuk.”
“That bastard really wants to die by my hand today. He said he’d quit being a gangster, but looks like the screws in his head came loose too, huh? I’ll send you off nicely with your lover.”
Seongyeom tried to raise his bound hands with a pained face to grab the man’s arm. The man was choking his neck so hard that his toes were barely touching the floor.
“Lover? What bastard said such ridiculous nonsense…”
Siwon, who had casually rested the steel pipe on his shoulder, raised one eyebrow and looked back at his subordinates. Everyone hurriedly avoided his gaze or actively denied it by waving their hands, saying it wasn’t them.
“That bastard to the very end…”
“Kkuh, urk…?!”
Tired of the attitude ignoring him, Gold Tooth tightly choked his neck with his thick arm muscles. Seongyeom’s vision gradually darkened and the strength left the hand that had been scratching the man’s forearm. As Seongyeom’s movements gradually subsided, Gold Tooth raised the rusty knife he was holding in his other hand high.
“Lee Seongyeom!”
“Teacher!”
From that point on, everything was a mess as if someone had played with time.
He felt a pain piercing through his shoulder, and the successive shouts sounded strange, like playing a stretched-out videotape. In the blink of an eye, time seemed to flow at 2x speed as he was instantly sprawled on the bathroom floor.
His left shoulder throbbed and lukewarm red blood was flowing down onto the tile floor like a faucet had been turned on. He could also see a knife rolling around stained with blood.
“Cold…”
Strange. I feel the cold more than the pain. Even though it’s almost early summer, I’m cold enough to be shivering. Cold, tired, and painful. Oh right, I was hungry earlier too… Thinking about it, all he’d had for dinner was a piece of pickled radish and a spoonful of corn salad.
I like fish cake soup… they should have ordered some with me earlier. He thought of Yi Cheong, that kid who wouldn’t even glance at it, saying he didn’t want fish cake soup because it was too hot.
“Teacher, Teacher! You can’t lose consciousness, open your eyes!”
His ears felt muffled as if submerged in water. Cheong’s voice sounded like it was coming from very far away.
“Selfish bastard…”
“What? What did you just say?”
“This won’t do. There’s too much blood. Cheong-ah, press here. I’ll carry him.”
Seoldong brought what was presumed to be an organization member’s jacket, handed it to Yi Cheong, and picked up the fallen Seongyeom on his back. As pressure was applied to the wound from that reaction, blood gushed out from his shoulder.
“Aaah…!”
“Damn it! Teacher’s in too much pain!”
“Do it anyway! Wrap the jacket inward and tie it tight.”
“Ah, okay!”
It hurt. A pain worse than having his hair torn out, worse than spraining his ankle, was felt somewhere in his left shoulder blade area. Seongyeom bit his lower lip until it bled, trying to shake off the pain as much as possible.
“Fuck, let go! Let go of this, will you!? Let go!”
“Boss, you mustn’t! You can’t kill him!”
When he raised his head with difficulty at the President’s anguished voice, Gold Tooth from earlier was lying sprawled with his cheekbone crushed. Nevertheless, seeing his face grinning with rolled-back eyes, he felt the blood draining from his head and his vision became distant.
Beyond his fading consciousness, Seongyeom thought: Did heaven punish me for trying to make money too easily? Or am I being punished for being attracted to handsome men? Or is it just my fate to die young?
He was too tired. Enduring the pain, exhaling labored breaths—everything felt bothersome. He just wanted to let everything go and rest.
Seoldong, who had been quickly descending the stairs, suddenly stopped when an arm dropped beside his shoulder.
“Ch-Cheong-ah…”
“Why! This isn’t the time to stop…!”
Yi Cheong, who had been pressing down hard on Seongyeom’s shoulder while descending, looked up at Seoldong with an anxious face. Seoldong looked down at Seongyeom with a deathly pale face. Yi Cheong’s heart also sank.
“Teacher, are you breathing…?”
“I-I’ll go get hyung!”
Yi Cheong nearly tripped several times as he bounded up the stairs again, three or four steps at a time. Siwon was still standing surrounded by the hyungs, catching his breath wrapped in anger. He looked much calmer than before, but the atmosphere was still fierce, as if he might grab and kill someone at any moment.
Fortunately, seeing the stomach of the man sprawled on the floor rising and falling, he hadn’t committed murder. Yi Cheong grabbed one wall and carefully called Siwon.
“Hyung.”
Only then did the murderous intent in Siwon’s blazing eyes slightly dissipate.
“What.”
“Well, Teacher, is, bre-breathing…”
Siwon, who sensed something ominous from Cheong’s stumbling expression, pushed past his subordinates and ran down to the lower floor. Teolbo, who was running down to the first floor following Siwon, picked up his cell phone and urgently instructed a subordinate waiting outside.
“Boss is coming down. Secure the perimeter well.”
Black sedans of organization members were lined up around the karaoke building. The fierce-looking organization members who got out of their cars in unison upon hearing Teolbo’s instructions blocked the front of the cars.
Because of this, passersby thought this was a movie filming location even more and stopped to peek inside the building looking for cameras or actors.
When they saw the blood-covered Seongyeom lying on a blanket, they repeatedly covered their mouths and laughed among themselves, asking if he was really hurt. Then, when they made eye contact with an organization member who looked like he might curse them out with his eyes, they hesitated and left on their way.
“What happened?!”
Siwon, who had run down from the 4th floor to the 1st floor in one breath, stopped abruptly. Teacher was lying on a hastily laid-out blanket. Daerim was stopping the bleeding on his shoulder, and Seoldong was straddling him, compressing his chest.
“What are you doing right now?”
“Boss…!”
When Siwon approached closer to Seongyeom’s side, only then did the shoulder wound come into view. His eyes had gone mad with anger at having his wife’s death anniversary ruined, so he hadn’t even properly seen the situation.
The sensation of losing someone again covered his entire body.
“I asked what you’re doing.”
“Teacher isn’t breathing…!”
Siwon looked down at Seongyeom with wavering eyes as if he couldn’t believe it.
The image of his wife who had died a year ago came to mind at the sight of him lying with a pale face covered in blood. For a moment, the wretchedness and helplessness of that time came back to life and crushed his head.
“It’s too late…”
“…What?”
Daerim hesitated then elaborated.
“He already stopped breathing even before leaving the building. The bleeding is severe, and like this, there’s absolutely no way…”
Daerim’s cold diagnosis hit, but Siwon didn’t listen. No, he couldn’t hear.
“Move, I’ll do it.”
Siwon pushed away Seoldong who had been struggling to perform emergency measures on top of Seongyeom, held Seongyeom’s nose and forcefully blew breath into his mouth. Then he clasped both hands together once more and compressed his chest with all his might.
“I can’t let you go like this. No, I won’t let you go. Hyerin too, after letting her go like that, do you think I’ll lose my person again in this shitty way?!”
“Boss, don’t push yourself!”
“There are many eyes watching! He’s a civilian who won’t benefit us. Just compensate the family with money and bury it secretly…”
“Shut up!”
At Siwon’s roar, Teolbo pulled Daerim away. There was no one who could stop him.
“Please, please…!”
In his eyes was only the obsession that he had to breathe life back into Seongyeom lying before him. Siwon’s eyes were looking at Seongyeom, but his heart was looking at the wife he couldn’t save a year ago. His desperate hands compressed Seongyeom’s heart again and again.
