Chapter 41

Lee Jaeho snapped awake, jolted by a sudden, oppressive silence that seemed to smother the entire world around him. It was the sheer incongruity that tore him from unconsciousness. The silence was so absolute, so profound, that it made the chaotic nightmare he had endured only moments earlier feel unreal.

“Hah!”

“Stay still, little brother. You might have fractured something.”

A rough, calloused hand pressed firmly against Jaeho’s chest, pinning him in place. The voice was unfamiliar, or so he thought at first, until a flicker of recognition surfaced from the depths of his memory.

It was Mo Jeong-gil.

Jaeho turned his head toward the driver’s seat, his voice catching in his throat as a barrage of frantic questions erupted in his mind, colliding and overlapping.

“You… you…”

Jeong-gil’s hands were locked around the steering wheel. His anxious profile was streaked with smears of dried blood, and each time the car swept beneath a streetlamp, a sharp diagonal band of light slashed across his face. Jaeho had just begun to feel uneasy about how quickly those lights were passing, despite the distance between them, when realization struck him like lightning.

“Where’s my brother?”

“…He’s being tracked.”

Only then did Jaeho register that he was lying back in a car he did not recognize.

Bracing a hand against his throbbing head, he sifted through the broken fragments of his final memories. After Lee Jaeha had collapsed while shielding both Mo Jeong-gil and him, the bastards had nearly dragged Jeong-gil and Jaeho away as well. Once the thugs shoved the unconscious Jaeha into the van, however, the number of men left behind to watch them dropped considerably.

It had all been because of Jaeha.

Jaeho had fought back in his own meager way, desperate to rescue his brother. He had even lunged for a bat one of the attackers had dropped and swung it wildly. He had begun with every intention of saving Jaeha, only to realize almost immediately that simply keeping himself alive would be a brutal struggle.

Cornered and overwhelmed, he had no choice but to endure the beating. He tried to curl into a tight ball, protecting his head and vital organs, but taking those blows had been agony beyond anything he could bear.

Lee Jaeha’s combat ability bordered on monstrous. Jaeho’s own efforts were far less impressive. Still, managing to knock out even a few of the thugs had been a respectable showing, considering he had learned only the fundamentals of boxing and was now trying to apply them in a vicious, real-world fight.

Is this really how I’m going to die?

That was the exact moment Mo Jeong-gil miraculously opened his eyes. He rose with a chilling, lethal aura and began methodically dismantling the men who had surrounded and pressured Lee Jaeha. The thugs had poured every ounce of their concentration and offensive power into bringing Jaeha down. Against Jeong-gil, however, they crumpled one after another, felled by movements so swift they barely seemed to register.

A professional truly was a professional.

Jeong-gil appeared to draw a military knife from inside his coat and wielded it with surgical precision. Yet he never used the blade. Instead, he struck with the heavy butt of the handle, driving it into temples and the backs of necks, dropping the men unconscious almost instantly.

He had something like that on him?

A sudden wave of indignation washed over Jaeho, as though the only reason he had lost was because he had lacked a weapon of his own. Of course, somewhere deep inside, he knew that the absence of a tool was not the real reason he had ended up beaten and broken.

Once Jeong-gil crushed the bones of several men beneath the weight of his heavy-soled shoes, the remaining thugs near the van simply fled.

The distant wail of sirens grew louder.

Jaeho recalled the desperate punch he had thrown in an attempt to help, only to be blindsided by a bat that sent him spiraling into unconsciousness. When he finally regained consciousness, he found himself inside a car driven by Mo Jeong-gil. Staring blankly through the windshield, he immediately noticed the absence of the van carrying Lee Jaeha. It felt as though they were racing down a deserted road, devoid of any sign of life. The vehicle appeared to belong to the enemy, and its interior was nothing like Lee Jaeha’s car.

Then Mo Jeong-gil raised a phone to his ear.

“…Yes, hyung-nim.”

Silence answered from the other end.

“Yes. We’re on our way.”

Jeong-gil’s expression hardened further. In the dim, filtered light of the cabin, his eyes seemed to gleam with a peculiarly cold blue intensity.

Jaeho studied the man’s face with open wariness. The ‘hyung-nim’ the man before him had addressed could only have been Jang Taegeon.

The desire to shout and demand an explanation for what had happened to Lee Jaeha faded before it could escape his throat. The call ended abruptly, and Jaeho remained silent, unable to ask what they were chasing down that desolate road. Meanwhile, Mo Jeong-gil continued to stare straight ahead, his jaw clenched so tightly that the muscles along his jawline were visible in rigid knots.

***