A brief commotion brought on by unease.
Jang Yijung had simply ignored it, but thanks to Seo Sinwoo, the situation looked to be nearly wrapping up. Until Seo Sinwoo got hit, that is.
Seo Sinwoo had whispered something to the man as he turned away. He hadn't seen the shape of his mouth, but going by his expression, it seemed like words offered to console him.
Had that provoked the man instead? In the end, a violent incident broke out.
Maybe he'd been hit harder than it looked, because Seo Sinwoo staggered with a nosebleed.
“I-I'm fine… just startled for a sec.”
He said he was fine, but the corners of his mouth were trembling.
Jang Yijung caught on that Seo Sinwoo's state was off. For now he went along to the restroom as Seo Sinwoo wished.
Seo Sinwoo turned the faucet with a frantic motion, then plunged his head into the cold water.
A moment later, dripping with water, he says:
“Hit me once.”
A voice trembling miserably. The nosebleed was still running down his pale chin. Jang Yijung thought he'd misheard.
“What?”
“Quick.”
“…What kind of nonsense is that?”
Seo Sinwoo quivered as if terrified.
“Please, just once…”
Then, as if unable to endure it, he made to ram his head into the wall. Jang Yijung quickly raised his hand and stopped the self-harm.
“Hk, hk…”
Even breathing looked like a struggle for him. The body convulsing, the way he clutched his chest with a look of suffocation. Jang Yijung narrowed his eyes.
Trauma?
It was a symptom commonly seen in Hunters who go in and out of Gates. Being bound by a painful memory of the past and throwing a fit.
Usually in such cases there was a trigger that set off the trauma.
Why all of a sudden…
Jang Yijung turned the gears in his head. There was only one thing he could point to.
“You trash bastard!”
Was getting hit on the head the catalyst? Violence creating trauma was common enough.
But if the subject was this man, the thought that struck him first was that it was unexpected.
Of all people, for the man who served as the “Boss's” right hand to crumble under violence. And to the punch of a wretched civilian he could kill anytime he set his mind to it, at that.
Did that mean a fear that enormous had been etched into him?
The cause was easily guessed.
The Boss.
Was there any being besides the Boss who could plant this much fear in Seo Sinwoo?
According to the information gathered so far, the Boss was particularly violent toward Seo Sinwoo. No—he was violent toward everyone, but he was especially vicious to Seo Sinwoo alone.
Making him imitate a dog, putting out cigarettes on his tongue—even in a short time, the punishments Jang Yijung had heard of numbered several kinds. To the other members he only occasionally wielded violence, but he didn't engage in that kind of unnecessary tormenting.
It was a faint voice, but a murmur that lent certainty to the conjecture came.
“Ugh, Boss…”
Seo Sinwoo couldn't even recognize who the person in front of him was.
He merely begged to be hit in a servile posture. When Jang Yijung ignored him, he grabbed Jang Yijung's hand and struggled to swing it somehow.
Don't tell me he was forgiven by demanding a beating on himself. And so, even now…
Cruelly trained.
In this state, there was even a possibility the trauma had been planted on purpose. Jang Yijung's eyes sank coldly.
But Seo Sinwoo's heart was entirely different from what Jang Yijung thought.
If the Boss were here, I'd have taken one solid hit and the penalty would've lifted nicely.
He was frustrated to the point of madness.
In the end he gave up his expectations of Jang Yijung. Seo Sinwoo pulled a knife from his chest pocket with a trembling hand. The instant the glinting blade was about to plunge down toward his own arm—
Grip.
Jang Yijung seized Seo Sinwoo's wrist.
At the force gripping his wrist hard, the knife dropped to the floor. Jang Yijung kicked the knife far away.
“Ugh, fuck, let go!”
Jang Yijung pinned the thrashing Seo Sinwoo against the wall beside the sink.
“Seo Sinwoo, calm down.”
“It hurts. I said it hurts, fuck…”
He still hadn't come to his senses and was crying out in pain.
A restroom with just the two of them. There was nothing causing Seo Sinwoo any pain. It seemed he was confusing the memory of when he'd been punished with reality.
Seo Sinwoo began to gasp as if he were underwater. Maybe his neck area felt tight, because he roughly undid the shirt buttons with one hand.
“Breathe slowly.”
“Hk, hk…”
Jang Yijung tried calmly to soothe him.
“Slowly.”
“Hk, kkng, kak…”
“…”
Can't he hear me?
Through their pressed-together bodies, he could feel Seo Sinwoo's chest heaving in ragged breaths.
There was no sign of it improving. Seo Sinwoo was being swallowed by his own breathing. From where Jang Yijung stood, it wouldn't be strange if he fainted on the spot.
“Mph…!”
A large hand covered Seo Sinwoo's face. It was Jang Yijung. With his pinky up, he covered the lower half of Seo Sinwoo's face like a mask.
“…!”
His nose and mouth were crudely sealed with one hand. Seo Sinwoo thrashed his body violently. It was an instinctive movement to breathe.
Fuck, is he planning to kill me like this?
Seo Sinwoo felt betrayed by the Association's spy.
And after all I did for you…
Crackle!
“!”
A sharp pain.
Jang Yijung reflexively pulled his hand away. At the same time, a translucent window popped up before Seo Sinwoo's eyes.
[Penalty triggered: 〈Sealing〉 now active. (00:05)]
Maybe because the attack had been weak, the time was shorter than before. While Seo Sinwoo was reading the text in his swimming vision—
“…Stay still. I won't do anything bad.”
The blond man spat out a line like a third-rate punk and reached out his hand.
“Up.”
The lower half of his face is seized again.
His shoes pushed frantically against the floor.
When the resistance grew fierce, Jang Yijung wedged a knee between Seo Sinwoo's legs to pin him. With thin trousers between them, the two men's thighs rubbed together. No matter how hard Seo Sinwoo strained, the solid leg showed not the slightest sign of moving.
The face that had been so composed began to flush red, as if it had never been otherwise. Seo Sinwoo reached out his hands haphazardly. Jang Yijung's mask, caught by his hand, came off.
“…! …!”
His blunt nails scratched along Jang Yijung's arm, but it was useless. Having lost his ability and trapped between the wall and the huge body, he was powerless. Emotionless red eyes stared down at Seo Sinwoo.
At a glance, a sight like a murder scene.
But Jang Yijung had no other intent. He really had covered the other's mouth mechanically, for the other's sake.
Jang Yijung thought blankly, with a calm expression.
…It's hot.
The breath touching his hand was terribly hot. Because the man flailed to open his mouth somehow, a damp tongue brushed his palm now and then.
By the way, overall, for a tall man, the resistance he put up was less than a bug's.
Not knowing the other's true feelings, Jang Yijung prattled carelessly.
“You know… you really ought to work out a little.”
Then, ignoring Seo Sinwoo's desperate thrashing, he held the position.
Before long the struggling gradually subsided. By now Seo Sinwoo was so out of breath his eyes were rolling back.
“…”
The strength-drained body slid down the wall. Only then did Jang Yijung take his knee and hand away. When he released the other wrist he'd been holding, Seo Sinwoo plopped down onto the floor outright.
“Haa, ha…”
Seo Sinwoo, his face flushed as if about to burst, gasped feebly for breath. When he blinked reflexively, the tears pooled there fell.
Jang Yijung gazed blankly at the sight from a step away, then checked his palm. His palm was damp with all sorts of bodily fluids. Jang Yijung wiped his hand roughly on his pants.
“You've calmed down.”
“…”
Seo Sinwoo looked up at him with a contorted face. The capillaries in his eyes had burst.
“So you know how to glare, too.”
Jang Yijung said in a voice of curiosity. He lightly bent his knees to meet eye level.
“I thought all you could do was smile.”
Jang Yijung wiped the blood off Seo Sinwoo's face with the sleeve of his jacket. It was a rough touch.
“Do you make that face when the Boss hits you too?”
Seo Sinwoo slowly closed his eyes and opened them again without a word. At some point he'd gone expressionless. It seemed he didn't even have the energy left to smile. He just stared hollowly into empty air.
Jang Yijung knew instinctively.
That this was a true feeling Seo Sinwoo had let slip without realizing. Probably the first genuine face he'd encountered.
In the truth glimpsed faintly, there was a man who looked worn out.
Is he not in the organization because he wants to be?
Enough that the thought came naturally.
And no wonder, since today Seo Sinwoo had had any number of chances to kill the target. But he hadn't killed him.
“I caused a bit of an accident at a place I went to work recently. Got chewed out hard.”
The face that had smiled as if speaking of something trivial, all while wearing a livid bruise, came to mind.
Were the blistered tongue and the wounds on his hands also traces of being chewed out for causing an “accident” similar to this?
It was a question that had arisen after hearing Yeom Hajae's story.
There was a high chance the “benefactor” Yeom Hajae was searching for was Seo Sinwoo. The reason the Boss had designated Yeom Hajae, of all people, as the target this time was, perhaps…
“Ugh…”
Jang Yijung snapped out of his thoughts. Seo Sinwoo had collapsed completely onto the floor. The direction his outstretched fingertips pointed held the dropped knife.
His eyes narrowing, Jang Yijung kicked the knife away.
“Get up.”
Seo Sinwoo, taking Jang Yijung's hand and rising surprisingly obediently, staggered. When he lifted his head, he was once again smiling as if nothing had happened.
“Ahem, I… wasn't trying to do anything strange.”
“If stabbing a knife into your own body isn't anything strange, then what is?”
“…I was just going to keep it on me, just in case.”
Excuses poured out smoothly from a shameless face. Had he come to his senses? Jang Yijung swallowed an inexplicable disappointment.
Jang Yijung leaned his body against the wall. He folded his arms and watched Seo Sinwoo as if keeping guard.
It's too early to jump to conclusions.
Harboring a faded suspicion.
That's when.
“Kek!”
Seo Sinwoo, who'd seemed to have calmed down, vomited a gush of blood into the sink.
