‘The Silhouette Behind the Shield’

With a sharp thud, Beomgyo shut the car door and walked past an unfamiliar motorcycle parked at the motel entrance.

“You know them?”

Opening the door and asking without preamble, he made Miju—who was just receiving a plastic bag from a delivery driver—freeze in her tracks.

Knit her brows slightly, she placed a yellow bill on the counter and replied, “How should I know?”

Quickly taking the money, the driver nodded and turned around. As he passed right by Beomgyo, Beomgyo’s steps halted abruptly.

Just now, something…

Due to the pitch-black tint of the helmet, the driver’s face wasn’t visible at all.

But feeling a distinct gaze boring into him from behind that shield, Beomgyo turned on his heel to pursue the man who had just brushed past.

Right then, Miju’s sigh-laden voice pulled him back.

“Sena, was it? That girl hasn’t budged an inch from her room since she asked for your number this morning.”

Watching the delivery driver quickly mount the motorcycle and speed away with a loud exhaust roar, Beomgyo finally shifted his gaze back to Miju.

“I have no idea if she’s dead or alive, and it’s making me completely uneasy…”

Muttering to herself, she pulled the delivery containers out of the bag.

The meat-heavy dish looked like tteokgalbi, and the pale broth was probably seolleongtang.

“You said you’re uneasy, yet you seem to have no trouble getting food down.”

Leaving behind the strange, lingering discomfort he had felt a moment ago, Beomgyo walked toward the elevator.

Perhaps because he had been surrounded by the scent of incense and stale cigarette smoke all day, his headache refused to subside.

Not only that, but throughout his incredibly exhausting schedule, the kid’s voice from across the phone line had kept trailing after him.

[Mister…]

That godforsaken ‘mister’ nonsense. That weak, lifeless voice that sounded like it might snap at any moment had been terribly grating, and he felt he needed to check on her condition first.

“Hey, hold on. I’ll heat this up, so take it up with you!”

Just as Beomgyo carelessly smacked the elevator button, Miju hurriedly grabbed the container of seolleongtang and shouted.

“The kid looks like she hasn’t eaten a single thing. She needs to eat something to take her medicine. I’m terrified she might actually be dead, so you take it.”

“…”

“I mean, why on earth did you tell a kid to drop dead so easily…!”

“What, does she remind you of your daughter?”

Hurrying toward the supply room with the completely cooled seolleongtang, Miju stopped dead in her tracks like magic at Beomgyo’s words.

Turning around to look at him, her pupils trembled faintly.

Having fixed his eyes strictly on the descending floor numbers, Seo Beomgyo massaged his temple and added indifferently, “Did she die around that age too?”

If digging ruthlessly into another person’s wounds like it was nothing was a talent, it was certainly one of his.

Instead, because the words he brought up vividly recalled her deceased daughter, Miju’s throat clamped shut, leaving her completely unable to answer.

Coincidentally, the arrived elevator doors slid open slowly.

“Cut it out. It’s pathetic.”

Dropping the hand that had been pressing against his temple, Seo Beomgyo boarded the elevator without casting a single glance back at Miju.

Pressing the button for the 4th floor where the guest rooms were and leaning his body at an angle against the smudged mirror, a ragged adhesive sheet with peeling edges caught his eye.

Some beach, that port, a certain business. Back when they were desperately chasing down every single plot of gold-lined land whose value was skyrocketing, fighting over territorial interests, this six-story building was one Seo Beomgyo had bought out.

Equipped with an operating room capable of performing minor surgeries, and despite the effort of placing a doctor who had committed a retaliatory murder disguised as a medical accident and fled to Busan, countless people had died here over the years.

To him, whose daily job involved getting stabbed, and to Yang Miju, who had spent years cleaning up after those b*stards, death didn’t hold much meaning.

But because that unfathomable kid seemed to continuously stay on his mind, and Yang Miju seemed to be acting the exact same way, his words had come out sharp.

Pathetic. That was perhaps an insult directed not at Yang Miju, but at himself.

Just like Yang Miju recalling her dead daughter because of the kid, he kept finding himself curious too.

Seo Yeji… how is that lunatic living around this time?

Ding. Snapping back to reality at the sharp sound of the elevator, Beomgyo chewed on a dry, bitter laugh.

What’s the point now? It was a worry he had no right to harbor.

He reasoned that because today happened to be his father’s death anniversary, and he was marking a proper memorial service for the first time in sixteen years, he had uncharacteristically turned soft.

Deliberately pushing away the thoughts of his sister that forced their way into his mind, Beomgyo decided he needed to clear this kid out first, taking wide strides into the red-carpeted hallway.

Halting in front of Room 404, he reached into his back pocket out of habit to pull out his wallet, only to freeze.

“Ah.”

Belatedly, he remembered he had handed over the room key. Letting out a short tsk, Beomgyo had no choice but to bang heavily on the door.

“…”

However, there was no reaction from inside.

Since it was a motel building with terrible soundproofing, he should have at least heard footsteps, but not a single sign of life could be felt within the room.

“Hey, open the door.”

Thud, thud. It was the exact same when he knocked once more.

Did she really die? No, if she was going to do that, there was no reason for her to contact him.

Grasping the doorknob to turn it, Beomgyo’s brows knit slightly. It was because the delivery driver he had seen in the lobby a moment ago suddenly flashed through his mind.

[The truth is, I’m being chased.]

As the phone conversation he had shared with Sena followed immediately after, tension tightened in his jaw.

Even if it was someone pursuing her, they wouldn’t be able to just stumble upon this place easily. Furthermore, the delivery driver hadn’t even come up here.

Though his mind told him it wasn’t possible, the ominous feeling from the gaze he had sensed behind that shield refused to fade away.

“F*ck.”

Veins bulged violently across the back of Beomgyo’s hand as he gripped the doorknob.

Because Room 404, which he used exclusively, didn’t have a separate spare key, he would have to call a locksmith to force the door open.

Of course, Seo Beomgyo didn’t possess the kind of patience to wait for that.

Intending to simply smash it down, he scanned his surroundings and caught sight of a fire extinguisher standing in the corner of the hallway.

Lifting it by the dust-covered handle, he was just about to slam it down onto the doorknob when—

Click. With a sharp sound, the firmly closed door slowly began to part.

“Took you long enough to crawl out. F*ck…”

Halting in a split second from a situation where he might have actually struck the woman, Beomgyo swallowed back a string of curses. Simultaneously, a stark white silhouette tumbled out through the crack of the door.

“What the…”

Dropping the fire extinguisher as if throwing it aside, Beomgyo reflexively caught none other than Hanna, who was wearing nothing but a bathrobe.

Pulling the limp female form closer against his chest, her head slumped helplessly against his broad shoulder.

Shivering eyelids, cold sweat pooling across her forehead. Not only that, but her thoroughly damp hair was tangled all over her flushed cheeks and neck, making her condition look entirely abnormal.

The body heat transferring through the thick bathrobe was also strangely high.

“Hey. Brat.”

To check if she was conscious, Beomgyo lightly shook Hanna’s shoulders as he held her.

Fortunately, her eyes seemed to flutter open slightly, her parched lips parting slowly.

“Mis… ter…”

But the moment she confirmed the man she was leaning against was Beomgyo, her body slumped even more heavily than before.

This time, as her head snapped back completely as if she had lost consciousness entirely, Beomgyo quickly supported the back of her head.

Right then, the sound of the elevator echoed in the hallway once more with a ding.

It was Miju, who had ultimately arranged the seolleongtang onto a tray and come upstairs herself. Coming face-to-face with the two of them, she froze instantly on the spot.

“Could it be… is she d-dead…?”

The very moment her pale-faced question ended, the old fire extinguisher rolling on the floor let out a loud pop, bursting with white powder as it spun rapidly in place.

Having finished his shower, Beomgyo exited the bathroom shirtless.

Because he had pulled the kid straight into his embrace when the fire extinguisher exploded, she had been perfectly fine, but his own broad back had been entirely covered in powder, forcing him to wash up.

As he headed toward the living room, shaking his damp hair out with a towel, water droplets trickled down the back of his neck.

The trailing droplets vanished seamlessly into the gaps of the intricate irezumi tattoo that completely covered his back.

Across the slate-gray sky drawn over his back, a blue-maned dragon baring its sharp teeth flashed its crimson eyes, undulating with every step as if it were alive.

Though its presence was thoroughly intimidating, he casually tossed the damp towel onto the sofa.

“Ha.”

Stepping toward the pull-up bar installed on one side of the living room, a low chuckle escaped his lips.

Hanging neatly across it were pieces of damp laundry.

A t-shirt and jeans that were entirely too small to be his, along with a petite-sized bra and panties…

“This girl didn’t take a single one of her medications.”

Just as Beomgyo hooked a finger through the plain white panties hanging from the parallel bar, Yang Miju’s voice drifted from across the wooden partition wall.

“Once the wound heals up, we need to pull out that wisdom tooth first. Out of habit, she bit down on the stitched area again.”

It seemed the kid had been fading away like that simply because her wound had become infected.

Seeing that she had gone as far as taking a shower and washing her clothes quite diligently, she clearly hadn’t intended to die, so why hadn’t she taken the medicine provided to her?

Glancing at Hanna, who was dimly visible through the wooden partition, Beomgyo brought his gaze to the unornamented white panties hooked on his fingertip, murmuring in a low voice.

“I can’t tell if she’s being cautious, or just completely careless.”