Chapter 22

Jaeha finished work early and went to the cooking academy to complete the taro chicken stew. Concerned that the food might get cold, he wrapped the entire enamel pot in a bundle as soon as he got home, carefully insulating it with a thick cloth. Then, he took a small iron cauldron, washed the rice, and set it to steam. Once the rice only needed to rest, he went to shower.

By the time he checked the clock, it was already eight. Director Jang should have been returning soon. Jaeha thought about calling him, but he hesitated, not wanting to seem overbearing.

The day had been like any other, yet an inexplicable unease had settled deep in his chest. It took him some time to figure out its source: the chilling undertone of the call from Jang Changsik. Jaeha’s intuition was rarely wrong. By cruel coincidence, a commotion erupted at the entrance at that exact moment. Jaeha had been dozing on the sofa while waiting for Director Jang, but the noise from the foyer jolted him upright.

Something was wrong.

The sounds echoing through the entryway were far from ordinary.

“Executive Director! Over here…” a voice called out.

“Director Jang!”

Jang Taegeon moved one hand from the hallway wall to press against his side, where his clothes were soaked in deep crimson. Park Myeongsun supported him from beneath one arm, though even the large man seemed strained under Taegeon’s weight. Unable to stand, Taegeon reached for the wall again, but his hand slipped, and he began to slide helplessly toward the floor.

“Jang Taegeon!” Jaeha shouted as a streak of blood arced across the cream-colored wall.

“Executive Director, take his right side,” Myeongsun urged. “Please.”

Jaeha rushed forward, pulling Taegeon’s weight against himself.

The man’s body felt deathly cold. His dark trousers had initially hidden the blood, but now Jaeha could see the fabric was completely saturated. Blood had poured from Taegeon’s abdomen in such volume that it immediately soaked through Jaeha’s loungewear as well. The sheer amount sent his heart into a frantic, terrified rhythm.

Up close, Taegeon’s eyes were unfocused and glassy. His pallid face bore no resemblance to the man who had strolled through the door after his previous injury, perfectly composed as he lifted his shirt and calmly explained that the blood was not his.

Struggling to regain control, Jaeha tore his gaze away, unable to bear looking any longer.

“Does Janghan have a private physician?” Myeongsun nodded grimly.

“He’s already on his way. I am deeply sorry, Executive Director. Things should never have reached this point.”

“Forget that. Get the first-aid kit. We need to stop the bleeding, Myeongsun.”

They couldn’t carry Taegeon up to the second floor, so Jaeha guided him into the ground-floor bedroom and lowered him onto the bed with painstaking care.

“The medical kit,” Jaeha repeated sharply.

Myeongsun nodded once and hurried out.

For several seconds, Taegeon’s gaze wandered through empty space. Then his eyes found Jaeha, and his bloodless lips parted. Jaeha sat on the edge of the bed and leaned close, pressing his ear toward Taegeon’s mouth so he wouldn’t have to strain himself. Taegeon’s whisper was frail, but the jagged bite in his voice remained.

“I’m gonna sleep for a bit, so don’t go having an affair with Park Myeongsun. Stay put. If I wake up and catch the two of you at it, I’m cutting Myeongsun’s dick off.”

“I’m not having an affair. What the hell are you even talking about?” Jaeha fired back, his expression rigid. “And you cannot go to sleep. You cannot lose consciousness.” His concern ran so deep that his features had hardened into an impenetrable mask, sealing every other emotion behind it.

While they waited for Myeongsun to return, Jaeha pulled Taegeon’s weakening hand away and pressed directly against the wound himself. It took firm, unrelenting pressure to slow the flow, yet Taegeon had barely been holding his side at all. The blood refused to stop. Jaeha felt as though he were losing his mind. His heart hammered so violently that every beat seemed to strike the inside of his ribs.

How did this happen…?

This was devastatingly different from the last time.

Taegeon had been able to speak and move normally then, but now his body was failing in Jaeha’s hands. Terror seized him with such force that it bordered on madness. Lee Jaeha had never endured anxiety this agonizing in his life. When he realized Taegeon’s body temperature was still falling, nausea churned violently through his stomach. Taegeon’s complexion grew paler by the second, and each time Jaeha noticed the change, he pressed harder against the wound, desperately willing the bleeding to subside. He must have used too much force because a low groan slipped from Taegeon’s lips.

“Ugh.”

Even then, Taegeon managed a faint smirk. His glassy eyes followed Jaeha’s every movement. “Are you sulking? Why are you pressing so damn hard?”

The sheer audacity of his humor made Jaeha’s blood boil. His eyes began to sting, threatening to redden. Something heavy and suffocating swelled inside him, an emotion he could scarcely name. It hovered on the verge of exploding, or perhaps hardening into a block of ice that would remain frozen for a thousand years.

Jaeha’s reply emerged strangled. “Sulking? How can you even say that when you’re bleeding out…?”

“Then why are you so angry?” Taegeon asked.

Jaeha said nothing.

Taegeon watched him through fading vision. “Or maybe… are you sad?”

It was absurd that he could strike directly at the truth even while his consciousness eroded. When Taegeon reached for him, Jaeha jerked his hand away and looked toward the door. He needed the first-aid kit, but he was equally terrified that if he opened his mouth again, he might say something he could never take back.

He had never experienced anything like this. His entire body trembled with fear for another person, seized by sudden, creeping waves of terror that seemed to rise from somewhere beyond his control. Every one of these feelings was foreign to him.

“Executive Director!” Myeongsun burst back into the bedroom.

Jaeha scrambled to his feet, his face as pale as a burial shroud. He seized the medical kit, layered several thick wads of cotton together, and poured the coagulant directly over the wound, unable even to manage the basic precaution of sanitizing it first.

The gash was roughly five centimeters across. It was smaller than the previous injury but incomparably deeper, as though Taegeon had been gutted with a butcher’s knife.

Jaeha piled on more coagulant and pressed the cotton firmly into place. His hands were drenched in crimson, and the sheets beneath Taegeon were completely ruined, but none of that mattered.

“It hurts,” Taegeon murmured, his voice hollow and strangely detached. His pupils were blown wide, and the sight intensified the horror clawing through Jaeha’s chest.

Even though his palm was pressed only against the abdominal muscles, he could feel Taegeon’s pulse hammering frantically beneath his hand. His heart rate had likely surged because his body was no longer receiving enough blood. The sympathetic nervous system had gone into overdrive, accelerating his pulse and dilating his pupils.

As the basic medical facts of massive hemorrhage surfaced in Jaeha’s memory, dread tightened around his throat. He was watching the theory unfold in real time. He did not want to imagine what would happen if Taegeon’s blood pressure dropped any further. He knew he had to act, yet he had already exhausted everything he knew how to do.

Helplessness paralyzed him.

The only thing left was to keep talking, to keep Taegeon from slipping into unconsciousness.

Silently, Jaeha prayed to anyone who might listen. He prayed that everything would be all right, that someone would arrive, that someone would save this Alpha. He could not bear to look at his own hands, slick and red with the blood he was fighting so desperately to contain.

The doorbell rang, and Myeongsun dashed out of the room like a lightning bolt. Moments later, chaos erupted in the hallway, and he returned, dragging a middle-aged man by the collar. Jaeha couldn’t remove his hands from the wound, but his face brightened slightly when he saw the stranger. At that moment, nothing could have been more welcome than Taegeon’s private physician.

“Let go of me!” the man snapped as Myeongsun shoved him into the bedroom.

Jaeha stared at him, momentarily blank, his blood-soaked hands still gripping the injury. He wanted to scream at the doctor to examine Taegeon immediately, but the words stuck in his throat.

The physician, however, seemed in no rush. He placed his medical bag on the bed and glanced sourly at Taegeon. “I heard he got married, only to drag some innocent person into this mess and traumatize them. That bastard Jang Taegeon, honestly…”

“Doctor, watch your fucking tongue,” Myeongsun’s voice turned cold enough to freeze the room. “I would appreciate it if you begin the treatment immediately.”

It was the first time Jaeha had heard the large man speak with such chilling detachment.

“I’m getting to it, aren’t I?” the doctor retorted. “I was dragged out of bed and hauled across the city like a stray dog at this ungodly hour. Can’t I even complain? Why the hell do you rich bastards refuse to visit a proper emergency room and call me instead?”

This was clearly not the first time he had snapped at Myeongsun. Despite the bodyguard being nearly twice his size, the doctor remained entirely unfazed.

Jaeha offered another silent, desperate prayer, this time that the man would stop talking and examine the dying Alpha. At last, the doctor shuffled closer and peered down at the wound Jaeha was still compressing with all his strength. Although the puncture was cleaner than the previous stab wound, its jagged, cavernous depth made the physician visibly grimace.

“Do you have to stare at him like you’re watching some tragic horror film?” the doctor grumbled. He pulled a pair of blue latex gloves from his bag and snapped them over his hands with a sharp pop. Then he shoved Jaeha’s shoulder aside with his knee. “Move. You’re only getting in the way.”

With professional disregard, the doctor brushed Jaeha’s bloodstained hands away and retrieved a bottle of sterile saline from his leather bag. “What are you, some kind of medical professional?”

“No.”

“Then get out. I’m going to stitch him up.”

A desperate, agonizing urge to plant his feet and refuse burned in Jaeha’s throat. He could not bear the thought of leaving Taegeon’s side. Then, even Myeongsun gave him a grave, pleading look. Jaeha had no choice but to surrender the space and step into the hallway. He paced the corridor like a caged animal, his nerves fraying with every turn.

A short while later, Myeongsun slipped through the bedroom door and left it slightly ajar.

Through the narrow opening, Jaeha watched the doctor thread an IV needle expertly into Taegeon’s thick forearm and connect it to a fresh bag of blood.

Myeongsun stepped fully into the hallway and bowed deeply. “Executive Director, you must be terrified. I assure you, an incident like this will not happen again.”

“He came home bleeding last time, too,” Jaeha replied, his voice drained of life. “Director Jang specifically warned me that incidents like this would happen frequently.”

“Well… yes, but it is exceedingly rare for the boss to return in such critical condition. He vouched for his own capabilities.”

Jaeha’s expression hardened into porcelain. Exceedingly rare. Myeongsun’s careful phrasing, particularly his refusal to claim that it would never happen again, confirmed that whatever violent turf war had caused this was far from over.

The corporate pieces began assembling rapidly in Jaeha’s mind. “Is this about Myeongwon Construction?” he asked, his voice dropping to absolute zero.

Myeongwon Construction was a rival corporate syndicate that had rapidly cannibalized its competitors by kidnapping and threatening the chief executives of successful listed companies, forcing them into hostile mergers and acquisitions. Because coercing a merger through violence required virtually no capital, Myeongwon’s corporate body had swollen into an unstoppable leviathan.

From the intelligence he had gathered before the marriage, Jaeha knew that Chairman Jang Changsik harbored venomous resentment toward the upstart faction.

Myeongwon’s chief executive was reportedly a junior from the Chairman’s hometown, underworld language for a thug who had once served beneath Changsik before breaking away to establish his own power.

With Janghan Construction struggling in recent quarters, Myeongwon had exploited its weakness without mercy. Changsik, whose greed knew no limits, would never stand aside and allow a former subordinate to dismantle his legacy.

The conflict had grown even more volatile when Jang Changsik launched an aggressive bid for the multibillion-won Millennial New City development. Myeongwon had entered the same contest.

Legitimate development firms had already fled the bidding war, terrified of the inevitable bloodshed that followed whenever two gang-affiliated conglomerates collided. For Changsik, withdrawing now would amount to a catastrophic surrender of territory.

It was horrifyingly clear what bloody orders the ambitious old Chairman had given his grandson.

Myeongsun averted his eyes, answering the question with suffocating silence.

That was confirmation enough.

Without another word, Jaeha seized his car keys and phone from the entryway console and strode toward the front door.

“Executive Director!”

Myeongsun called after him, but Jaeha did not spare him a glance.

He pressed the button for the private elevator, then looked down and immediately regretted not washing his hands. Dried blood clung to his skin in a tight, restrictive layer, pulling uncomfortably whenever he bent his fingers.

The stiffness would not prevent him from gripping a steering wheel, but the violent tremors coursing through his hands made him wonder whether he could drive at all.

Jaeha drew a shuddering breath and forced his racing heart to steady.

If Jang Taegeon intended to sacrifice himself relentlessly for his family’s empire, enduring one brutal injury after another, then Lee Jaeha would have to step into the fray and shield him.

It was a twisted, self-destructive expression of love, born from a man who had never experienced affection and had now devoted himself completely to a love that might never be returned.

The elevator doors opened onto the underground garage.

Jaeha had taken only a few steps toward his parked sedan when a figure emerged from the shadows.

“Executive Director.”

Jaeha stopped.

“Secretary Go?”

Chairman Jang Changsik’s right-hand man stood before him. Immaculately dressed, the fixer bowed with practiced respect before opening the rear door of an idling black luxury sedan.

“The chairman wishes to see you. Would you be so kind as to accompany me?”

At those polite, poisonous words, Jaeha’s face turned to ice.

The chairman had reacted far too quickly. He had managed to intercept Jaeha in his own garage before Jaeha could even leave the building.

Suddenly, the old man’s true and sickening intentions became perfectly clear.

Taegeon being gutted like a fish that night had not been a tragic consequence of a turf war. It had been a calculated sacrifice within Changsik’s broader strategy.

The bastard had anticipated Jaeha’s response. He had counted on Jaeha stepping directly into the political line of fire.

—Don’t do anything unnecessary.

Taegeon’s earlier warning returned with razor-sharp clarity.

Jaeha understood men like Jang Taegeon intimately. The Alpha was not the sort of predator who granted second chances, nor would he tolerate such a blatant violation of his boundaries.

Crossing this line would destroy the fragile balance between them.

The warm, quiet evenings they had shared would never return. There would be no more mingling of their bodies beneath the convenient and desperate pretense of a sympathetic rut.

Taegeon might never again set foot inside the estate where Jaeha waited for him.

Yet the alternative was unthinkable.

Jaeha could not endure the sight of Taegeon’s eyes glazing over a second time, his heart frantically pumping blood that would never return.

What Taegeon had explicitly forbidden, Lee Jaeha had no choice but to do.

He did not need the Alpha to look back at him.

Jaeha was walking willingly toward his own destruction, bearing the agonizing weight of first love. He was prepared to sacrifice everything to force a salvation upon a man who would violently reject it. At the core of his frozen heart, he simply could not bear the thought of Taegeon taking another blade to the abdomen merely to serve as the Chairman’s disposable cleaner.

“Executive Director, we are departing,” Secretary Go murmured.

Jaeha climbed into the car.

For one brief moment, regret flickered through him.

He thought of the morning he had awakened in Taegeon’s room and wished he had taken the time to look around. He had wanted to know how Taegeon lived, what he kept near him, and what objects remained beside him while he slept.

Jaeha fell silent.

Outside the window, Seoul passed beneath a veil of darkness. Artificial lights tore through the gloom, leaving the night fractured and incomplete.

Lee Jaeha’s regret dimmed with the passing city and gradually dissolved into something indistinct.

Except for the most trivial details, he never regretted what he did that day.

***