Chapter 5

With a grade deemed that worthless, Geum Seoul survived as the neighborhood errand boy, scraping by on odd jobs. In this building, he was the only omega exempt from submitting gemstones to Boss Park; in exchange, he shouldered every menial chore. Cleaning went without saying, as did laundry, errands, and even serving as the punching bag for Park Gil-pyeong’s blows.

Fortunately, Geum Seoul was resourceful. The people here were so poor that even when they hired him to do their laundry, paying him regularly in cash was impossible. At times like that, he coaxed them into offering something else in place of coin, good-naturedly let the payment slide until later, or—when faced with the truly shameless—matched their shamelessness by planting himself outside their doorstep for hours on end.

Despite taking on every sort of menial chore—and the contempt that came with it—Geum Seoul moved through the neighborhood with remarkable ease. How he navigated the decrepit, long-abandoned ruins so effortlessly was a mystery, but from dawn until dusk, one could always spot him darting through the narrow alleys.

“Grandma! I’m not leaving until you pay me this time!”

Flutter—billow.

Geum Seoul calling from beyond a waterproof tarp. Geum Seoul hauling an enormous laundry bag. Geum Seoul darting past at a quick clip on yet another errand. Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, he was a constant presence in the alleys—someone the villagers had long since learned to take for granted.

Click.

As the hallway clock struck eight, Geum Seoul finally straightened after hanging the freshly washed laundry and gathering the clothes that had dried. Even on a day this sweltering, the sight of him bundled in long sleeves, long trousers, and an outer layer was enough to make anyone frown in bewilderment.

Whenever anyone asked why he dressed that way, he claimed he had a sun allergy. His face was fine, he insisted, but if direct sunlight touched the rest of his body for too long, hives broke out everywhere. It did not make much sense, yet he had dressed like that from the moment he first appeared in the neighborhood, so eventually no one questioned it. The rumpled, oversized layers of long sleeves and trousers had simply become part of Geum Seoul himself.

“Where are you headed?”

Instead of heading back into the building after hanging the clothes, Geum Seoul began climbing down the wooden ladder fixed to the side. Rin called after him. A faint “Just a walk” drifted back, but knowing how relentlessly busy the youth kept himself, Rin did not press. Bunhong, in no position to pity anyone else, felt no particular sympathy for Geum Seoul either. In this village, misery was a birthright shared by everyone.

Thud.

Outside once more, Geum Seoul strode briskly down the path. By the time he glanced back, the two figures who had been leaning against the window frame were already out of sight.

Chirp, chirp. Within a minute, the inhabited dwellings had vanished behind him. The narrow alley ahead was deserted, flanked on both sides by overgrown thickets alive with insects rasping strange, grating cries, but the path was etched clearly into Geum Seoul’s mind. Normally he would have hurried through in brisk strides. Today, however, every line of his face was alert, and he took unusual care to muffle his footsteps.

Crack!

As if answering his wariness, a loud, violent rupture rang out without warning. There—unmistakably, someone was nearby. Startled, Geum Seoul hunched his shoulders and turned toward the sound. At the end of an alley lined with tottering abandoned shacks lay a vacant lot where the makeshift roofs had been completely washed away in the last torrential downpour. The presence of people was coming from there.

“Haa… What should I do?” he muttered under his breath.

Geum Seoul stopped, hesitating. Beneath the yellow light filtering through the crumbling, half-standing walls opposite him, the shadows of men flickered. His destination lay beyond them, and there was nowhere to hide while crossing the open stretch. Then again, wading through waist-high weeds would leave him covered in tick bites and itching all night.

In the end, he chose to skirt the remaining perimeter wall—the only proof that a building had once stood there. After twenty years spent learning how to erase his own presence, he trusted his stealth. Let’s just slip past quickly. Hunching lower and smothering the sound of each step, he crept along the wall as beads of sweat prickled across his back.

Boss Lee’s terrified shriek rang from beyond the wall. “Wh-what do you want from me? Huh? What did I do wr-wrong? What did I do?!”

Geum Seoul pressed his back to the brickwork and clasped both hands against his chest. Panting, stammering—that voice was familiar. His heart thudded hard against his ribs. Common sense told him to keep moving, yet curiosity worried at the back of his mind until, despite himself, he peered cautiously over the wall.

“You’re the one who brought him here, aren’t you?” Yu Jeong-ham asked coldly.

It was the same man who had brought Noki in yesterday. Lee Dae-chang, was it? Geum Seoul did not know the details, only that the man stopped by the auction house from time to time and that Boss Park called him “Boss Lee.” Now Lee Dae-chang knelt on the ground with blood running from his forehead, facing a man who stood directly before him while five or six others lined the wall behind.

The one questioning Boss Lee was the man who had spoken with Park Gil-pyeong that morning. His expression hovered somewhere between mild politeness and cold indifference. He pinched the front of his T-shirt and flapped it to fan himself, then wiped the beads of sweat from his brow with the back of his hand.

“I told you already! Good grief, the kid was sleeping outside my house first! But, well, his condition looked like a gemstone omega. Right? So I slapped him around a few times and dragged him here—that’s all I did!”

Boss Lee looked deeply aggrieved. Spitting as he spoke and gesturing wildly with both hands, he pleaded his case to men young enough to be his sons. The man before him did not budge, hands planted on his hips. Apparently, fanning his shirt had done nothing against the stifling heat; irritation settled across his face.

Rustle.

Did they snatch that man and drag him all the way here? Just to find Noki? Geum Seoul blinked rapidly through the sweat glazing his eyes. They really are gangsters who beat people half to death.

Though most of Geum Seoul’s memories belonged to this town—he had arrived here as a child—he had lived in another village while his mother was still alive. That place had been an abandoned ruin too, though larger than this one, and he still remembered with painful clarity how terrifying the local enforcers who ruled it had been.

At least there were no such people here. More precisely, this place did not have enough residents for thugs to bother stationing themselves permanently. If anything, the outsiders who appeared whenever an auction was held carried an even colder, more frightening air.

“From, uh, Iljang Trading…”

Mrs. Choi Sook-jin’s voice flashed through his memory. Iljang Trading was notorious enough that even Geum Seoul knew the name. They were said to be ruthless, terrifying people. If they caught him spying on them here…

Stop looking. Keeping low, Geum Seoul continued creeping along the wall. Moving in a crouch through the sweltering heat was grueling; his thighs burned, and his breath came in shallow gasps. Weeds brushed his calves as the smell of dust hung thick around him.

He wanted nothing more than to get away from this place. He still had plenty of chores left, and all he wanted was to finish the day without incident. Keeping his eyes rigidly forward until he had crossed half the distance, he pressed himself to the brickwork again. The men’s voices drifted over with the oppressive heat.

“If it wasn’t you, then what?” Jeong-ham scoffed from across the courtyard. “Some sewer rat sneak him out?”

“Look, go ask that Park Gil-pyeong instead!” Lee screamed desperately. “I’m telling the god’s honest truth!”

This was not the first time something like this had happened. It was hardly an everyday occurrence, but every few years someone ran away, or pursuers arrived looking for them. When pursuers came, money was almost always involved. Those who fled usually did so because they had saved some cash, found a sliver of hope, gotten pregnant, or simply decided anywhere had to be better than here—reasons like that.

Geum Seoul had never seriously considered running away. The other residents earned a little pocket money selling food, drinks, and minor comforts whenever auctions were held, while he scraped together a few hundred won at a time by running errands for those same neighbors.

There was nothing else he knew how to do. With the coins he scraped together, he bought food, medicine, and whatever else he needed to stay alive. He had no reason to leave this place. Besides, sometimes his mother…

Forcing down the memories surging into his mind, he clenched a fistful of his clothes. This was no time to lose himself in thought. Just as he began to uncoil his hunched back—

Tap.

Geum Seoul froze, his breath snagging in his throat. “…”

The face he lifted was swallowed entirely by a pitch-black shadow. A man stepped out from the corner as though he had been waiting there to block Geum Seoul’s path—the man—

“…Ah.”

Geum Seoul’s mouth fell open. He knew at once. The person standing before him was the handsome man Rin had described.

Rustle.

Maybe he isn’t even human. Even in that chilling instant, with his hiding place exposed, Geum Seoul could not understand why such a strange thought crossed his mind. Perhaps it was because the face before him was more breathtakingly beautiful than anything he had ever seen. Orange twilight slipped through the jagged opening in the wall, yet the stranger’s jet-black hair reflected a cool blue sheen, echoed by irises of the same piercing hue. Geum Seoul stared in foolish, glassy-eyed bewilderment. The tall man stood with both hands buried deep in his trouser pockets, smiled as pleasantly as if they had met by chance, and parted his lips.

“Hi there, little rat. Off to fetch some cheese?”

His voice was every bit as striking as his face.

Whoosh.

The sweltering summer-night breeze grazed Geum Seoul’s nape. Despite the elevation, there was not the slightest trace of coolness in it. The sparse population had not allowed the mountain to return to lush forest; instead, the broken cement where a maze of tightly packed shacks had once stood simply baked and radiated the day’s trapped heat.

“Can’t even tell what’s crawling around outside—fucking great job you guys are doing,” Gwichang murmured lazily.

Gwichang walked into the open lot through a gap in the crumbling wall and drew a cigarette from his pocket—a short, slender stick hand-rolled from loose tobacco. Yu Jeong-ham, still in the middle of arguing with Lee Dae-chang, reached for his lighter, but Gwichang had already struck a match. He touched the flame to the cigarette and snuffed the match with a flick of his wrist. At his superior’s sudden appearance, Yu Jeong-ham bowed his head in mortification. “I apologize, sir. I’ll see it rectified.”

“Yeah, all fucking talk,” Gwichang shot back, blowing a ring of smoke. “When exactly are you going to rectify it? In your next life?”

With that airy rebuke, the dark-haired man exhaled a plume of white smoke steeped in a bitter tang. He had never expected his men to screen out every bird and rat in a town where people still lived, nor had he made any particular effort to conceal himself. Their schedule remained intact. Even so, he raised his chin, and the men filling the lot immediately straightened their backs.

The one they were hunting was Lee Hee-joong, the omega who produced green gemstones. When Park Gil-pyeong heard the name, he had merely reacted with, “Is that the kid’s name?” No one in this racket cared about a gem’s real name.