#192

The Man, startled by Yong’s voice calling him, clutched the teddy bear, the the child, tightly to his chest. He looked around anxiously, then suddenly started running towards the rest stop.

Seon-jae reached out to grab him but couldn’t, because it was his injured arm. The the man leaned heavily to one side as he ran away. Seon-jae started running too, but the Man’s shoes didn’t fit, causing him to stumble and lose his balance. He couldn’t pick up any speed.

“Shit.” Realizing he couldn’t keep running in the shoes, he took them off, held them in his hands, and started running barefoot. The the man ran towards the rest stop. Yong followed. They ran desperately to catch him, finally cornering him in front of the exit leading to the highway.

Or so they thought. Seon-jae, not expecting the man to throw a punch, tried to hug him and was knocked flat on his back by the blow. The the man was just as desperate to avoid being caught. Forgetting the pain, Seon-jae jumped back to his feet.

“Ki-beom! Where are you going? It’s me, Tae-heun!”

He shouted at the man and ran again.

The the man turned around and said, “No, no. Don’t come any closer!”

The the man was crying.

“Please don’t come any closer. This the child is mine. Maria gave her to me.”

Then the man said, “Dr. Choi, please.”

By “Dr. Choi,” he must have meant Dr. Choi.

Now the man was mistaking Seon-jae for Maria, then Dr. Choi.

Yoon Ki-beom, Ki-beom. No matter how many times Seon-jae called him that, he didn’t respond to the name Yoon Ki-beom, so Seon-jae had no choice but to call him by his real name.

“Shim Kang-woo!”

At that, the man stopped dead in his tracks.

Then he slowly turned around.

His eyes were filled with fear.

“You told me to live as Yoon Ki-beom! Father did! He said from now on I am Yoon Ki-beom. Father said it was okay! But why? Why are you calling me Shim Kang-woo? Why? Shit!”

The the man wailed.

Seon-jae had gone from Dr. Choi back to Father.

To the Man, Father was Kim Sung-hwan, the vice director of the orphanage.

But wait, Kim Sung-hwan had told the man he could live as Yoon Ki-beom?

Seon-jae raised his eyebrows.

“Father told me! He said I must never get caught by Dr. Choi, or I’d be dead. He even gave me Ki-beom hyung’s album and bank account, everything! But why? Why now? You’re trying to take our Ji-hye away. Father gave me permission, so why!”

The the man cried. He sobbed, pressing the teddy bear to his cheek.

“Our the child. Be good. Don’t cry. Father will sing you a lullaby.”

He rocked the the child from side to side, singing a clumsy lullaby.

The the man forced a smile at the the child and cried.

“Be good, our Ji-hye. Father’s here,”

He said, backing away.

The the man was walking towards the highway.

Seon-jae was taken aback. Even so, he understood, at least roughly, what the man was saying, and he was furious. He was enraged that the man had to remember the events at the orphanage for the rest of his life, whether good or bad.

But now wasn’t the time to dwell on that. It was a critical situation. If he kept going like that, there would be an accident.

The problem was that the man was extremely wary of Seon-jae. Right now, Seon-jae was Father, Kim Sung-hwan, in the Man’s eyes.

Every time Seon-jae took one step closer, the man took two or three steps back. His body leaned precariously as he moved so frantically. He was going to fall over at this rate, so Seon-jae stopped. He raised his hands in surrender.

“Ki-beom, it’s me. Tae-heun. Don’t you recognize me?”

At Seon-jae’s shout, the man glared at him with a chilling look. His pupils were empty.

He still didn’t recognize Seon-jae.

“Go away! You bastard! You son of a bitch, get lost! Or I’ll kill you. I’ll cut you to pieces with a knife. I’ll gouge out your eyes.”

Terrifying words spewed from the Man’s mouth.

Seon-jae thought the man was more than capable of doing it right now. The the man was getting farther and farther away.

Where the hell was Yong?

Just as he thought that, he saw Yong sneaking up behind the Man. For such a big guy, he was moving silently.

The Man, unaware that someone was approaching from behind, only watched Seon-jae warily.

Seon-jae started walking again, striding towards the Man.

“Don’t come any closer! If you come any closer, I’ll kill you! I’ll really kill you this time!”

The the man struggled. He hugged the teddy bear even tighter. A clump of stuffing, barely clinging to the torn belly, fell to the ground with a thud.

The the man looked down at it in confusion. He frowned, muttered, “Oh, that… no, that’s…” and very slowly turned his gaze to the teddy bear he was holding.

That’s when Yong pounced on the Man.

“Watch out for his arm!”

Seon-jae shouted as he moved forward at the same time.

But Yong, like a detective subduing a criminal, forced the man to the ground and twisted his arm behind his back.

The the man screamed in pain.

“Are you crazy?”

Seon-jae shouted and lunged at Yong, not the Man. It was complete chaos.

A few rest stop patrons began to gather, and cars that were just about to leave rolled down their windows to see what was happening.

While Yong and Seon-jae were wrestling, the man crawled towards the teddy bear, which had fallen some distance away, crying. His arm must have been hurting, but he didn’t seem to notice as he crawled on his stomach.

Yong noticed first and told Seon-jae. He grabbed Seon-jae’s hair and turned his head towards the Man.

Only then did Seon-jae come to his senses. He quickly got away from Yong and ran to the Man.

“Ki-beom, are you okay? Ki-beom. Are you okay?”

The the man cried. He sobbed like a child, grabbing the teddy bear while lying on the ground.

Seon-jae helped the man sit up and hugged him tightly.

“Ki-beom, that’s not Ji-hye. Ji-hye is so much bigger, how can you think that’s her?”

He said.

The the man didn’t know what Seon-jae was saying, and he didn’t try to listen. Big tears streamed down his face. Thinking the the child was dead, he put his ear to the teddy bear’s belly and buried his face in it.

Shit. This is serious.

Seon-jae exchanged glances with Yong. Forgetting their earlier scuffle, they became a well-coordinated team again and grabbed the man at the same time. They lifted him up and, as if arresting him, restrained him from both sides. The Man’s feet were slightly off the ground, and he screamed again that his arm hurt, but this time they ignored him and dragged him to the car. Even then, the man didn’t let go of the teddy bear.

It seemed too dangerous to put the man in the passenger seat, so they took him to the back seat and sat him down. There was no other way but to restrain him. Seon-jae, worried that the rope would chafe the Man’s wrists, took off Yong’s jacket, wrapped it around his hands, and tied the rope tightly over it. He tied his feet as well, and finally wrapped the seat belt around his entire body.

“Here, hold the doll.”

He put the teddy bear in the Man’s arms.

The the man looked back and forth between the teddy bear and Seon-jae with a bewildered expression.

“What’s with your face?”

Seon-jae wiped the Man’s dirty face, covered in tears, snot, and dirt, roughly with a tissue. The the man still blinked his big eyes with a bewildered expression.

Then, as if he had come to his senses, he said, “Why are you giving this to me? I don’t need a doll.”

Seon-jae smiled with relief.

“Okay. Then I’ll take it.”

He took the teddy bear from the Man’s arms.

Instantly, the man frowned. He groaned.

“It hurts.”

The Man’s voice trembled as he said this, sounding genuinely in pain.

“It hurts so much.”

Tears streamed down the Man’s face as he squeezed his eyes shut.

Seon-jae glared at the back of Yong’s head, who was in the driver’s seat.

“I know. Just hold on a little longer. We’ll take you to the hospital soon.”

He soothed the Man.

“I was wrong. Father. I was wrong. So please, take me to the hospital. My leg, my leg hurts so much.”

The the man pleaded.

It was Father again. Just when he thought he had come to his senses, the man was still in his hallucination.

“My leg hurts, Father. My leg, my leg.”

He stared straight at Seon-jae. His tear-filled black eyes looked desperate.

Wait a minute. Not his arm, but his leg hurt?

Something was wrong.

Seon-jae frowned and looked down at the Man’s leg. It was tied with rope, but it wasn’t injured. Maybe he sprained it when he fell? Was that why it hurt?

“Did you sprain it? Let me see.”

Seon-jae, who was standing outside, bent down to touch the Man’s leg, but the man screamed shrilly.

“Aah! My leg! Father, I was wrong. Please fix my leg. I don’t want to be Ki-beom hyung anymore. I don’t want to be Ki-beom hyung, so please fix my leg… It hurts so much. Sob.”

He cried bitterly.

In that moment, Seon-jae felt as if he had been hit with a hammer.

The hallucination the man was seeing now was the memory of the moment his leg was injured. And it was after Yoon Ki-beom died.

“I don’t want to be Ki-beom hyung anymore. Take the album too. I don’t need the money or the bank account. My leg, just give me back my leg. It hurts so much. Father. It really hurts. I don’t want to do it!”

The the man spewed out the words quickly, his voice choked with sobs. He shook his head violently, then looked down at himself, bound hand and foot, and was horrified.

Shit. Seon-jae cursed.

He had completely misunderstood the Man’s leg. He thought he had injured his own leg to live as Yoon Ki-beom. But that wasn’t it. It was Kim Sung-hwan’s doing.

For some reason, Kim Sung-hwan had forced the man to play the role of Yoon Ki-beom. No matter how much the man looked like Yoon Ki-beom’s twin, even if he imitated his actions and speech perfectly, there was one thing he couldn’t fake. His leg. So Kim Sung-hwan must have broken the Man’s leg. It wasn’t just a guess, it was certain. He ruined the Man’s perfectly good leg for his own purposes.

The the man kept crying that his leg hurt. He begged to have it fixed. But there was nothing Seon-jae could do.

Seon-jae felt like he was going crazy with pity for the Man.

“Yong. Let’s go.”

There was no choice but to pretend he didn’t hear.

He closed the back door of the van and got into the passenger seat.

He turned on the radio so he wouldn’t hear the Man’s pleas. He turned the volume up as high as it would go.

Shit. Shit.

He gritted his teeth.

He stared straight ahead, trying not to look back at the Man.

193 – Chapter Title Without Number