HPK 103

After pondering for a long while, Taejung picked up his phone again. Unable to bear the waiting any longer, he was thinking of texting first himself. However, the thought that it was always him who texted first suddenly struck his mind.

“Ah, shit…”

That hurt his pride quite a bit. In the end, he put his phone back down and chewed on his thumbnail, chew chew.

He texts other guys first just fine. Especially that bastard named Hyunjun or whatever, he texts him every single day without fail. He couldn’t be more affectionate toward his younger sister either. What’s so precious about a family that does nothing but leech off him?

Taejung badmouthed Wooseung relentlessly, thinking that acting nice to this extent was a disease that needed to be cured. But it didn’t make him feel any better inside.

“This is so fucking annoying…”

He rested his arms on his knees and dropped his head low. Thud, thud, his phone hit the table every time his hand shook. The sighs that spilled out were heavy.

After being like that for a good while, Taejung slowly lifted his head toward the ceiling. The glaring fluorescent light painfully stabbed his eyes.

“P-President… Just this once, please spare me just this once, heuu…”

Kim Hyungho, who had been constantly following Taejung with his right eye, whimpered. Moonsu, who was about to kick his leg again, abruptly stopped his movement. It was because Taejung was looking straight at Kim Hyungho.

“I was wrong. I, I didn’t know anything… kkeuk…!”

“…”

“I’m an idiot, I, heuk… I’m a real, heup, idiot.”

His hand, hanging limply at his side, swayed lazily as if gauging something. The lengthening silence began to slowly suffocate Kim Hyungho.

Taejung propped his elbows on his knees and pressed his phone firmly against his temple, press, press. As his head tilted slightly, his fine-textured hair fluttered.

“You didn’t know that Kyung and I were close?”

The voice, murmuring nonchalantly, sounded almost playful.

“I-I didn’t know. I really didn’t know, heup… kkeuk!”

“If you go tattling to him like that, what does that make me.”

When pronouncing ‘tattling,’ he deliberately rolled his tongue in an exaggerated way, as if he were singing a song.

“Honestly, there’s no sincerity, no sincerity at all.”

Kim Hyungho shook his head wildly, saying he really didn’t know. His cheeks were soaked with tears as his whole body trembled violently. The pain from his broken ankle and teeth was one thing, but the fear that this was clearly not the end kept strangling him. It felt as though only pleading innocence and apologizing was the lifeline that could save him.

In reality, he had merely been foolish; it wasn’t something he had done knowingly. He had been desperate for money and wanted to run one more errand.

Just one more time.

That was all.

However, after being kicked out of Girin, he had no way of approaching Taejung again, so he ended up finding another dealer through an acquaintance. He did so without knowing that the dealer was a close younger associate of Taejung.

“Kyung came to me in a panic, and I thought I was going to fucking die of embarrassment.”

Taejung jumped up from the metal table. He left his phone behind and rotated his right wrist, swivel, swivel.

“That Eom Taejung’s work is shitty.”

Taejung strode forward and lifted his foot.

“How could you go around advertising it to the whole neighborhood.”

And then he kicked Kim Hyungho in the chest, thwack.

“Keok…!”

Kim Hyungho, still tied to the chair, fell straight backward. Clang! The metal chair hit the floor, creating a loud noise.

“That Hyunkyung is fucking two years younger than me.”

“Keu, keok!”

“So fucking embarrassing, huh?”

“Kkeuk, keuk, huh…!”

Taejung kicked his abdomen and side, thump, thump, with enough force to rupture all his internal organs. Kim Hyungho had to helplessly receive the barrage of violence. He couldn’t even avoid it, as his entire body was tied up.

“Gaaah…!”

Finally, Taejung kicked Kim Hyungho’s face, wham. One of his blood-soaked lower teeth popped out, thwip, and rolled across the floor, clatter, clatter.

“Ah, the blood, shit…”

Seeing the drop of blood that had splattered on the tip of his sneaker, Taejung shook his foot in annoyance. But the splattered droplets had already soaked in and wouldn’t come off. In that moment, a wave of irritation surged through him, and he lifted his foot with the intention of breaking all of his teeth, but then.

Ding!

A notification sound rang from the phone on the metal table. The light pouring from the screen brightly illuminated the ceiling.

Taejung, who had been sweeping back his disheveled hair, strode over without hesitation. The hand that picked up the phone was somewhat rushed.

[Should I wait?]

Taejung let out a chuckle at the text that arrived with an emoticon with a question mark next to its head. He rubbed his lower jaw with his palm, rub, rub, and slowly read the text one more time.

“Um, President.”

Moonsu, who had set Kim Hyungho’s metal chair upright, carefully began to speak. He had been watching only Taejung the whole time, trying to gauge the right moment to speak.

“Should we proceed now?”

Taejung’s head, which had been looking at the phone, slowly turned to look behind him.

The sight of him staring blankly with an expressionless face sent a chill down his spine. He had heard the laughter and thought ‘now’s the time’ to ask, but it seemed he had chosen the wrong moment.

“From a while ago…”

“…”

“You have no tact.”

Taejung’s voice was neither low nor high. It was plain, as if stating an obvious fact.

“I-I’m sorry. President.”

Moonsu hastily offered an apology. With Hoonyeong not here, it was solely his responsibility to navigate this situation. The inside of the container, with the wall-mounted air conditioner running, was not hot. But a bead of sweat trickled down the back of his neck.

“Ah, I was in a good mood.”

Taejung tilted his head back slightly and sighed.

“I understand, President! I will proceed immediately. I am truly sorry.”

He could have just handled it well on his own, but he had needlessly disturbed Taejung’s thoughts with a useless question. He shouldn’t have done that. As if he had realized, Moonsu smiled awkwardly and raised a hand to wipe the sweat from his forehead and nape. Since he was wearing latex gloves, the sweat didn’t wipe off properly.

To begin the main task, he pulled over a metal shelf and placed it beside them. On the shelf were several syringes, each containing a single dose of methamphetamine.

“Kkeuheuk…”

“Here, let’s have a drink.”

Moonsu lifted Kim Hyungho’s limp left arm and deliberately acted nonchalant. He acted that way even more because he knew Taejung liked that kind of attitude. He didn’t forget to keep an eye on Taejung’s presence behind him with furtive glances. Thankfully, Taejung was once again engrossed in his phone. Moonsu let out a sigh of relief internally.

The inside of Kim Hyungho’s arm was already severely inflamed from contaminated needles. However, Moonsu paid it no mind and plunged the needle straight into the vein on the inside of his elbow. Kim Hyungho, who had been motionless with his head lolled like a broken branch, suddenly flinched and his body trembled.

Moonsu put down the used syringe and picked up a new one. And just like before, he found a vein and injected the drug. Kim Hyungho, having been on meth for a long time, no longer reacted easily to a moderate dose.

After repeating this about four times, a disturbing, hissing breath, saek, began to escape from Kim Hyungho, whose body had been twitching.

Soon, thump, thump, thump!

The sound of the floor reverberating filled the container. It was the sound of the collapsed heel of Kim Hyungho’s sneaker drumming against the floor.

“Ah, ah…”

He kept drumming the floor with his foot, like someone who urgently needed to urinate. Thump, thump, thud, the sound of his footfalls repeatedly sped up and then slowed down.

“Hah…!”

A moment later, Kim Hyungho’s head shot up toward the ceiling. Below his grotesquely swollen eyelids, the pupil of his slightly visible eye was disgustingly large.

“Ha, ahaha!”

He laughed with a face full of ecstasy. The unpleasant sound of a moan mixed with laughter echoed loudly between the footfalls.

“Ah, it’s coming, it’s coming… hak, hak!”

The drug, which had spread throughout his entire body in an instant through his bloodstream, gave Kim Hyungho an excessive sense of excitement. Stomping his feet like someone being chased, he could not overcome the surging sexual desire and brought a hand to his genitals.

“Heuah…!”

However, his fingers, broken from the assault, could not perform their function, so he couldn’t even properly pull down his zipper. Unaware of the extreme pain in his fingers, he tried to tear at the zipper, then finally gave up and groped his genitals through his pants. Even though his arms were tied, making movement difficult, he touched himself tenaciously.

“Heok…!”

He hunched his back, his body trembling, shudder, as he groped his genitals wildly. Before long, his back was undulating like a wave. It was a premature ejaculation. But his erection returned even faster.

“Heuk, kkeup, hehehe.”

Saliva dripped to the floor, drip, drip. There was no trace of sanity in his wide-open eyes.

“Ah.”

Taejung, who had been concentrating on sending a text, suddenly remembered something and looked back at Moonsu.

“Moonsu, I hear you’re dating someone.”

It was a rather random question, unbefitting of the situation.