At some point, the thundering against the door stopped. An eternity passed, and then even the alarm that had seemed like it would ring forever cut off abruptly.
With everything falling quiet, only Yieum’s heartbeat sounded — irregular, unsteady. Outside, it was as if nothing had happened at all.
He held his breath and strained his ears.
Ding-dong —
Every nerve in his body lurched at the sudden doorbell. He nearly lost his grip on the knife from the shock. The palm that tightened around the handle again was slick with sweat.
The intercom screen had lit up.
A chance to see outside. Keeping the blade still aimed at the front door, Yieum carefully slid his gaze toward the screen. The tension coiled tight all the way up his throat — even the sound of swallowing rang in his ears.
But the person on the screen was not his biological father.
A man, slightly bent at the waist, was staring directly into the lens. He had lowered himself deliberately so his face would fit within the camera positioned below chest height. That face, filling the entire screen, was looking in from the dark hallway.
Cheon Chaehyeok. That man.
Yieum wiped the cold sweat from his hand and pressed his eye to the peephole. Through the convex lens, there was only Chaehyeok outside the door, dressed in his black suit. Not a trace of his biological father — not even the string of lackeys Chaehyeok usually kept at his heels.
He felt considerably more at ease, yet strangely unsettled. Feeling relieved at the sight of a gangster coming to collect a debt — that’s quite the irony.
Maybe it was because he’d been shaken so thoroughly by a fear he hadn’t seen coming. The predictable kind of fear had somehow become trivial by comparison. At the very least, this man wasn’t a shadow that could lunge out from anywhere, anytime.
Yieum steadied his breath and pressed the front door open. A hand immediately pushed through the narrow gap. Chaehyeok wedged it wider from the outside and stuck his face in, expression displeased.
“World’s a rough place — put the chain on before you open the door.”
He had apparently anticipated the door being slammed right shut again, hence the hand first.
Though fair enough — flinging a door wide open for a stranger who happened to be a gangster you’d only met once was a fairly careless thing to do.
Thanks to that, Yieum found himself in the peculiar spectacle of being lectured about how rough the world was by one of the very people responsible for making it that way.
But the thing that truly frightened him right now wasn’t the gang boss who had, on occasion, helped him.
Yieum craned his neck with every nerve on alert and scanned the hallway — empty. The tension drained from his body all at once.
“I’ll do that next time.”
“I’m coming in.”
Chaehyeok let himself in through the wide-open door. Yieum’s entire focus went to whether he would take his shoes off — and in that moment, he forgot entirely about the kitchen knife in his own hand.
Chaehyeok was, somewhat surprisingly, in the middle of removing his shoes when his gaze landed on the blade. One corner of his mouth curved up in amusement.
“Who were you planning to stick that in.”
The moment Yieum registered what his chin gesture was pointing at, he dropped the knife as though it had burned him. The blade clattered against the tile with a sharp, ringing sound.
Chaehyeok walked back the few short steps to the entrance and picked it up. An ordinary kitchen knife, nothing special. He turned it over a few times, then held it out handle-first toward Yieum, gripping the blade side himself.
“Hold it properly.”
“N-no, I——”
“I said hold it.”
He had clearly been badly misunderstood. When Yieum hid his hands behind his back, Chaehyeok caught his wrist and forced the handle into his grip.
“Hold it right. Unless you want your grip snapped.”
At the low murmur, Yieum clenched the handle so hard his fist shook. The trembling blade tip grazed the hem of Chaehyeok’s shirt. Even so, his face was perfectly composed — and it was Yieum, the frightened one, who kept stumbling backward.
Then —
“Ah!”
His wrist was yanked. Before he could even react, his arm was twisted. His joint bent the wrong way and his vision went black with searing pain.
He swallowed the sound trying to escape from between his teeth, and slowly his sight returned.
A cold blade hovered in front of his eyes. Yieum stared at the faintly trembling tip, not breathing.
Chaehyeok had folded his own hand over Yieum’s, the one that held the knife. The wrenched arm, the handle, everything — all of it was locked inside that rough grip.
“Don’t mess around with knives. You’re the one who’ll end up getting gutted.”
“Th-that’s not what I——”
He released Yieum’s hands and took the knife back, expression casual, bordering on indifferent. Gripping the blade side without any concern.
Yieum worked his hand and rubbed his startled arm. The pain had been so sharp he’d been certain his joint had been bent backward.
It struck him anew — this man really was a gangster. If he’d had any genuine intention to attack, Yieum would have gone to join his mother and stepfather by now.
“Of all knives to pick, one with a completely blunt edge.”
“I wasn’t actually going to use it on you——”
He started to stammer out an explanation and Chaehyeok snorted immediately. His face wore his contempt plainly.
“I know. Otherwise I’d have pulled your guts out first.”
“My guts……?”
He couldn’t understand why that word was coming up here. Chaehyeok held his gaze and mimed slicing open his own stomach with the knife in hand. In case that wasn’t clear enough, he helpfully added a gesture of pulling the organs out from inside.
The crudeness and brutality of the language made Yieum recoil. Chaehyeok paid the open disgust no mind.
Instead, he was already pulling open the shoe cabinet uninvited, still talking.
“If you’re going to arm yourself, get something with reach — a bat, a golf club.”
“……I don’t have any.”
Whether that was all he’d been looking for, he closed the door without hesitation at Yieum’s answer. Hands shoved in his pockets, Chaehyeok stepped into the living room in his polished dress shoes.
“A frying pan would’ve been better.”
“Your shoes——”
“Right. This place is spotless, by the way.”
He said it offhandedly, as though he’d only just noticed, after taking a couple of steps in. Then, somewhat surprisingly, he went right back and took his shoes off, even putting on the indoor slippers.
Chaehyeok wandered through the apartment with the knife dangling loosely from one hand, and then his gaze fixed on one spot.
Yieum, who had come back after tidying the shoes, looked at the same place. There sat his mother’s and stepfather’s funeral urns. After a brief silence, Chaehyeok chinned toward the dining table.
“Is that Bongwoo?”
“Yes.”
“Good grief.”
He’d brought the urns home for now, but there was nowhere particular to put them, so they’d ended up on the dining table.
He hadn’t wanted to go into the master bedroom, and his own room had no space. He’d thought leaving them there for a while wasn’t so bad, since he’d be moving before long. It wasn’t as though he’d be eating at the dining table much anymore, in any case.
Chaehyeok, though, looked genuinely taken aback.
He walked over to the table, set the knife down, and — of all things — opened the lid of the urn and peered inside. His expression was somewhere between a sneer and irritation.
“Remarkable how it all fit into one.”
“Bone volume is roughly similar across people……”
Yieum had trotted after him and answered. He even craned his own neck and peered in alongside him, as though there were something worth seeing. Chaehyeok looked down at him and let out a quiet breath of a laugh through his teeth.
“Wow…… thanks for enlightening me on a fact I had absolutely no need to know.”
The sarcasm was unmistakable to anyone who heard it, and Yieum’s ears went red.
Chaehyeok set the lid back on the urn, then flicked Yieum lightly on the forehead as he walked past.
“Ow!”
Yieum clapped both hands to his forehead and glared. Chaehyeok dropped onto the sofa without a care and crossed his legs.
For an uninvited guest, the attitude was fairly brazen.
Then again, should Chaehyeok even be considered a guest. He’d nearly forgotten — this was a man who had come to collect a debt Yieum had never even taken on.
Chaehyeok surveyed the apartment with a detached sweep of his gaze, then beckoned as if he owned the place.
“Why are you standing over there. Come here.”
His feet felt heavy for no particular reason. Yieum dragged his heels and made his way into the living room.
He sat down on the floor, though — as far away as the space would allow. Then immediately slid his eyes sideways to check if he was about to get an earful for it.
Surprisingly, Chaehyeok said nothing, just idly flexed his foot.
“Was that just now your biological father?”
“……Did you see him?”
“What a situation.”
His heart stirred uneasily. He’d thought it was possible Chaehyeok had crossed paths with his father, and had hoped it wasn’t so.
But why.
It was his own feelings, and yet he couldn’t pinpoint the exact reason. Too worried about a fight breaking out — but it had already passed without incident.
