Chapter 23
Chapter 23
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Translator : M.N 1391
Chapter: 23
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But he didn’t have to wait long. Someone was coming along the path they themselves had taken, carrying a bundle on his back.
Park Jeong-hoon and the four others hid silently, then revealed themselves front and back to surround him as he came close.
Kyung-wan set down the bundle he had been carrying on his back and wiped the sweat on his forehead. Then he looked straight at Park Jeong-hoon and asked. His sharp eye instantly judged who the head was.
“Do you have business with me?”
“Is your name Lee Kyung-wan?”
“It’s not?”
“It’s not?”
Park Jeong-hoon’s tone rose slightly at Kyung-wan’s shameless answer. He had suffered to come all the way out here where hardly anyone came, and now it seemed he’d found the wrong target, it made him a little furious.
But soon he felt something strange. A young homeless guy? Could there be another one like that?
Park Jeong-hoon pulled out his phone and opened a photo, an image of a guy named Lee Kyung-wan, obtained through an informant planted in the police station. The kid was famous even among cops for that double-sided reputation: savior of lives on one end, rotten attitude on the other. A few officers had taken pictures of him out of curiosity.
He held out the phone, comparing the photo on the screen with Kyung-wan’s face.
“It’s you, you little shit, isn’t it?”
“Huh?”
The moment his lie was exposed, Kyung-wan threw himself toward the side where there wasn’t even a path. Watching that, they briefly denied reality.
The first to regain his senses was Park Jeong-hoon.
“Chase him, you idiots!”
They tried their best to run after him, but their bodies, fattened with subcutaneous fat and muscle under the excuse of preparing for fights, and their daily visits to the free-meal center could never catch up to Kyung-wan, whose legs were trained and whose body was light.
Eventually, when they could no longer see Kyung-wan, they gave up the chase, panting heavily.
“Goddammit!”
Park Jeong-hoon was pissed. He hadn’t expected the brat to assess the situation so quickly and move so swiftly. No, if he had felt a fierce tension the moment they first encountered, he wouldn’t have lost him like this.
Losing him was his own fault, for letting down his guard at the kid’s shameless attitude when he denied even his own name.
“Boss, what do we do?”
A minion asked. Park Jeong-hoon hesitated, then made a big decision.
“We’re gathering everyone.”
Mobilizing a large group to catch one young homeless brat would hurt his reputation. But given Park Dong-chil’s testimony and the judgment the kid showed today, he wasn’t normal. And either way, failing to make up for this loss would damage his reputation just as much.
He was quick. The only way to catch prey like him was to mobilize as many people as possible and drive him like game.
“But what if that brat doesn’t come back?”
Another minion worried. It was a reasonable concern. As a homeless guy, he might abandon his spot and move elsewhere.
But Park Jeong-hoon nodded.
“He’ll come back at least once.”
He knew people at rock bottom. Because they had nothing, they clung to even the most worthless possessions. They had no choice. Lose that, and they truly had nothing left.
Park Jeong-hoon had never seen someone who wasn’t attached to what they owned.
“Let’s go back.”
At his words, the minions trudged through the pathless woods. The harder it was to walk and the more breathless they became, the more they nurtured the malice of how they would deal with Kyung-wan once they caught him.
Then something long flew from somewhere and lodged into one minion’s thigh. Feeling the sharp pain of something piercing his leg, the guy collapsed and screamed.
“Aaaagh!”
“What, what the hell!”
“There!”
One of them spotted Kyung-wan far behind and pointed with his finger.
The distance was about ten meters. How had they failed to notice him getting so close?
Pushing aside his confusion, Park Jeong-hoon hurriedly urged his men.
“Get that bastard!”
The fallen leaves were piled so deep their ankles sank, but if Kyung-wan didn’t run, they would catch him in a few seconds.
But instead of running away, he took out the hand he’d been hiding behind his back. In his grip were three sticks about the length of an arm.
Too thin for clubs and too thick to be called switches, the ends of the sticks had sharp pieces attached, wrapped tightly with vines to serve as spearheads.
Kyung-wan threw one of the hastily made throwing spears toward the guy running in front. The man twisted his body to dodge it, but because of that, the guy behind him grabbed his thigh and fell.
In that brief moment, the leader had already reached right in front of Kyung-wan. One more step until he’d be caught.
Kyung-wan swung another spear. The man raised one arm to cover his head. The sticks weren’t thick, so he judged he could take the hit.
But the spearhead moved cunningly. The spear, which had been drawing a curved arc, suddenly straightened and slipped under the man’s armpit as he bent forward to tackle.
Because he’d raised his arm to block an attack to the head, he didn’t notice the change.
“Graaagh!”
With a scream, he toppled forward from the momentum. And then someone pounced like a predator, it was Park Jeong-hoon.
“You little shit!”
Already anticipating that piled leaves would hinder backsteps, Kyung-wan braced the last remaining spear and received Park Jeong-hoon’s tackle.
Park Jeong-hoon rammed his shoulder into Kyung-wan’s abdomen and grabbed his waist, but the stick was wedged between his shoulder and the waist, blocking him.
It didn’t go as planned, but with no choice, he pushed forward anyway. Kyung-wan twisted his waist and body to disrupt the man’s balance while not resisting the intent to topple him completely.
“Urgh!”
An imperfect tackle, imperfect balance.
Park Jeong-hoon, who had intended to pin the kid down in a mount position, fell sideways with Kyung-wan still wrapped in his arms.
Tumble tumble!
Leaves scattered everywhere. The struggle, Park Jeong-hoon trying to gain top position with his superior build, and Kyung-wan trying to avoid disadvantage, ended when Kyung-wan pushed his leg between them.
Then he kicked hard with his leg. No matter how big Park Jeong-hoon was, the power of a leg was three times that of arms. And since he hadn’t fully secured the position, their bodies split apart.
Using the momentum, Kyung-wan rolled and jumped up. Park Jeong-hoon also got up quickly and pulled a knife from his pocket.
Kyung-wan asked,
“Mister. Do you know a guy named Park Dong-chil?”
At that, Park Jeong-hoon’s eyes narrowed, as if asking how much he knew.
That brief change in expression gave Kyung-wan all the confirmation he needed. The thought that came to him right after shaking off their earlier pursuit:
‘Who the hell sent them?’
The chain of cause and effect wasn’t hard to deduce. Someone who hated him enough to send such unfriendly men? None of his past enemies would know his whereabouts after he left Gyosodo and became a homeless drifter. That left only one person, Park Dong-chil.
Had he made that quick settlement with the detective only so he could leverage the assault later?
It was a reasonable hypothesis. Thinking a drug-offender criminal wouldn’t use the law would be stupid. Criminals like them knew the law better than ordinary people.
Just like how you have to know exactly what kind of opponent you’re dealing with to insult them well, you had to know exactly where the boundaries of law lay in order to break it better.
Kyung-wan had no intention of asking more about the mastermind. Nor did he intend to keep his mouth closed.
“Mister. If you don’t get your underlings to the hospital fast, they’ll die.”
Park Jeong-hoon ignored the words and cautiously extended a foot to probe Kyung-wan’s opening. Who cared about a stab in the arm or leg?
But the words that followed shook his composure.
“Do you know what I made this spear tip from? Rusty nails and discarded cans. If you don’t get them to the hospital soon, they’ll die of tetanus and sepsis.”
Only then did Park Jeong-hoon look closely at the spear tip. He had thought it was just metal, but it was something made by tearing and folding cans into sharp points. Even a thug could guess it must be crawling with germs.
His lips curled with anger.
“You little freak.”
When the hell…
“There are quite a lot of hikers here, you know. And believe it or not, I make a living off people’s kindness, so I pick up trash I see lying around.”
Places like free-meal centers ran purely on people’s good intentions. Since he ate there, Kyung-wan collected the trash he found to repay even a little. Once enough gathered, he planned to throw it all away at once.
Thanks to that habit, he could gather the tools and materials for the makeshift spears quickly, life was strange like that.
Meanwhile, Park Jeong-hoon grew increasingly desperate. The more desperate he got, the more frantic his movements became. He had a knife, but the kid had a longer weapon. That desperation grew heavier.
He glanced sideways to see if his minions could help, but it wasn’t good. The two with leg injuries were dead weight in the uneven woods, and the one stabbed under the armpit was breathing raggedly, pale-faced, like he had lung damage.
He decided he couldn’t subdue Kyung-wan without getting hurt himself and steeled his resolve.
Giving flesh to take bone, a common tactic in thug life. The only thing hurting him was that he had to make that kind of resolve against a stinking young homeless brat.
Thud!
Aimed for the thigh, the spearpoint stabbed into his thick palm. Enduring the pain, he grabbed the spearhead that pierced through and swung the knife toward Kyung-wan’s neck.
“Die!”
It was, in his mind, the perfect attack at the perfect moment. Until the kitchen knife suddenly appeared in Kyung-wan’s hand and pierced his wrist before he could complete the swing.
Stab!
“Gyaaaagh!”
The knife pierced cleanly between the radius and ulna of his forearm, and Park Jeong-hoon screamed.
Watching him, Kyung-wan smiled, a faintly chilling smile.
“You walked right into it.”
The truth was, Kyung-wan’s method required more lives than a person had. He intentionally exposed a weakness so the opponent would attack him with all their strength.
But as risky as it was, it was a high-risk, high-return method that saved him from an exhausting, pointless bloodbath or extended brawl.
Kyung-wan twisted the kitchen knife, and Park Jeong-hoon screamed and dropped the knife he had barely been holding onto.
Kyung-wan caught the falling knife in his empty hand and began humming.
“We meet~ again, we meet~ again. That shitty~ person.”
“Stop~! Stop~!”
As the man begged in pain, Kyung-wan’s toes struck his solar plexus.
Park Jeong-hoon bent forward, drooling and struggling to breathe. Seeing that, Kyung-wan seemed to lose interest and switched songs.
When you~ are sad~ when you are hurt~
I will sing a so~ong for you~
But the one who gets hit~ the one who gets beaten~
Ends up, a crip~ple anyway~
By the time Kyung-wan finished the short song, Park Jeong-hoon was blankly sobbing like a man who’d lost his mind. Because Kyung-wan had severed the ligaments in his wrist and the Achilles tendon in his ankle.
The dream of inheriting the organization from Park Dong-chil and enjoying wealth and power vanished like morning fog in sunlight.
Kyung-wan looked at the minions stumbling away and, tapping his chin with his bloodstained hand, seemed to think about something. Then he rummaged through Park Jeong-hoon’s pockets and made a call on his phone.
“Hello. Is this ○○ Police Station? Is Detective Gu there?”