The Broken Hammer
Mo Cheol-dong arrived at the lodging house without a pause and flung the door open as if to make a point of it.
“Foreman Won!”
“Wh-what?!”
Somehow, Won Il-chu had already washed and was lounging in comfortable clothes, leisurely sipping tea. Mo Cheol-dong, and the others who hurried in after him, all wore the same dumbfounded look at the sight.
Unlike their own mud-caked, utterly spent figures, Won Il-chu looked far too at ease.
“What is it? Don’t tell me you’ve already finished the cleanup?”
Once he confirmed the intruders were Mo Cheol-dong and his crew, Won Il-chu recovered his usual arrogant smirk as if the surprise had never happened and put on his customary bluster. Mo Cheol-dong jabbed a finger at him.
“Look here—this is going too far!”
“What are you blathering about out of nowhere?”
Won Il-chu answered with a shameless face. If he had possessed any conscience to begin with, none of this would have happened. When everyone was left speechless with sheer absurdity, he gave a snort of contempt.
“If you’ve got complaints, bring them up properly later. Right now we’ve got more urgent work to handle, don’t we? As you can see, I’m a little busy.”
With that, he dabbed at his still-damp hair with a soft towel. Mo Cheol-dong could not hold back any longer and raised his voice again.
“You’re really going to pull this? A man needs a conscience! At least take responsibility for the mess you started until the end!”
Once Mo Cheol-dong found his tongue again, every word he had been bottling up came pouring out like a waterfall. Behind him stood a line of nearly ten people. With every sentence he spoke, they nodded, their faces openly savoring the relief of finally hearing it said aloud.
The room filled with angry voices until Won Il-chu waved a hand as if to shut them up.
“Fine. Seeing as the day’s been what it is, I’ll talk to the higher-ups about padding your daily wages a little. Happy now?”
At the unexpected offer of a deal, the laborers’ whispering swelled—what a windfall this was turning out to be. Yoo Eunhyeon, who had been watching quietly, narrowed his eyes.
They’re falling for this kind of rabble-rousing? It isn’t even a firm promise—just ‘I’ll talk about it.’ What if the answer comes back no? Or rather… would that bastard even bother talking at all?
Knowing the Won Il-chu he had seen so far, the man would never bring it up. And even if he did manage to extract extra pay, he would pocket most of it himself—that much was obvious.
After a moment’s thought, Yoo Eunhyeon stepped close to Mo Cheol-dong and whispered a few words against his ear.
“You… are you serious?”
Startled by the unexpected masterstroke, Mo Cheol-dong looked at him. When Yoo Eunhyeon gave a small nod, Mo Cheol-dong spun around and shouted to the whole group.
“You still don’t know Foreman Won? He’ll just talk pretty and then drag his feet until it all blows over! We have to set this straight right now while we have the chance!”
At Mo Cheol-dong’s cry the murmuring among the laborers died down at once. Seizing the moment, he raised his voice again.
“So all of us have to stick together and testify to this outrage! If our stories line up, even the Black Lotus Merchant Alliance will have to listen!”
“R-really?”
Hearing that much, the men seemed to find Mo Cheol-dong’s words plausible; the noise quieted as they considered. The moment the mood shifted, Won Il-chu’s face twisted.
“Mo… Mo Cheol-dong, you bastard…!”
The truth was, this turn of events put Won Il-chu in a tight spot. The higher-ups would never welcome a mob like this stirring trouble. Especially not here—this was the demonic path, where the logic of power ruled rather than righteousness. When problems arose, a man could not even count on keeping his post, let alone his life.
“A-all right. Tell me what you want. I’ll grant whatever I can.”
In the end Won Il-chu took a step back. When he suddenly came out so weakly, Mo Cheol-dong’s eyes went round with surprise.
“But first, leave only a few representatives and send the rest back to the worksite. If the work stops running properly, the Black Lotus Merchant Alliance will start asking questions.”
“Very well.”
When Won Il-chu yielded a pace, Mo Cheol-dong yielded one as well. Thinking the matter settled, Yoo Eunhyeon was about to turn away of his own accord when Mo Cheol-dong shot him a silent look—one that clearly hoped he would stay.
Yoo Eunhyeon deliberately avoided that gaze and stepped outside. Only Mo Cheol-dong and three senior hands remained; everyone else opened the door and left.
“W-will he be all right?”
“Come on, of course he will! It’s Mo Cheol-dong!”
A few of those who had come out still fidgeted with unease. Some even pressed their ears to the door, curious to hear what would happen next. Watching them, Yoo Eunhyeon quietly folded his arms.
They’ll handle it from here. He’s swallowed plenty of bitterness already—if they can squeeze out even a fraction of what’s owed, it’ll be a win.
While Yoo Eunhyeon paced outside, waiting only for the final negotiation—
“Aaaargh!”
A chaotic crash and a scream erupted from inside. Every idle thought vanished. Yoo Eunhyeon sprinted to the door in a single breath.
Brushing past the men who had recoiled in fright, he yanked the door open.
“Hey! Cheol-dong! Stay with me! Stay with me!”
The room was a wreck—furniture scattered every which way.
But what caught the eye first was Mo Cheol-dong, collapsed with his head a mass of blood. Several men clung to him, frantically trying to stop the bleeding and calling his name, yet he did not so much as stir, eyes shut as if dead.
Yoo Eunhyeon took a light breath to steady himself, then turned his gaze to the opposite side of the room.
“I-I didn’t mean to! He came at me first…!”
Where Yoo Eunhyeon’s eyes landed stood Won Il-chu—clearly the one who had felled Mo Cheol-dong. He was trembling in the corner of the room like an aspen leaf, a bloodied hammer clutched in his hand. The blood was almost certainly Mo Cheol-dong’s.
“What in the world happened here?”
Anyone could guess the situation at a glance, but he needed to be certain. As he approached Mo Cheol-dong, the man who had been staunching the wound pointed furiously at Won Il-chu and launched into a scathing rebuke.
“That bastard’s the culprit! He brought the hammer down on Cheol-dong!”
“He just struck him out of nowhere?”
“They were discussing terms when an argument started. Voices got louder, and then…”
Yoo Eunhyeon stirred a thread of inner energy and checked Mo Cheol-dong’s condition. He was not dead—only unconscious from a heavy blow to the head.
The head isn’t the real problem.
Though all eyes were fixed on the wound above, a full examination showed the right leg badly twisted. In collapsing, he must have struck something and wrenched the joint. If it was not set at once, he would have trouble even walking, never mind farming.
Yoo Eunhyeon started to tear his own clothes for a makeshift brace, then instead ripped strips from Won Il-chu’s garment beside him. It was not clean, but still better than his own dirt-caked rags. When he gently infused a little inner energy, Mo Cheol-dong let out a pained groan.
“Ugh…”
“Cheol-dong! Are you all right?”
He had not fully regained consciousness, but once it was clear he was alive, the men watching hoisted him onto their backs and hurried outside at once. With the immediate crisis under control, Yoo Eunhyeon spoke quietly.
“I’ll hear the foreman’s side of the story as well.”
He turned fully to face Won Il-chu. The man opened his mouth as if he had been waiting for the chance.
“He attacked me first! I did nothing wrong!”
In truth, the one who had lost his temper was Mo Cheol-dong.
Once the crowd thinned, Won Il-chu had plastered on an iron face and tried to seize the upper hand; Mo Cheol-dong simply could not endure the brazen attitude. In the scuffle that followed, Won Il-chu had swung the hammer as a threat—and it had connected.
“I’m sure you did. Haa… If I’d known it would come to this, I would have stayed.”
Had Yoo Eunhyeon remained, none of this would have happened. But regret over what was already done was useless. He glared once at Won Il-chu and made to leave quietly. Mo Cheol-dong’s safety came first, whatever else.
Yet Won Il-chu called after him.
“Wait. You don’t think this ends here, do you?”
At those words, Yoo Eunhyeon’s steps halted.
He turned his head slowly. Won Il-chu wore a mean little smile at the corner of his mouth.
“How dare you try to threaten me… I will hold every last one of your gang accountable and reclaim every coin! Think that’s all? I’ll see to it none of you can set foot in Qinghai soil again!”
The accident had already cut the negotiation short, yet hearing Won Il-chu talk like this left Yoo Eunhyeon speechless. The man had injured someone with the weapon in his own hand and still had the shamelessness to spit such venom—it was more than Yoo Eunhyeon could stomach.
“Reclaim, is it… Fine.”
With a hard face Yoo Eunhyeon began walking slowly toward him. Inside, Won Il-chu had been crowing in triumph—but unease crept in by degrees. As Yoo Eunhyeon drew near, the youth who had looked like a mere greenhorn suddenly seemed to grow larger in his eyes. People did not simply swell in size, yet to Won Il-chu it felt as though a monster was approaching.
“Don’t come any closer!”
In a panic of pure defense he swung the bloodied hammer—only for it to vanish from his grip.
“Wh-what?”
He stared, unable to comprehend how the hammer now rested in Yoo Eunhyeon’s hand. In that instant Yoo Eunhyeon closed the final distance and raised the seized hammer in both hands.
“But I feel wronged enough that I intend to collect at least some of the wages for the work we’ve done.”
His hands clenched. The iron hammer cracked with a dull crunch and shattered into fragments that scattered across the floor.
“Eek!”
Looking down at Won Il-chu, who had collapsed and was shaking violently, Yoo Eunhyeon gave a thin smile and spoke in a low voice.
“I’ll leave the reckoning to you, Foreman. Of course, I trust you’ll do a very, very thorough job of it.”