Chapter 2

Without a word, Geum Seoul leaned forward and gripped the cart handle tighter. At that motion, Park Gil-pyeong patted his rear twice with a “Go on” and withdrew his hand. The flesh of Seoul’s rear was firm and filled Gil-pyeong’s palm nicely, but one look at the thick waist and plain, homely face quickly doused whatever desire might have stirred. Rather than this one… His greasy, lingering gaze crept past the retreating Geum Seoul and crawled toward the scrawny tops of the feet belonging to the young man sprawled on the floor across the desk. Even if plain-looking, slender and tender was far more to his taste.

“Tsk, still, since our good Boss Lee took the trouble to come all the way here with a new gem for once, I ought to pay a little finder’s fee.”

He pulled out a flat, round electronic wallet dangling from his waistband beside the office keys. The Crevit logo stamped into one corner was so worn it was barely legible. After tapping a few digits on the screen, he watched the fuming customer hurriedly bring out his own Crevit wallet. The fourth digit rolled upward. This much? Did the market rate for C-grade gems shoot up without me knowing? The man narrowed his eyes at the figure as if puzzling over it, then gave his arm a dismissive shake.

“Ahem. Next time, I’ll definitely bring in a real catch,” the visitor grumbled, clearing his throat.

Babbling as if to patch up his battered pride, the guest nudged the kid still collapsed on the floor with his boot and prepared to leave.

“Hey. Get up,” he barked at the fallen boy.

Just as the middle-aged man was about to snap again at the pathetic sight of the boy still unable to rise, Gil-pyeong’s cackling laughter made him turn his head.

“Hold on now,” Gil-pyeong called out with a lazy grin. “That’s not how this works.”

“Huh?”

Gil-pyeong leaned forward. “Boss Lee. If you took the payment, you leave the goods behind, don’t you?”

Lee Dae-chang’s face twisted as understanding struck. The money the boss had deposited into his account wasn’t for the stone. That snake-like bastard. In this racket, Park Gil-pyeong had a reputation for being filthy and petty to the bone. Then again, there was no chance a bastard who never let go of money once it entered his grip—and who hated taking even the slightest loss—would hand over this much as a mere finder’s fee.

“Boss Park, I’m the one who found him,” Lee protested, bristling.

Park countered smoothly, “And that’s why I paid you a finder’s fee.”

The sheer shamelessness on Park’s face made Boss Lee’s eyes turn venomous.

“You think you can pull this shit? Huh?” Lee shouted, his face reddening. “Even for you, buying someone out for a measly few tens of thousands of won?!”

Cutting him off, Park Gil-pyeong lifted his gaze and smirked. “Think it through. Isn’t it better for you to keep coming in and out of here on good terms? What’re you gonna do, drag around a worthless piece of junk and wander from place to place?”

“Th-that’s…” Lee faltered, his jaw working.

Park warned coldly, “You’ll spend more on transit fare.”

The blatant threat forced Lee to swallow the rage that had flared inside him. People buying and selling gems didn’t trek out to this godforsaken neighborhood because they enjoyed the trip. Ever since the administration changed, private auction houses had vanished one after another while crackdowns intensified. By now, places willing to buy mediocre gems were few and far between. Park Gil-pyeong, rumored to have numerous discreet buyers, was one of the few brokers willing to take even a few thousand won’s worth of gems.

He might be a cheapskate who drove prices into the dirt, but he dealt in goods other auction houses rejected as a nuisance, leaving people with little choice but to swallow their pride and come to him. In other words, if Lee crossed this man now… Running the calculations in his head, Lee let out a hollow snort and spat a glob of hot saliva onto the floor. “Just you wait,” he muttered, then turned on his heel and stomped out of the concrete building alone.

“Safe travels,” Gil-pyeong called out.

Clank.

Meanwhile, Geum Seoul had stowed the machine back in the office and was lingering in front of the door, struggling to lock it again. The iron slab was so heavy that even closing it properly took effort. A dark shadow fell across his back. Tap, tap. A hand patted his rear once more.

“Hand over the keys and get upstairs,” Park instructed, jingling his keychain. “One moved out the other day, so the green room on the upper floor is vacant, right? Get it ready for him to sleep in.”

Turning around gingerly, Geum Seoul’s gaze brushed past Park Gil-pyeong and settled on the boy standing behind him. The deep reddish-brown eyes the boy barely managed to lift caught his attention. Seoul handed over the keys with a soft “Yes.” Behind him, the boss said, “From now on, I’m calling you Noki, so when I call, you answer on the double.” His voice sounded close enough to brush against Seoul’s shadow, prompting him to bound briskly up the stairs.

By the time the heavy office door clicked shut, Geum Seoul had reached the second floor and quickened his pace even more. Eeek, eeek. Beyond the window, the speakers were now pouring out sounds like weeping ghosts.

***

“Geum Seoul!”

The raspy shout rumbled through the concrete building like thunder, spilled past the windows, and overflowed into the surrounding makeshift shelters pitched with tarps and scraps of canvas. Just the previous dawn, the speaker noise that had droned on for days had finally shut off, granting them a rare, quiet night. Thanks to that silence, Geum Seoul had fallen into a dead sleep without even cotton in his ears—and now jolted awake in fright.

Slid.

The space beneath the stairs had a ceiling so low he couldn’t even stand upright. The room measured less than two square meters, too cramped for him to stretch his legs fully even while lying down. From this place known as the doghouse, Geum Seoul crawled out on all fours before he could so much as rub the sleep from his eyes. The soles of his sneakers had completely detached and flapped with every step, but his body had long since learned how to move in them; he sprinted down the long corridor anyway. If he failed to show his face within five seconds of being called, the man’s temper was terrifying.

“Coming down!”

Iron doors crowded both sides of the corridor, half standing open and half shut. From behind a bright crimson door, roughly the third from the front, came Bunhong’s voice: “Park Gil-pyeong, that son of a bitch is pitching a fucking fit at the crack of dawn again! Again!” That meant it was still early. Even so, Geum Seoul’s T-shirt was already soaked through with sweat.

“Just wait a moment,” Park Gil-pyeong assured his guests smoothly. “That thing will know.”

Geum Seoul reached the first floor just as voices rose again near the bottom of the black-mold-covered stairs. Nearly ten people were gathered there. Why were there so many visitors this early in the morning? Their faces were unfamiliar; they weren’t locals from the neighborhood. More telling still was Gil-pyeong’s deferential posture. In other words, these were high-class guests.

Some lounged on worn sofas of different colors while others stood around smoking as though waiting for something, with two or three gathered before Park Gil-pyeong. Geum Seoul stepped forward and stopped in front of Boss Park, who was tapping the floor with the toe of one dusty dress shoe.

Bowing low, Geum Seoul asked timidly, “You called for me?”

Crack!

The moment he opened his mouth, a flash burst across his vision and his body folded beneath the blow. He nearly dodged on reflex, but instead squeezed his eyes shut, dug his toes into the floor, and forced himself to hold his ground. His cheek throbbed and burned. He clamped his lips shut.

“Noki, that omega bastard who came in yesterday—where the hell did he go?” Park barked, glaring down at him.

“What? He isn’t in his room?”

Smack!

The second blow snapped his bewildered face to the opposite side. It landed solidly enough to send his vision spinning.

“You little shit,” Park snarled, raising a fist. “You’re questioning me with guests standing right here?”

It felt as though a bucket of ice water had been dumped over his mind, washing away the sleep that had clouded it only a minute earlier. Geum Seoul hurriedly read the room. Several unfamiliar guests. Park Gil-pyeong standing with his hands on his hips. Seoul immediately dropped to his knees and threw his head back. His long, oversized T-shirt clung to him, outlining the slight roll of his belly, while the frantic sound of skin rubbing against skin filled the space as he rubbed his hands together.

Seoul clasped his hands in desperate supplication and cried, “I’m sorry! I took him to the room just like you told me to, Boss! At dawn!”

“What time was that?” the boss demanded.

“Four o’clock!”

It was the truth. That was all. His face already slick with sweat, Geum Seoul rubbed his hands together furiously in desperate plea, looking ready to cling to the boss’s trouser legs at any second. He begged so fervently that his planted knees practically jolted against the floor.

“What the hell,” Park muttered, clicking his tongue. “Did he really run off?”

“What were you doing all that time?” Park snapped, his brow creasing into a deep scowl as he loomed over him.

Seeing Geum Seoul grovel pathetically at his feet, Park Gil-pyeong raised one leg and drove his dress shoe straight into the youth’s belly. Barely half Park’s size, Seoul collapsed backward with a choked gasp, clutching his stomach with both hands and writhing as if he were dying. Only after watching him wheeze and gasp did Gil-pyeong look somewhat satisfied and turn back to the group behind him.

Park let out a heavy sigh as he addressed the visitors. “Haa, this doesn’t happen often, but once a year or so, we get a disaster like this. Won’t another one do? I have a similar one—a green one.”

The middle-aged woman standing at the very front rubbed her chin, visibly torn.

“The thing is, it’s not the gem they need, but the boy himself,” the middle-aged woman explained, still rubbing her chin. “Boss Park, are you positive he isn’t here? You mustn’t lie to these gentlemen.”

Park Gil-pyeong’s eyes narrowed into slits. He had raised a hand against Geum Seoul only to show off and assert his dominance before the guests; he never went so far as to lock up and imprison the runaways who drifted down here. They had nowhere else to go anyway. When told to clear out, low-grade brats would huddle together and come creeping right back to squat. Other brokers reportedly threw worthless kids out onto the streets, but Gil-pyeong considered himself a generous benefactor for giving them a chance to sell even a single stone.

“Good grief, why on earth would I lie about that? You heard what he said yourself,” Park said, shaking his head.

“Well, yes, but…” the woman hedged, glancing back at the silent men.

“It hasn’t even been three hours. The roads around here are rough, so if it’s his first time, there’s no way he could’ve made it halfway down the hill by now. Feel free to search around. Ah, or did that bastard Lee Dae-chang come back on the sly and haul him away?”

“Lee Dae-chang?” one of the visitors asked coldly.

“Yeah. He’s the one who brought him in. The guy running the factory down in the lower neighborhood.”

Park bowed repeatedly in haste. “Yes, yes.”

Scrape. Shove.

Without a word, Park jabbed a thumb toward the stairs, signaling Geum Seoul to go.

While the two conversed, Geum Seoul let out a pained breath and barely lifted his cheek from where it had scraped against the concrete, blinking through heavy eyelids. His face was utterly blank, as though the groveling submission from moments earlier had been a lie. He even gave his sleeves a light, nonchalant pat.

Geum Seoul knew all too well that dropping flat to the floor and begging the instant he took a hit was the fastest way to satisfy Park Gil-pyeong. Since the strike had been purely a display meant to seize the upper hand before new guests, it was a beating he was bound to take at least once regardless. Only by thrashing on the ground and pretending to be in absolute agony could he keep from suffering worse.

He tried to haul himself upright with one sudden push, but a sharp sting shot through his ribs. Ah. Bad luck. His tilted vision refused to straighten. Fighting back the tears that had pooled by reflex, he planted a hand on the floor to rise—when, for no discernible reason, someone caught his eye. One of the men lounging on the sofa.