INFB Ch 26

Even so, I washed before coming to school today. Ah, maybe the clothes are the problem. Come to think of it, I wore these clothes yesterday, too.

As Seobin bit gently on his lower lip to swallow his embarrassment, Dohyun tapped Seobin’s upper arm lightly, without hurting him.

“It means you manage yourself so well. You’ve never let yourself get wrecked.”

“…Get wrecked?”

As Seobin narrowed his brows at the meaningless words, Haesoo offered the answer.

“Yeah. It’s because you don’t drink with us, and you don’t go to MTs or OTs either. We’ve never seen you drunk even once. Never seen you sleeping, either. I threw up right in front of Dohyun here while drinking just the other day.”

“Ah…”

So that was what it meant. Seobin’s face lightened up noticeably.

“It’s because I can’t drink. And my parents… don’t really like me roaming around late at night.”

The corners of his lips curled up gently. There was not a trace of falsehood in that clear face.

The sunlight streaming through the window brightly illuminated Seobin’s face. That appearance was exceedingly ordinary and peaceful. A son loved by his parents. A university student who was good at studying. It was just that exact degree of ordinary.

When the sun was up, Seobin was remarkably human.

In the bluish dawn, he tumbled at construction sites; in the navy-blue night, he tumbled at a meat restaurant; and in the pitch-black night even later than that, he tumbled beneath Jaegyu. Yet during the bright daytime, when he was at school, he lived normally.

Within this other world called school, no one knew that Seobin’s family had fallen into ruin.

Though his father had run a business, it wasn’t at the level of a conglomerate that everyone knew, and although his father committed fraud and died of acute alcoholism, only a couple of articles under the name ‘a certain Mr. Cha’ had been published.

Above all, it was significant that Seobin hadn’t put on airs of being wealthy since he first entered university. Although the things he wore were luxury brands, people simply thought he came from a well-to-do family, rather than assuming he was a rich family’s young master.

Thanks to that, Seobin could still live in this world as ‘a child of a reasonably well-off family.’

Seobin put a piece of rolled omelet into his mouth and chewed silently. As he did, Dohyun, sitting beside him, softly swept down the side of Seobin’s hair with his index and middle fingers.

“Bina. Your hair has grown a lot.”

At those words, Seobin shook his head to scatter his hair. The fine strands flipped back before softly flowing forward again like a gentle wave. With his chin tucked in, Seobin stared at his bangs blocking his view.

“Is that so?”

Come to think of it, it did feel long. He recalled how he had continuously brushed his hair back because his vision felt stifled.

Resting his arm over the back of Seobin’s chair, Dohyun asked:

“It’s time for me to get a haircut, too. Want to go to the hair salon together?”

“Uh… hair salon?”

“Yeah. Do you have to go straight home today as well?”

“Ah, it’s not that…”

The problem wasn’t time. It was a different set of numbers. How much was a men’s haircut these days again? He felt it was around tens of thousands of won. It was too much money. When he was someone who walked everywhere to save a few thousand won in transportation costs, he couldn’t spend that kind of money just to cut his hair.

Thinking like that, his shaggy hair suddenly didn’t feel uncomfortable anymore.

It was just as Seobin was about to shake his head. Dohyun beat him to it.

“You know the hair salon on the third floor in front of the back gate, right? I know a hyung there. He’s still an apprentice, so he told me to drop by if I ever needed a haircut, saying he’d cut it for free as practice.”

“For free?”

“Yeah. But he cuts hair well, so you don’t need to worry. My hair right now was cut by that hyung, too.”

“Ah…”

Seobin looked at Dohyun’s hair. The neatly trimmed hair suited Dohyun’s kind-looking impression very well. It wasn’t jagged as if nibbled on by mice, nor was it tacky. On top of that, wasn’t it free? It couldn’t be better.

“But can I go, too?”

“Yeah. He said he’d be totally thankful if I brought a lot of friends.”

“Ah…, mm… then I’ll… go, too.”

Seobin smiled softly while biting the end of his spoon. Dohyun smiled in turn. Haesoo, who was sitting across from them playing poker on his smartphone, suddenly snapped his head up.

“What? Where? Where are you going? Going out to play? Or meeting girls?”

At those words, Seobin shook his head side to side. Dohyun mimed throwing a spoon, calling him a crazy guy.

“Ah, why!”

Haesoo ducked his neck and opened his eyes wide. Looking at that foolish sight, Seobin giggled softly.

Standing in front of Jaegyu’s office, Seobin took a deep, long breath. It was an office he visited every month, and he met Jaegyu far more often than that. Furthermore, they had met just three days ago and stickily rubbed not only their lips but also those kinds of places—so he didn’t know why he felt nervous every single time.

Shrugging his shoulders to level his backpack, which was slanting to one side, Seobin took another deep breath. He then gave a eye signal to the burly man standing guard in front of the door. The man stepped a pace to the side, signaling him to enter.

It was right when Seobin raised his hand to knock.

Clatter.

The door opened from the inside first. As burly men instantly filled his view, Seobin quickly stepped aside. A total of four men came pouring out. No—should he say five?

Four were familiar faces. That was because they were usually beside Jaegyu whenever Seobin visited his office. But together with them—or rather, carried out like a beast by them—was a face he had never seen before. In fact, even if it had been a familiar face, he likely wouldn’t have recognized it…

The man, carried with his limbs held one by one, was wearing a worn light down jacket and dark jeans. He clearly had a face, arms, and legs, but he was so thoroughly black and red that he couldn’t be recognized as a human being at all.

“…”

As if spellbound, Seobin couldn’t tear his eyes away from him. Then, the moment the group brushed past his side, his eyes met the swollen face.

It was a momentary point of contact. In terms of time, one second? Two seconds at most. Yet in that brief moment, Seobin saw a great deal.

Eyes with burst capillaries. Eyelids swollen to an absurd, almost laughable degree. One side of his cheekbones excessively flattened. Bluish cheeks. A bizarrely twisted bridge of the nose. Nosebleeds pouring out continuously, and thick blood mixed with saliva dripping limply from between parted teeth.

His blood-soaked hair was black and damp as if washed in petroleum, and his intermittent, choking breaths were rough. Surprisingly, however, there was no pain in his gaze. His gaze—hazy and dazed as if drunk—felt as though he were no longer a person of this world.

And a fishy smell. How should he describe it? Should he call it the stench of spoiled meat? Mixed with the stale smell of sweat from not washing for days, the scent of blood produced a stench so strong that it made the bridge of his nose twitch.

The group passed Seobin in an instant. The path they left behind was splotchy. While the blood dripping from the man being carried was part of it, the sticky footprints stamped out from the soles of the men’s shoes burned particularly sharp into his retina.

The group did not take the elevator, disappearing down the emergency exit stairs instead. At the same time, the side door opened and an expressionless woman and a few men appeared carrying cleaning tools. Passing Seobin, they entered Jaegyu’s office first.

By around then, Seobin realized that he wasn’t breathing. His stopped heart beat violently in a rush belatedly.

Although more than a year had passed since Seobin’s downfall, there were still many misfortunes he had not yet experienced.

For instance, this kind of raw violence. Violence completely different from when debt collectors pulled at him and hit him out of frustration. Violence that had not existed in Seobin’s world. Fragments of another world—to be precise, Jaegyu’s world—that he had never dared imagine encountering in his lifetime.

“Not going in?”

As Seobin hesitated, the employee guarding the door asked with a chin jerk. It was a prompt-filled question. Flinching his shoulders, Seobin entered the office as if pushed by something.

The office was chilly. It wasn’t just the atmosphere; the temperature was genuinely low, and a wind was blowing. That was because the awning windows were all open.

The cleaning staff who had entered a moment ago were spraying an unidentified liquid over the floor, which was sticky with red fluid. A few were scrubbing the floor vigorously with mops. Other syndicate members were picking up wads of cash scattered on the floor or assisting the cleaning staff.