Chapter 62

He had assumed the cloth over his head would be removed if they were going to speak, but the man gripped his chin through the fabric instead. Geum Seoul drew in a sharp breath.

“Did you see your friend Bunhong earlier?” Gwak Chun-young asked.

Geum Seoul offered no answer, clamping his lips tight. “……”

This time, he said nothing. Geum Seoul understood instinctively that this had to be the man who killed Lee Hee-joong. Otherwise, there was no reason to abduct him from the Deputy Director’s home. In that apartment, Seoul himself had been the least valuable thing. Lee Hee-joong had brought something into the neighborhood and hidden it in the bathroom. That was why Lee Hee-joong died, why the neighborhood was torn apart, and why Geum Seoul had now been dragged here.

Geum Seoul kept silent. It was not a simple inquiry of ‘Did you see Bunhong?’ but a veiled threat. ‘You could end up just like that.’ That was what it meant.

Crack—.

Geum Seoul’s dark head suddenly snapped to the left. With nothing visible before him, he had no way of knowing a hand was swinging and took the blow completely off guard. Jolted by shock, he let out a choked gasp: ‘Hngh!’ Immediately following, fingers seized his hair through the fabric.

“Answer me,” Gwak Chun-young snarled. “An adult is speaking to you.”

“…Yes. I saw Bunhong.”

It hurt. Far more excruciating than anything Park Gil-pyeong had ever dealt out, the agony prompted Geum Seoul to hastily slide his tongue between his teeth on one side and bite down. He was terrified that another blow might inadvertently trigger the transmitter. Biting his tongue created a protective gap between his teeth.

Gwak Chun-young tugged the fistful of hair. “Gye Do-hyeop went to the neighborhood you lived in pretending to be me, didn’t he? What did he say?”

Yet considering he had grabbed him by the hair, he didn’t strike again immediately. For reasons unknown, the man’s presence loomed too close. Though the cloth dulled his sense of smell, his instincts screamed it.

“…He said he’d have me run errands,” Geum Seoul stammered. “So I ran errands.”

“Errands?”

Geum Seoul nodded frantically behind the hood. “Yes. Yes. Just errands.”

“What kind of errands?”

“He asked me to show him around town, and—mggh!” Geum Seoul cried.

This time, his mouth was smothered. When the man clamped a massive hand over his nose and mouth, crushing down, the fabric—already damp with moisture—choked off his airway entirely. Wide-eyed in panic, Geum Seoul attempted to pull his head back, but a rough palm braced heavily against the back of his skull.

“Mmph, ngh.”

With his hands and feet bound fast, he couldn’t even thrash properly. If his nose and mouth were smothered and crushed like this, he would lose consciousness in seconds. His breath seized in sharp, suffocating hitches. Starved of oxygen, his chest convulsed wildly and his toes curled inward. ‘This man is going to kill me.’

“Haaah!” he cried out in a ragged breath.

The instant the hand slackened, Geum Seoul gulped in air in frantic heaves, but obstructed by the cloth, it was nowhere near enough. Coughing repeatedly, he breathed hard enough to shake his entire frame. The damp fabric clung to his lips and pulled away with each wheeze. Tap. A broad hand rested atop his crown.

Gwak Chun-young’s hand patted his hair. “I’ll ask again. What errands did you run?”

“Ah…”

Tears streamed down from Geum Seoul’s eyes. Whether due to the airway that had barely reopened after being crushed, clear tears rolled heedlessly down his cheeks. Terror clung to him like grime.

“S-Showing him around… and h-holding the antenna so he could make… a call… and…” he stammered.

Gwak Chun-young scoffed, “Ha.”

Furrowing his brow, Gwak Chun-young looked down at the boy soaking the cloth right before his eyes. He grabbed the back of his head once more, prompting the trembling voice to turn frantic.

“It’s the truth! Really! I… I was useless, so…” His words were soaked in thick, trembling sobs. “So there was nothing else I could do, so I… I did that kind of thing to survive. It’s the truth!”

The boy’s pathetic plea of ‘Please believe me’ sounded so sorrowful that Gwak Chun-young nearly stroked the head he was holding. He had kept the face covered lest seeing it stir other impulses when there were answers he needed to extract, yet the boy had a knack for inciting pity with his voice alone.

Could it be true? Looking at the photos from when he was running errands under Park Gil-pyeong, his face looked as if it were caked in disguise, in which case he would have been even more useless. Looking down from above, Gwak Chun-young’s gaze drifted to the gap between Geum Seoul’s thighs beneath his shorts. Even those slender thighs pressed tightly together were trembling like a leaf.

“Then why did that bastard return a few days later and take you with him?” Gwak Chun-young asked.

“……”

It was the very question Geum Seoul had contemplated all the way here. He had promised the Deputy Director he wouldn’t say a word, and he genuinely intended to keep it. He wouldn’t reveal anything he had seen or heard. Which meant he had to fabricate an excuse in its stead. The reason he left that neighborhood. The reason the Deputy Director took him to his home.

“If you’re so useless, there’s no reason Deputy Director Gye would take you,” Gwak Chun-young countered.

“That’s…”

‘The thing is…’ Geum Seoul chewed his lower lip as cold sweat poured down him.

“I… I begged him to take me,” Geum Seoul blurted out. “When I ran that last errand, I begged him to take me with him, I pestered him… so he came back, and…”

Wham.

A perfectly weighted fist crashed into Geum Seoul’s brow, bleaching his vision gray. A sickening crunch—something splitting between bone and flesh—reverberated through his skull. Then came pain so savage it felt as though half his face were being carved away. His eyelid and eyebrow burned like scorched skin; his eyeball throbbed with a deep, vicious ache. His parted lips trembled violently, unable to close around even a sound.

“Hngh, kh…”

Gwak Chun-young chided coldly, “What a waste, lying with a face that pretty.”

Defying his will, tears burst forth, and something coppery and metallic kept sliding down the back of his throat. With his entire face already drenched, he had no way of telling where or how badly he had been injured. What stung and pricked at the skin of his neck were tiny crystal fragments that had flaked from his flesh and hardened into gemstone granules.

“I-It’s really the truth,” he stammered.

The terror of total blindness gnawed steadily away at Geum Seoul. Never knowing when another blow might land, having no way of telling if a gun was aimed at his head—it kept his breath catching in ragged gasps.

Geum Seoul’s voice cracked. “I…”

Something hot, impossible to discern whether blood or tears, dripped down his cheek.

“I saw the Deputy Director, and… ngh, I fell for him… I fell for him, so I asked him to take me,” he cried softly.

‘It’s true. That’s why I was in that house, why I was there. Because I liked him.’ Shrinking his frail frame, swallowing blood and tears in desperate gulps, shuddering in abject terror, that was what he conveyed.

The man fell silent for a brief, fleeting instant before pressing again.

“Ah. So you showed him your real face and seduced him with your body? Seeing how drenched in pheromones you are, you must’ve fucked him too.”

Geum Seoul nodded. Beneath the tied black cloth, bright red blood began spreading down his neck, staining the collar of his T-shirt.

Pulling back slightly, Gwak Chun-young splayed a hand heavy with rings and pressed it against Geum Seoul’s shoulder. He could feel the bone beneath. He could feel the ragged panting.

By now, Gwak was curious about the face hidden beneath blood and tears. He had let Lee Hee-joong off too easily after listening to the man chatter for only a few minutes; if a face this perfectly suited to his tastes began chirping at him, he might be tempted into granting mercy that had not been earned. He had meant to keep the boy covered until the end, yet his fingers itched. Gwak Chun-young tapped the hem of the black cloth with one finger and let it trail lower. The back of his hand brushed suggestively over Geum Seoul’s heaving chest before drifting down. He wanted to close his hands around those thighs that had been catching his eye all along.

“Boss,” a man called out from behind.

Just then, the man standing behind stepped forward and whispered into his ear. It was a business call. Pulling his hand back with an irritated grimace, Gwak Chun-young jerked his chin.

Gwak Chun-young commanded, “Leave him there for a bit. I’m going to finish this.”

“Yes, sir.”

Since it concerned his overseas ventures, the call couldn’t be deferred; he had to step away momentarily. As he moved away, Gwak Chun-young pivoted slightly.

He threw back a stern warning. “Don’t touch him.”

A brief affirmative followed the warning. Still panting, Geum Seoul waited for the man’s footsteps to recede. Stinging pain forced him to keep his eyes shut tight, making this lull an immense relief. If he had taken even one more blow, he might have hyperventilated and passed out.

He wanted to count how much time had passed since arriving here. While riding in the vehicle earlier, he had counted each digit, but once dragged out, he hadn’t had the presence of mind. He had said he’d come within thirty minutes. The Deputy Director had promised that he would make sure he won.

‘If you’re going to keep collapsing, don’t walk—crawl on all fours. Or ride in a stroller.’

What he had meant back then was: ‘Why do you collapse so easily?’ Even though they hadn’t known each other long, the Deputy Director’s blunt phrasing was strangely easy to decipher.

‘Your rate’s priced at market rate, but your health changes with the seasons.’

The man’s tone in his memory was flippant, threaded with playful malice. What would he say if he could see Seoul now? Maybe he would ask whether some two-bit punk had actually frightened him, or laugh at him for crying because he could not endure thirty minutes. Beyond that, Seoul could not guess. So he kept chewing over, recalling, and replaying every memory of Gye Do-hyeop he could reach. Against the dread swelling heavier by the second, those memories became both armor and escape.

Ironically, only after being thrust into the most horrific crisis of his life did Geum Seoul discover an emergency exit inside his own mind. Perhaps that was not strange at all. Ever since he met the Deputy Director, whenever he stood on the verge of breathing his last, the man had appeared before his eyes as if by magic. He had not appeared this time—not yet—but when Seoul closed his eyes, he could still summon him with startling clarity.

‘I asked him to take me. That was why I was in that house. Because I liked him.’

He had racked his brain for an excuse that sounded plausible, yet in his heart he did not believe it was a lie. The Deputy Director had asked, ‘Want to come?’ and Seoul had said yes. Drunk on the first sweet alpha pheromones that had ever reached him, they had slept together, and afterward he had lain in a bed steeped in that scent. Sometimes his heart fluttered and grew strangely impatient. Because he liked him. That part, at least, was simple.

Geum Seoul quickly composed the slackening corners of his mouth and bit down on his lip. He missed the Deputy Director. And to see that man again, he had to get rid of this cloth over his head first. He had to transmit a hint so he could be found that much faster.