The police had filed it as a runaway case, and since they’d only searched Dohui’s home without actually seizing anything, the matter would fizzle out without resolution.
As he always had, the officer connected to him would handle things cleanly — and in exchange, the man would receive his drugs as payment. That was all it would take to put it to rest.
***
Gong Haejin returned to find Dohui collapsed after exhausting himself knocking and pulling at the door. Seeing the boy curled up in the corner, Gong Haejin set a bottle of water down in front of him.
“Drink.”
Dohui breathed through cracked lips in ragged, worn-out bursts and struggled to move his arm. His joints felt like they’d been made of ice. One wrong move and he felt like he’d simply crumble apart.
Even trying to twist off the blue cap of the water bottle, his fingertips kept slipping. After failing several attempts, the man took it from him.
“Oh…….”
With a quick, light turn — click — he handed it back to Dohui. He received it with both hands, pressed it to his lips, and swallowed in gulps. Ugh — the water, forced down carelessly, scorched his split, parched throat.
“Get up.”
Dohui’s eyes moved sluggishly. Gong Haejin’s face came into sharp focus in his field of vision.
“……I’m cold.”
“I know.”
He answered as though it were obvious, then took the water bottle Dohui had left unfinished and screwed the cap back on.
“What time is it?”
How much longer do I have to wait. When Jinho comes — when this man’s misunderstanding is cleared up — will I be able to go home? Floating questions tormented Dohui.
The man glanced briefly at the watch on what appeared to be a solid, firm wrist, then gave a small shrug.
“Im Dohui.”
“…….”
A trace of the water he’d just drunk lingered on his chapped, rough lips. When the man brushed them lightly with his thumb, the soft swell of his lower lip gave way under that effortless pressure.
Compared to Dohui, who was completely bare, the man was dressed in full layers. A warm-looking coat, and beneath it a jacket and vest, and even further in, a shirt. The leather gloves he wore suggested he’d been somewhere — his clothes were entirely different from the last time Dohui had seen him.
The leather gloves, carrying the full chill of the outside air, gripped Dohui’s chin and turned his face side to side.
“A bit swollen.”
His face had puffed up slightly on one side from the slaps he’d taken. His face, flushed with heat, was pink — and from his slightly parted lips came only the sound of shallow, colored breathing.
“Does it hurt?”
“…….”
Dohui nearly let out a sigh right to the man’s face. It was too obvious a question to ask.
He had been stripped bare without even underwear in the dead of winter, and he didn’t know how much time had passed. How contradictory it was — for the man who had taken every stitch of his clothing in weather like this to ask so gently. His weary eyelids blinked a couple of times.
“I asked, does it hurt. Im Dohui.”
“P-please don’t call me that.”
“There we go.”
Gong Haejin laughed. The sound of his pleased laughter rang and echoed against the walls. It piled up in the air one layer at a time and stabbed painfully at Dohui’s heart.
Was it better to have this man here? Or would it have been better to be alone? Neither was normal. He felt like he could do anything — anything — if it meant getting out of this cold.
The man didn’t ask again like before, demanding the names of the others involved. It was as though he were simply waiting for Jinho to enter the country. It was what Dohui had wanted — and yet, for some reason, his stomach churned.
Betrayal, treachery, a trap…… Did he not know? Did Jinho really not know about any of this? They were a well-off family, more than enough. Every time he’d visited Jinho’s house, he’d had to hold his jaw shut to keep it from dropping.
Past a grand entrance lined with lush, manicured grass, an impressive and imposing house would appear — large enough to take your breath away. Jinho’s father was an executive at a major conglomerate, and his mother, they said, ran an art gallery. They’d inherited considerable wealth to begin with. So the likelihood of him being caught up in something this absurd was low.
I’d rather that were true.
The man Jinho had referred to as his uncle…… had Jinho been pulled in by that person too?
The feeling that Jinho couldn’t have been entirely unaware, and the friendship he held for him, pulled Dohui in opposite directions. The more he traced back through those thoughts, the deeper into the swamp he sank.
In the end, he arrived at a conclusion — that Jinho was not entirely uninvolved in this. If only Jinho could look him in the eye and tell him it wasn’t true. If he would just say that…….
“What are you thinking about?”
A voice broke lightly through the long chain of thoughts, and Dohui gasped.
“……I-I’m cold. Too, too cold.”
“I know.”
There was no sign of it being resolved. His fingers and toes felt like they were on the verge of frostbite. He’d been rubbing them for a while now, but his frozen knuckles wouldn’t move the way he wanted.
Gong Haejin’s leather-gloved hand moved away.
“Shall we go out?”
“…….”
“Or we can do it here.”
“……Do, do what?”
“You need to answer. Do you want to go out, or stay here?”
“I…… where would we be going…….”
“Somewhere warmer than here.”
At his brief, pressing words, Dohui gave a small nod. Please let me out. At the soft, breath-laced plea, Gong Haejin let out a quiet smirk.
He gripped Dohui’s forearm and pulled him to his feet. Having been crouched for so long, his knees straightened out stiffly. The man gripped the door handle and pressed it down gently. The door that had refused to budge no matter how desperately Dohui had pounded at it opened easily under Gong Haejin’s slight force.
Dohui stared open-mouthed, then was dragged out. Bright light stabbed at his eyes and he squeezed them shut. It took a moment for them to adjust.
As they passed through the long corridor, he kept both legs moving without a single pause. Carried along haphazardly by Gong Haejin’s momentum, by the time Dohui came back to his senses, he was inside an elevator.
“Are we…… going……?”
His frozen jaw wouldn’t move properly. He ended up stumbling over his words against his will.
Dohui let out a slow breath — huu — and tried to calm his trembling limbs, but it wasn’t easy. He kept running his hands over his goosebump-covered forearms. His thighs were numb with cold too. Then he caught sight of his naked body reflected fully in the elevator doors and turned his eyes away.
“……Please give me something to wear.”
The man didn’t seem inclined to answer. Dohui glanced sideways at his profile. Past the firmly sealed lips, along the strong jawline, was a prominently protruding Adam’s apple. He’s big. A full head taller than Dohui, and his shoulders were immensely broad.
His frame blocked the numbers from view, but it seemed like a fairly tall building. The rows of buttons lined up — what would happen if the doors opened at some floor in between? He was in no state to be seen by the outside world. Gaunt and shivering uncontrollably, he pressed his thighs tightly together. He desperately needed warmth.
A mechanical tone announced the floor they’d arrived at, and the doors — which had faintly reflected Dohui’s wretched appearance — slid open.
“Get out.”
Without even allowing him time to ask questions, his back was shoved forward. There was a limit to how much his two thin legs could resist. His legs moved reflexively, following the force.
There were doors on either side, their atmosphere slightly more comfortable than the basement. Gong Haejin pushed one open without hesitation and shoved Dohui inside.
Dohui froze up even more than he had in the place he’d just come from. The air was warm, but he was afraid. It looked like an office. Several desks scattered with documents, chairs, and a sofa.
The men who had just been sitting on the sofa resting all rose in unison at Gong Haejin’s entrance and moved to the edges of the room. The way they moved as one, without hesitation, left Dohui staggered.
Gong Haejin sat Dohui down on the sofa and settled in beside him. He stretched out an arm built of thick muscle, rested it along the back of the sofa, and crossed his legs. The leather sofa suited him remarkably well. The tip of his dress shoe bobbed up and down.
Despite the thoroughly insolent and crude behavior, Dohui sat still with his fists clenched, acutely aware of the arm radiating presence behind his back. He hid his shameful groin with both hands — because the eyes of the men in the room had landed there, on his hairless genitals.
“What to do. Dohui. I used up all my patience on the way here.”
With a slight tilt of his chin, someone respectfully offered him a cigarette. He tucked it between his canines, and a crimson flame ignited at its tip. A long exhale — huu — and the smoke curled toward Dohui’s ear. The warmth beginning to return to his body prickled and tingled.
“Ugh.“
A hand seized his shoulder and folded his body inward. A chilling voice drove itself into Dohui’s ear as he swallowed a breath. The voice, whose depths were impossible to measure, carved itself into Dohui’s mind like words etched in stone.
“Did you not consider what would happen if you lied?”
“Wh-what…….”
“Deceiving even me is not a wise choice.”
“…….”
“That friend of yours — he never came through. Thanks to the false information you fed us, my men made a trip all the way to Incheon Airport and back. Remarkable, truly. That you’d put me to this much trouble.”
He had set foot on Korean soil. He just hadn’t come out through the arrivals gate. The moment he landed, he’d fled to another country. He’d caught the scent of something. And Im Dohui had flicked his tongue like a rat and put him through considerable inconvenience. He’d taken him for nothing more than naive — and yet, as though he had sugar on his tongue, the boy had deceived him with such ease.
He was so dumbfounded all he could do was laugh. Had the back of his head looked that easy to hit?
“I’ll give you credit. I believed you, and this is how that trust is repaid.”
“Hff.“
Gong Haejin forcibly brought Dohui’s body down. The spot where the men had just been sitting was still warm with their body heat. But from the man right before him rose a very cold, cutting air.
“Ah!“
His head whipped to one side first, and then deep, searing pain arrived at his cheek. He’d been slapped.
