Just Tear Out the Festering Wound
“What the hell are you doing here?”
Kwak Do-jin’s body staggered the instant he stepped forward with that rough look on his face.
Damn it.
The aftereffects of the horse-riding stance. His lower-body muscles were shredded to ribbons; even walking was agony.
“Senior!”
Baek Yu-yeon cried out in alarm.
“How did you even find this place?”
Hwang Min-woo stepped in front of her, a mocking smile already curling his lips.
“Hey, hey. Mad Dog. You really need to calm down.”
“You son of a bitch…”
“What, gonna hit me again? Pick up another disciplinary mark? You do realize the only reason you got off with just repeating a year after all those demerits is because of me, right?”
“You! You!”
From the rooftop, Kang Hyun watched the whole scene with mild interest.
Kwak Do-jin had been a decent kid up through second year, hadn’t he?
Judging by the looks of things, some messy history was tangled between those three.
“Disciplinary action? Fine, you piece of shit. Keep piling them on. See what happens.”
Kwak Do-jin charged forward like a bull. Hwang Min-woo flinched and took a step back under the sheer pressure.
“Crazy bastard’s actually lost it.”
“Senior! Please stop!”
It was Baek Yu-yeon who blocked his path.
“Why do you always do this?”
“What?”
“Whatever I’m doing here, you have no reason to interfere. I’ll handle my own business, so stay out of it.”
Her sharp voice stopped Kwak Do-jin cold. He knew better than anyone that her clenched fists were trembling, just a little.
“You heard her, Mad Dog. Know your place—”
“You shut up too, Hwang Min-woo.”
Baek Yu-yeon’s gaze turned ice-cold on him.
“Watch how you talk to him. Keep acting like that and I’ll lose all interest in signing that contract.”
“A-all right, all right. Senior Kwak, I’m sorry, okay?”
Hwang Min-woo gave a half-hearted bow and shot Baek Yu-yeon a look—time to move. After a moment’s hesitation she spun on her heel and vanished from the spot.
Kwak Do-jin ground his teeth, watching them go, started to say something, then swallowed it.
And then—
“Aaaaaargh!”
Bang! Crash!
He howled like a beast and drove bare fists into the wall. Passing cadets frowned and gave him a wide berth; the sight was clearly familiar.
Just the Mad Dog doing mad-dog things, that was the general feeling.
Behind him came a soft thud—someone landing lightly.
“……!”
Startled, Kwak Do-jin whipped his head around. A familiar face was holding out a whiskey bottle.
“Want a drink?”
The two of them sat on the edge of the alley, each with a bottle, and started draining them.
Kang Hyun sipped while carefully venting the alcohol’s energy; Kwak Do-jin was drunk in no time.
“Fuck, fuck!”
He gulped again and again. Did he even know each bottle cost five hundred thousand won?
Ordinarily Kang Hyun would have walked right past. Kids’ problems were better settled among kids than by adults butting in.
But.
When Baek Yu-yeon was involved, the rules changed. Especially when she was about to sign some shady contract.
“Kid. That girl. You like her?”
“……It’s not like that.”
“Then what?”
“None of your business, Professor.”
Kwak Do-jin snapped, then tipped the bottle again.
Gulp, gulp.
“Fair enough. Whether you’re screwing around with someone or wagging your tail for some pretty-boy freeloader—”
“……I wasn’t wagging my tail!”
Kwak Do-jin flared.
“That so? Then what did I just see? You couldn’t even throw a proper punch. Just stood there shaking.”
“That’s—!”
Kang Hyun prodded him on purpose. He wanted the wound the boy had buried deep to surface and spill out.
Get drunk. And throw it all up.
A wound doesn’t heal just because you hide it. Hide it and it festers. Festering rot eats you from the inside until it ruins the whole person.
So just tear it out. Turn yourself inside out, squeeze the pus, spill the blood if you have to—empty the rotten part first.
Only then can something else fill the empty space, right?
“If you’re scared, don’t bark in the first place. Barking and then not biting—what kind of mad dog is that? Just a mutt.”
“You think I don’t bite because I can’t?”
“That’s what I figured.”
“If I bite, Yu-yeon gets hurt! That’s why!”
Kwak Do-jin was so worked up he barely knew what he was saying, but the shout itself cracked something open inside him. Once the blockage loosened, he wanted to let more out.
“Hwang Min-woo is the eldest son of the Taewang Guild master.”
“Taewang Guild?”
“You don’t know it?”
“Never heard of it.”
“…….”
Kwak Do-jin stared at him with a look that said, What kind of professor is this?
Taewang wasn’t one of the Big Three or a mega-guild, but any hunter worth the name knew it.
“About a year ago there was a dungeon practicum.”
A monster’s aggro had suddenly locked onto Baek Yu-yeon. Kwak Do-jin had thrown himself in the way and saved her. Later they learned the truth: it had been Hwang Min-woo’s doing. The guy had publicly confessed his feelings, gotten rejected, and done it out of spite.
“What a bastard.”
“Yeah. A real bastard.”
Grind.
Kwak Do-jin’s teeth scraped together.
“So I didn’t think twice. I beat the living shit out of him.”
“Good.”
“What’s good about it?!”
He choked up and poured whiskey straight down his throat.
“I almost got expelled for it!”
That had been the start. After that day he was charged with assaulting a classmate, hit with disciplinary action, and even put up for expulsion review. He fought it hard, of course, but the Taewang Guild had already bought a few professors.
“That’s when I learned how the world works. It’s a rotten place where moneyed, connected thugs thrash around while decent people get crushed.”
That was probably the moment Kwak Do-jin started going off the rails.
Kang Hyun drank in silence.
No wonder.
Every time he looked at the kid he got the feeling of someone wearing clothes that didn’t fit, barking in a voice that wasn’t his. Not a real thug—just a third-rate imitation of one.
Kang Hyun had rolled through the martial world long enough to see every kind of trash. Real bastards who slit throats and laughed about it. Know their defining trait?
They never bare their teeth at someone stronger. When death looks certain they piss themselves, drop to their knees, and beg before they run.
That’s the true nature of real garbage.
But.
Kwak Do-jin was different. Even under killing intent that should have taken his head clean off, he had crawled across the floor and crossed the line. Real trash never does that.
He was just a wounded kid throwing a tantrum, begging someone to look at him. And there had been no adult around to set him straight.
“Ugh… the booze is bitter.”
Kwak Do-jin’s voice shook as he nearly finished the bottle.
“I know why I wasn’t expelled. It’s because of Yu-yeon. That idiot…”
He clenched his fists.
“She went and begged that piece of shit Hwang Min-woo. Said she’d ruined my life by letting me save her, and pleaded with him not to expel me.”
“…….”
“That bastard must’ve been thrilled— a girl who wouldn’t even look at him suddenly on her knees. He used it to jerk her around for a whole year.”
Honestly, Kwak Do-jin had felt relief. Relief that he wasn’t getting kicked out.
“I don’t have parents. My grandmother raised me from when I was little.”
Kang Hyun felt a flicker of kinship there. He hadn’t had parents either; he’d been raised by old folks when he was young.
“She spent her whole life selling greens in the market just to make one decent person out of me. When I got into the Academy she threw a neighborhood feast and cried. Said her Do-jin was going to become a hunter and give her an easy life.”
Drip. Drop.
Tears finally spilled from Kwak Do-jin’s eyes.
“How am I supposed to tell a grandmother like that that I got expelled for beating up a classmate? How do I make the excuse that I got screwed because I had no connections?”
In the end, the people who loved him were the ones holding him back. Baek Yu-yeon’s sacrifice of kneeling for his sake. His grandmother’s hopes, pinned entirely on him.
“You know Professor Hwang Ye-rim? Top martial-arts medicine expert in the country. Yu-yeon’s a genius who could become her personal disciple. But to save my ass she’s about to sign a ten-year slave contract under that bastard Hwang Min-woo’s guild. I found out today and came looking for her! Aaaaargh! What a fucking world!”
“The world’s always been like that.”
The martial world had been crawling with Hwang Min-woo types. Hypocrites who hung shiny orthodox-sect signs out front while binding people with money and power behind the scenes. And just as many fools like Kwak Do-jin who shouted half-baked justice, got crushed for lack of strength, and were discarded the moment they were no longer useful.
Justice? A nauseating word.
The world isn’t corrupt. It simply runs on the logic of power. Powerless justice always ends up eaten by powerful hypocrisy.
“If you’re bitter, get stronger. Why roll around in the same mud and brag about how dirty you are too? Idiot.”
Kang Hyun rose slowly from his seat. He casually brushed the dust from his pants, then snatched the empty whiskey bottle from Kwak Do-jin’s hand.
“Wh-what?”
Half-glazed eyes followed the motion in a daze.
“Empty.”
Kang Hyun clinked his own bottle against the empty one.
Clink!
The clear ring of glass cut through the night air.
“I heard your whining loud and clear.”
“……I wasn’t whining. I was just pissed.”
“So what? You hoping someone else would step up and cut that freeloading pretty-boy’s throat for you?”
Kwak Do-jin’s lips pressed shut. He had never hoped for that. He had learned bone-deep that no one in this world would help him.
“Listen carefully, mutt.”
Kang Hyun’s lazy eyes turned suddenly cold. A heavy voice laced with alcohol slammed into Kwak Do-jin’s ears.
“If you lost something because you were weak, then take it back with your own strength. Whining and rolling in the mud while you bark ends today.”
“…….”
“And you’re the exception.”
“Huh?”
What did that mean?
“You don’t get to skip class anymore. If you’re not there at six tomorrow morning, it won’t be the freeloading pretty-boy who kills you first—it’ll be me.”
“……S-suddenly?”
“Payment for drinking my expensive booze.”
With that, Kang Hyun’s figure melted into the darkness as if he had never been there at all.
“Ha.”
A faint, empty laugh tugged at Kwak Do-jin’s mouth. Even so, the tightness in his chest had eased a little.
That night.
Faculty housing corridor.
Knock knock.
The door flew open at the sound.
“Kang Hyun-nim?”
Lee Se-ah, hair wrapped in a towel as if she had just finished showering, greeted him with round eyes.
Without a word Kang Hyun dumped two empty whiskey bottles into her arms. She knew exactly what that meant.
Buy the exact same ones again.
“Whoa, these are expensive. You finished them both?”
“Something I need looked into.”
“Huh? Oh—the Baek Yu-yeon student you mentioned earlier?”
“No. Not that.”
“Then what?”
“Taewang Guild.”
“……Taewang?”
“Yeah. And a list of every Academy professor tied to that guild—money, favors, whatever.”