# Chapter 4
“Just let Seo Hanryul go. I’ve lost interest in him now.”
“Ha… fuck.”
Han Woojin. He is Cha Jaehyun’s personal secretary. Personal secretary sounds nice, but for two years he’s been treated worse than a dog while serving as Jaehyun’s hands and feet. As soon as the call ended, Woojin slammed his fist against the steering wheel and spat out a curse.
At some point, this madman had become obsessed with a rookie actor and started stalking him. Recently, things had escalated to the point where he ordered a kidnapping, but Woojin couldn’t dare refuse his orders. It was obvious what terrifying abuse would await if he failed to carry out the command.
After several days and nights of grueling work, he finally captured the man named Seo Hanryul. Sorry for the guy, but his own survival came first.
But what kind of bullshit whim was this now? After losing sleep and going through all that trouble to capture him, now Jaehyun says he’s lost interest and wants him released. Of course, these capricious moods weren’t new. But the extent of his fickleness was always fresh and varied. To Woojin, Cha Jaehyun was worse than the devil—a psychopath testing how much stress a human being could endure. A bastard who gifted Woojin new, grand forms of torment every day.
The order to release Seo Hanryul wasn’t the big issue. The problem was that when he went to Cha Jaehyun’s house, depending on his mood, he might suddenly fly into a rage asking why Woojin released him. If that happened, Woojin would have to endure the tantrum with no resistance whatsoever.
Though he had faced countless similar situations while working as Cha Jaehyun’s secretary, the helplessness and humiliation he felt each time never became any easier to bear.
“…Crazy bastard.”
Sighing at his circumstances, Woojin pushed back his bangs and felt his forehead. He touched the long scar that stretched across it.
Cha Jaehyun. At their first meeting, Woojin was shocked by his intimidatingly handsome appearance, and then shocked again by his insane personality.
From their very first encounter, Jaehyun threw an ashtray at him simply because he didn’t like something, leaving a 3cm scar on Woojin’s forehead. Seeing Jaehyun’s psychotic behavior from the start, anger welled up inside him, but he had no choice but to endure it. The sum offered was too substantial to refuse. Having experienced the brutal face of poverty, Woojin couldn’t possibly turn down that money.
“Release Seo Hanryul now.”
Woojin made a call to someone and immediately gave the order. After a few taps on his phone, he could see Seo Hanryul confined in an enclosed space. Men in black suits approached Hanryul as soon as they received the order.
“Who are you people!”
Startled, Seo Hanryul began to resist, shouting. A black bag covered his face so his expression couldn’t be seen, but he was surely wearing a look of terror.
“Lucky bastard. Stay still if you don’t want to get hurt.”
The men quickly cut the ropes binding Hanryul’s body and removed the handcuffs from his hands and feet. After finishing everything, they roughly lifted him up, threw him to the ground, and vanished from the scene in an instant.
After the men left, Hanryul painfully raised his injured body. He must have resisted fiercely when captured, as small and large wounds covered his entire body. Hanryul tore off the bag from his face, then stared into empty space with eyes full of rage. Like someone certain there was a CCTV camera somewhere.
“Crazy bastard.”
After spitting out a short curse into the void, Hanryul calmly left the scene. After he departed, the CCTV screen showed only a desolate empty lot with no one present.
After confirming his departure, Woojin turned off the phone screen.
‘Poor guy.’
Watching Hanryul, Woojin felt a sense of kinship. He couldn’t help but feel sorry seeing someone else suffering because of that hopeless bastard. Your situation is just as pitiful as mine.
Hopefully, it was true that Jaehyun had lost interest in Hanryul. Woojin wanted to stop the tiresome job of chasing after Seo Hanryul too.
* * *
Woojin’s childhood was like being at the bottom of the ocean with no end in sight. A mother who left home when he was very young and whose face he couldn’t even remember, and a father who hardly ever came home.
When his father did occasionally come home, he would have a flushed face and give Woojin some pocket money from unknown sources. He claimed to be working, but judging by his face and appearance, he didn’t look like someone doing legitimate work.
In the neighbors’ eyes, his father was nothing more than an alcoholic who occasionally appeared in the neighborhood and ominously wandered the night streets.
“Woojin, are you doing well even without your father?”
“…”
“Well, you have to manage on your own. Whose son are you, after all.”
Woojin despised when his father came home drunk. When in a good mood, he would touch Woojin’s face roughly with his calloused hands and ask if he was doing well. It was impossible for a young child to do well alone in a house without either mother or father.
Even this behavior only came out when he was in a good mood. The worst situation was when he came home drunk on a bad day. On such days, Woojin was helplessly exposed to his father’s verbal abuse.
“You worthless piece of shit! How dare you glare at me?”
During those times, Woojin thought it would be better to live as an orphan. After being beaten all night, he would wake up with his entire body swollen only to find his father gone. Cleaning the mess of a house and trying to pull himself together, young Woojin often pondered where the bottom of life truly was.
One day in December. That day, as usual, 14-year-old Woojin was alone guarding the empty house. A shabby semi-basement room that could be seen only after climbing uphill for about 20 minutes from the shantytown, a place that was practically falling apart.
In the cold winter with even the coal briquette boiler broken, Woojin sat looking at the window that only showed the ground outside. Being winter, the sun set early. As the sun gradually went down, even the narrow light coming through the semi-basement window faded away, and pitch-black darkness arrived. As complete darkness settled, the gloominess of the shantytown became even more pronounced.
Footsteps were heard from afar. Father? As the sound came closer, he realized it wasn’t just one person’s footsteps. Outside, two men were walking toward Woojin’s house, saying something to each other.
“We’re from the police station. Please open the door.”
Soon, there was a knocking sound from outside. What could this be? Other than a father who barely visited once or twice a year, there was no one who would come here. And people from the police station? Something bad must have happened. Woojin opened the door, feeling ominous about the presence outside.
“Are you Han Woojin?”
“…Yes.”
“Woojin, your father was found dead in a nearby stream.”
The two men hesitated for a long while looking at young Woojin before delivering the news of his father’s death. Their eyes were filled with sympathy.
The sudden news of his father’s death. The cause was an accidental fall. In a daze, Woojin left the house and headed to the police station with the two men.
He could see his father’s last moments in the CCTV footage. After drinking heavily, he staggered right next to the stream, lost his footing, and fell straight into the water.
If he hadn’t been drunk, the accident wouldn’t have happened given the shallow depth where he fell. It was a pathetically fitting end for an alcoholic.
“Poor kid at such a young age…”
Though the CCTV screen turned off, Woojin couldn’t leave his seat for a long time. He could hear people around him saying things, but soon those voices faded away. It felt like a large stone had dropped in his heart. An indescribable, complex, subtle, and unpleasant emotion began to creep up in his heart.
In front of the stretcher in the morgue, Woojin reached out and carefully placed his hand on the white cloth. An unpleasant and chilling cold sensation traveled up his fingertips.
So he’s really dead. Woojin finally realized his father’s death. The person who had abandoned him his whole life. The person who ignored him even on the rare occasions he came home. Though he had thought countless times that becoming an orphan would be better than having such a father, when it actually happened, it felt like being shot in the head.
He felt hot liquid flowing down his cheeks. Tears had fallen without Woojin even realizing it.
I’m really all alone in the world now. Woojin finally realized that he had become completely alone.
* * *
After that night, his father’s funeral proceeded rapidly. Since there were no relatives to take care of the underage Woojin, he naturally went to a nearby orphanage.
“So you’re Woojin. This is where you’ll be staying from now on!”
A young woman with a youthful face greeted Woojin kindly. People who treated him kindly, meals that came on time, and even a heated room—everything was so good it was hard for Woojin to get used to it. When he lived alone at home, going a whole day without a single meal was common, and every winter he had to endure the severe cold with just one blanket.
Before he knew it, a year had passed quickly, and December came again. The busy preparations for the end of the year could be felt on every street, and carols celebrating the upcoming Christmas could be heard.
Woojin had perfectly adapted to life at the orphanage over the year. Although he occasionally had nightmares about the day his father died, he was living a very stable life compared to his life a year ago.
“Our Woojin has grown so tall in just a year and looks so handsome. You could even be a model in the future!”
Orphanage teacher Yoon Ahyoung smiled proudly at Woojin who had grown significantly in a short period. Ahyoung vividly remembered Woojin’s first day at the orphanage.
A very small build for his age, a skinny body with bones almost showing through the skin. A vacant gaze that didn’t seem like that of a 14-year-old child. She had been very worried whether the child in front of her would adapt well to the orphanage.
Fortunately, the child seemed to get used to orphanage life quickly and noticeably began to regain his vitality. In a year, the child had grown over 10cm taller and his complexion had greatly improved. Not only that, he had grown into such a handsome young man that his appearance from a year ago was unrecognizable, and his face glowed with transparent vitality.
“Yeah, hyung! I think you’re more handsome than the people on TV.”
Hearing Ahyoung’s words, the children nearby began to chime in one by one.
“Oh, don’t say such nonsense.”
Woojin answered with a gentle smile toward Ahyoung. Just a year ago, Woojin had never thought about the future. In that semi-basement house where hardly any light entered, young Woojin’s emotions had withered away as he endured each day alone.
Living at the orphanage, Woojin could feel human warmth for the first time. Teachers who took care of him, being able to sit face-to-face with someone and eat together. It might be natural for others, but for Woojin who had never experienced being cared for, he felt life’s consolation for the first time in this environment.
‘I want to become a wonderful adult someday.’
Looking out the window, Woojin vaguely felt the emotion of “happiness” for the first time. He pictured his future. In the past, even survival had been difficult, let alone thinking about the future. Woojin surprised himself as he thought about the future. Now I can think about the future and have dreams too.
