The man smiled slightly as if amused. The boy also burst into laughter looking at his face.
“Alright. Since we met like this, it’s fate, but joining you is a bit much—I’ll treat you to the alcohol.”
“Wow!”
Dowon, who had been making a fuss saying no until just a moment ago, started wagging his tail and currying favor with the man.
“As expected, a cool adult is definitely different! When did this fox-like bastard seduce such a hyungnim? Anyway, your skills are exceptional, exceptional.”
None of them noticed the man watching them with a sinister gaze as they pretended to lunge at the boy, playing around in a friendly manner.
“Who did you really come here with, hyung? A friend? Or just a work colleague?”
“Ah…”
The man’s gaze went toward some unknowable place.
“Then should we go say hello for a moment?”
“If it’s not rude, would that be okay? Hyung bought us all this alcohol and snacks, so I feel like it’s proper manners for me to at least greet your friend.”
The man, who seemed to find the boy cute for speaking so prudently, gently stroked his cheek and glanced toward Dowon. None of them noticed that his eyes had already hardened coldly.
“The kids are waiting. You take the alcohol and go in first!”
Dowon, who found it bothersome to follow them that far anyway, greeted the boy and man with an overtly pleased face, feeling relieved inside.
The man spread his large hand toward the boy’s slender neck.
He briefly imagined grabbing the nape of the chattering boy who was excited without sensing any danger and shaking him violently, then smiled eerily.
***
I don’t remember well what happened after that.
It’s like a broken screen—parts that don’t connect smoothly are cut off, then reconnect, then cut off again.
The person I followed calling him hyung.
The person who smiled gently at me.
The person who always listened to my stories, silently watching me with calm, sunken black eyes.
I never thought he would change like that.
He was like a beast.
He was a different person.
At least, he wasn’t the man the boy knew.
“…Kid?”
Crackle.
Crackle crackle.
“Is that really him? He looks younger.”
“Weren’t you the one who said the younger the better?”
“Fuck, who are you making out to be a child sex offender?”
Crackle.
Crackle crackle crackle….
“He’s cute.”
“……”
“I totally get it. Your taste.”
Crackle crackle……
“You always liked fragile bird-like things. You were especially weak for those kinds of things that make you want to embrace them and spoon-feed them.”
“……”
“And then in the end, you twisted their necks.”
“……”
“You’re really a crazy bastard.”
Crackle crackle crackle….
Crackle crackle crackle……!!!
“Wasn’t it your specialty to make innocent chicks follow you completely, then kill them before they became chickens?”
The unfamiliar man’s giggling laughter constantly reached beyond my ears.
The boy, whose eyes were covered with a black cloth so he couldn’t see ahead, let out small groans while whimpering.
Suddenly, I felt the sensation of a large hand stroking my hair.
The boy writhed his whole body and sobbed.
Grandmother….
Mom… Dad……
Dowon… Seungjeong… Juho… Taegeon……!!!
I’m scared.
I’m so, so scared.
Please save me. Please……!!!!!
“Is the bunny kid still not asleep?”
The unfamiliar man whistled sharply.
“Hik……”
“……”
“Hik… hik……!”
“Are you crying?”
“……”
“Don’t cry, kid.”
“Huuk……!”
The boy, who was extremely tense with fear, finally started hiccupping. Hiccup… hiccup….
“We don’t plan to kill you.”
The moment I felt the man’s hot lips touch the trembling back of my head gently, the boy’s body began trembling like an aspen tree.
“……not going to.”
Crackle crackle…….
“Get some sleep, pretty one.”
They appeared before the boy after he struggled once more in agony and fell back into a hellish sleep, then woke up.
Before I could even gather my wits, a man strode in through the abruptly opened door. The boy turned his head toward the man with a frantically terrified gaze, but his focus wasn’t properly aligned, so he couldn’t properly capture anything in his eyes. Soon after, I felt a black cloth wrap around my eyes, and before I could even scream, my body was lifted in an instant.
The boy, slung so easily over the man’s shoulder, finally grasped the situation and screamed bizarrely while drooling. The boy’s saliva dripped onto the white shirt the man was wearing, but he didn’t seem to care much.
“Huuk…… hik… hik……! Hyung… hyuuung……”
The boy kept crying out, calling for the man, but there was still no change in the man’s expression. Rather, his face was filled with a cold chill that hadn’t been there before.
The man tossed the boy’s body onto the plush sofa as if throwing away a piece of luggage. In the process, perhaps having twisted his finger slightly, the boy swallowed a painful cry and shed tears streaming down. The black cloth covering his eyes began to get soaked with the boy’s tears.
But there was no change in the man’s expression.
He was looking at the small body of the boy trembling slightly while crying with an indifferent and cold face, like someone watching a fire across the river.
J snatched Min’s collar. A painful scream escaped from the boy Min’s mouth. Min has been noisily calling out “hyung, hyung” and whining endlessly since earlier. He briefly considered whether he should gag him, but on the other hand, he felt a desire to keep listening to Min’s whining.
“Hyuuung… please…… hik hik.”
“……”
“It’s J hyung, right? You’re hyung…? Why, why are you doing this to me… hyung…… hyuuung……”
The squirrel that has finally managed to crawl into my embrace.
I was planning to slowly train him to my taste.
A few years ago, he was betrayed by a lover he’d been dating and, as if that wasn’t enough, was also scammed, squandering all the wealth he had.
J wasted that entire year on alcohol and gambling. At one time, he had gained fame as a young entrepreneur and made quite a lot of money through stocks, possessing enough ability to accumulate wealth even while sitting idle. But all of that flew away because of one lover.
He was a fox-like bastard who enchanted everyone with his crinkling eye smiles. A pathetic man like himself who grew up under strict parents and spent a gloomy adolescence never having rebelled even once couldn’t help but be bewitched by that fox bastard at once. That bastard was a human optimized for exactly that purpose.
He got into a scuffle to snatch back the fox bastard who had left for another man’s embrace while drunk. And he deeply plunged a kitchen knife into the waist of that detestable fox’s new man. Thick, dark blood gushed out.
Whether it was unfortunate or fortunate, he didn’t die. Because of that, J went to prison on attempted murder charges and lived for a full 7 years.
And there he met a man like a beast, a cold-blooded creature who didn’t seem human.
He met K.
K was an organized crime member notorious for picking out and devouring only young male prisoners who looked tender in prison. Rumors said he was the real culprit of the famous Jamwon-dong family murder case, that he killed Kim, the action captain of the ** faction, that he was actually the hidden power behind that organization… Even inside prison, it was like a small society. Only baseless dark rumors chased after him, but he was a strong man who wasn’t fazed by such things.
