Vol 6 Ch 4

Kwon Taeha stopped me with words just as I shot up from my seat.

“Sit down.”

I tried to shake off the words that clung to me like chains and take a step forward, but he spoke again.

“How does it feel, sitting here with the three men who’ve all had a piece of your body?”

Before I could even feel hurt, my lips twisted into a sneer.

“So what, you’re planning to be the grand finale? Isn’t it supposed to be none of your business whether I become a porn star or not? Like you said, I screwed Baek Hyunseok over there, and I rolled around with your cousin too. Was your plan to force me into feeling indebted to you after all that?”

“You want to make a fool of me, don’t you?”

That refined tone made me scoff. I grabbed the wine-soaked tablecloth in one go and yanked. Crash! Food and wine clattered together in a violent mess. Before anyone could stop me, I snatched up a wine bottle rolling bare on the now-naked table.

I turned the bottle upside down over Kwon Taeha’s head. Red wine poured down, soaking his hair.

“You’re the one who made a fool out of me.”

The bottle was already half-empty to begin with. It didn’t take long to finish. I hurled the empty bottle to the floor. Kwon Taeha wiped the wine from his face with one hand.

“…Go upstairs.”

Veins stood out bluish on the back of his hand.

“You just told me to sit down. Now you’re telling me to go upstairs?”

A heavy silence filled the room.

“Mr. Louis, this is…”

Aeil Kwon looked between the two of us with eyes full of disbelief. Kwon Taeha grabbed my tattooed wrist. The strength in his grip was enough to make me want to scream.

“Let go! Fine, I’ll go upstairs if that’s what you want. Or should I sit again instead? Wag my tail like a good little mutt?”

He’d clearly hit his limit. He stood, still gripping my arm, and dragged me out by force. The more I tried to twist free, the tighter the snare clamped down. He strode out of the room and, the second the door shut behind us, slammed me against the wall. My whole body rattled from the impact.

With both arms on either side of me, Kwon Taeha murmured low.

“When did you get this stupid?”

Red wine trailed down his cheek.

“And what about you? You forced me into your debt, now you want me to hand over Wikileaks like some kind of payment?”

My throat burned again.

“You know what kind of people I hate most in this world?”

My face kept twisting, slipping beyond my control.

“The kind of bastard who can’t even clean up his own mess. And you made me into one of them.”

My face, my insides—both were a wreck. Nothing could be salvaged. Kwon Taeha leaned in close. He lowered his arm and took my hand, his fingers sticky with wine gripping mine.

“Take my hand.”

“…”

“Join me.”

“Why would I…”

“Mega Float was never really my project. It was my father’s. I was always going to destroy it.”

Kwon Taeha’s voice blurred.

“My kidnapping happened because of it.”

‘My father said it was impossible. That he couldn’t give up a project he’d spent five years preparing to save me. It felt like the world was ending.’

His voice overlapped with fragments of memory from the Maxho.

“Why the hell should I join you?! I’ll just be thrown away when you’re done! If you were planning to destroy the project anyway, you never should’ve used me as a bargaining chip! Was I the one who kidnapped you? Was it me, or my father, or Tex?!”

Bang! He slammed a fist into the wall. Then rested his forehead against it, just above my shoulder.

Drip, drip. Wine soaked steadily through my shirt.

“Fuck… I don’t give a damn about any of that anymore.”

Then he lifted his face and looked straight at me. His voice crushed down, like even he couldn’t understand it himself.

“I couldn’t stand the thought of you being with someone else.”

It felt like the eighteen-year-old Kwon Taeha from the kidnapping footage was standing right in front of me.

***

His breath was rougher than usual, and in the stagnant air, he alone seemed alive. It felt as though all the gods depicted in the massive fresco surrounding us were watching this place. Yet, the man before me was intense enough to overpower that oppressive presence, his emotions a turbulent mess that left him seething. That was also what made him captivating. Like the demon king who whispered sweet lies to a child in its father’s arms, only to eventually strip away his mask of laughter and sink his teeth into its neck—his raw, unfiltered honesty was pulling my defenseless body in.  

In front of Aeil Kwon and Baek Hyunseok, he had laid me bare, tossing me away like some kind of twisted offering. That was just like him. I caught the hand that had been about to reach for his face. Instead, I pushed myself away from the wall where he had cornered me.  

“So, is this why you brought me here? To tell me you bought me from Aeil Kwon? To make Hyunseok hyung understand that I’m yours?”  

My breath tangled with his, growing just as ragged. When Kwon Taeha didn’t answer immediately, I pressed the blade deeper.  

“Do you really not know that this kind of approach only breeds resentment?”  

You said you wanted my heart, didn’t you? Then you shouldn’t be doing this…  

The love I knew was nothing like Kwon Taeha’s version. Exploitation, possession, sex tangled with nothing but desire—a relationship where control was everything. That wasn’t something you could call emotion.  

“You think anyone here would stop me if I fucked you right now? Even if you screamed under the man you resent, no one would save you. There’s no one left who can be tied to you but me. Like it or not, I’m the only one you can hold onto now.”  

His harsh words made my head spin. He was utterly convinced his methods weren’t wrong.  

What answer had I even wanted? Did I expect some sweet confession from him? There was no way I deserved words purified into something sincere. I had betrayed him, and he had been deceiving me for far longer.  

A self-deprecating laugh twisted Taeha’s expression into something darker. His displeasure wasn’t directed at me, though—his gaze was fixed on the door we’d come through.  

Aeil Kwon was walking toward us, hands clasped behind his back, stepping soundlessly over the carpet. His smile was almost pitying. The tension between Taeha and me thickened as an impurity seeped into the air. Aeil stopped right in front of us.  

“You left so abruptly—Baek Hyunseok looked quite flustered. Is there a problem?”  

He sounded genuinely concerned, but it was all an act.  

“I thought you two left to have a lovers’ quarrel, but it doesn’t seem like that’s the case. The atmosphere is downright icy.”  

His eyes flicked between Taeha and me before suddenly grabbing my arm. “Ugh!” I hadn’t expected it—Aeil had seemed calm, almost harmless. But in an instant, he yanked me into a tight embrace from behind, tearing off the button on my sleeve and exposing my wrist.  

“Oh? It’s still there. I thought Taeha would’ve erased it by now.”  

I twisted in his grip, but his arm only constricted like a snake. His breath was hot against my nape. My eyelid twitched as I looked up at Taeha. His cold pupils flicked from Aeil ’s hands around me to my face. He didn’t move, but the wine dripping from his hair looked like blood, dangerous and foreboding. The tension was so thick, it felt like anything could set it off.  

Then, just as suddenly as he’d grabbed me, Aeil let go. He raised both hands in a mocking gesture of surrender—right as Taeha’s hand shot toward my face. I flinched, squeezing my eyes shut.  

Thud!  

The sound of impact came, but I felt nothing. Only Aeil ’s laughter, bright and unbothered, even as he sprawled on the floor from Taeha’s punch. Before I could even process it, Taeha yanked me forward by the nape.  

“Hhk—!”  

Without warning, he bit into my lip. His teeth tore at the soft flesh like he wanted to devour me whole.  

“Direc—ngh!”  

The metallic tang of blood filled my mouth as he worried the wound. Every time I tried to push him away, he punished me by ravaging my tongue and lips even harder. The pain would only stop if I submitted. Rage burned in me—I refused to be crushed under his strength.  

I slapped him across the face.  

The sharp sound echoed, the sting reverberating through my palm. I hit him again. And again. But my fury wasn’t spent. I would’ve kept going if he hadn’t caught my wrist. My lips and mouth throbbed so badly I could barely swallow, forced to cradle the injury with my hand.  

My shoulders trembled.  

“Are you out of your mind?!”  

“Yeah, you’re right. I’m not in my right mind. You drive me insane—how could I be? Maybe if I kill Aeil and cut off your wrist, I’ll feel a little better. Huh?”  

He said those horrifying words so smoothly. Aeil, still sitting on the carpet like it was nothing, giggled. His cheek was swollen grotesquely from Taeha’s punch, blood trickling from his nose.  

“See, Louis? I told you back then—ow.”  

His pronunciation was slurred, mouth full of blood. He spat it out with a wet *ptui* before wiping his lips, grinning eerily.  

“I told you my cousin was definitely insane.”  

Taeha didn’t react. He just gripped my tattooed wrist and dragged me out of the grand hall, his strides long and furious. I stumbled, legs tangling, but he didn’t care—he only walked faster, determined to shove me back into that tower.  

Shoved into the elevator, I tried to steady my ragged breaths. The pristine mirror reflected my bloody lips—the cut was deep. My face was pale, as if I’d seen a ghost. I hated how I looked. Hated him for reducing me to this.  

Taeha pressed his thumb against my bleeding lip. I flinched back, pressing against the elevator wall. If he tried to force me in this confined space, I’d have no choice but to yield—but I’d bite my own tongue before letting him.  

“Joo Hawon, I—”  

I looked up. His expression was unreadable.  

“I don’t need it. If this is your idea of emotion, then I want no part of it.”  

He looked almost confused, as if he didn’t understand what had gone wrong. Or maybe he was just resigned. Before he could respond, the elevator doors opened. His eyes, when I glanced back, were neither gray nor blue—just a dark, shifting abyss under the dim light.  

I stepped out, turning my back to him. The hallway to the tower seemed to warp, an illusion of twisting corridors. The old me wouldn’t have let my composure crack. Wouldn’t have gotten swept up in Taeha’s emotions.  

But I’d slapped him. Dumped wine on him in front of Aeil and Baek Hyunseok.  

And yet—he never resisted me. The man who humiliated me was also the one who, absurdly, considered me. That was the man he was now. If it hadn’t been for WikiLeaks, we wouldn’t even be facing each other like this. He wouldn’t have come for me himself.  

But he would’ve kept influencing me from the shadows.  

And that—more than anything—was the truth I couldn’t stand.  

What did 18-year-old Kwon Taeha feel for me? What had he done to me?  

Catching a glimpse of that version of him earlier had been a mistake. If I hadn’t, I could’ve kept those questions locked away forever.  

But you shattered them all today.  

In the end, I had to retrace my own filthy, miserable past—the one I couldn’t even bring myself to embrace. Remembering it made my vision swim. The Joo Hawon before I stood on my own was a useless flower. Weak, foolish—something my father had cultivated.  

That was why looking back hurt so much.

***

That night felt like I was going to suffocate in the damp air that clung to this city. It was just like the night I realized Baek Hyunseok had abandoned me when I was sixteen.

His disappearance from the hotel where we’d been staying together had been so sudden. The ten-million-won check left on the table became my only companion from that day on. At first, I thought he’d just stepped out for a while because something had come up. But as night turned into late night and he still didn’t return, I stayed awake until dawn, and only then did I begin to worry—maybe something had happened to him.

I struggled to lift the hotel room phone, but it never connected to Hyunseok’s cell—his number was already suspended.

What if he really doesn’t come back? That anxiety kept me wrapped up in the blanket, unable to leave the bed. Loan sharks were probably all over the city looking for me—if I stepped out that hotel door, I might be snatched away just like that…

Paralyzed by fear, I couldn’t bring myself to leave. I filled my stomach with tap water and survived on the peanuts and snacks left in the minibar. It was only after a long time that the room phone finally rang—it was the hotel, notifying me that it was time to check out.

The room had been prepaid for fifteen days. That’s when it finally hit me: Baek Hyunseok was really gone.

Staying alone in a place that cost several hundred thousand won per night wasn’t an option. So I walked out of the hotel with nothing but that ten-million-won check.

My dried-up body felt like it was being crushed under the towering hotel building. With each step I took away from it, the check in my pocket grew heavier, and my heart sank deeper into emptiness.

I kept my anxious, deer-like eyes low, avoiding glances from passersby, and slipped into the shadows of the city. Somewhere dark, damp, and invisible to others felt like the safest place. But the only money I had was the check. I couldn’t buy food. I couldn’t get a cheap room.

Still too naïve, my foolish mind led me to the Korean loan office that had ties to my father’s debt.

It’s not that I didn’t understand the value of money, but I believed that a single check like this would be enough to make them show me some leniency.

The people working at the loan office ranged from teenagers to old men in their sixties.

Men circled around me, who was kneeling on the cold tile floor, as if appraising me. Sitting apart from them in a black leather chair was an old man with thin, long eyes like a Buddha—eyes that seemed to pierce straight through me. But there was no mercy in them.

“So. Joo Hawon—are you smart at all? I’d hope you take after your father.”

The old man introduced himself as the head of the loan office.

“How’ve you been? Tsk tsk, look at that face. Just pitiful. Where were you hiding all this time that our boys couldn’t even find a single strand of your hair? I could hear that growling stomach of yours all the way from here.”

He pulled a bun from his desk drawer and tossed it at me. My dry throat moved on its own. As I clutched the plastic bag tightly in both hands, he gave a small nod. I shoved the bread into my mouth without a second’s hesitation—my eyes never leaving his.

“You’re young and pretty, even if you are skin and bones. It’d be a waste to harvest your organs for sale. But clearing debt with that alone? Not a chance. So how are you planning to pay it back?”

It was only after I managed to swallow the dry, clumpy bread that I answered.

“…By working.”

Laughter broke out around me. Only the old man didn’t laugh.

“There’s always work. The easiest would be to sell that pretty little body of yours—sleep with whoever comes along. But after a month, your asshole might not even close anymore. You’ll be kicked out of the brothel, maybe die of disease.”

The bread was gone in an instant, leaving only the greasy wrapper. I gripped the empty plastic in my hand.

Because I knew how painful it was to take a man through there. Baek Hyunseok, after the first time, barely touched me again—saying it was for my sake. Even so, the pain never went away.

Whether it was his gaze that held me or mine that couldn’t let go, I stared at the old man for a long time. Finally, he gave a soft snort.

“Didn’t you earn that money the same way?”

“…It…”

I swallowed back the words—that an older friend had given it to me. Something instinctively told me I must not say that. I didn’t even blink.

“Is there… a way to make good money, even if it’s dangerous? Something besides what you just said—something not so… limited.”

At my small voice, the old man blinked slowly.

“In Macau, you either do loan sharking like me or you’re a born gambler. That’s how you make real money.”

“…Gambling.”

“Even the ones selling their bodies have to be clever, you know. Look around—the streets are full of idiots selling themselves for a mere five hundred patacas. And yet, here you are, completely broke, but with that kind of money in your hand.

Doesn’t matter who gave it to you or who you conned out of it. What matters is that Joo Hawon clearly has debt-paying potential.”

At last, the old man stood from his leather chair. The men surrounding me stepped aside, making room for him to approach.

“Joo Hawon.”

I looked up and saw his grinning face.

“If you’d come to me empty-handed, I would’ve had these boys pass you around before tossing you into a brothel.”

I felt goosebumps all the way to the tender flesh behind my ears, but I kept my lips shut tight. The old man returned the check to me.

“Six months. Bring me back triple. Then you’ll have proven to this old man that you’re capable.”

“Boss!!!”

A younger man’s voice broke in, angry. Almost simultaneously, the old man’s slap struck him. The guy growled and glared at me like I’d done something to him.

“You lucky bastard. If it weren’t for those guys, you’d have been screwed!”

I parted my lips in confusion.

“Oh Woosung, I’ve told you over and over again—it’s your damn mouth that gets you in trouble.”

“It’s not fair, damn it! You sold off my girlfriend but you’re letting that bastard go?! You said you’d sell him too if he ever got caught! But the moment those white guys showed up, you changed your damn—”

The old man grabbed Oh Woosung by the jaw and squeezed hard. I could hear the bones grinding in his screams, scraping at my eardrums. The old man stared coldly down at Woosung, who writhed on the floor.

“Joo Hawon, you may go.”

As soon as I straightened my knees, my legs buckled. I placed a hand on the floor and slowly stood, then turned to the old man.

“Has… anyone come looking for me?”

Hyunseok hyung… or maybe my mom…

“You? As if anyone would.”

The wrinkles deepened around the old man’s mouth.

“You’d better pay it back quickly and become a free man. Of course, you should.”

There was no weight to the hand that patted my shoulder. Even as I walked out through the iron gate, I could still hear Oh Woosung getting beaten, and at the bottom of the stairs, the pale face of the man who had come to repay his debt grew even whiter.

I carefully tucked the check into my pocket and squatted on the steps.

How was I supposed to triple this money? And do it within half a year?

I was completely at a loss.

Neither the reason why Oh Woosung had been beaten nor the words he had spat out lingered in my mind. Because unless it was Hyun-seok hyung or my mom, no one else would come looking for me.

I curled in tighter, pressing my face to my knees. Maybe it was the blood rushing to my head, but my eyes burned. My worn jeans were quickly dampened. Only now, long after it happened, did the tears come—because I’d been abandoned by Hyunseok hyung, the one person I had no choice but to trust. More than sadness at never seeing him again, it was the fear of being alone that made me tremble. The sex had hurt, but having him there made me feel safe. And I liked how he was always more affectionate after we had sex.

I think I already knew. That the relationship between Baek Hyunseok and me existed because he directed his attention and desire toward me, and I accepted it.

My head had known, but my body had already learned to act out of self-interest. And now that he’d lost interest in me, I didn’t want to accept that he had simply left.

I finally let go of the empty plastic bag in my hand. The oil that had leaked out made my fingers greasy, and the sickening taste rising from my mouth churned my stomach. I didn’t even need to check the expiration date printed on the wrapper. I had shoved down that rotten bread in a hurry, deliberately avoiding the moldy parts, staring only at the old man instead.

I’d been that hungry. I’d fallen that far.

I clamped a hand over my mouth and ran down the stairs. Only after bursting outside did I throw up every last bit of the bread I’d eaten. Gasping, I rubbed at the tears filling my eyes. As my vision cleared slightly, I saw half-eaten lamb skewers someone had tossed aside. If I just brushed off the dirt, maybe they’d be okay…

And I hated myself for even thinking that. I forced myself to retch again, gagging until bile rose up. Then I crushed the fallen lamb skewers beneath my sneakers. Even as I stomped on them, hesitation born of hunger curled inside me like a sob that came out as laughter.