Chapter 5
Chapter 5
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Translator : M.N 1391
Chapter: 5
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Geongwan was running his mouth when Youngchul, who had practically stomped his way forward, swung his knife.
His bloodshot, rage-filled eyes were half-rolled back, unable to see anything.
Because of that, it became a problem.
He didn’t see what Geongwan was holding in his left hand.
Geongwan flicked his left hand.
The dirt firmly clenched in his fist scattered across Youngchul’s face, landing neatly on the slowed-to-react boy’s cornea.
“Argh! You son of a, !”
Feeling humiliated, Youngchul flailed the knife wildly.
It was a desperate attempt to stop Geongwan from attacking him while he couldn’t see, but having forgotten what was in Geongwan’s right hand, he screamed when sharp pain exploded from the bridge of his nose.
“Arghhh!”
“Strike!”
Geongwan had thrown a cement chunk straight into Youngchul’s face.
While the punk staggered, clutching his face with one hand, Geongwan quickly picked up the fallen cement chunk and shouted:
“Second pitch! Coming!”
Whack!
“Graaah!”
“Two strikes!”
The cement chunk struck the back of the hand covering Youngchul’s face.
As he groaned, Geongwan’s voice echoed in his ears again.
“Third pitch coming!”
Instinctively, Youngchul raised his arms to shield his face.
Getting hit on the arm, where there was more flesh and muscle, hurt less than getting hit on the face or the back of the hand.
But…
Whack!
“Aaaagh!”
“Ball! That’s a ball!”
The cement chunk hit his knee.
The knee wasn’t shattered, but the pain was so brutal it felt shattered, forcing him to kneel with one leg.
“You bastard! I’ll kill you myself!”
But the bastard didn’t lose his nerve and swung the knife through empty air to keep Geongwan back.
Tears washed away the dirt in his eyes, and slowly, his vision began to return.
Once he could see, he fully intended to chop Geongwan into pieces, his face twisted with murderous rage.
But he never got the chance to see properly.
Instead, his entire field of view turned yellow.
“Guh, !”
“Home run! A two-run home run!”
While Youngchul knelt and swung blindly, completely defenseless from behind, his partially restored vision, the pain in his face, hand, and knee, and the frantic panic clouding his senses kept him from noticing Geongwan sneaking around him.
Geongwan burst both eggs and then did an airplane celebration run, stomping on the back of the delinquent’s skull three or four times as he collapsed forward.
After finishing the celebration, he carefully picked up the knife from the ground using only his index finger.
“A real knife, huh? Guess being under the age of criminal responsibility really is nice.
Hey. Do you even know what a bladed-weapon permit is?”
He nudged Youngchul with the tip of his shoe as he asked, but the punk only trembled violently without answering.
Having finished subduing them all, Geongwan began the work of dragging them together.
He twisted their legs to prevent escape, and one of the boys who had fainted woke up screaming.
A girl asked, horrified by the sight:
“What… what are you going to do with them?”
“You didn’t leave yet?”
“...”
“Oh, right. Guess you can’t exactly go home looking like that.”
Geongwan pulled out a tracksuit from the stash he’d hidden inside the abandoned factory and handed it to her.
The tracksuit was small for both him and the girl, but it was enough to cover her bare upper body.
Because it was small, it revealed a sliver of her thin waist and emphasized her well-developed chest.
“There. Now go.”
“… What are you going to do with them?”
Even after being told to leave, she stubbornly asked again.
“You don’t need to know.”
“...”
Her silent stare was full of fear and curiosity, but Geongwan’s eyes only narrowed.
“Why are you trying so hard to get involved in something you don’t need to be involved in?”
“… Then why did you help me?”
“No idea.”
When she flipped the question back at him, he tilted his head with a calm expression.
To the girl, he looked completely alien.
It was hard to believe this was the same person who had just been beating those wannabe rapists while looking almost gleeful, almost deranged.
After a moment of thought, he spoke.
“Maybe because there are still good people in the world?”
“… That doesn’t make sense.”
Of course it didn’t.
Even if the world was full of bastards, there were still good people.
And Geongwan had once met someone good, a person who had helped him.
That’s why he had begun to believe that even this shitty world might be worth living in.
And if he had to choose between facing bastards or rubbing shoulders with the few good people left, wasn’t it better for his mental health to side with the latter?
That was why he stepped into this mess.
If he left the human trash lying around, the number of bastards would grow and the number of good people would shrink.
Facing bastards was unpleasant.
Part of why he got involved was simply to wash away the disgust of witnessing something filthy.
Crushing bad people felt refreshing.
It made the vague sense of indebtedness he felt toward the unnamed good people of the world feel a little lighter.
Hurting the wicked made life slightly easier for the decent ones.
Even so, there had definitely been a non-violent way to help her.
The reason he didn’t take it was simple, he wasn’t attached to his own life.
He didn’t love his life.
He was full of thoughts like:
If I can’t repay kindness properly, then at least I’ll return malice tenfold.
Of course, he couldn’t say any of that to the girl.
There was no need to taint someone who at least had the decency to say “thank you.”
Geongwan knew he wasn’t a good person, more like a bad one.
Maybe that was why he felt guilt and debt toward those who tried to live kindly.
Maybe that was why the trash lying on the ground disgusted him even more.
“You don’t need to understand it, and you shouldn’t try to.”
He dismissed the question and motioned for her to leave.
This time, she nodded and finally turned away.
“My name is Kim Shinyoung!”
“Didn’t ask, don’t care.”
She left her name instead of a goodbye, but Geongwan let it in one ear and out the other.
He didn’t expect to ever see her again.
But…
“Don’t move!”
“Police!”
Turns out fate was stickier than he thought.
= = = = =
While Geongwan was dealing with the three punks that appeared afterward, one of the first delinquents had woken up and secretly sent a text to the police.
He’d written that someone had been killed, so both police officers and detectives rushed over.
Fortunately, no one had died, but most of them were in such condition that dying might have been kinder.
Groin ruptures were the minimum.
Geongwan was arrested on scene, and the girl, Kim Shinyoung, parted ways with him at the station.
She gave a brief witness statement as a victim of the victims and went home.
Geongwan, having been caught red-handed, went straight into a holding cell.
The delinquents, both victims and perpetrators, were taken to the hospital.
The situation was clearly unfavorable for Geongwan.
Detective Oh, who sat across from him preparing the report, could see that plainly.
“Why’d you do it?”
“Because they were disgusting.”
“You little shit! You think that’s a real answer?!”
Detective Oh exploded, but the answer Geongwan gave next was even worse.
“Then do those bastards going in to gang-rape a girl look good to you?”
“Hey! There’s still a limit! You turned them into cripples!”
“Considering how lenient this country’s laws are toward minors, isn’t turning them into cripples the best way to prevent more victims?”
“You a judge now?! What do you think law enforcement is?!”
Detective Oh finally snapped and smacked Geongwan’s head with the papers.
Geongwan’s brow twitched.
“Oh for f, ”
“Oh for f, ?”
“Should I invoke my right to remain silent? I’m cooperating pretty well, but if you’re gonna act like this, this stops being fun.”
Detective Oh was stunned.
What kind of backward-wired brat is this?
“Hey. Do you even know how bad your situation is?! I’m the only one on your side right now!”
“You’re on your own side, detective. Not mine.”
“Hah?! You little, ”
“So you’re saying you’re actually pleased that I turned those bastards into cripples?”
“...”
Detective Oh rubbed the back of his neck, which was starting to stiffen.
He took a breath and lowered his voice.
“Listen carefully. If this keeps going, you’re going straight to juvenile detention.”
“Does the food taste good there these days?”
“HEY!!!!”
His shout drew the whole office’s attention.
Another officer walked over to calm him.
“Hey, keep it down. Why are you yelling?”
“This kid is a complete lunatic! He doesn’t feel even an ounce of remorse!”
Hearing that, the colleague gave Geongwan a look usually reserved for roadkill.
Then he told Oh:
“What can you do? Just follow the law.”
In other words, stop getting emotional and do your job.
Detective Oh sighed and forced himself to focus on the report.
His colleagues clearly didn’t want drama.
That was how society worked.
But the calm didn’t last long.
Because the victims’ parents arrived.
“Where is he?! Where’s that bastard!?”
Whose eyes wouldn’t turn inside out when their child became impotent and their knee joint destroyed?
“Sir, ma’am, this isn’t appropriate, ”
“What do you mean inappropriate?! I just want to see the face of the bastard who did that to my son!”
He didn’t want to let them meet, but one of the parents was a lawyer.
As soon as one father saw Geongwan, he grabbed him by the collar and yanked him up.
“You son of a, ! You, guh!”
But he immediately released him when Geongwan headbutted him in the nose.
“Please don’t grab me without permission.”
“You little, !”
The man, overwhelmed as a parent, threw a punch.
But Geongwan wasn’t about to take it quietly.
He turned his head, letting the punch slide past, and kicked the man in the groin.
As the man folded over, clutching his crotch, Geongwan drove his knee upward into the man’s face.
“Argh!”
The man clutched his face again, blood streaming from his nose.
Seeing the blood made him snap completely.
He lunged, fingers curled,
, and that was when the officers finally intervened, shocked and scrambling.
The man shouted desperately:
“Hey! I’m the one who got hit! I got hit! Why are you holding me?!”
Trying to break up a fight was one thing, but being the one who got beaten and still held back was infuriating.
But they were police officers in a police station.
They couldn’t just let him hit the kid a few times.
If a weapon got involved, it would become a nightmare.
“Sir, please calm down, ”
“I got hit too. My throat hurts from getting grabbed, and my face hurts from his punch.”
Geongwan complained.
But what pain could a stretched-out cheap t-shirt collar even cause?
And as for the punch, there wasn’t even a red mark on his face.
To the officers, he looked like he was provoking on purpose.
To the bloody-nosed father, he looked infuriating beyond belief.
“You stay quiet!”
The man thrashed, and the officer restraining him glared at Geongwan.
But Geongwan didn’t back down.
“I’d love to stay quiet too.”