“May I take that as acceptance? ……Ugh!”
Gangwoo threw a punch at Sijin’s jaw. A groan escaped his mouth — the kind you’d expect from a rusty hinge. Gangwoo pressed his forearm against Sijin’s throat and sneered, quit being dramatic. It was the very violence he had long avoided, yet he didn’t hesitate.
He had just violated Rule 1. But he had upheld the equally weighted Rule 2. Never resort to violence. However, if it’s a moment where you must protect yourself, don’t hesitate.
The act of cutting off Sijin’s airway stemmed from a reason entirely separate from any personal grudge over the treatment discontinuation. Nor was it because he’d been subjected to some archaic nonsense about repaying a life debt with his body.
It was because Sijin had figured out that Gangwoo was a terminal patient. His illness was a weakness that could not be discovered by anyone — but above all, not by Sijin.
The “Park” in Allen-Park Syndrome was Park Sijin’s “Park.” The man who had identified the cause behind symptoms whose existence had been disputed and attached his own name to the disease — and the man who was capable of making, and held in his hands, the only treatment that was as good as Gangwoo’s lifeline. Which meant that Sijin knowing Gangwoo had Allen-Park Syndrome was the same as knowing he had Gangwoo by the collar.
How had he arrived at the conclusion that Sijin knew his diagnosis? The evidence was Gangwoo’s body itself — still clinging to life even after the treatment deadline had passed.
Sijin had said it. That he had taken appropriate measures. If he had identified the cause, he would have been capable of responding accordingly.
The treatment was Gangwoo’s leash. If he wavered even slightly, he might end up being dragged around by Sijin like a dog.
He had already been subjected to utterly preposterous words from the man. Gangwoo needed to cut that leash as quickly as possible — every second counted.
“Where is the Allen-Park Syndrome treatment?”
He glared at the wheezing Sijin and asked point-blank. This was his chance. They were alone together in Sijin’s private laboratory.
Even after undoing his restraints and climbing on top of Sijin, there was no sense of anyone about to come in. The only sound was the rain pouring hard against the windows. Reassured, Gangwoo raised his voice.
“Where are you keeping it? Tell me the location. Now!”
“If you, keep moving like that…… your arm, is going to, hurt.”
Sijin glanced at the IV needle inserted in Gangwoo’s forearm. The veins along his forearm had bulged from the force he was exerting. Gangwoo didn’t care.
“You understand pain, and yet you discontinued the treatment and brought things to this?”
He added a little spite to the pressure on Sijin’s throat. Gangwoo left just enough space for the red arterial blood pumped from the heart to flow up to the brain unchecked.
The blue venous blood, stripped of oxygen, had its path downward cut off by Gangwoo’s compression. Sijin’s pale face gradually shifted to violet. He was likely in agony — blood rushing to his head until it felt like his brain might rupture.
“Not going to talk? Want me to make it worse?”
“Hrgh…… Ugh!”
He lowered his forearm slightly, then pressed down again with greater force. The brief opening of Sijin’s airway and blood vessels came back to him as excruciating pain.
His wide-blown eyes filled with bloodshot veins. The cardiac monitor let out a rapid series of short, high-pitched beeps. Red blood began climbing up the IV line. Sijin tapped on Gangwoo’s arm. His black dress shoes slid across the surface of the bed.
“Where is it? ……Ghck!”
Gangwoo coughed up blood. He blinked, as though he couldn’t comprehend what had just happened to him, and stared at Sijin, who was now splattered in bright crimson. Sijin smiled silently, his face like that of a demon.
The pressure on his throat disappeared. Sijin quickly rolled and broke free from Gangwoo, nearly falling off the bed in the process. Gangwoo crumpled forward.
Sijin grabbed the bed rail and pushed himself upright. He staggered, losing his balance from the dizziness and the slick blood on his palm, but barely managed to get to his feet and checked the cardiac monitor.
“Appropriate — krhk — appro, priately……”
His doubled-over torso kept heaving with unrelenting coughs. His words came out in fragments.
Sijin roughly wiped his face with his left hand. Watching Gangwoo writhing on a mattress that was practically a pool of blood, still demanding an answer with his eyes — Sijin couldn’t help but want to click his tongue and laugh.
“Appropriate……. Hmph.“
So he opened his mouth. What came out was a ragged, hoarse voice. He kneaded the area around his Adam’s apple with his hand and cleared his throat. Then, with a sneer loaded into every syllable, he answered.
“I took appropriate measures. Not appropriate for Gangwoo — appropriate for me.“
“How…… did……”
“Would knowing change anything?”
Wiping his face with a blood-covered hand only made things worse. Sijin walked to the sink in the corner of the laboratory and rolled up his sleeves. He cupped cold water in both hands and began washing his face.
Beneath the sound of running water, Gangwoo could be heard murmuring something — words that were almost certainly curses — faintly in the background. But even after finishing washing his face, Sijin hummed to himself, leisurely and thoroughly scrubbing between each finger and beneath his nails.
Vincerò. Vincerò. Whistling the lips of Puccini’s aria, Sijin came back. He was elated. The thing he had wanted most had rolled right to his feet. Victory in the battle was within sight.
“Don’t be so upset.”
Sijin said with a refreshed look on his face. Gangwoo barely managed to lift his eyes and glare at him.
“It’s not as if I’ve treated only Jeh Gangwoo like a fool. There is no one on this earth other than myself who understands the mechanism of action of this drug.”
I have halted the progression of the syndrome for exactly twenty-four hours from the time Jeh Gangwoo collapsed. He rolled Gangwoo’s prone body onto its side and whispered into his ear. No need to feel wronged. In short, it was his way of saying everyone except himself was an idiot. He wasn’t wrong, but there was no one who would be happy to hear it.
Sijin gathered all of Gangwoo’s limbs together in front of him. Unlike the director of Kim Internal Medicine, he was strong. Without so much as a strained expression, he curled Gangwoo’s body into the position of a tucked fetus. His forehead looked like it might touch his knees.
What is he trying to do? Gangwoo struggled to move his lips, but Sijin, standing behind him, couldn’t see.
All that could be heard was a steady, snake-charmer’s whistle. And before long, there truly came a sound — a slow, slithering sss — grazing past Gangwoo’s ear. A chill ran down his spine.
“Good.”
Sijin pulled the hem of the patient gown up to the waist and gave a satisfied nod. The soft swish-swish was the friction of the patient gown rubbing against the mattress sheet. The chill Gangwoo had felt was not psychological fear but a physical sensation.
Everything beneath the patient gown was exposed to the open air. The air maintained at a constant twenty-two degrees year-round began to leach the warmth from his skin.
Tsk. The sound of a tongue clicking drifted over his shoulder. Goosebumps rose along the hollow of his knees, his lean thighs, and the taut muscles of his backside. Just as the physical sensation was about to convert into psychological terror, Sijin let out a small sigh and moved to one side of the laboratory.
“I was actually the one surprised by you. I had no idea my inner circle could be breached this easily. I hadn’t anticipated it at all.”
Four leather cuffs connected by chains hung slack from the bed rail, like the tongue of an ox. Whether the restraints that had been so easily undone were as good as useless, or whether there was simply no need to bind a patient who could barely gasp for breath — Gangwoo couldn’t read Sijin’s thinking.
“I thought you might be a spy sent by the protesters, but that wasn’t it either. What on earth are you?”
“You would’ve, seen, the documents I submitted……”
He tried to respond to Sijin’s words and move his body, but he couldn’t budge. The sudden coughing up of blood had sent the world spinning. His limbs were as heavy as those of a person who hadn’t eaten or slept in a week.
“Ah, those?”
Sijin wheeled a cart back toward the bed. He spoke from behind Gangwoo.
“I checked. Everything recorded there was true, except for the health examination documents. The contents not listed in the documents are still under investigation.”
“What?”
Gangwoo summoned what little strength he had left and turned his head. Sijin grabbed him by the head with one hand. In his line of sight were his own squished cheek and the bloodstain left on the cuff of Sijin’s white coat.
“Don’t move. One wrong movement and your lower body could be paralyzed.”
Having issued that warning, Sijin returned his face to its original position — nearly throwing it. Immediately after, a cold alcohol swab rubbed against his lower back.
A sharp needle pricked his trembling skin. The sensation of fingers pressing down over it soon disappeared.
“I’ll now be administering a local anesthetic into the subarachnoid cerebrospinal fluid.”
“Sub, sub-arach……?”
“I knew you wouldn’t understand, but I said it out of courtesy. You do know what lower body means, don’t you? That’s what I’ll be anesthetizing. For the sake of a nonviolent conversation, I believe this is the best option for both of us.”
It wasn’t for nothing that he’d left the restraints alone. Sijin had employed an even more preemptive measure. His plan was to keep Gangwoo’s legs immobilized through lower-body anesthesia while leaving the upper half functional — just enough to have a conversation.
“Is this something you can do to a patient who just died and came back? I coughed up blood, you know?”
“It’s fine. I’ll revive you again anyway.”
Again? It was the kind of phrasing that showed off credit for something that hadn’t even been fully done yet. Curses came naturally.
“And not a single person has ever died in this laboratory. Not one.”
“So the CEO of Eaton Biotech has a hobby of locking people up and running drug experiments on them? If word got out, the fallout would be far worse than a few offensive remarks.”
Something was off about this place, just as I’d thought. A bed fitted with restraint chains, and a space fully equipped with all manner of treatment apparatus. Beyond the medication storage cabinet holding anesthetics, there was also a stainless steel tank larger than the bed.
He had seen something like that before — when he’d broken into the home of the third-generation boss of the Hangdong mob. It had been an heirloom from the second-generation boss, who had dissolved his enemies in sulfuric acid inside that tank, and the second-generation boss himself had met his end inside it at the hands of the third.
“You see, aside from myself, Jeh Gangwoo is the first person to have ever entered this place. Well — if Jeh Gangwoo were to die, he would be the first to leave here dead.”
Sijin added with an air of mild displeasure. Keep your mouth shut. I’m currently checking whether the cerebrospinal fluid is flowing properly from the needle now that the stylet has been removed.
