Chapter 68

The junior officer shot Gi-hyeon a desperate look, silently begging him to do something, but Gi-hyeon was already spiraling out of his mind.

A high-pitched ringing shrieked in his ears. Blankly, he stumbled back a couple of steps. He needed to find a way out of this nightmare, but his brain merely spun in endless, meaningless circles.

“You stay right there, too.”

Yeon-oh’s deadpan, apathetic command effectively rooted Gi-hyeon to the spot. It was the exact tone Yeon-oh only deployed when he was genuinely, homicidally furious. Having learned long ago that the complete erasure of emotion, rather than his usual smarmy, skin-crawling provocations, was the ultimate indicator of his rage, Gi-hyeon squeezed his eyes shut against the prickling dread creeping up his arms and braced himself.

Then, it happened.

“Ha, haha—. Ugh, uk… Haha—.”

Jo Yeon-shin erupted into sudden, hysterical laughter. Baring teeth coated in blood, he clutched his ribcage as if it were broken and giggled wildly.

“Oh, fuck. Have you completely lost your goddamn mind?” Yeon-oh snarled, seizing Yeon-shin’s collar once again.

He raised his massive arm high, clearly intending to deliver another devastating slap. Yeon-shin hacked and coughed, thick droplets of blood and saliva splattering down his shirtfront and face with every spasm.

“Haha… Yeon-oh, it’s just… you’re too fucking funny…”

Yeon-shin’s voice was impossibly smooth, completely incongruous with a man who was currently being beaten to a pulp. It was the exact same polished, well-mannered tone he had used to approach Gi-hyeon on the beach in Namhae. A violent shudder ripped through Gi-hyeon.

Yeon-oh simply stared at his cousin, a silent challenge daring him to see exactly how far he was willing to push this. Yeon-shin giggled again.

“Ugh, ha… You… You didn’t even know, did you? Why that Omega’s… ugh… why his ankle is permanently crippled?”

“…”

“Haha, ugh—. No, I mean… Ah, this is just too fucking hilarious. You didn’t know why that cripple busted his ankle, you didn’t know he turned into an Omega, and yet…”

Yeon-shin covered his face with one hand, his eyes crinkling in genuine mirth as he burst into a fit of uproarious laughter. Every time he guffawed, the blood pooling in his mouth sprayed outward. He laughed with the desperate intensity of a man unable to suppress a coughing fit, rapidly staining the cuff of the shirt Yeon-oh was gripping with a vibrant, wet crimson.

Twisting his head to the side while still suspended by his collar, Yeon-shin spat a mouthful of frothy blood onto the dirt, his shoulders violently shaking as he exploded into another fit of hysterics.

“Ahaha—! So tell me, Yeon-oh. For an Alpha and a Beta who spent years fucking each other so goddamn disgustingly, you really had absolutely no idea what your little Omega was doing behind your back? Ha, ha—!”

The narrow alley between the identical greenhouses barely accommodated two adult men standing shoulder-to-shoulder. Within that suffocatingly tight space, Yeon-shin’s manic laughter echoed deafeningly. The dying embers of the charcoal grill cast grotesque, dancing shadows across his crazed, grinning face.

“…”

Yeon-oh, who had remained horrifyingly silent, finally moved. He grabbed So Gi-hyeon by the wrist. With a sharp jerk of his chin, he pointed directly at the junior officer standing frozen nearby.

“Is it that bastard’s?”

“…What?”

The casual, conversational tone carried absolutely zero inflection. The utter absence of emotion in the question terrified Gi-hyeon far more than a scream. While Gi-hyeon blankly tried to process the absurdity of the question, Yeon-oh locked eyes with the junior officer, glaring at him with piercing intensity.

And then, dragging Gi-hyeon behind him, Yeon-oh marched right past them.

“…Hey!” Gi-hyeon finally snapped out of his stupor, desperately calling out, but Yeon-oh didn’t even bother looking back.

He yanked open the door to the greenhouse doubling as the gambling den. Before Gi-hyeon could utter a word of protest, Yeon-oh aggressively shoved him inside. As the door swung open, Gi-hyeon briefly locked eyes with the bank teller, who was staring at them from the counter.

“You…”

The sudden blast of the air conditioner did nothing to cool Gi-hyeon’s rising panic. He tried to call out again, but Yeon-oh merely scanned the area before kicking the door shut with his dress shoe. Grabbing a thick piece of lumber that had been nailed to the doorframe for reinforcement, Yeon-oh effortlessly ripped it free.

“Hey! What the fuck are you doing?!” Gi-hyeon screamed, trying to stop him.

Yeon-oh ignored him completely, continuing his violent demolition until the heavily nailed timber tore loose. He had wrenched it free using pure, brute strength; one of the nails remained bent and dangling uselessly from the doorframe, while the other stayed embedded in the wood.

Yeon-oh gripped the nail-studded end of the lumber like a baseball bat.

He still hadn’t looked at Gi-hyeon. Just as Gi-hyeon lunged toward the door to physically restrain him, Yeon-oh grabbed the doorknob. Without turning around, he issued his ultimatum.

“Try to run away again. I’ll slaughter every single bastard out here and claim temporary insanity to get probation.”

“…What?”

He was casually threatening mass murder with the full confidence of evading prison time. Leaving Gi-hyeon utterly paralyzed in disbelief, Yeon-oh stepped outside and slammed the door shut.

“Huh? What’s going on? Tell ’em we didn’t order delivery,” mumbled Jisu, half-rising from the sofa where he had been sleeping off his buzz before immediately passing out again.

Gi-hyeon let out a ragged sigh. He debated asking if Jisu had been the one to invite the junior officer, but quickly swallowed the question. Despite his laid-back demeanor, Jisu possessed a rigid moral code; he would never orchestrate something this vile against Gi-hyeon.

Furthermore, the junior officer had arrived with Jo Yeon-shin. Gi-hyeon chastised himself bitterly. When he had felt a prickle of familiarity seeing the man in the foreign car in town, he should have anticipated this catastrophe. He had known of Yeon-shin’s existence through Yeon-oh, but failing to recognize his face was a fatal oversight.

I think I heard he was a degenerate gambler… From that perspective, Yeon-shin ending up here with the junior officer might have been a grotesque coincidence. Despite its rural location, Jisu’s den was apparently infamous in gambling circles.

The real enigma was Yeon-oh. How the hell had he tracked him down to the absolute middle of nowhere?

Suddenly, a sickening, wet thud echoed from outside, followed immediately by a sharp scream.

“Aaaargh!”

Because the sound originated outside the greenhouse, the distance muffled it slightly. Gi-hyeon stood frozen for a second before slowly drifting toward the vinyl wall. Since the interior was far brighter than the night outside, no shadows projected onto the plastic, but the horrifying sounds of violence were unmistakable. Then, a bloody handprint slapped against the translucent vinyl.

“Ack!”

The startled yelp came from behind Gi-hyeon. The bank teller, usually unflappable, had apparently fallen backward in shock, his chair clattering loudly against the floor. But Gi-hyeon couldn’t tear his eyes away from the plastic wall. Someone outside was enduring a vicious, one-sided beating, desperately slapping their hand against the vinyl just to stay upright.

“W-wait—! Hyung, Yeon-shin hyung! Please help me!”

The muffled, desperate plea confirmed the victim was the junior officer. Gi-hyeon had assumed Yeon-shin was the one being beaten, making the revelation jarring. He clamped a hand over his mouth. A heavy, leaden dread settled in his stomach as he realized Yeon-oh had somehow uncovered the truth.

He knew he had to go out and stop it.

At that moment, the junior officer, frantically crawling backward to escape the assault, dragged them all under the illumination of the streetlamp positioned between the greenhouses. Through the translucent plastic, Gi-hyeon saw the horrifying silhouette of someone raising a club high into the air.

Panic overriding logic, he bolted for the door.

“Aaaargh—! Ack!”

Before he could even turn the knob, an agonizing scream pierced the night. Oblivious to his stiff, unresponsive ankle, Gi-hyeon charged outside. The scene that greeted him drained the blood entirely from his face.

Sprawled face-down in the dirt, the junior officer writhed and groaned in excruciating agony. The thick piece of lumber was driven directly into his ankle. More specifically, the rusty nail protruding from the wood was buried deep into the flesh just below the ankle bone.

“You…” Gi-hyeon gasped, his voice failing as he stared at Yeon-oh in horror.

Yeon-oh ignored him entirely, casually stepping toward a paralyzed, trembling Jo Yeon-shin. Because Yeon-oh’s back was turned, Gi-hyeon couldn’t read his expression, but Yeon-shin, staring up at him, looked utterly petrified. He stammered frantically.

“Y-Yeon-oh, look, I-I won’t tell Grandfather about this right now, so…”

“Go ahead and snitch, you fucking piece of shit.”

Grabbing Yeon-shin by the collar again, Yeon-oh delivered another devastating blow to his face. This time, there was no sharp smack; it was a sickening, meaty thud, sounding less like a slap and more like a closed-fist punch. Yeon-shin offered zero resistance, merely groaning a pathetic, breathy “ugh, ugh” with every strike.

“S-Second Lieutenant, please… please, save me. Please?”

Unnoticed, the junior officer had dragged himself across the dirt and desperately latched onto Gi-hyeon’s ankle, the exact same ankle that still caused Gi-hyeon to limp whenever the traumatic memories resurfaced.

Gi-hyeon stared down at the lumber nailed into the man’s ankle, mirroring his own old injury, his face twisting in revulsion. He violently yanked his foot free from the junior’s desperate grip and marched toward Yeon-oh.

Still mercilessly pummeling Yeon-shin, Yeon-oh seemed completely oblivious to the fact that his cousin was on the verge of losing consciousness. Fighting through a wave of nauseating vertigo, Gi-hyeon firmly grabbed Yeon-oh’s shoulder.

“Stop it.”

“…”

Yeon-oh ignored the command, continuing to rain down blows. Because he was repeatedly targeting the exact same spot, Yeon-shin’s cheek had already swollen grotesquely, resembling a cluster of severe bee stings. At best, his jaw was fractured.

While their grandfather favored Yeon-oh above all else, the patriarch was fundamentally obsessed with bloodlines; he would never ignore the brutal maiming of another grandson. Gi-hyeon pleaded again.

“I said stop.”

“…”

“Jo Yeon-oh!”

He finally barked the name like a warning. Yeon-oh violently jerked his shoulder, throwing Gi-hyeon’s hand off before slowly standing up and turning around.

Bloodshot eyes, swarming with violent, unadulterated fury, locked onto Gi-hyeon.

Gi-hyeon instantly snapped his mouth shut in shock. It was the exact same, terrifyingly intense glare Yeon-oh had directed at him when they had first reunited, an expression he hadn’t seen in years. Staring at a paralyzed Gi-hyeon, Yeon-oh let out a hollow, scoffing laugh.

This entire situation was completely fucked.

***