Reunion (2)
Reunion (2)
Kim Tae-oh moved in, holding a dagger.
Those movements—I knew them better than anyone.
The brat I raised together with Jae-yeong...
The one who tried to save me in my past life, who died because of me...
Park Gi.
I stamped my feet, unable to hold back my laughter.
"Whoa...? I thought it might be, but fuck—Park Gi, that dumbass bastard... he actually confessed to me once~ Ahaha? I'm gonna tease the hell out of him later, just you wait~"
"...?"
Two men staring at me.
Thankfully, they were foreigners.
Couldn't understand a word, so they probably just thought I was crazy.
I looked back at Kim Tae-oh and Park Ji-hoon.
Maybe because their bodies were young—the two of them already looked exhausted.
Just as I thought, Park Ji-hoon and Kim Tae-oh began letting a few attacks through.
But in the end, they finished handling what had to be close to a hundred of them and came this way.
Park Ji-hoon snapped the neck of the man he was holding.
With an ugly crack of bone, Ji-hoon walked toward the soldiers and tossed the man aside. As he got close to Oh Tae-hyeon, Oh Tae-hyeon clapped loudly, looking delighted.
Park Ji-hoon saw that and said quietly.
"Huff... huff... fuck... this is exhausting."
"Huff... I concur..."
"You get it, right? If they take a hostage now, we're screwed."
"Huff... yeah."
Park Ji-hoon was the first to bolt, and the others shot away too—but the soldiers didn't bother blocking them.
Watching this, Oh Tae-hyeon laughed.
"Hahahah! Wait... you thought I'd... take a hostage? Me?! Against you guys? Why would I bother? Adorable~"
Park Ji-hoon and Kim Tae-oh looked at the ones who remained.
Unlike the ten soldiers in uniform who'd joined the fight earlier, the twenty who stayed gave off an entirely different feeling. Something wrong.
Oh Tae-hyeon grinned as he spoke.
"From now on, how about one-on-one?"
"".....""
"Doesn't that sound like fun?!"
At Oh Tae-hyeon's words, the two at the front approached Park Ji-hoon and Kim Tae-oh. Park Ji-hoon laughed as he spoke.
"Hey, one-on-one's fine, but fuck's sake, let's rest a bit first. Honestly, you throw a hundred guys at us and then go straight to one-on-one? That's not right, you bastard."
I'd been watching Park Ji-hoon and Kim Tae-oh with interest when I suddenly saw the two of them sprinting in this direction.
And right after, the one-on-one matches began.
That idiot Park Ji-hoon barely managed to take down two and then, must've been exhausted—took a solid hit right to the face and collapsed just like that.
In that same stretch of time, Kim Tae-oh took down his third and planted himself in front of me and the sleeping Da-yeon.
"Wait... I'll... I'll protect you..."
"Pfft?"
Kim Tae-oh must have meant it with absolute sincerity, but I simply could not hold back the laugh that burst out of me.
And at that, Kim Tae-oh turned to look back at me with an expression like he was seeing a genuine madwoman.
I'd known they were out there somewhere.
From the moment I met Jae-hyeong—no, from the moment I met Ji-hoon at kindergarten—I knew I wasn't the only one who'd shown up.
But Park Gi, of all people, was Kim Tae-oh... what a ridiculous situation this was.
I held back the laughter spilling out of me and spoke.
"Hey, untie me."
"...Huh?"
"Park Gi. Who do I look like to you...?"
"...What does that have to do with right now...?"
"I said untie this, you little shit."
Kim Tae-oh flinched, realizing I'd called him Park Gi.
As if possessed by something, with his exhausted body, he came to me and cut the rope around my ankles.
I turned my back to him naturally and held out my hands, and Kim Tae-oh, as naturally as if it were instinct, untied my wrists too.
The onlookers stared at this scene in disbelief.
"Hand it over."
When I held out my hand—as if hypnotized, as if his body remembered—
Kim Tae-oh held out the dagger he'd been carrying.
"Ah... you sons of bitches... my wrists hurt."
I loosened my wrists and bit down on the dagger's grip, slick with sweat and blood,
then casually tied my hair back with the headband that had been around my wrist.
I slashed my tight, long training pants up to the thigh with the knife and then took hold of the dagger. The fluent-Korean-speaking foreigner who'd been fighting Kim Tae-oh laughed as he spoke.
"That's a dangerous object, you know~ keep playing with that and our Boss is gonna get mad at you?!"
"What the hell is he saying, this dumbass..."
The foreigner, who'd been laughing at me for a long moment, rushed in quickly and reached out his arm.
I naturally caught the wrist of the man who'd so carelessly extended his arm,
and with one swift, clean stroke, I sliced through the tendons in his arm—literally shredded them.
It happened in less than a second.
The man's blood began seeping out, spreading slowly in a bloom...
Only then did the white man grasp what had happened and start screaming.
"GAAAAAAAH!!!!"
I faced forward, beaming brightly, and yanked on the skin of his limp, strengthless arm—
the man came lurching toward me, pouring an enormous amount of blood.
"AAAAAAGH!!!!"
I twisted the man's blood-soaked arm and pressed the sole of my flat shoe hard against his throat.
"Damn, you startled me... why are you screaming like a woman...? That's seriously throwing me off."
"....."
"A voice that loud, you should've ditched the thug life and done some honest singing. Shame..."
Shnk-shnk-shnk!
Three more stabs into an arm that was already shredded—the man couldn't even scream, just flopped and quivered.
I turned back to Tae-oh, who stood behind me wearing an expression of pure horror, and smiled as I spoke.
"That's not how you use a knife—I told you that, didn't I? Park Gi."
"!!!!!"
And I scoffed at the soldiers, their mouths hanging open as if they'd seen a ghost.
"What're you all staring for~ you scared of me, or something?"
What the hell was he looking at?
The daughter of the famous Kim Ji-ho, the Si-yoon he had wanted so desperately to possess...
was literally sweeping through his subordinates.
No—she was just reducing them all to a brutal, miserable death.
As if... like Ga-in in that film, emotionlessly taking down zombies one after another...
Every person there must have been asking themselves how someone so young could execute those kinds of actions.
Was the stunt director world-class? Was it endless practice?
If not that, maybe... could those movements have been achieved through CG?
If the world could see this, right now... they would be horrified—no, they would faint.
I couldn't close my mouth as I stared straight ahead.
Because I loved Si-yoon too much, because I wanted her so badly,
I'd watched the films she starred in countless times.
But no matter how I thought about it, film simply could not capture these movements in their entirety.
As if numbers truly held no meaning whatsoever...
without even breathing heavily, without a single scratch...
she was killing my subordinates, making them suffer.
And one of my men spoke.
".....a... monster....."
"Oh reeeeally? Me? Really?! Park Gi! Park Gi, you asleep?! This one's calling me a monster~ Ahaha?"
"Yes, Boss. I heard him too."
"Ahaha."
A monster, drenched in blood and laughing brightly...
Hanseong's little monster wasn't even comparable...
A monster—in the truest sense of the word, the word itself made flesh...
My amazement at the one who came with Hanseong's little monster felt hollow now,
because the real monster was someone else entirely...
A true monster, hidden inside a beauty that seemed to have reached the very limit of aesthetics.
The man who was Oh Tae-hyeon's closest aide, his left arm. He touched his gun with the bone-deep, instinctive certainty that fighting this woman of such lovely appearance meant certain defeat, and he looked to Oh Tae-hyeon.
The instant Oh Tae-hyeon gave permission, the aide raised his pistol—and toppled straight backward.
With a knife grip now embedded in his face.
The same thing happened to the man who was Oh Tae-hyeon's right arm.
It was as if she had eyes in the back of her head—the moment anyone so much as touched a firearm in the middle of the fight, they went down immediately, as if they'd pressed a button to forfeit their own life.
Before anyone realized, the area around Oh Tae-hyeon was empty of everyone except himself...
No—it was full, but only with the hideously slain.
Si-yoon walked calmly toward Oh Tae-hyeon, who stood dripping cold sweat.
"You were all full of leisure earlier. Why so quiet now, sweetheart~"
"..."
"Sweetheart... aren't you looking forward to it, like you said? I might be getting a little excited myself..."
"....."
Park Gi... no, the man who was now Kim Tae-oh, could do nothing but stare blankly straight ahead.
Those movements... that way of speaking—everything was familiar.
But the situation was impossible. It made no sense...
Except for when she tormented or cussed out Park Ji-hoon, Si-yoon's every action was normally so exceedingly feminine...
But even so...
The reason Park Ji-hoon took those hits and never resisted a single one, even 'served' her...
That peculiar confidence Kim Si-yoon had from the very first meeting, calling him disgusting just for glancing at her...
From the smallest details, one by one, every puzzle piece began snapping into place.
Of course, I never thought I was the only one who'd been reborn.
What were the odds of that...
But still—for Kim Si-yoon, of all people, to be my Boss...
From a woman so slender and delicate, there was no way that massive back—the back of my Boss that had loomed so huge—could ever appear to me...
Yet seeing her movements now... that she was the same monster from those days, that part was unchanged.
Watching her kill her opponents agonizingly, without a shred of hesitation...
Si-yoon's back began to look colossal.
No... seeing the way not even a single strand of her hair got touched...
it was like she'd become even more of a monster than in the past.
Watching that agile, light body move even more fluidly, even faster...
Without a doubt... she wouldn't lose even when compared to how she used to be.
Those movements were probably the essence of modern dagger techniques, extracted and reshaped into the Boss's own style...
That was how the Boss always was.
Because he was a monster whose talent for combat had no visible end...
Because that was why we revered him, and why merely standing at his side was a glory in itself.
Even after displaying movements like that, Si-yoon was still rotating her arms and ankles as if her body hadn't loosened up enough...
About ten remained, but with her body drenched in blood...
she stretched, and then she began spinning the dagger in one hand—flamboyantly, like twirling a pen.
Even that gesture overlapped with the past, and something inside my chest prickled and grew hot.
If it were the Boss...
right now, while the enemy was too terrified to approach, he'd cock his head, smile, and say one thing.
'What's wrong? You... scared of me?'
"What's wrong? You... scared of me?"
"....."
My body began to tremble.
Awe? Excitement? Enjoyment? Joy at reuniting? It was all of those, but slightly different.
If you failed to stand beside the Boss when he started wearing that expression just because you were tired, then afterward...
you were always, always fucked.
I, who never used the word fucked even up to the brink of death—the reason I use fucked now is because it truly means you are fucked.
If there was one thing that got trained into me like Pavlov's dog over twenty years of serving the Boss...
it was stamina and mental fortitude under extreme conditions.
If we couldn't keep up with the Boss's stamina—and the Boss barely exercised to begin with—he would run us into the ground without mercy.
Until just moments ago, I'd collapsed from exhaustion...
but seeing Si-yoon, radiating murderous intent like an aura, I felt like my legs were suddenly working perfectly fine.
Seeing that smiling face even in this situation, my arm that wouldn't move began to fill with strength again.
Faced with that fathomless wildness, my mind—which had been worn down and ravaged by fatigue—grew clear.
The instant I tried to go stand beside the Boss, my eyes met the Boss's—right as she buried a knife into the shoulder of a soldier more than twice her size and started mauling him.
A smile, worn on a face drenched in blood... the Boss seemed to be at her absolute peak, and I felt a chill.
If I didn't listen to what the Boss said right now... the aftermath was too horrifying to even imagine.
"You've had plenty of fun. Sit down."
I dropped to my knees and sat on the ground exactly as I was.
"Yes, Boss!"
And the final slaughter unfolded after that...
Without even realizing it, I... my eyes were sparkling.