Chapter 2
Chapter 2
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Translator: Vine
Chapter: 1
Chapter Title: A Visitor from the Past
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One year later.
Rat-a-tat-tat-tat!
It was a quiet alley.
Figures with their faces covered by hoods leaned out of a car window, firing their guns. A man walking down the street, engrossed in a phone call, collapsed without a chance to resist.
“We're done! Go!”
At the urgent command, the driver slammed his foot on the accelerator.
Vroooom!
As the old sedan sped away, spewing black exhaust, blood began to pool around the fallen man.
It all happened in broad daylight, under a sun that beat down relentlessly.
There were others on the street, but no one paid any mind.
They were simply relieved it wasn't them, grateful not to have been hit by a stray bullet, and hurried away.
This was the kind of place Kanghyeok lived.
In this shabby, run-down corner of a foreign land—inhabited by Mexicans, African Americans, Russians, and the local sun-tanned Caucasians—he was a rare sight: a Northeast Asian.
Click.
Having witnessed the man's death through the gap in his window, Kanghyeok lowered the blinds.
The light was cut off, plunging the room into darkness and making the sweltering air feel even more palpable.
Kanghyeok leaned his back against the wall and pulled a cigarette from his pocket. Even with such a simple movement, the solid muscles of his forearm flexed and defined themselves.
Click! Whoosh!
The cigarette smoke drifted away, carried by the current from the old fan in the room.
*‘Is that three this week?’*
It was Thursday. Today.
Yet three people were already dead, and the locals didn't find it strange that their neighbors were dropping like flies.
Probably a gang fight.
Or maybe a hit job.
If not that, the guy probably did something to deserve it.
That's likely how they saw it.
This neighborhood was like a cemetery, a place where death and corpses were taken for granted.
Hooo…
Kanghyeok exhaled a plume of smoke and raised his gaze to the ceiling.
His long hair rustled as it brushed against the wall, and his unusually deep-set eyes narrowed.
Kanghyeok had lived here for the past year.
He hadn't returned because it was his hometown or a place filled with memories.
Kanghyeok was born and raised in South Korea until he became an adult.
Naturally, he had served in the military.
In the special forces.
He had been a UDT member, undergoing various military training exercises and even being deployed in actual combat.
But who would have known?
That he would end up living in a place like this.
A year had passed, but he still hadn't gotten used to the yellowed ceiling that greeted him every morning.
Beep, beep, beep, beep!
An alarm sounded from his laptop, the source of the stuffy heat in the room.
Time for work.
But not the company he used to work for.
Click!
Kanghyeok moved the mouse to dismiss the notification and put on the jacket hanging on his chair.
All the while, he stared intently at the chart on his laptop screen, but the horizontal graph remained motionless.
Kanghyeok thought of his old company.
It wasn't the kind of company you could brag about, but the pay had been insane.
His severance and savings were substantial, yet the sole reason he was living in a place like this and getting ready for work was that chart.
The chart showed the price of Bitcoin.
*‘When the hell is it going to go up?’*
Because this time, he wanted to live a peaceful life.
Because he wanted to rest now.
Knowing the desperate future that awaited, Kanghyeok had quit his job and invested all his money in Bitcoin.
He had invested his entire fortune, enough that he had to settle in a place like this.
But he was waiting for the moment that price line would shoot up diagonally—no, vertically—and for the past year, it had remained at a pitiful level.
Click.
Kanghyeok closed the laptop and exhaled through his nose.
No need to be anxious.
He knew Bitcoin would eventually skyrocket to an insane degree.
For now, it was a virtual currency few people knew about.
But the time would surely come when graphics cards would become scarce and the whole world would go crazy for it.
Until then, he had to live as quietly as a mouse.
There are two types of rich people.
The well-known ones.
And the ones so unknown you'd ask, "Who's that?"
It was obvious the latter lived a more comfortable life, free from parasites.
*‘No need to be anxious. Everything will go according to plan.’*
Having finished getting ready for work, Kanghyeok opened the door to the hallway.
It was right after that.
“Chino!”
A kid in his mid-teens, with dirty clothes and skin, abruptly called out the racial slur, though his face seemed devoid of malice.
Kanghyeok glanced impassively at the kid and the one next to him with a nasty look in his eyes, then meticulously locked his door.
Clank, clank.
It was a door that could be secured with three separate locks.
Click!
As Kanghyeok fastened the final lock, the kid spoke to him again.
“Chino, you going to work?”
This kid, whose name he didn't even know, spoke to him in a familiar tone.
But the voice of the one next to him, the one with the nasty eyes, was completely different.
“Dumbass.”
It was a voice so hostile that even Kanghyeok, who avoided most confrontations in his desire to live quietly, turned to look.
“The older guys said it. That you're a dumbass. If you can't even get angry at your age, you're a dumbass.”
The kid's gaze toward Kanghyeok was anything but friendly.
He was the type to become infinitely cruel to anyone he deemed weaker than himself.
Kanghyeok stared at him blankly. The kid flinched for a moment, then twisted his lips, his pride wounded.
“Fuck, what? Not gonna look down? Want me to gouge 'em out?”
Kanghyeok looked at him a little longer, then smirked.
He was on his way to work.
He didn't have time to deal with a punk like that.
“Hey! Stop right there!”
Thump.
He felt a small impact on his back, as if the kid had thrown something, but Kanghyeok didn't even glance back.
“I'll kill you one day, Chino!”
The kid's voice followed Kanghyeok.
How could someone so young show such malice?
This was why one's environment was so important.
This was a neighborhood where people died and no one batted an eye, where the police were in bed with the gangs and did nothing but suck their thumbs.
Expecting reason and common sense to survive here was asking too much.
“Hah!”
Feeling an odd tightness in his chest, Kanghyeok put a cigarette between his lips and shoved his hands in his pockets.
He walked the rest of the way to his destination just like that.
Kanghyeok's workplace was a supermarket on 3rd Street.
The supermarket, its walls covered in graffiti, was owned by a middle-aged woman who appeared to be of Central Asian descent—a race as rare here as Kanghyeok's.
That was probably why.
Why she had hired him.
“Hello.”
The owner, who had a bad leg, smiled from behind the counter.
“You're here?”
“Yes. What should I start with?”
“Let's stock the new items and then clean the floor.”
In truth, the store wasn't large or profitable enough to need an employee. His job consisted of helping with simple chores for three or four hours a day.
“What happened to your back?”
“Is something on it?”
“Come here.”
As Kanghyeok approached the counter, the owner leaned in and sniffed his back.
“Is this soda? Who did this?”
“Just some neighborhood kids.”
“The ones from your apartment building?”
Kanghyeok simply nodded, and the owner furrowed her brow and clicked her tongue.
“Those kids are getting worse. Be careful. I heard they started hanging out with a gang recently.”
“The one with the nasty eyes?”
“Yeah, him. You know him well.”
It was just that no one else came to mind.
Just as Kanghyeok gave a small nod and turned back toward the shelves, the owner's voice came from behind him.
“You should get angry sometimes.”
Kanghyeok froze as if he'd been ambushed, then finally spoke.
“I'm fine.”
“You don't look fine.”
Looking at Kanghyeok's back, the owner sighed and narrowed her eyes.
“When you've lived as long as I have, you start to see things. Someone who's holding in their anger might look fine on the outside, but their eyes are different. Just like yours.”
Kanghyeok snorted.
*‘Angry? Me?’*
He wanted to deny it, but it was difficult.
Maybe she had hit the nail on the head.
He wasn't from this neighborhood; he was only here out of necessity. His life was unsatisfying, spent day after day watching the price of Bitcoin, wondering when it would rise.
He'd thought it was a decent life plan, but putting it into practice had revealed a life completely different from his expectations.
But he'd never thought of himself as holding in anger.
*‘Why?’*
Was it because it felt like denying his present, like regretting his decision?
“I'll give you a little extra in your pay this week, so go take a break somewhere. Alright?”
“Who will do the work?”
“I managed just fine on my own before you were here.”
It couldn't have been easy.
Kanghyeok glanced at the owner's cane leaning against the wall and silently continued stocking the shelves.
Clatter, clatter.
His hands moved slower than usual, his expression vacant.
It was probably because the owner's words were echoing in his mind.
Swoosh.
After finishing the stocking, Kanghyeok started mopping the floor.
He pushed the mop with force, as if determined not to leave a single stain, and the owner occasionally glanced at his back with a bitter smile.
It was just past noon.
Sunlight streamed through the clean glass windows, illuminating the store floor, and the faint smell of water filled the air.
It was then.
Ding.
The door opened, and two men with familiar faces walked in.
“Hock, ptooey!”
It was obvious what kind of customers a neighborhood like this attracted.
They spat a thick glob of phlegm onto the store floor, and their bodies reeked of piss like a homeless person's.
They wore denim vests with yellowed grime around the collars and red caps—a common outfit around here.
They looked a bit older.
But they didn't look like they had jobs.
Then again, if they had jobs, would they be coming to buy alcohol at this hour?
They ignored everything else and made a beeline for the alcohol aisle.
They exchanged pointless chatter—about which woman was hot, or a fight at some bar that was fun to watch—all meaningless conversation.
Then, almost at the same time, they spotted Kanghyeok.
“Hey, yellow boy.”
That's what they called him.
The Asian man who never got angry.
There was no easier target in this place.
“Hooock, ptooey!”
He hawked up phlegm from deep in his chest and smeared it across the floor Kanghyeok had just cleaned.
Then he shoved Kanghyeok's shoulder. Kanghyeok's eyes met the owner's, but she just shook her head.
A signal not to engage.
“Hah.”
Kanghyeok breathed out through his teeth.
He stared at them blankly, his expression as devoid of emotion as he could manage.
“Whoa! Look at this bastard's eyes.”
“Is it fun messing with a dumbass?”
“No, this bastard's staring right at me. The nerve.”
“Kehehe.”
The one in the red cap grinned, grabbed a bottle of liquor from the shelf, and, without paying, twisted it open and brought it to his lips.
“You need to pay for that first.”
“Ptooey.”
At Kanghyeok's words, the man lowered the bottle, scowled, and spat. A foul smell wafted from his plaque-filled mouth.
“Has this bastard lost his mind?”
One of them strode forward while the other licked his lips and turned toward Kanghyeok.
Kanghyeok unconsciously tightened his grip on the mop handle.
Normally, he would have just let it go.
He would have thought nothing of it.
He wouldn't have even bothered speaking to these lowlifes whose greatest achievement in life was being born white; he would have just waited for them to leave.
But why?
Something was different today.
He felt a churning in his gut.
Maybe it was because he'd heard the owner say he was holding in his anger.
Kanghyeok's eyes narrowed, and the mop handle in his tight grip creaked.
“What, you gonna take a swing?”
Thump!
The man, now close enough for Kanghyeok to feel his body heat, shoved him in the chest with a blatant sneer.
At the same time, the one in the red cap signaled for the owner to stay put. The owner flinched, flustered.
Creak.
The mop handle creaked again.
*‘Should I just let them have it?’*
He couldn't even count the number of times people had picked fights with him just for being Asian.
In this neighborhood, devoid of common sense and decency, Kanghyeok was always at the bottom of the food chain.
But that was their mistake.
Kanghyeok ran his tongue over his gums and let out a small sigh.
*‘I’ve held it in so well until now.’*
Kanghyeok had endured everything, believing that attracting attention would do him no good.
If he was going to snap like this, he should have done it long ago.
“Who gave you the nerve to sigh like that...?”
Might as well just take a punch and get it over with.
Just as Kanghyeok thought that.
Vrrrrrmmm.
The sound of a car engine pulling into the supermarket parking lot drew everyone's attention. It was a luxury sedan, the kind you would never see in a neighborhood like this.
“What the...?”
The man in the cap shot the owner a look, as if asking what the car was, but she just shook her head.
Just then, the car door opened, and a Caucasian woman stepped out from the driver's side.
A sharp suit, a clean face.
An elegant posture, born from a ramrod-straight spine.
She exuded an aura that screamed she was someone the locals wouldn't even dare to look at.
Click, clack.
Her low-heeled shoes clicked as she approached the supermarket and opened the door.
The men surrounding Kanghyeok, flustered by the stranger's arrival, instinctively took a step back.
More than anything, the fact that she was walking toward them was enough to intimidate them.
As an indescribable atmosphere filled the supermarket, Kanghyeok muttered her name like a groan.
“Leila...”
Despite her name being called, Leila approached with a blank expression and spoke.
“It's been a while.”
Do they know each other?
Someone like her and this dumbass?
The two men who had been harassing Kanghyeok were completely taken aback as Leila continued.
“I've come to escort you.”
And when Leila bowed her head to Kanghyeok, the two men were even more stunned.