Jang Yi-soo (2)
I slowly regained consciousness.
Vrrrm. Vrrrm.
The rumble of a diesel engine droned in my ears. I was probably lying in the back of that van I'd seen earlier—but everything was pitch black, and I couldn't see a thing.
Then, out of the darkness, came the voice of an older man in a suit.
"The baby's growing up well, I take it?"
"...Mine's started throwing tantrums lately. It's a handful."
Up in the front seats, the black-suited thugs were chatting away like old friends. Listening in, I couldn't help but find it a little absurd.
Even thugs like these dote on their own kids, huh.
I tensed my body, trying to move—but something had me bound tight, restraining me so completely that I couldn't budge an inch.
"Stay still!"
Sensing my movement, a gruff voice beside me barked. At the sound, the older man up front asked:
"Is he awake?"
My face was covered by a sack, my hands bound behind my back.
"Hey, don't even think about acting up. Someone wants to see you, so we're taking you to them. We'd rather not rough you up any further before we get there, either. So let's keep things civil, all right?"
As if to drive home the older man's words, I felt rough hands seize my arms and wrench them hard from either side.
Someone who wants to see me?
I hadn't had the presence of mind to think it through earlier, when everything had happened so fast—but now, forced into this slow, helpless stillness, I suddenly had a pretty good idea who these thugs were.
There was only one person who'd come looking for me in a situation like this. And he was the very man I'd been longing to meet.
Jang Yi-soo. Is that you?
For now, I decided to play along and see where this went. It wasn't as if I could do anything even if I struggled.
"Fine."
That's what I said, anyway—but wedged into the van's cramped back seat, with the goons' sweat stink and the sweltering heat of their skin pressed against me, I was anything but cheerful.
The van that had kidnapped me drove on for quite a long while.
Click. Click. Click.
The turn signal clicked noisily. With the sack over my head cutting off my vision, my hunter's hearing sharpened all the more: the whine of a drill at a construction site, horns blaring in the distance, the fat thug beside me breathing through his open mouth...
"Yes, Boss. We're almost there. Ten minutes out."
Jolt. Jolt.
As we bounced over the speed bumps, the dimwitted goons on either side yanked my arms so hard that the flesh scraped raw.
Sniff, sniff.
Humid air laced with the earthy smell of manure seeped into the van.
The countryside?
Screeeech!
The van stopped, and the doors ground open.
"Out."
One of the suited men seized my arm and hauled me roughly.
Woof! Woof! Woof!
The moment I stepped out of the van, the thunderous barking of large dogs split the air. I walked deeper in as the goons steered me along.
Creeeeeeak!
The shriek of a massive warehouse door grinding open pierced my ears like a scream.
Blood!
Beneath the musty reek of mold, the coppery stench of blood hung thick.
A foul place.
My instincts blared a warning, the hair on my body rising on end. When I faltered mid-step, a black-suited hand seized my arm and dragged me forward again.
"Move it."
Thump, thump.
We walked a little further, and this time light began to seep through the fine weave of the sack over my head. We had probably entered an interior lit by bright lamps.
"Sit!"
At the imperious command, I was shoved down. Beneath my backside was the heavy, cold feel of a steel chair.
"Tie him up!"
"Yes, sir!"
Cords as thick as rope wound tight around my limbs—chair and all.
Someone yanked the bindings taut, checking they'd hold, then—whoosh—ripped the sack off my face.
"Ugh!"
Light blazed down into pupils grown used to the dark, and I winced. Slowly, like a camera aperture narrowing, my vision began to resolve.
The first thing I saw was a man with a vicious face walking out from between the black suits.
A fairly handsome face—yet one that could never be called kindly. Ten years had weathered it, leaving it subtly different from the face in my memory.
But I knew who he was the instant I laid eyes on him.
It was you after all. Jang Yi-soo!
I bit down on my lip where no one could see.
The face that had been strikingly handsome in his youth had gone gaunt and haggard, sharpened into something neurotic. Even so, the underlying good looks hadn't gone anywhere—he was no longer the fresh-faced pretty boy of the old days, but in their place he now exuded a decadent, seedy allure.
Jang Yi-soo took a chair from one of his men, set it down beside me, and sat.
"...Well, well. You are a pretty one, aren't you? Fuck, I'm jealous."
He patted my cheek with his palm as he spoke.
"Hey, kid. You know why you're here?"
"..."
When I gave no answer, Jang Yi-soo turned his head toward the older suited man who'd dragged me in.
"You tell him?"
"We showed him the photo, sir."
At the answer, Jang Yi-soo gave a small nod and leaned his face in close to mine. His tongue flickered out, reptilian, as he spoke.
"I don't leave men who touch my woman breathing."
His eyes, too, were as empty of feeling as a snake's.
Face to face with an old comrade for the first time in years, the memory of the day I was betrayed surfaced, and nausea welled up in my gut.
"Now then, look. Here's what you did wrong."
Jang Yi-soo pulled out his smartphone and showed me an article.
I stared at him with a so what? look, and he scrolled further down to show me the photo attached to the article.
It was a picture of a naked Hae-na cradled in my arms.
Ah...
The article even had a top comment vowing to cheer on the "hunter couple" with all its heart.
Of all the photos, it had to be that one...
Well, Hae-na had fought nearly naked from the very start, so that was probably the only usable shot the reporter had managed to salvage.
"That bitch denied it to the very end. Let's see how good a liar you are."
I offered no rebuttal, one way or the other.
Reading my silence as an admission, Jang Yi-soo pressed on.
"You two humiliated me."
I simply stared at him, expressionless.
"Hmm. Why aren't you panicking?"
Jang Yi-soo barked at his men.
"Hey. Bring the bitch here."
At his command, they hauled Hae-na over, dragging her across the floor.
She was bound in rope, just as she'd been in the photo.
Hae-na shrieked at Jang Yi-soo.
"You fucking bastard! I told you—I met him for the first time today!"
Jang Yi-soo answered her with a chill.
"Tsk, tsk. Disgusting bitch."
So he'd kidnapped us over a misunderstanding about the two of us.
"Doesn't matter either way. What matters is that you made my name, Jang Yi-soo's name, a laughingstock."
He had a point. With things having spiraled this far, insisting now that there was nothing between us would have meant nothing at all.
"Fuck... you son of a bitch. Fine. Do whatever the hell you want."
Hae-na, sprawled on the floor in nothing but her underwear, spat the curses out in a voice worn completely hoarse.
She looked far worse than she had in that photo.
God...
Bruises mottled her whole body, layered over older scars in every shade of the healing rainbow. Trails of blood that had run down her smooth abs had dried into brittle, rust-colored scabs.
Jang Yi-soo! You rotten bastard!
Inwardly, I ached for Hae-na even as I clicked my tongue at the sheer cruelty of the man.
And yet—even in the middle of all this, staring at those huge breasts trussed up in rope, at her stripped-bare, flawless body, I felt blood slowly pooling in my groin.
Get a grip, you idiot. This is not the time.
Incongruously, she was wearing character panties. Her enormous ass stretched the little teddy bear's eyes sideways into what looked like an angry scowl.
Clack. Clack.
The sound of brass knuckles being worked onto fingers pulled my attention back to Jang Yi-soo.
"You two bastards—I'll make you regret it all the way down in hell."
He stepped around in front of me, studying my face.
"You really are fucking handsome. No wonder Hae-na fell for you."
With a decadent little smile crinkling his eyes, Jang Yi-soo abruptly began raining punches at my face.
Wham!
One blow, two, three—and then dozens more, hammering me like a sandbag.
Ugh...!
In seconds, blood was bursting from my face, skin splitting open.
Wham!
After working me over for a long while, Jang Yi-soo stopped, gasping for breath.
I gathered the blood pooling in my torn mouth and spat it onto the floor.
"Hack—ptoo!"
Having kept my mouth shut until now, I curled my split lips into a grin and spoke.
"Pretty soft punches, for a B-Class hunter."
At that, Jang Yi-soo's face twisted into a grim smile.
His fists came flying at my face again—this time with his brow knotted, every blow loaded with real force.
Wham-wham-wham!
Lightning-fast punches poured down on my face like rain.
"Hah. Hah. Hah."
Wheezing even harder than before, Jang Yi-soo finally stopped.
Clutching at consciousness as it threatened to slip away, I spoke.
"You poor bastard... That inferiority complex carved into your bones is as deep as ever."
When I smiled through my blood-caked face, even the thugs shook their heads.
Wiping the beads of sweat from his forehead, Jang Yi-soo said:
"You're a tough one, aren't you?"
I pressed on.
"Heh heh heh... That deep-rooted inferiority complex is why you can't trust anyone. You'll never trust a soul as long as you live—not your underlings, not your comrades, not a lover. No one."
"Wow. What are you, Freud now?"
He was still sneering as he said it, but I caught the faint twitch of his eyebrows.
Jang Yi-soo walked slowly toward the warehouse wall.
All manner of torture tools hung there in neat array. Only then did I understand the source of the blood-soaked stench that had soaked into this place.
Scrape, scrape.
He selected a long iron mace from among the hanging tools and dragged it across the floor. Dried blood, hair, and shreds of flesh still clung to it.
As Jang Yi-soo inspected the mace before putting it to use, one of his men came up to him.
"Boss, if you don't leave now, you'll be late for the meeting."
Jang Yi-soo frowned in irritation for a moment, then smoothed his expression.
"Ah, right. Almost forgot."
Clatter.
He dropped the mace's handle to the floor. Then, looking at me again:
"This bleak concrete warehouse will be your graves, the two of you."
A malevolent light kindled in his gleaming eyes.
"I'll be back at dawn. And then I'll take my sweet time chewing you up, nice and slow. Look forward to it."
Turning on his heel, Jang Yi-soo bellowed at his men.
"Hey! Keep these bastards in good shape until I'm back!"
"Yes, sir!"
As he left the warehouse, a smile had spread across Jang Yi-soo's lips—the smile of a child with a brand-new toy.
"Heh heh... Looks like I've finally got someone worth working over... I can hardly wait."
Bang!
The iron door of the warehouse slammed shut with a deafening clang.
With Jang Yi-soo and his men gone, only Hae-na and I remained inside.
Jang Yi-soo... he's become a complete monster.
He had never been a good man, not even at his best—but now even the last trace of humanity seemed to have burned off him entirely. The blood-soaked reek clinging to the torture tools on the wall was proof enough of that.
He said he'd be back at dawn...
Somehow, some way, I had to be ready before then.
