Right now, my mind held only one thought: I had to go check on my beloved boyfriend myself.
The thought was simple. The action was swift.
It was almost comical watching the guys hurl themselves in both directions like balls flying toward opposite goalposts, trying to stop me from storming out of the office. I cleared them easily — they were standing in my way like goalkeepers — and walked straight out. I didn’t forget to grab the car keys hanging by the door, either.
I climbed into the SUV parked with impressive skill in a tight corner of the narrow alley, started the engine, and looked up at the worn-down three-story building. Second floor, specifically. The office I’d been going in and out of since I was ten, until the stairs had worn smooth.
There was a time when having a roof over my head and someone inside who actually knew me was enough to make everything feel complete…… Now, all of this — everything around me — is something I can only resent. Why did I have to grow up into a thug like this.
The resentment climbed and climbed until it summoned the faces of parents I could barely even remember.
What if something really went wrong because of me.
Damn it, I’ve done so many rotten things I can’t even narrow down which bastard it might be.
Even as dark thoughts swelled like they might burst my skull open, my right hand steadily pulled down the handbrake and worked the gear shift.
“Come on, seriously! Who just up and leaves in the middle of work?!”
“Hear, hear! Work! Get back to work!”
Just as I was about to press the accelerator, voices came through the car window and a sigh escaped me before I could stop it. The guys throwing up flimsy excuses to mess with me were acting strange today. They’re the type who’d be thrilled the second I disappeared from sight — so why the hell are they doing this?
Cracking the window open just slightly, worried a noise complaint from the neighborhood might be next, I said:
“Doesn’t look like I’ll be back today, so just do the rounds with the guys and head home on time.”
“Oh, come on, Lee Gang!”
“Hyung!”
Who said anything about overtime? I’m telling you to leave on time, you old men.
I rolled the window back up, cutting off their faces as they blocked the car and shouted at me, and answered them by pressing the accelerator instead. There seemed to be some swearing mixed in, but that was something I could sort out later with my fists. A quick glance in the rearview mirror showed Bulgom tearing at his hair and Mangchi collapsing to the ground.
I wondered briefly what was going on with them, but they slipped out of my mind just as fast. The car wove quickly out of the winding narrow alley.
Just because he hadn’t replied to two measly messages from me. Just because a GPS app I’d secretly installed was pointing at a hospital. Is it normal to feel like I’m going out of my mind?
No. Damn it — I lost my mind three years ago.
It was an anxiety that had taken root the moment I — who had nothing to my name — got this one person in my hands. The endless fear snowballed, bleeding into regret.
“Haah — no matter how much I liked him, I shouldn’t have gone after a civilian.”
No, actually — the real comedy was me, a beta, going after a man who was an extreme alpha in the first place.
Why were there so many traffic lights today, and how was I managing to stop at every single one without exception? With each stop I was sure something terrible must have happened, and every foul word I knew kept tumbling out.
“Lee Gang. Get it together. Enough with the paranoid thoughts. You’re just going to check. Just check.”
I’d made a real effort to cut out the swearing since we started dating, but the occasional slip was still unavoidable. Hell, what else was anyone supposed to say in a situation like this, if not swear?
Unable to hide my impatience, I drummed restlessly on the steering wheel, then hit the accelerator again when the light changed. The closer I got to my destination, the bigger the dread and suffocation grew — and I yanked off the necktie the man had knotted for me just a few hours ago and threw it onto the passenger seat. I rolled the window all the way down and undid a couple of shirt buttons as well, but the strangled tightness in my throat didn’t go away.
Weaving dangerously in and out of lanes, I finally arrived at the hospital marked on the map.
Parking lot be damned — I left the car practically abandoned at the hospital entrance and ran for the front desk. There was only one thing I needed to confirm. My boyfriend. The single fact that my boyfriend, Kang Jaeho, was not hurt.
“Excuse me…….”
Just as I was catching my breath to ask the front desk staff —
I spotted a cluster of familiar-looking hulking figures piling into an elevator.
I’d been in this world for thirteen years. A strange, ominous feeling set my heart hammering. I chewed again at my lower lip — already bitten ragged — and stood rooted in front of the closed elevator doors as if in a trance. 1…… 2…… 3……
I raised the phone I’d been gripping like a talisman and checked the app again, but the location hadn’t moved. I looked up again — the number had stopped at 7. I pressed the button, and as I waited for the elevator to come back down and was about to step in and head straight up—
“Hyung!”
Bulgom and Mangchi, who I’d left behind — and Gamja, who had apparently finished the collection rounds and joined them — all came running toward me. I stared at the air above them and pretended not to see them, jabbing the close button — but all three of their massive bodies shoved themselves against the doors to keep them from shutting. Three big guys wedged into the elevator doorway like they were all stuck in it together.
“Why are you guys seriously like this? What are you doing, following me all the way here?”
I shot them an annoyed look at the absurdity of them actually trailing me here, and Mangchi awkwardly laughed along. A smile in those eyes on that menacing face was the worst combination imaginable. The long scar running from above his right eyelid down to the tip of his nose twitched visibly.
“H-hyung. How about a cup of coffee with us, for old times’ sake…….”
“Mangchi. Was what we just drank poison?”
“T-then just three minutes. N-no! Can’t you wait just one minute before going up?! Please!”
Gamja shoved Mangchi aside to plant himself in the center and rubbed his hands together so frantically it was like they might catch fire. He was the biggest one of the bunch — so why was he being so pathetic.
“Stop talking nonsense and move!”
Their increasingly rowdy behavior was drawing stares from people around us. Displeased, I kicked the shin of Gamja, who was at the front — but though he yelped, he didn’t budge.
“Oh? Holding your ground, are you?”
“P-please spare us, hyung! If you go up there like this, we’re actually dead!”
Bulgom, who had been hovering in the back just watching the situation, got jabbed in the ribs by Mangchi a few times before finally blurting out something ridiculous. He did look genuinely desperate. But right now, I had one desire only — to throw anyone blocking my path into the next world. If anything, being stopped made me feel like I had to go no matter what, even if it killed me.
They’re telling me not to go, so now I want to go even more — am I losing my mind? No, these bastards — my boyfriend is in the hospital right now! And he might have been targeted in retaliation by the Yuseong faction! And they’re telling me not to go?
“Bulgom. You’ve got the wrong address — very much the wrong one. This place is crawling with doctors and nurses. ‘Please spare us’ — go beg the ones in the white coats.”
“Hyung, please…… Sob!”
Now he was grabbing at my trouser leg and crying. Come to think of it — what did this bastard say when I was getting in the car earlier?
“You talked shit about me, didn’t you?”
All three of them flinched at the same time when I fixed them with a sharp look.
I stretched both arms out and braced them against the sides of the elevator door frame, then lifted my right leg and started kicking at their thighs. I focused my heel on Bulgom’s thigh in particular, though I was fair enough to give each of them a turn.
“Ow! Seriously! Ow, hyung!”
“Seriously, just one minute!”
“Hyung, please—”
I finally drove all three of them out of the elevator, then called out to a passing nurse:
“Three patients over here—”
I said it in the same breezy tone as ordering three bowls of soup, dispatched them accordingly, then hammered the close button ten-odd times in quick succession and pressed 7.
It’s not like I said I was going to raid some other organization’s hideout on my own, or pocket all the interest money. I just said I’m going to find my own boyfriend — what the hell is wrong with these guys that they’re making this much of a scene?
I was thinking I’d need to whip them back into line soon, when the elevator arrived at the seventh floor.
There was no need to look anywhere else. The hulking figures standing guard in front of the VIP ward were suspicious enough that even an ant passing by could tell something was off.
The moment they saw me approach, they visibly startled — and I grinned.
“So you know who I am.”
The moment suspicion became certainty.
“H-how did you find this place!”
“Hey, stop him!”
Ah, I feel like I’ve seen this before. What do you call that weird feeling where something flashes through your head…… Deja-woo? Deja-byo?
Looking over their faces carefully, there was a vague familiarity to them — like this wasn’t actually our first meeting…… But they all had that same cookie-cutter look about them, which made it hard to tell them apart.
Haah, so what was that word again……?
“Oh! Déjà vu! Déjà vu, you bastards!”
The word had been on the tip of my tongue, tickling at my brain, making me scratch uselessly at the back of my head — and then it came to me. The sheer joy of remembering it made me drive my fist straight into the temple of the first guy who rushed at me.
“First strike, you little shits—”
I let out a loud shout to seize the upper hand — but something felt off. The guys were keeping a strangely wide distance from me. When they should have been coming at me with everything they had, why were they all holding back? Guys who hesitate in front of someone throwing punches — I was confident I could knock them flat with a single finger.
I thought things might get interesting, but they turned out to be all size and no durability — a few hits and they went down fast.
“Boring.”
With just a handful of punches I’d cleared them effortlessly and was now standing in front of the hospital room door.
“Of course he won’t be in there…….”
My boyfriend, Kang Jaeho, is probably at work right now, busy as ever. He was probably in a meeting and couldn’t pick up. That’s what I told myself, over and over — so why am I this nervous? My palm was sweating around the phone, so I wiped it carelessly on my thigh — and then, as if I’d never hesitated at all, I threw the hospital room door wide open.
In the place I was certain my boyfriend would not be. Right there, in the exact spot my eyes landed the moment I stepped inside the hospital room.
“Babe!”
My boyfriend, Kang Jaeho, was there.
