Because I’m a Good Person

‘Stay put. Don’t go loitering around the club for no reason.’

‘I can’t go anywhere?’

He had said that to mean, ‘Don’t follow me out,’ but Sana asked back in an unexpected way. He wondered what he meant, as he wasn’t keeping him imprisoned.

‘I never locked you up.’

When he answered similarly to Sana’s non-sequitur question, Sana looked at the front door.

‘I don’t have a key, though. If I go out, I can’t get back in.’

‘Ah…’

It was an auto-lock, so he only needed to close the door when leaving, but to get in, he needed the password.

Doha pondered for a moment, then instead of telling him the password, he found the smart lock card key and handed it to him.

‘If you put this over the number pad, it’ll open.’

Although various emotions were mixed in and he had allowed him to stay temporarily, he still considered Sana suspicious and didn’t trust him 100%. The card key could be retrieved anytime, but telling him the password still felt a bit uneasy. Of course, he could always change the password if he needed to.

Whatever the case, he had given Sana the authority to open and close his house door. Anyone hearing it would scold him for being careless. And that was him.

He really was doing things he didn’t usually do. People say if you do things you don’t usually do, you don’t live long…

A hollow laugh escaped him as he thought of the death Sana had foretold. When he didn’t know, he didn’t care, but the fact that he kept subconsciously recalling Sana’s words meant it was bothering him.

Due to his profession, it wouldn’t be surprising if he got stabbed at any time, so there was nothing astonishing about it.

However, seeing how the Gangnam Alliance was operating recently, it was somewhat puzzling.

It was no exaggeration to say that the Gangnam Alliance had swept through the Seoul area, especially Gangnam.

Thanks to this, there hadn’t been any noticeable fights recently. There was also no particular discord within the organization. At least, no noticeable discord.

‘Is he perhaps earning someone’s grudge?’

‘f*cking hell, why are you blocking the way?’

Yesterday, before leaving work, Kim Sinhak cursed at him with a grim face as soon as they met.

Doha knew the reason.

After Park Jaemin entrusted Doha with the Daechi-dong collections, Kim Sinhak had been even more hostile towards him than before.

The Daechi-dong collection was different from other regional tasks. It was clearly something important enough to make Kim Sinhak’s nerves stand on edge.

‘What’s the difference? Is it not just a simple collection?’

“Customer, if you like that, would you like me to find your size?”

He seemed to have been staring blankly, his thoughts having strayed. The clerk, who had approached him unnoticed, asked.

“What size do you need?”

When he didn’t answer immediately, the clerk asked again. Doha’s gaze naturally drifted down to the clerk’s waist. ‘Would she get angry if I said, ‘He probably has a thinner waist than you’?’ Probably.

“What’s the smallest size?”

“For these pants, they start from 25. Size 25 is for truly slim women.”

Meaning, if a man were to wear them, 25 would be impossible.

“Even if men look thin, they surprisingly have bone structure, so they often wear sizes 27 to 28.”

The clerk, seemingly remembering his earlier mention of it being for a man, found and showed him different sized pants of the same design.

Doha checked the waist measurement of the clothes and swallowed a groan.

‘This still looks too big, no matter how I look at it…’

In the end, he asked for the smallest waist size for the training pants and a compromise size of 26 for the jeans, letting out a deep sigh once again, wondering what he was even doing.

Sana sat stiffly on the living room sofa, staring at the TV in front of him. The TV screen, black from being turned off, reflected Sana’s image sitting on the sofa.

How much time had passed? Doha had left after 10 AM, so not much time had passed.

‘To others, sitting here blankly doing nothing, time must feel slower,’ he thought, but Sana wasn’t particularly bored. It wasn’t much different when he was alone.

‘It will take time to adapt to a normal life. There’s no need to rush, so slowly find what you want to do.’

Mooyoung had said that, but once he was just left in the city, he felt utterly lost about what to do. Since there was no immediate problem with his livelihood, there was no urgent need to think about doing something. So, he mostly spent his time sitting blankly like this, falling asleep and waking up.

Then, occasionally, he had dreams. Countless unknown people passed through Sana’s dreams. Like Choi Doha…

‘You can go out if you want, but if possible, don’t stay out too late. If you go out, use the main roads. Don’t get robbed and lose everything for no reason.’

Before leaving for work, Doha had given him one more instruction. He was just like a mother leaving a small child. He almost laughed, thinking that even Mooyoung had never treated him so childishly, but he silently nodded.

Indeed, Choi Doha was not a bad person. He even had a soft spot, enough to keep someone who only spoke strange things in his house.

‘Gangster? Is that what he is?’ He didn’t want to think that just from looking at Doha, but the other people he met in front of the club definitely gave that impression. The club itself must be run by gangsters.

‘If he’s a gangster, does he get into gang fights too?’ One day, he had carelessly turned on the TV, and a movie about gangsters was playing. There was a scene where dozens of suit-clad gangsters, holding terrifying-looking knives, were hacking at each other.

‘Does Doha do things like that too?’

Sana had no way of knowing if it was exaggerated for the movie, or if gangsters actually fought like that.

The death Sana saw of Doha was not as flashy as in the movie. He wasn’t stabbed in a chaotic brawl. That’s why Sana couldn’t understand that Doha was a gangster at first.

‘Choi Doha.’

Someone called out to Doha, who was standing alone.

No particular emotion was visible on Doha’s face when he turned around. There was no sign of caution either. However, the sharp blade in the approaching person’s hand pierced Doha’s abdomen.

Gasp. The moment the muffled groan escaping Doha’s lips resurrected in his ears, Sana shuddered.

It was so vivid that he felt like he was dreaming even with his eyes open. It had repeated so many times that even when he was awake, the scene would vividly replay. It was becoming unbearable.

He spent most of his time alone, and whether his eyes were open or closed, the image of Doha bleeding and collapsing flickered, making it impossible to do anything but watch.

That’s why he set out to find Choi Doha.

He hadn’t told Doha, but he hadn’t found him immediately. It took a full two weeks after he decided to find him and left home. He tried to remember everything he had seen in his dreams: tall buildings, store signs, even people’s clothing. After combining small details and inquiring here and there, he ended up in the Gangnam entertainment district.

The joy he felt when he found Doha there was inexpressible.

As if meeting a long-lost acquaintance or a separated family member, he impulsively ran towards him in a rush of elation at finally finding him.

“He must have been really flustered.”

Thinking about it now, he wondered how absurd his actions must have seemed. In reality, Doha’s face had indeed been contorted in embarrassment at the time.

Yet, he eventually accepted him.

He couldn’t bring himself to completely cast aside someone who was obviously suspicious and strange. Even though Sana couldn’t properly explain himself, he didn’t push him to tell the truth.

He frowned and stared, but simply let it pass with a sigh, as if understanding.

‘Because he’s that kind of person. Even if he seems a bit gruff and aloof on the outside, he’s definitely a good person inside, so I don’t want him to die.’

Sana took a quiet, deep breath, then slowly closed his eyes. All he could do was dream. He had to fall asleep a little more and dream to find clues about that day.

That was why he kept falling asleep. Because he needed to dream to find out when Doha would die, exactly where, and who was trying to kill him.

He had come out early because he was told to, but after organizing the financial statements Park Jaemin handed him, he had nothing much to do. There were no instructions today about where to go for collections.

Ziiiing. A short vibration rang in his pocket.

Doha turned his head to check the clock on the office wall. It was a little past 2 PM. He didn’t need to take out his phone and check the screen to guess who the caller was.

“Just for a smoke.”

He told Jungwook, who was looking around the club through CCTV, and stood up. Neither Jungwook nor the other guys paid much attention to Doha leaving the office.

Doha, who came out to the back of the building through the back stairs connected to the office without passing through the club, subtly raised his gaze.

A CCTV camera was also installed on the utility pole opposite the alley.

Doha’s current appearance could also be seen entirely from inside the office.

He took out a cigarette, put it in his mouth, lit it, then slowly took out his phone.

He tapped the screen a few times, and a message screen popped up.

– [Ad] Guaranteed an amazing night with a shapely 23-year-old sister ♡ Minimum 3 hours. From 150,000 per hour. Excellent service. https://bit.li/3qhSYbn1

A hollow laugh escaped him at the absurd ad copy and the link that looked suspicious no matter how you viewed it.

The face of the guy who came up with this and laughed heartily, asking if it wasn’t brilliant, also came to mind.

He tapped the link with his thumb, which was written below text that most people would dismiss as a voice phishing scam and never click.

Soon, an internet window opened, and a black screen with the word ‘password’ and a white blank space appeared.