By Zephyria 
‘Kill me then. What difference would that make?’
Back then, he was at a stage where he’d do any kind of physical labor. It was right after he accidentally found out that his younger sister, who had just gone to study abroad, had collapsed after starving for days because she had no money. It seemed she had worked part-time jobs in between her ballet practice because she didn’t want to ask her brother for help. For a girl who was used to dieting, if she had reached the point of collapsing, she must have been starving and overworking herself terribly.
He had boasted and sent her abroad, telling her not to worry about money, and the thought that he had ended up passing poverty down to his only sister filled him with such self-loathing. That’s why, at the time, he acted like a man obsessed with money. To the point where he would have willingly gone to a prison cell if they paid him enough.
In the midst of that, being kidnapped and becoming a hostage was not a profitable situation at all. A guy he had lived with for a long time had handed Min-ho and Jae-hyeok over to the rival organization. Rather than hostages for a deal, they needed people whose lives could be used as leverage for threats, and Min-ho and Jae-hyeok, who were in middle-management positions, were perfect.
‘Why? Are you suddenly scared to actually kill me?’
While spitting out words to grate on the opponent’s nerves, Min-ho’s mind was racing. If he died here, his sister would definitely feel guilty. He didn’t want to pile that emotion onto a child who was already struggling. The priority was to get out of here by any means necessary.
‘Can’t you tell just by looking? Those guys are terrified.’
Jae-hyeok, who was kneeling and tied up in the same way, chimed in to provoke the opponent.
‘You fucking bastards. You talk too much. Should I cut your tongues out first?’
‘Go ahead. They were unnecessary for playing gangster anyway.’
While continuously engaging in a battle of nerves, they slowly rubbed their wrists tied behind their backs, waiting for a gap to open. Since the strings were much looser than before, the speed of the friction on their wrists gradually increased. Recognizing this, Jae-hyeok intentionally spoke louder and provoked them to draw their attention.
‘You can’t do it, right? You guys don’t have that kind of guts.’
Just a little more, just a little.
The loosened string felt as if it would snap at any moment. Just as Min-ho swallowed dry spit, the bald man suddenly turned his gaze toward them.
‘Hey, Cha Min-ho.’
‘…….’
‘You told me to cut your tongue, so why are you keeping your mouth shut? Are you the one who’s scared?’
‘Now that I think about it, I feel like a tongue is actually necessary for playing gangster.’
Min-ho put a lot of strength into his expression so as not to let the tremor of his curling lips be discovered.
‘You should try being honest like Min-ho, Jae-hyeok. Doesn’t it look great?’
‘Fuck off. Don’t you know people like me live longer?’
He pretended to be on guard, scanning the surroundings during their conversation. There were about seven members of the rival organization, and broken beer bottle fragments were scattered nearby. Once the string snapped, he would immediately swing the broken bottle to threaten the guys and force them back. And once Jae-hyeok freed his wrists, they would have enough time. Perhaps the two of them could even clear the whole place.
Screech, screech. When his wrists became free enough to move, Min-ho gave a signal by exhaling short, fragmented breaths. Jae-hyeok, noticing this, raised his voice abruptly.
‘How long are you going to keep us like this? Seven of you can’t even step on two of us?’
‘That’s it. Let’s gag them too.’
While the threatening conversation exchanged, Min-ho urgently snapped the bindings on his wrists and lunged forward.
He pushed over a standing man with his torso and grabbed the neck of a half-broken beer bottle lying on the floor, swinging it wide. Whoosh, a sharp sound sliced through the air.
Confirming that the men were immediately taking defensive stances and stepping back, he quickly scraped the tight strings on Jae-hyeok’s wrists with the sharp edge. It had some effect, but the beer bottle fragment was insufficient. Just as he tried to pull the half-broken string with force, Jae-hyeok hastily pushed himself up.
He’s trying to untie the ropes himself. Judging it so, Min-ho turned his back to Jae-hyeok to confront the others. I can get out now. He had certainly felt a sense of relief.
‘Ugh, kh…!’
At the suppressed moan, Min-ho quickly whipped his head around. Something had been driven deep into the side of Jae-hyeok, who was hunched over with his hands still tied behind him. Thuck, thuck. A series of gruesome sounds followed.
Min-ho and Jae-hyeok’s gazes met in mid-air. Jae-hyeok’s lips trembled as if in a convulsion, fluttering slightly.
‘Run.’
Immediately after, the noise of someone rushing in echoed through the space.
‘The timing! Fuck!’
Despite the urgent exchange of dialogue, Min-ho could not take his eyes off Jae-hyeok’s lips. Sorry. Jae-hyeok repeated the word “sorry” a few more times, then slowly curled the corners of his mouth upward. As blood flowed, his smile distorted grotesquely.
Thump, thump. His heart raced wildly. The ropes on Jae-hyeok’s wrists, nearly severed, were still shaking faintly.
“Ugh, agh!”
Min-ho woke up with a start, gasping. Thump, thump. The pulse was still ringing in his ears, and his entire body was trembling. He felt as if all the blood had drained out of him; he couldn’t find any strength.
“Ah…”
Years had already passed since Jae-hyeok died. Even though he had stepped away from the world of fists and spent his days buried in paperwork, the nightmare of that day still haunted Min-ho. He placed a hand over his chest, which was pounding frantically, and exhaled slowly. The scent of alcohol still lingered in his breath.
“…….”
Looking at the clock, he realized he had only been asleep for an hour and a half. Sleeping fitfully like this only made him more tired. But once sleep had fled, neither sex nor alcohol could bring it back.
With a hand on his forehead, Min-ho stared blankly at the ceiling, breathing steadily before slowly pushing himself up. The image of Jae-hyeok’s final moments seemed to linger before his eyes. In times like this, it was easier on the mind to simply stare at documents.
He sat back down at the desk and turned on his laptop. Pushing himself to the brink of exhaustion was as easy as breathing. If he crammed letters into his head and moved his body without giving his thoughts a chance to connect, he could forget to some extent. It was a method he had mastered through a fairly fierce life. Though it was not yet dawn, Min-ho’s night ended early like that.
It was nearly sunrise when he finished showering and checked his phone.
[Missed Calls: Viper (46)]
“Crazy bastard.”
Squinched his eyes, he carefully looked through the messages starting from the first one.
[New video of Jjang-a’s three siblings is up lol The one where they go for vaccinations]
“……Who the hell is Jjang-a?”
Starting with a link to a dog video he had zero interest in, Gyu-oh’s monologue had continued throughout the night. Come to think of it, the phone had been vibrating incessantly around the time he woke up from the nightmare in a cold sweat.
[Gym tomorrow?]
[Photo]
[My current view lol Guess where this is?]
[The view from Mu-gyeong Hyung’s balcony. He told me to sleep here; the hospitality is killer]
[He said someone brought a sandwich from the first floor—can you even get full on that?]
[Meat for lunch tomorrow]
[Don’t forget to clock in at 7]
As expected, it was full of useless chatter. With a smirk, Min-ho shook his wet hair and typed a quick reply with one hand.
[Don’t you be late.]
He pressed the send button and was about to flip the phone over when he paused. He scrolled back up through the mountain of messages.
“…….”
He eventually found the link and played the video. The first thing he saw were three puppy-sized dogs waddling around.
While buttoning his shirt, his gaze remained fixed on the video on the screen. He stared at the sight of the puppies, who looked as if they had no weight at all, tangling with each other and chewing on toys, while other thoughts continued to run through his mind.
Won Gyu-oh spent the whole night on his phone like that; I wonder if he can make it to work on time. Not that he had high expectations. It was a moment of rare respite for a mind that had been packed tight with the letters of documents all night.
* * *
“Min-ho.”
“Yeah.”
“Sss.”
Gyu-oh was the one speaking informally, yet he was the one glaring at him with fierce eyes.
“How many times do I have to tell you before you get it?”
“…….”
At Gyu-oh’s cold words, Min-ho almost found himself reading the room instinctively.
“What is wrong with you? Let’s focus.”
Ha. Gyu-oh let out a long sigh and swept his hair back. Despite the heavy reprimand, Min-ho only blinked blankly, glancing at Gyu-oh sitting beside him.
Seeing as he had stormed into the office exactly at 7:00, it meant he had either slept very little or stayed up all night. Looking at the redness around his eyes, Min-ho suspected the latter. He wondered why Gyu-oh went to such lengths for a promise that didn’t strictly need to be kept.
While his concentration wavered due to his wandering thoughts, Gyu-oh scowled and snapped his thumb and middle finger together with a loud click.
“Daydreaming again.”
At the sharp rebuke, Min-ho rolled his dry eyes. It was ridiculous that he had even gone so far as to find and wear glasses just to watch this, but… Gyu-oh had started it.
“Look. Jjang-a has a spot under the eye. Is that so hard to understand?”
Gyu-oh referred to a bit of brown fur mixed in with the white as a “spot.”
“……Spot.”
“Cheol-su has white mixed in at the tip of the ear.”
To his eyes, they all looked like the same Shih Tzu, but he had no choice but to nod and pretend he understood.
The mistake had been asking who Jjang-a was when Gyu-oh had played that dog video again immediately upon arriving at work. Gyu-oh had looked at him as if he were absurd, dragged him over to the sofa, and begun a lecture. He complained that he had shown him the video dozens of times and only now was he asking.
After being held captive and educated for a while, Min-ho had finally reached the point where he could distinguish Cheol-su from Hoon-i. He didn’t know why Gyu-oh was so focused on this, though.
“Your eyes are out of focus. Why?”
“…….”
“Test time.”
Just as Min-ho tensed up at the threat of a surprise quiz, the office door swung open and someone entered. Min-ho’s face brightened. With the firm belief that things would finally quiet down, his lingering tension snapped. Only then did he push his glasses up onto his head and press his palms firmly against his eyelids.
“If you’ve set up house here, just stay put. Why do you keep crawling into other people’s homes?”
It was the man who owned the house Gyu-oh visited incessantly, and who was also the Managing Director of Woowon. As soon as Mu-gyeong entered, he stared at Gyu-oh with a sharp gaze.
“Ah, I was told I could come.”
“Who told you?”
“Who else? The other homeowner.”
As expected, the two continued to bicker. Now was the chance. Min-ho quietly stood up and quickly slipped away. As he sat in his chair, he saw the data on his laptop and the mountain of documents, but he figured this would be easier than distinguishing between identical dogs.