Phase 2: Hui-gyeong (6)
One day.
A full day had passed, yet Gyeong-hun still had not come home.
Hui-gyeong had expected as much. He had walked out with such weight on his shoulders that of course he would stay away at least a night. She ate neither lunch nor dinner. After the fight with her mother she refused to leave her room except to use the bathroom. Gyeong-ae had deliberately cooked the spicy stir-fried pork her daughter loved and left it on the table under plastic wrap, but Hui-gyeong never moved. The truth was that after sobbing herself empty she simply had no strength left. All she could manage was to close her swollen eyelids, breathe out broken little sobs, and cling to the pillow her brother used to use while she lay curled on the blanket.
A day had passed, yet Gyeong-hun still had not come home.
Hui-gyeong had expected as much. What she had not expected was how hollow and lonely a single night without her brother’s arm for a pillow would feel. The only thing that let her endure it was the vague hope that Oppa would return tomorrow.
“Hey—you okay?!”
“Almost fucking died.”
I ducked on pure reflex and the iron pipe whistled past. If my body hadn’t moved first my nose would have been pulp and I would have been sprawled on the ground, ready to be stomped flat. With this many of them even letting one small hit land could snowball into a chain of attacks I might not walk away from.
Should I just kill them?
That would be easiest. Drop them one by one, thin the pack, make the rest of the night simple. But Gyeong-jun’s father had forbidden it. Too little experience, too little resolve to get blood on our hands.
Make the money fast and go back to being a civilian the second you can.
No, Father. I’ll be dead long before I ever get the chance to go back. Killing is one thing—how much experience and resolve do I need just to walk through my own front door again?
“Y-you dodged that?!”
The junkie staggered upright, stunned. Once he was on his feet he towered. Gyeong-jun and I both stood around six feet; this bastard had another full head on us. Kid must have grown up in a high-rise with clean air. Then again, his insides were probably pickled in chemicals, so what did it matter.
“You the boss here?”
Gyeong-jun asked the question.
“I-I’m the overall—no! The head, the head, Jun-hyeok said I’m the head!”
“Same damn thing, you idiot!”
I dug out the answer. A chin-jerk toward the junkie; Gyeong-jun nodded. The second our eyes finished talking I launched forward. The pipe-swinger raised the steel again and I drove a fist straight into his armpit.
“Gyaaaaah!”
Ever taken a clean shot to the armpit? I swear on my life it’s second only to the balls. I scooped up the fallen pipe, planted it like a cane, and bent my waist into a hard L. Gyeong-jun used my back as a springboard and vaulted.
“Wha—?!”
The big junkie flinched and started a punch toward Gyeong-jun; I used the opening to smash the pipe into his ribs and he crumpled forward. The instant the awl pressed against his throat every other bastard froze and stared.
Gyeong-jun patted the restrained junkie’s cheek and asked again.
“Hey. By now Jun-hyeok isn’t going to forgive either of us. How about we team up, take some of this shit, and bounce?”
The eyes rolled around for a second. But what junkie in the world turns down free product?
“Y-yeah. Okay.”
The greasy smile that followed was pure nightmare fuel.
Two days.
She sat perfectly still, staring at nothing. Hui-gyeong was used to it. Whenever Oppa was gone she spent her time like this. With her personality, if she’d had a phone she would have been texting some guy or a friend who could introduce her to one, filling the hours with distractions. At first the lack of a phone had felt like a prison; now she was grateful it was gone. Instead she sank deeper into daydreams and long stretches of thought.
The daydreams always featured the same cast. Hui-gyeong met a good man, succeeded, and her husband was spectacularly successful. Then every person who had ever been cruel to her appeared one by one to beg forgiveness—Father, Mother, the friends she had fought with, all the ex-boyfriends. They apologized with everything they had, yet Hui-gyeong never felt satisfied. They had to keep pleading, keep regretting, keep being crushed underfoot until her heart finally unclenched. Even then she did not forgive them easily. In the end the fantasy always dissolved into endless apologies and left only emptiness behind.
In the quieter thoughts her brother accepted her exactly as she was, said every word she wanted to hear, did every thing she needed, and whispered love. Hui-gyeong asked him the same question again and again.
“Even like this… I’m okay? I’m not clean.”
“Jo Hui-gyeong, I like you because you’re you.”
Slut. At first she had dismissed the word as nothing but spite aimed at her confidence. But the more boyfriends piled up, the heavier it became, until it sat on her chest like a stone. That was when Gyeong-hun had slipped into her heart. He had gotten handsy, she had scolded him, and he had looked crushed. With any other man she would have been the one scolded and crushed. She had teased his body and he had gone rock-hard yet still watched her face for permission. Any other man would have hit her a few times and shoved her into a corner to wait quietly. She had asked him to hold back and he had waited like a lost puppy. Any other man would have told her to endure it and done whatever he wanted again.
If I do this, Gyeong-hun Oppa will…
But if it were any other man…
She kept lining up the meaningless comparisons until the truth hit her. In her relationship with Oppa, the things she did were exactly what her exes had done, and the way Oppa acted was exactly the way she used to act.
“…Huh?”
One old memory surfaced. Hui-gyeong had wanted to hear “I love you,” so she had begged an ex.
“Depends how you behave.”
She had thrown herself into everything that might please him. After weeks of it he had finally, grudgingly, said the words.
“Fine. I like you. I like you.”
At first she had been over the moon, but when he never said more she begged again. Why wouldn’t he say he loved her?
“I already said it once. What more do you want?”
“I asked you to say ‘I love you.’ ‘I like you’ is different—ah!”
“Still climbing up my ass, huh?”
A low kick dropped her; the beating that followed was brief. Afterward she had told herself she was lucky it had ended so lightly.
“No. It’s different!”
Looking back now, those men had never felt any real affection for her. But she was different. She genuinely liked Oppa Gyeong-hun; she had even left him room to try, on purpose. More than that, she had forgiven him for that huge mistake. So she was different. She had to be different.
“Heyyy, good work. Good work.”
Once we had seized the little eel’s drug warehouse and made the call, Hyung Tae-sik showed up with a pack of enforcers in tow. We already had the big junkie and the rest of the small fry under control, so the enforcers simply marched the prisoners out.
“Hyungnim, what do we do with this trash?”
“All men?”
“Yes.”
“Keep the prime cuts, send the rest to the hospital.”
One of the enforcers had asked; Tae-sik answered as if he were discussing the weather. “Prime cuts” meant gut them, harvest the usable organs, sell them. “The rest” meant take a fee and dump the bodies at a hospital as cadavers. A cold shiver ran down my spine. The casual way he treated people like meat was a different world from half-bloods like Gyeong-jun and me.
“You little shits still got the touch. Found a warehouse in two days?”
“Thank you, Hyungnim.”
Even Gyeong-jun bowed with a stiff face. He was the boss’s son, but his relationship with the family was no better than mine. He had refused the succession, taken a beating for it, and been thrown to Tae-sik for “education.” Past tense, because his father had finally given up on him. An abandoned heir gets no special treatment from the organization’s rising stars. If Gyeong-jun ever fell completely out of favor, he would die too.
“Who’s this?”
“Says he’s the head here.”
“Oh yeah?”
Tae-sik squatted in front of the kneeling giant and lit a cigarette.
“You smoke?”
“N-no…”
“Why?”
“Huh?”
“Why?”
“B-because it’s b-bad for your health…”
Tae-sik froze for a second.
“Right. Gotta keep the body healthy if you want the high to hit right.”
“Y-yeah. Heh heh…”
“So how’d you gather all this product? Damn, there’s a lot. How much?”
“T-twenty kilos.”
“…What?”
“Twenty. J-Jun-hyeok said if good overseas stuff was cheap, b-buy it all.”
“So you just bought it and stacked it? Like a good little boy?”
“Y-yes.”
“……”
We were fucked. I wasn’t the only one who felt it. Everyone except the big junkie went rigid, waiting for Tae-sik’s next word.
“Hey, Logistics!”
“Y-yes, Hyungnim!”
A surprisingly clean-cut man in a suit popped out—glasses and everything, clearly educated.
“He says he just bought it and piled it up. Twenty kilos?”
“Th-that’s…”
The four-eyed guy had gone white; he couldn’t even lift his head. Watching his shoulders and neck sink was almost pitiful.
“Head up.”
“Yes…”
Another subordinate hurried over with hand sanitizer. That old habit of sanitizing before a punishment was showing again. I thought the kid was about to get destroyed—then Tae-sik did something I never saw coming.
“Kyaaaaah! Hyungnim! Hyu—gyaaaaah!”
“You fucking piece of shit—you think product can move through the airport and the docks without going through our eyes? Did you ever report twenty kilos entering the country to me?”
He twisted the arm into a lock, ripped the glasses off, and shoved a bare finger into the eye socket, starting to dig the eyeball out. The four-eyes could only scream as his living eye was torn free.
“Aaaaaagh—!”
“You don’t need this, right? Right? Whether you’ve got it or not you still can’t do your job, huh?”
“Gyaaaaaaah!”
Crack.
The thrashing broke the pinned arm. Tae-sik never stopped. He finally ripped the healthy eyeball out of a living man’s head, then twisted the long optic nerve until it snapped. After that little display of raw power he turned to the man standing behind the screaming logistics guy.
“Hey. What’s your vision?”
“Left and right 1.8!”
“Nice. You’re Logistics now.”
“Yes sir!”
“Clear this. And grab the product.”
The second the word “product” left his mouth the junkie exploded to his feet, thrashing and howling.
“N-no! You said—you said we’d share it! We were gonna do it together!”
Tae-sik’s face twisted into something terrifying as he locked eyes on us.
“You little shits try to skim?”
“No. Too many of them, so we used him a little.”
How does Gyeong-jun’s tongue stay that smooth?
“Oh, that so?”
“Yes.”
“Hear that, you bastard!”
Thwack!
A clean one-legged turn-kick smashed into the temple. The junkie went down foaming; Tae-sik followed with a series of soccer kicks.
“You fucking pieces of shit! In my territory! What? You bought the drugs with money? Twenty kilos?!”
Only when the face was no longer recognizable did the blood-soaked Tae-sik walk over and clap our shoulders.
“Good work! We got product out of it—nice!”
He lit another cigarette, dragged deep, and savored the smoke for a long time.
“Ayyy! This feels fucking great! You two go book a room first. My treat.”
He handed Gyeong-jun a card, grinned, and exhaled smoke through his nose.
“Close the door on your way out. Got business inside, yeah?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Short and thick—I like it!”
Like my ass. When he’s pissed he just keeps saying “nice” forever. We did as told, quietly shut the warehouse door, and left. Neither of us knew what was about to happen inside. With that uneasy feeling sitting in our guts we searched blogs for a quiet room-salon somewhere in Seoul and headed out.
“Oppa still isn’t coming.”
Evening of the second day. Hui-gyeong waited endlessly in front of the house for Gyeong-hun, only going back inside once the dawn moon hung sharp and clear in the sky.