Sorry for What? Say It.
The man's icy voice from the doorway drove itself into Yoo Jimin's ears, and she almost reflexively glared and spat a curse. This crazy bastard — who the hell does he think he's talking to with that filthy mouth! Her lips even twitched. No sound came out.
As the man slowly stepped into the room, Jimin swallowed without meaning to. The oppressive presence radiating from him was on an entirely different level from the glimpse she'd caught in the darkness earlier.
He wasn't merely tall — he was enormous. Broad, solid shoulders, and above all a murderous aura that seemed to pour from every inch of his body. A chill ran down her spine, as if she were standing before a freshly honed blade. His shadow swallowed her completely.
The rage and irritation from moments ago vanished without a trace, and a primal terror rushed in to take their place. The struggling, the writhing — all of it stopped. The pain of the iron chains biting into her skin was nothing compared to the man standing in front of her. Her mouth went bone-dry. Her heart hammered like it wanted to burst from her chest.
The face that drew close was expressionless. But in his eyes, contempt and fury and a darkness too deep to name all swirled together. Jimin instinctively averted her gaze and shrank back.
"W-who are you…?"
The voice she finally managed to squeeze out trembled like a bleating goat. There was no trace left of the confident, bubbly tone she used on stream.
"Why… why are you doing this to me…? What did I ever do…?"
The man gave no answer to her terror-stricken question. He simply stared down at her with those ice-cold eyes, as if he were looking at an insect. That silence squeezed her throat tighter than any threat or stream of abuse ever could.
Silence. The man's frigid gaze bound her from head to toe. The air in the room sank, heavy enough to choke on. How much time passed, she couldn't say. At last, he broke the frozen quiet.
"You really… don't know who I am?"
The voice was low and flat, but the cold inside it slid down her spine.
Who… who is he? Who the hell…
Jimin wracked her brain desperately, squeezing every last cell for a memory. She couldn't possibly know a man this huge, this oppressive. Someone from the broadcasting station? Absolutely not. Those people might grovel and scrape, but they didn't radiate bloodlust like this. A sponsor? No — a sponsor wouldn't come at her like this. A hardcore fan? There were weirdos now and then, sure, but someone with the balls to commit a crime this blatant… nobody came to mind.
The man watched her flounder, looking either intrigued or simply amused by how pathetic she was. At last, he spoke again.
"I'll give you a hint. It's been… what, seven years?"
"…Seven years?"
Seven years ago. The moment that number lodged in her mind, Jimin's pupils shook violently. Seven years ago… high school? No way. Impossible. It couldn't be. The hazy fragments of her past began snapping together like puzzle pieces.
A boy's face, faintly recalled. The pathetic little shit who was always getting beaten in the corner, always having his money stolen, always shaking like a leaf.
"…You… no way…?"
Even as she thought it was absurd, a name hovered at the tip of her tongue. But she couldn't connect that name to the man in front of her. There was no way that pathetic loser from back then could have turned into this.
And yet an ominous premonition crawled up from somewhere deep in her chest. In a trembling voice, she finally forced the name out.
"Lee… Lee Dongwoo…? You're… Lee Dongwoo?"
The man said nothing. He simply nodded, slow and deliberate.
"Lee Dongwoo? You're seriously telling me you're Lee Dongwoo?!"
She asked again, as if she couldn't believe it — or as if she needed to put a bullet in the doubt once and for all. The Lee Dongwoo of the past: pathetic, groveling, trembling under their feet. That name simply would not match the man standing in front of her. But his unwavering nod forced her to accept a reality she could barely comprehend.
A thought flickered through her mind. Right. It was Lee Dongwoo. That loser. As the old memories surfaced, a familiar arrogance and contempt lifted their heads, just for a moment, above the terror that had frozen her solid.
It was just Lee Dongwoo. The loser they'd beaten like a dog. He'd apparently gone off somewhere and bulked up, but even so…
"Hey, you fucking bastard! You went missing, so what — you crawl off to some backwater shithole, pump iron like a maniac, and now you're back?"
Her voice suddenly swelled. As if she'd forgotten she was chained to a bed, she tried to crush him underfoot the way she used to.
"You think just 'cause you got a little stronger you can pull this shit?! Huh?! You not scared of the cops, you crazy fuck?! This is a crime! A full-on crime! You think you're walking away from this?!"
Her shrieking filled the room. She was thrashing as if she were still the one on top — no, as if she had to be the one on top.
But Lee Dongwoo didn't so much as twitch. He simply approached the bed she was bound to, slowly, very slowly. There was no hesitation in that movement, no flicker of emotion. It was unnervingly calm — the way a predator closes in on its prey.
When he came close enough that she could feel his breath, Jimin swallowed hard without meaning to. Looking up, she found his eyes filled with a darkness that had no bottom. What burned inside that darkness was unmistakable bloodlust.
"Do I…"
A low, even voice. But the weight inside it crushed her heart.
"…look like I couldn't end your life right here, right now?"
The instant those words landed, every hair on Jimin's body stood on end. The bluster from moments ago melted away like snow, and instinctive terror seized her once more.
Now that she thought about it, this bastard's build… it was incomparably bigger than before. Back then he'd been a scrawny little anchovy. Now his shoulders were massive, his whole body packed with hard muscle. When the hell had he changed this much?
She dropped her gaze without thinking. She couldn't bear the murderous stare that seemed to bore straight through her. The fury she'd been screaming with was gone without a trace, and her voice shrank to a mosquito's whisper.
"…W-what…?"
Lee Dongwoo's murderous stare and that low, murmuring voice were not a simple threat. Inside them sat genuine killing intent — the unshakable certainty that he could snuff out a life without a second's hesitation. Jimin felt that bloodlust with her entire body, and her eyes drifted, unbidden, over his frame.
He had changed. Completely. There was no trace left of the scrawny, hunched-over boy from before. Hard muscle showed clearly even through his T-shirt. His forearms were as thick as her thighs, and his neck was solid and powerful, like an athlete's.
And then… his hand. At some point, a heavy steel hammer had appeared in his grip. It was an ordinary workman's hammer, nothing special — but in this moment it looked more threatening than any weapon she could imagine. If he brought that down on her skull… A hideous image flashed through her mind, and she felt the blood in her body run cold.
I might actually die.
This bastard had completely lost it. He was not the pathetic loser from before.
Terror rose all the way to her throat, but she couldn't just die like this. Jimin wrung out the last remaining scrap of reason she had and tried to negotiate, her voice shaking.
"L-Lee Dongwoo… I… I don't know why you're doing this, but… just calm down, okay? You put one hand wrong and… that's your whole life, done. You could rot in here for decades! I-I'm a public figure, you know. My face is all over the internet. If this gets reported, you'll just…"
"Decades?"
Lee Dongwoo's quiet interjection cut her off. He gave the hammer a lazy spin in his palm, and the corner of his mouth curled up in a smirk.
"Think so?"
There was nothing pleasant in that laugh. A nauseating cold clung to it instead, the kind that set every nerve in the body on end. His eyes were not smiling at all. Looking down at her with those empty pupils, he looked like a psychopath whose human emotions had been carved out at the root.
In that instant, the last thread of reason Jimin had been clinging to snapped clean through. Negotiate? Threaten? None of that would work. This crazy bastard was never the type to care about any of it in the first place.
"No, fuck! Why the hell are you doing this to me?! What did I ever do to you?! Aah! Say something, you son of a bitch!"
The terror flipped back into a scream laced with fury. The chains rattled and clanged as she thrashed wildly on the bed. Why? Why the hell? Because of that shit from seven years ago? Was that really worth going this far?
Her head was a snarl of question marks and terror and a rage she couldn't even understand, swelling until it felt like it would burst.
Jimin's desperate shriek cut through the room like a blade. The clash of chains and the rasp of her ragged breathing tangled together into a chaotic noise. But Lee Dongwoo didn't so much as blink. He simply looked down at her with those same ice-cold eyes as she raved — the unfeeling gaze of a man observing a loudly buzzing insect.
At last he opened his mouth again. Still low. Still empty of anything that could be called emotion.
"Why am I doing this?"
He tilted his head, slow and slight.
"Back then… you used to bully the shit out of me."
A blunt, direct statement. In that single line, Jimin's thrashing stopped dead. Every nerve in her body stood on end, straining toward whatever he would say next.
"You planning on… apologizing?"
Apologize…? Don't tell me… over that?
Jimin's mind spun fast. Seven years ago. Of course they'd bullied Lee Dongwoo. The memories surfaced, faint but there — stealing his money with the others, hitting him, making him run every pathetic little errand they could think of. But so what? Didn't everyone live like that? And he was pulling this shit over that?
Crazy bastard… so fucking petty.
Contempt and disbelief boiled together inside her, but on the outside she kept her face as frightened as she could manage. The Lee Dongwoo in front of her was not the loser from back then. If she poked him the wrong way, there was no telling what he might actually do.
"I-I'm sorry… Dongwoo… I'm really sorry…"
She started her apology in a thin, trembling voice.
"B-back then… we were just so immature. We were kids… we didn't know any better. I mean it."
The way she even let her eyes well up as she begged for forgiveness was one of the acts she used all the time on stream. She had decided it was the most effective move she had left in this situation.
"That so? You were just being immature?"
Lee Dongwoo was silent for a moment, as if turning her words over. Jimin clung to a scrap of hope. If she just kept begging like this, maybe she could still get through it somehow.
"Then an apology should do it, right?"
He spoke again. The tone of his voice had not changed at all.
"But."
He took one more step closer. His shadow swallowed her completely.
"Huh…?"
It was not a question she had expected. Sorry for what? Just… for bullying him back then? What was she supposed to apologize for, specifically? For a moment, the words died in her throat.
The incidents from seven years ago flickered past like a panorama, but she couldn't pick out a single one to name. Because there were too many? Or because, to her, every last one of them had been nothing more than a passing prank — the kind of memory you let slide by without a second thought?
Lee Dongwoo watched her hesitate with those same ice-cold eyes.