A brief disturbance stirred up by anxiety.
Jang Ijung just ignored it, but thanks to Seo Sinwoo, the situation seemed to be wrapping up. Until Seo Sinwoo got hit, that is.
Seo Sinwoo had whispered something to the man as he turned away. He hadn’t seen the shape of the words, but from the expression, it looked like something meant to comfort him.
Had that, instead, set the man off? In the end, it turned violent.
He must have been hit harder than it looked, because Seo Sinwoo staggered, his nose bleeding.
“I’m… I’m fine. Just startled for a second.”
He said he was fine, but the corner of his mouth was trembling.
Jang Ijung noticed something was off about Seo Sinwoo’s state. For now, he headed for the restroom, as Seo Sinwoo seemed to want.
Seo Sinwoo turned the faucet on with urgent movements and shoved his head under the cold water.
After a moment, dripping wet, he said,
“Hit me. Just once.”
His voice was wretchedly shaky. Blood still dripped down his pale chin. Jang Ijung thought he must have misheard.
“What?”
“Quickly.”
“…What the hell are you talking about?”
Seo Sinwoo trembled as if gripped by terror.
“Please, just once…”
Then, as if he couldn’t bear it, he tried to slam his head against the wall. Jang Ijung quickly raised a hand to stop the self-harm.
“Hck, hck…”
Even breathing seemed to be a struggle for him. His body shook violently, and he clutched his chest as if suffocating. Jang Ijung narrowed his eyes.
Trauma?
It was a symptom commonly seen in Hunters coming out of a Gate. Bound by painful past memories, triggering an episode.
Usually, in such cases, there was a specific trigger that set it off.
Why now, all of a sudden…
Jang Ijung’s mind worked through it. Only one thing came to mind.
“This piece of trash!”
Had getting hit on the head been the trigger? Violence causing trauma was common enough.
But if the person in question was this man, it struck him as unexpected first.
Of all people, the one acting as the boss’s right hand, breaking down from violence—and from the punches of some lowly civilian he could kill anytime he wanted, no less.
Did that mean some massive fear had been carved into him?
The cause wasn’t hard to guess.
The boss.
Was there anyone besides the boss who could instill this level of fear in Seo Sinwoo?
According to the information gathered so far, the boss was uniquely violent toward Seo Sinwoo. No—he was violent toward everyone, but he was especially vicious specifically toward Seo Sinwoo.
Making him act like a dog, burning his tongue with a cigarette—in a short amount of time, he’d already heard of several kinds of punishment. Toward other members of the organization, he only occasionally resorted to violence, without that kind of unnecessary torment.
A faint voice, but a murmur that confirmed the guess.
“Ugh, Boss…”
Seo Sinwoo didn’t even recognize who was in front of him.
He simply begged, in a groveling posture, to be hit. When Jang Ijung ignored him, he grabbed his hand and tried desperately to swing it at himself.
Could it be that he’d learned to ask to be hit himself, as a way of earning forgiveness? And that even now…
Trained him cruelly.
In a state like this, it was possible the trauma had been deliberately instilled. Jang Ijung’s eyes turned cold.
But Seo Sinwoo’s mind was nothing like what Jang Ijung was thinking.
If the boss were here, I’d get hit once and feel better, and the penalty would clear too.
He was going out of his mind with frustration.
In the end, he gave up on Jang Ijung. With trembling hands, Seo Sinwoo pulled a knife from inside his clothes. Just as the gleaming blade was about to plunge down into his own arm—
Grab.
Jang Ijung caught his wrist.
The force of the grip was strong enough that the knife dropped to the floor. Jang Ijung kicked it away.
“Ugh, fuck, let go!”
Jang Ijung shoved the struggling Seo Sinwoo against the wall beside the sink.
“Seo Sinwoo, calm down.”
“It hurts. It fucking hurts…”
He still hadn’t come back to his senses, complaining of pain.
In the restroom, with just the two of them. There was nothing actually causing Seo Sinwoo pain. He seemed to be confusing memory with reality—memories of being punished.
Seo Sinwoo began gasping as if he were underwater. Feeling something tight around his throat, he roughly tore at his shirt buttons with one hand.
“Breathe slowly.”
“Hah, hah…”
Jang Ijung tried calmly to soothe him.
“Slowly.”
“Hck, kkeuk, geck…”
“…….”
Could he not hear him?
Pressed together, Jang Ijung could feel his chest heaving rapidly.
There was no sign of improvement. Seo Sinwoo was being swallowed by his own breathing. To Jang Ijung’s eyes, it wouldn’t have been strange if he passed out right then.
“Mmf…!”
A large hand covered Seo Sinwoo’s face. It was Jang Ijung. He covered the lower half of Seo Sinwoo’s face like a mask, pinky finger upward.
“…!”
His nose and mouth were crudely sealed by a single hand. Seo Sinwoo thrashed violently. It was an instinctive movement, trying to breathe.
Is he trying to kill me like this, the bastard?
Seo Sinwoo felt betrayed by the Association’s spy.
After everything I did for you…
Crackle!
“!”
A sharp, stinging pain.
Jang Ijung reflexively pulled his hand away. At the same time, a translucent window popped up in front of Seo Sinwoo’s eyes.
[Penalty triggered: 〈Prohibition〉 in effect. (00:05)]
Maybe because the attack had been weaker, the duration was shorter than last time. While Seo Sinwoo read the text through his blurred vision—
“…Stay still. I’m not going to do anything bad.”
The blond man reached out again, spouting a line straight out of some third-rate thug.
“Mmph.”
His lower face was seized again.
His shoes scraped frantically against the floor.
As his resistance grew more intense, Jang Ijung wedged a knee between Seo Sinwoo’s legs to pin him in place. Through the thin fabric of their pants, their thighs rubbed together. No matter how hard Seo Sinwoo pushed, that solid leg didn’t budge an inch.
His once-composed face began flushing red, as if all that composure had never existed. Seo Sinwoo flailed his hands wildly. Jang Ijung’s mask, caught in his grip, came loose and fell off.
“…! …!”
His blunt nails scraped against an arm, but it was useless. Stripped of his ability and trapped between the wall and a massive body, he was powerless. A pair of emotionless red eyes gazed down at him.
At a glance, it looked like the scene of a murder.
But Jang Ijung had no other intentions. He really had only mechanically covered the other’s mouth for his own good.
Jang Ijung thought to himself, expression calm and blank.
…He’s hot.
The breath against his hand was extremely hot. From the desperate struggle to open his mouth, a damp tongue occasionally brushed against his palm.
Anyway, overall, for a tall grown man, his resistance was weaker than an insect’s.
Oblivious to the other’s inner turmoil, Jang Ijung spoke idly.
“Hey, you… maybe try exercising more.”
Then, ignoring Seo Sinwoo’s desperate struggling, he held his position.
Eventually, the thrashing gradually subsided. Seo Sinwoo’s eyes were starting to roll back from lack of air.
“…….”
His body, all strength gone, slid down the wall. Only then did Jang Ijung pull his knee and hand away. When he released the other wrist he’d been holding, Seo Sinwoo simply collapsed onto the floor.
“Hah, hah…”
Seo Sinwoo, his face flushed to the point of bursting, breathed weakly. As he blinked reflexively, pooled tears spilled out.
Jang Ijung stared at the sight blankly from a step away, then checked his palm. His palm was damp with all kinds of fluids. He wiped his hand carelessly on his pants.
“You’ve calmed down.”
“…….”
Seo Sinwoo looked up at him with a twisted expression. The blood vessels in his eyes had burst.
“So you can glare, huh.”
Jang Ijung said, sounding intrigued. He bent his knees slightly to bring their eyes level.
“I thought all you could do was smile.”
Jang Ijung wiped the blood off Seo Sinwoo’s face with his jacket sleeve. His touch was rough.
“Do you make that face when the boss hits you too?”
Seo Sinwoo said nothing, slowly closing and opening his eyes. At some point, his expression had gone blank. It seemed like he had no energy left even to smile. He just stared emptily into space.
Jang Ijung knew it instinctively.
This was a side of himself Seo Sinwoo had let slip without realizing it. Probably the first true glimpse of him.
In the truth he’d briefly glimpsed, there was a man who looked exhausted.
Is he not here because he wants to be?
The thought came naturally enough.
After all, today Seo Sinwoo had had several chances to kill the target. But he hadn’t.
“I caused some trouble at a job recently. Got chewed out pretty badly for it.”
The image came back to him—Seo Sinwoo, sporting a dark bruise on his face, smiling as if it were nothing.
The blisters on his tongue and the wounds on his hands—were those traces of being punished for a similar “incident” as well?
It was a question that had been forming ever since hearing Yeom Hajae’s story.
The “benefactor” Yeom Hajae was looking for was very likely Seo Sinwoo. And the reason the boss had chosen Yeom Hajae as this time’s target—maybe…
“Ugh…”
Jang Ijung snapped out of his thoughts. Seo Sinwoo had collapsed completely onto the floor. The direction his outstretched fingers pointed toward was the fallen knife.
Narrowing his eyes, Jang Ijung kicked the knife away.
“Get up.”
Surprisingly obedient, Seo Sinwoo took Jang Ijung’s hand and got up, swaying. Lifting his head, he was smiling again as if nothing had happened.
“Ahem, I… wasn’t trying to do anything weird.”
“If sticking a knife in yourself isn’t ‘weird,’ what is?”
“…Just thought I’d hold onto it, just in case.”
The excuse came smoothly, with a brazen face. Had he come back to his senses? Jang Ijung swallowed an inexplicable sense of disappointment for reasons he couldn’t name.
Jang Ijung leaned back against the wall. He crossed his arms, watching Seo Sinwoo as if keeping guard over him.
Too early to jump to conclusions.
His suspicions still faint, but present.
That was when it happened.
“Kehk!”
Seo Sinwoo, who’d seemed to have calmed down, suddenly vomited blood into the sink.
