#kk.written

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It is said death with the tongue is useful, but I find words too soft an instrument to smash a man’s skull. And tongues useless.

featuring @chenosias

[August 29, 2023, location: confidential]

The basement is a fleeting nightmare you enter with your conscience and cognition far detached from yourself. And as you ascend to the surface again, everything you've seen and heard below, unless significant in any way above, stays behind on the backdoor's threshold. These were the rules for as long as Kijun could remember, an onslaught of repeated relays to you in the car on the way; and really, of such importance they were that everyone who dared come and go here were adamant on the notion of colouring within the lines of this rule. At least if you wanted to keep your head.

Valuing his sleep and sanity, Kijun never dared bring even a toe overline and nevertheless, he couldn't ever truly get accustomed with the unseeing nor the forgetting. But coming here had sometimes been a necessary part of his job as a mediator, and given how seriously he took mediating, he'd eventually taught himself brute force and found enjoyment within the process of tricking his mind with the pleasure of pulling teeth. Thus forcing himself apart from lesser men that cowered, while mitigating some the guilt that often came with memories and dreams.

This they called bravery or balls, and said that if you did it enough times a numb void would become of your heart, as his did—a silence that he could never return noise to again. It grew like a tumor, held his heart hostage and made his work easy, much like a basement in and of itself, for many years of reflex. But for how long could the heart remain obscured and content in the dark?

Car tires come to a screeching stop in front of a plain-looking duplex residence, unobtrusively sitting between two others alike and in an alley so narrow it can only fit one car at a time. Behind the veil of tinted windows, it appears as some sort of anomalous, jagged figure bled into reality by helter-skelter shadows and the sun. Off it wafts the unease of staring into a void you can sense is bottomless. Yet that's all it takes—one glance as a flicker of the switch inside Kijun's heart. It retreats into the darkness with one final warning from the driver, before the car door unlocks for his emptied ribcage.

Expectedly, Yunho is the first to greet him on the way in through the backdoor, which extends to a naturally lit alcove preceding one of the empty living areas. As it is outside, the abode's pale bowels are cold and barren as a wasteland; made in plain sight that this was, after all, not a home made for living. After all these years, eerily, it hasn't changed.

"Glad you decided to show up, kid, even though you're recovering. Didn't sound like you would over the phone back then."

"Sure. Is it just us?" Asks Kijun blandly, as he tightens his signature leather jacket around himself and discards the memory of his initial hesitance. And drawing the blade tucked against his ribcage that much more within reach.

Yunho, perpetually amused and properly clad in his formal suit, extends an arm within the general direction of the basement's entrance somewhere down the right hall. "Everyone else's downstairs."

Lead by his stare alone, Kijun follows.

Two men are on standby on each side of the doorframe, and the two bow with a fleeting stiffness when they approach, their neat black suits creasing and dimpling through the motion. Used to gang formalities, Kijun keeps his head up and his scowl tightly chained across his features, his guard so high it heats his blood and draws pinpricks up to the back of his neck. Neither of them return the favour on the way in.

Soon to be discoverd below is what Yunho meant by everyone, being just the two of them and the other men that belonged here in the undigestible stiffness of the basement, rendered to inconsequential heaps by lack of light—at least for now. There are precisely two of them as well, suspended upside down on thick ropes and stagnant time by their ankles, tied wrists reaching for the floor. Like slaughter hung up to dry.

When Yunho flickers on the basement lights, irrefutable proof of days spent without a meal or much water lay palpable between concave abdomens and protruding ribs. Bruises and dried blood tell tales of long and painful beatings on either side.

The one on the far left is slightly larger, his fingers seeming to have grown swollen and purple with shatter and then neglect. Kijun, who's completely unphased by the tableau in front of him, wonders if the broken bones were a just punishment administered after an attempt at escaping. Remembers how often it had to be done before—how many times he'd partaken in the beatings himself.

After all, if given the chance, dogs on tight leashes often bite their way to freedom.

Noticing Kijun's fixed stare, Yunho chimes in from the side, "That one on the left'd almost killed you last week," He says, "But this one's your guy. Caught him sneakin' around the club on Sunday and apparently, he knows plenty. Here—"

A bucket of water Kijun knows is ice-cold immediately follows the smooth voice pouring over his shoulder, which is almost caught amidst the sudden deluge were it not for his reflexes. The water splashes as intended onto the target body hanging on the room's right, resurrecting him from a deathly stillness with some seconds of vigorous floundering. He's alive.

This is Kim Woosik, Yunho had informed Kijun on the phone earlier in the week, while extending his invitation to this questioning. Woosik'd been working undercover as a messenger for the Green Gang leader for a while, recovering and buying information from accomplices working in the club. Their job this morning was to find out just how much he knew, and who, exactly, it was that told. If there was one thing Kijun was good at, it was carving out rats with only his tongue. Then his knife.

"Kim Woosik," Kijun calls out as he finally tunes into his other self, merciless and unforgiving if he'd ever seen it. The heavy bass in his tone passes and reverberates across the damp walls and limbs with a commandeering urgency, Woosik immediately stopping his squirming to listen as he no doubt hears nearing footsteps in the echoes, then feels Kijun's presence when he crouches down by his head.

In this moment, everything happening outside the two of them ceases to exist, Yunho's lighthearted warning not to break him too soon falling upon deafened ears. This place was made for breaking, and breaking alone.

Kijun rips the soaked sack off Woosik's head to begin, and—briefly freezes. Met with two eyes he instantly recognizes, all bloodshot and reflecting shock and the vivid memory of mourning staring back up at him, Kijun feels icy blood and dread rushing up to the back of his skull. Has to quickly war confusion off his brows by aggressively ripping the piece of duct tape off Woosik's mouth. The latter screams as his dry lips split red, alive. He should be dead. I saw you die.

"Who the fuck are you?" Demands Kijun from the ghost turned rat, overtaken by a surge fury so profound it tears and shreds through him thoroughly enough to quickly become all he can feel.

But nonetheless, Woosik smiles a dangerous smile, like he knew all along that this day would come. Spits blood and teeth at Kijun and earns himself a square punch in the face—the sheer force of that singular blow so hard it cracks and skews Woosik's nose completely. It also throws him off balance, erratically swaying on the rope as the walls reflect broken moans and convulsions that can't be muffled by hands. Neither should they exist today, to begin with.

Kijun figures he'd question Yunho later in favour of satisfying his current rage instead. Grips onto Woosik's hair hard enough to sting the scalp bloody, too, and spits, "You fuckin' traitor."

"You fuckin' idiots. Yeah, it's me." Woosik chokes on every syllable he can't grind out without hurting himself, tongue too large in his mouth in this position and agony. But his eyes—oh, how the fire never falters. "Y'thought I'd ac'ually go and die for that greedy fuckin' bastard y'call a boss? Fuck 'ou— I'd rather be a traitor than a fuckin' dead on this turf."

A violent silence ensues at this, lasting only a few laboured breaths from the hanging men, but enough for everyone to feel it's onslaught ten times over. Kijun stands with it, shoving the head in his grip away from him with harsh dismissal. Takes a few extra moments thereafter to produce a smoke from his pocket and light it up, then another, for him to gather some manner of composure back into his voice, in spite of the fires that are laying waste to his insides. Blood, fresh from his split lip soaks into the circumference of the cigarette.

He stars over, while effortless, long strides bring him around this Woosik far too quickly for the other to keep up with, "So, that's why you decided to fake your own death to get out? Just so you could go die for another greedy fuckin' bastard? S'that it, Jung Hyungmin?"

The name tastes filthy and bitter on his tongue; not because he cared that much about Hyungmin's loyalty. Until this day, Jung Hyungmin was supposed to be simply a good friend from the past; someone Kijun had known well since they were seventeen and nineteen. And most importantly of all, he was supposed to be dead. Yet no matter how hard Kijun tried and tried again, life then knocked on his door and proved itself a force he could only bend when it came to his own death.

He had wondered what Yunho meant when he'd said on call, nowadays, we can't even trust death to do it's job. Now he knows; the explanation being a bloodied nose, ugly stabbing scars Kijun recalls stitching openly stretching across the length of his spine and abdomen, and a snake tattoo etched into his inner bicep. Green Gang.

"Yes, Kijun. Y'd be surprised t'know how many have done the same shit. People get sick of bein' manipulated to fuckin' hell, from bein' lied to practically all the time and worked literally to death for personal gain. I didn't choose this life t'be someone's fuckin' toy, and neither did you."

Kijun sneers, though he's merely playing along now after having detached himself from the past, "You know nothing about me. And I ain't surprised at all. Found that informant of yours at the club—works as one of my boys. He told me as much." He crouches next to Woosik again, this time bringing with him a confident lie and the blade he had sheathed under his jacket. Before Woosik can find the strength to surge forth, Kijun brings the tip of the knife up to the base of his throat. Smiles the smile of someone who knows.

"That's before I cut his fuckin' tongue out'ta his mouth, 'course. Future proof problem solved."

Maybe it's because he's wet, starved, desperate and upside down, because the lie connects immediately. Woosik is suddenly reduced to an eerie stillness again, his toes so white it must feel like death slowly encroaching into his skull. His mouth becomes a thin line, his eyes a thousand slices through Kijun's flesh. The latter doesn't mind.

"There it is, Yunho hyung. The truth." Lifting off again, this time off the air off success, the blade follows Kijun's generous height all the way up to Woosik's abdomen. Aimed precisely where Kijun knows his vitals are. "He knows it."

"Yes, and we only need a name."

"Fuck—y'selfish fuckin' bastards. Cut out my tongue. 'm not givin' y'all jackshi—" But Yunho shoves the water bucket under his head before he can finish disagreeing, the implication of it becoming all the more horrific when Kijun brings the sharp end of his blade back to the tender flesh at his throat. Tuning his stare downwards, he recalls how Hyungmin had been many things, but a hero had never one of them. "Wait, wait, wait, okay, okay I'll fuckin' tell you! Jus' don't—"

If anything, he was always just another traitorous coward.

"Then spit it out, bitch."

"K—Kim Namseong. He knows everything."

/

[September 2, 2023, location: confidential. / ft @chenosias]

"Now, let us pray."

Two ancient hands raise skyward in avid calling of the holy spirit. Summoned along with them are long, white robes of cotton, suspended properly by gleaming, silver cuffs, and at opposite end, presumably God in the action of thousands of feet stomping upright in the pews, hands joining. Kijun checks his watch and notes that it's been about an hour since the church hall had become fully occupied, with both him and Osias included in the mix, at whichever God's mercy. The prayer drawls on without his own participation, though wholly embraced by his searching gaze.

The pastor remained as he always remembered him; an old, hunch-backed mausoleum of sin and holy nightmares. And perpetually equipped with a frown that always haunted his face, provoking unease at rest. To the others around them, he may be a devout zealot and Messiah, drawing garbs of cotton, modest silver and a large crucifix around his neck, blessed directly by the God they pray so heartfully to. But all Kijun sees is a crook in a suit and tie, well tucked beneath a hard mask like a second skin. He was a cartel knave at heart and he was good at being so. As was Kijun, though.

In the pew next to him sits Osias, dark, brushstroke brows shifting and settling repeatedly to and fro on his face. He carries curiosity on his sleeve; catching details in the crowd ahead no average joe would ever see, then releases them with the occasional stray nudge or remark into Kijun's shoulder. Watching and listening to him quickly becomes half of Kijun's mind, counting freckles like stars whenever the hall erupts into drab musical bumps and leaves him only with long, black coils and a perfectly smooth, tan cheekbones.

The moment Osias finds the truth in backhanded preachings from the pulpit, though, by way those eyes skew dark brown and stare sidelong with did he just fuckin' say what I thought he just said? on the tip of his tongue, Kijun figures he'd done well by rejecting Yunho's company and bringing Osias instead. The growing glint in them susses out philosophy and cartel poetry he's probably heard many times before, both in Korea and America, the realization doing something most glorious to his handsome features that Kijun, satisfied and amused beyond imagination, would never forget.

Never trust the preachings of a gangster priest. Presses his elbow to the one beside him and murmurs blasphemy through repeated worship, all to be occasionally shushed by the grandmas sitting behind them.

But they steadily lose interest as the service itself ultimately has no place in their itinerary tonight. The person they're actually here for stands five pews ahead with his fingers crossed and eyes closed. In worn hoodie and jeans he appeared as benign as it got, far from the clandestine chamber of secrets he actually was. What would a man like that pray for, wonders Kijun.

It's ironic how society has always taught the next about how and when it's important to fear God, rather than fearing the immediate violence of being alive instead. After all, the only hurdle between man and the God they bend the knees at night for are themselves.

A prayer can only save you if you are alive.

"In the name of the father, son and the holy spirit, Amen."

That's their signal and purely by design, as well as everyone else's. Unhurried and careful to keep small and out of sight, Kijun raises from his seat as the crowd surges and begins to drift towards the exit doors, wordlessly nudging Osias behind him for that extra overlay of obscurity. Five pews behind them now, Kim Namseong, none the wiser, claps his bible shut and thinks of his successful attendance as a telltale sign of safety within the same breath he fails to register the head full of luscious coils sprouting ahead of him, as the only sign of yonder bloodshed.

They tail him out, that blissful ignorance lasting him four whole blocks and a brief convenience store trip to home though at his front door, it becomes a carelessness that would be taxed at the cost of a tongue.

A risky operation soon ensues within strict Green Gang turfs, and is executed by just two men and their trusty blades.

It begins and ends in a back alley apartment block just two preceding buildings shy off the main road, the residence itself a narrow and unkempt street-level hall that reminds Kijun of his days spent in Gyeonggi prison. The thought even tickles a bitter chuckle out of him given the recollection that were this to go completely wrong, he would end up either dead or in prison yet again. Osias hears him in the silence, of course, sounds self-assured enough for the both of them as he echoes off a smug grin a sentiment off the side, just his boyish excitement and encouragement pulling Kijun's shoulders back with an immediacy that arrests him into resolution.

So it goes, the Green bastards, grim reaper and pigs all be damned. Blood can only be paid back with blood.

"Go on, then." Speaks Kijun only around the last corner up to their destination, encouragement returned in kind with a firm clap on Osias' rear.

Their plan was a simple one for the sake of avoiding too many complications and potential injuries: After Namseong gets home from his usual church service schedule, Osias will knock on his front door a couple minutes later and make conversation about anything random. Which, if he's not immediately recognized, would in turn allow Kijun just enough time to sneak up to the scene once Osias gives the clear, and pounce on Namseong. Palm muffling the screaming and an arm locked beneath his jaw, they'll have to knock him unconscious as soon as time and the ferocity of Nameseong's squirming will allow. And then that'll be that.

The only thing that manages to slip past them is a stray punch in the jaw behind him, which later in the night at their own hideout, Kijun will spend nursing with a half-frozen can of Terra beer, Osias already drunk and going off about something in English.

For now, they work in silence, speed and efficiency of it's use within their tandem paramount to their success. This was neither of their turfs after all, so a throbbing jaw would have to wait until their fates are once again only theirs to determine. While Kijun strips and ties up the unconscious body by the joints, Osias searches the room for anything that might alert the Greens of their meddling, smashing Namseong's phone and watch for good measure. Then he's hauled into the only armchair in the neglectful goshiwon space and gagged. His head silently hangs as though shame plagues him hushed and visionless, his neck bruising purple from their recent struggle. Kijun almost allows a pang of guilt grip his heart, except he can't seem to find it anywhere himself.

"A'ight, we shouldn't wait." Scarcely speaking, Osias murmurs as he pulls off his hat, then mimics Kijun by sinking into a relaxed crouch. "Gotta get what you need and get the fuck out posthaste. Surely they'll know somethin's wrong after an hour or two."

"Did'ya find anythin' in his stuff? Just to be sure. Still don't think we should kill him, 'least this— ain't the right place for that..."

"Yeah, yeah whatever y'say. Found these, though."

From Osias' jacket pocket to the center of a palm, then the next, appear a pocket knife and a burner phone. Kijun has to refrain from rolling his eyes and laughing too loud, but the approval is there, resonating in thick contorting eyebrows, his snickering and the soft popping of his knees as he stands again and casually cracks a slap across Namseong's right cheek, so unforgiving even the walls reflect the sound.

Kim Namseong jolts violently awake in the chair, his eyes falling wide as the moon upon a living nightmare he's probably had before. Once his gaze at last crosses Kijun, the air in his fury shifts to an alternative avenue; icy and tart with a fear he can't expunge quickly enough off his smooth face. The same reoccurring snake tattoo peeks at him from an inner left bicep, thus defining the other's ultimate stance. And that twists some ugly, raging, swelling thing inside Kijun as it clearly spells a dreaded mistake out for him: a massive oversight on his part, that'd almost costed him his life.

After laying out all the warnings and going through necessary intimidations, the captive emerges with dense pulps all over his body and two deep black eyes, sponsored by Osias' uncontrollable fists and Kijun's unrelenting refusal of wanting his partner to halt the pummeling. Until Namseong is choking on blood and air and begging through tears.

"Tell me what exactly you know now about the Green Gang's intentions with the ring and we'll leave it at this. Simple." Kijun attempts with a firm clap on Namseong's shoulder, "Why did you fuckin' traitors attack us?"

The next few minutes stretch for what feels like eons and naught, every second spent stalling another sentence of death upon the two who didn't at all belong in this space. Kim Namseong was a stubborn opponent, the type of gangster that rarely fought with his fists. He was slightly older and thus a handful wiser; better informed than most, and Kijun could tell. But Kijun has also learned over the years that to win against the odds, you must first take away their greatest asset. And we gotta do it quickly.

The idea emerges through the heat and pleasures of the moment like a fish out of water,and Kijun finds himself impulsively knocking Namseong out cold, for this final stretch. His fist flares bright red and purple with a fresh pair of reaped blotches, when he says, all wide-eyed and feral, "Hold his head back f'r me, O."

"What? The fuck're you doin'?"

"...Makin' sure he'll never snitch again."

Totally contrary to the wild, searing numbness overtaking his hands, the knife feels light and icy in Kijun's fist as he lifts his sweater and unsheathes it. So light it is that he feels he could toss it upwards and it would somersault on and on until it skewers the sun. But he grips it with a surgeon's precision, and sees only red.

"May God bless you."

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[August 19, 2023, Gangnam-gu]

When you exist outside all boundaries of the Law's tapestry, life quickly becomes a comically long series of misfortunate events and unforeseen circumstances. Like carrying a bomb in your breast pocket, active and ticking down. Every minute spent alive starts to count, every hour suggesting egregious possibilities no one else could dare stomach as their reality. And that reality, being his, once again reinforces itself upon Kijun's shoulders tonight and reminds him that a minute off his guard could cost him nearly thirty years.

In one breath, his wristwatch reads one o'clock or so in the morning and then he finds himself ensnared in some suffocating minutes of it, facing abrupt assault in the building's parking lot floor. In the next instant, it's two, three people are dead, and he's battered and broken but still alive, and seated at the far end of the longest oblong table they have in the club upstairs. Unlike how it were just the hour upon the incident, the dance floor now lays barren in abandon, and the doors are closed. Only the moon dares to interrupt urgency, stepping in through curtains after bulletproof glass.

Fury, smeared blue-black across Kijun's knuckles especially, waits with him here for the emergency meeting to start, a pack of frozen steak on his brow holding the rest at bay, for the safety of everyone else in the room. The cook had hesitated passing it on, the steak, maybe because he knew it wouldn't help much with saving anyone. Ire will bring man to places he would never go even in death.

As he shifts deeper into the shadows and his seat, the chair underneath him creaks feebly with the effort of supporting his size, crying out in tandem with the zippo he flicks as he lights his fifth smoke of the hour. This one in particular reminds him of how he may have more in common with the steadily burning anger in the embers than any of those slowly filtering into the room with him tonight, as the hour wanes. Each drag signifies a minute's passing, his patience cascading just as slowly. Until, finally, the table is full save for the seat his opposite, at the other end of the table. The largest chair available, perfectly suited for a king.

Finally, Lee Gun-pyo arrives five minutes late to the meeting he'd ordered himself, a bowing Yunho preceding him and a cane supporting half his weight. It would appear that he can no longer hide his limp anymore, another case of vulnerability or—another potential catalyst towards his downfall Kijun is certain he'd earned himself.

All present rise from their seats in favour of bowing to their king. All but Kijun, who merely rolls his eyes at the unfolding pageantry as he repositions the pack of thawing steak on his temple. As though he expected no less, Gun-pyo heeds no mind to blatant disrespect and sits on the opposite end at the table, thick wrinkled palms resting almost too gracefully for the occasion atop glossed black oak. If it weren't for the continuous rapping of his fingers Kijun knew he always did when he were nervous, he'd even take offence of the tardiness.

Gun-pyo's eyes though, are far more steady, and they scan the faces in the room with a fierce and starving tiger's gaze until they finally land straight upon the elephant in the room; onto a Kijun in tatters at his opposite, staring back from beneath the ugly veil of his shortcomings. And Kijun half-expects him to smile. To taunt him for this predicament because he'd been awfully uncooperative in the last year. But Gun-pyo visibly sighs and readjusts his suit with a scowl, and that's it.

"It's always you."

"Yeah, no. fuckin'. shit, boss."

one | two | three | four | five | six | seven | eight | nine (1/2), nine (2/2)

Let all the vile and suppurating venoms of the night spit in the eyes of God and blind her to our evil.

[Breaking News (31 October, 2023): Notorious drug ring gang members arrested en masse after a major brawl breaks out near Incheon Port in broad daylight]

[30–31 October, 2023. Somewhere between Yongsan and Incheon]

Have you seen the news going around on the 31st? Do you recall the full context of the coverage articles? Let me jog your memory for you: written by an obviously politically motivated prick, spreading bullshit about violent gang members, mass arrest, and body counts. Then something else about a notoriously wanted drug ring leader turning up dead a few hours after, his leaked identity shocking the general public into an instant uproar. Yeah, I mean that news, something about... trouble, trouble, and more trouble.

Was not my cup of tea in general as you would imagine, at least not that abysmal holier-than-thou attitude it'd been written with. But I can't deny that the evidence was still all there. And as per usual, it made the population anxious. What the president of a well known major corp. being the mafia all along implied for the rest was that any thriving day-to-day establishment they adored so much could also have been sponsored by the 'bad guys'. Any neighbor or relative a pawn to other men and women who would reach all horrifying ends with their lives to get what they wanted. This allows me another chance at reminding you, though, that crime organizations have always been deeply ingrained in our society, even more than they are today. It's just a matter of getting caught at the wrong moment and having no connections to back yourself up with.

I'd been heavily medicated and asleep when it all first blew up in the early morning. Didn't even notice my body being dragged from one room to another and finally laid to rest, despite all the excruciating aches and sores I'd earned during the many hours spent in captivity. My dad had to read it to me twelve hours later, twelve hours of the final escalations and then de-escalations of the day before being real and strictly unrefuted. I didn't somehow dream it all up. It was real how all it took was one night for more of my old friends to end up dead. My boss had been killed on his own turf, the drug ring he'd lead for most of his life and the life of his father before him crippled beyond repair. A legacy left behind to rot on the bloodied doorsteps of history. Finally, scores I've taken part in rousing all these years have been settled and I was allowed to walk free. Everybody lost, everybody won. But at what cost?

My dad had been caught by the same people who had me in their custody, tied at the same joints I was and thrown around along with some other guys on our side. They'd recognized him, though, and news of him being at large again spread far and wide enough in the ranks to reach my ear within an hour or so, if I had to make a guess. We didn't even catch him, I heard them whisper behind my back, he came and purposely gave himself up. He'd been pretty roughed up, and I could tell for sure by just looking at him, though it wasn't nearly as bad a hand as the one I'd been dealt.

"They were afraid. And they didn't exactly know what I wanted, though it was obvious," pops had said after I asked him why. "I could tell. They were perplexed and afraid". Even after all these years and secure layers of thick rope, they were still afraid of Kim Junseo. They had not washed the blood off my back the night before. Not until after I'd heard of my father's presence, almost a day later. I wonder what they'd say now if they were to see him in the kitchen, humming around a cigarette while he cooks dinner in an apron.

I do wonder if Yunho had heard he was here, too, and what his presence meant in terms of the future. Did he linger on purpose? Is that why he'd disappeared entirely?

As for me, the abrupt news of my father's captivity had shocked me so profoundly I think I had slipped into some sort of comatose state for a while. I swear I couldn't breathe nor feel the pain of my injuries ripping apart all the sinews in my back, thighs and arms with every miniscule movement. I could only stare at the ground and hold in my mouth a tongue that felt far too large for it, and a desperate series of pleads and cries that may get me burnt again. He was so close yet so far away from me. Was supposed to be in Kyoto. Was supposed to be far away from all of this. And yet he was there, and with him came an opportunity the syndicate would've never again gotten. A bone made of gold for the wildest dog.

They struck the deal with me over the phone as though they knew they had hardly any time left to relay the message, let alone come in personally to slap or carve it into me. A man whose voice I scarcely recognized growled to me, and I quote, "It's either you and your father's lives, or Lee Gun-pyo's life. Two piglets to a boar. We let you go, you take us to him. Kill him, and you and your father will never hear from us again." Later, my father would tell me that he leads the Reds.

I said only—or rather croaked, "Yes."

And only truly felt the sheer gravity of that choice after waking up to my pops beside me the next day. After seeing my partner for the first time in two eternities. Only then could I finally grasp at and understand the one and truest meaning of my life. Love so hard that it kills you.

They let me go just shy after our location had finally been leaked. Bound, still, though, I couldn't run even from myself. Only talk, for the lives I intended to save. This had been my bone, and I no other choice but to chew on it blindly while it was still intact and mine to bury. I've recently been such a bad dog to my owner, anyway. Give a dog a bone and he'll find his way home.

We got there sometime past twelve in the morning when they finally began to untie me. It's was a really small and narrow 떡볶이 restaurant cornering two empty streets, and was often empty. I knew the area and place very little, except that it was ran by the unfortunate mother of a man who'd passed away serving Gun-pyo years ago. I believe he was their sponsor. Before, I had been there only twice to eat and then exchange information for pay and new tasks with the same one man that sat inside every time. October 30th would it's last day in business for a really, really long time. If only the food had been any good.

Now, I don't want any of this to read as though I'm an innocent saint that harbored not even a fraction of desire to kill my patron myself. Believe me, the size of my desire had grown fucking behemoth at this point. I was thirsty to bite off the same hands that had been feeding me scraps all my life. That's how bad of a dog I was, and still am. I don't even consider myself a victim at this point. It's just karma. I might even forgo surgery and instead bear these scars on my back for the rest of my life, as I already do the rest.

What particulars I had against this was that me gutting my patron with kitchen scissors that night had not been a choice I'd decided on by my own terms. My hands, breaking the law and fixing another all at once, were forced, the fighting a brutal blur in time, and my back fucking ached. I was hanging by a thread exhausted and tattered to such awful degrees that I'm sitting here now, writing this and considering the fact that I'd been one of the only survivors alive in the end to be a complete miracle. The van had been full when we arrived on location, and left only with three in the end.

I'd just killed a man, I thought. Before he slipped out of my grip he managed to grab my shirt sleeve with what had been the last of his strength, looked up at me and said, "I should've put you down when I had the chance."

I hadn't been able to register it in the chaos of the moment back then, but as I think of his eyes now I can trace back no hatred in the brittle frost of them on me, despite his words. He'd made me into the dog that I am now, after all. He knew all along that this day would come for the both of us. So I killed him and simultaneously, part of myself, knowing that it would've, too.

one | two | three | four | five | six | seven | eight | nine (1/2)

I'm writing this down now while it's still fresh on my mind, so in the case I'm ever found and arrested for it, I'll have this log as some sort of proof. Or even a confession.

[October 29, 2023, Somewhere between Yongsan and Incheon]

On the 29th of October of this year, four days ago, I was supposed to land safely on Japanese soil by 6 in the evening. My dad had agreed to pick me up from the airport and together we planned to grab a meal and some beer on the way back to Kyoto, where we live. It cuts me deeply now to remember how happy I'd been that day. After such a fun weekend spent with my boyfriend and friends, and of course, getting back to pops, which always excited me to all ends. I spent all morning holding my precious partner before he went to work, then gave him my afternoon, too. We had some lunch together right before my flight, though eating had been a challenge as parting for us was nothing short of bittersweet. We already knew we'd be apart for four days; he had work. And yet it had never occurred to me then that on top of that, I'd disappear entirely.

In hindsight, my joy had been a red herring of sorts.

Something strange happened around eleven, same day. The other gangs have been more aggressive lately, especially the Greens who've recently suffered a few greater losses than they've had to deal with in a while. The general goal had shifted from yielding for peace to blood for blood. They wanted Gun-pyo's head and would not stop until the hit is finally made on the right man. So around eleven that morning, I heard the burner phone I'd stolen a while back ringing for the first time since I found it. At first I had no clue what the sound was, until I realized during the second time it went off from somewhere in my closet. I found it but waited for the call to go dead prematurely, then waited until the very last ring to pick up. Up to my ear, while standing within the darkness asleep among my jackets I heard someone on the other end murmur, "I know it was you."

And for a horrifying moment the voice sounded like it came from the other side of my closet door. It didn't, but remembering now how I felt back then, how I held my breath and flushed with ire, I'm sure, despite everything, that I would've killed him on the way out.

Instead I quietly shrugged it off, drowned and then smashed the phone, blackmail material be damned. Because according to my logic and possibly greed, yeah it was me, so fucking what? Everything has already gone to shit and I was not about to be in Korea at all after the three following hours anyway.

At least I thought I shouldn't have been, but life wouldn't be life if it didn't have other plans in store for me, of fucking course. Halfway to the airport I'd asked my hyung to drop me off somewhere quiet so I could get a taxi instead, right after I noticed we were being followed. He has a kid so I didn't want him to get in trouble along with me if it came to it, although he'd stubbornly refused to abandon me at first. I hope to tell him soon that although my insistence got me kidnapped almost immediately after, I don't regret it. I could've died like he said, but I lived, after all.

As I expected though, my kidnappers were an odd mix of Greens, Reds and Blues, all guys we did business with. And I'm under the impression, still, that they'd followed me from home or somewhere too close to home for my comfort. I tried to fight them off and run, but I had nothing to protect myself. Next thing I knew I was somewhere in an abandoned building, disoriented as all hell. I didn't know in the beginning where exactly I was, though it couldn't have been too far from where they'd first apprehended me as I likely was not out of it for long. Alas, in that short amount of time they'd moved my unconscious body on location, stripped me of my clothes and belongings entirely, and was bound by the wrists and ankles on my knees.

I braced myself for a beatdown as soon as I was conscious again and rightfully so, as a beatdown I received after every question and threat of theirs I refused to answer (Tell us where your boss is. Do you know what will happen to you if you keep secrets? If you just talked, we wouldn't have to kill you). So their priority hardly was to keep me alive and that's the thing, I didn't mind it. I never could mind a split lip, some deep and tender bruises and black eyes, not even a stab. Even if they broke my bones and spit in my swollen eye and open wounds, I wouldn't snitch, though not for loyalty—not even fucking close. I have people to protect and if I had to die to guarantee their safety, I would.

Realizing this, the bastards started to burn my shit. Threw my suitcase and handbag into one of the braziers in the area. I lost my phone in that fire, alongside a lot of precious memories, messages and some of my skin. Which they burnt with a rod that's been cooking in the flames, dragging the thing down my back with a slowness so infinitesimal the space momentarily became hell itself. I saw red, I saw white, and then I couldn't see at all but just squirm there with the smell of my burning skin. While I tried to hold in my tears I imagined: this is what it must feel like to an angel having its wings ripped off.

That was the first night I disappeared.

[October 30, 2023, Somewhere between Kyoto, Japan and Seoul, South Korea]

The following section will be literal word of mouth, though as verbatim as I can help it. I trust my pops wouldn't lie to me.

He said and I scribe: he knew something was up within the first hour after I was supposed to land in Japan. I've warned him in the past before that while apart, if I ever went for more than 24 hours without replying to his messages or calls, assume I'm missing or dead. So he was more than prepared for situations like this though he also thought about waiting a while—maybe my phone had ran out of battery and I somehow forgot to charge it, while simultaneously forgetting he was picking me up. He went home, he said, and waited precisely another two hours before finally booking himself a flight to Korea for the morning. Nothing could get in the way of him finding me at that point, dead or alive, he said.

Much to my dismay, that's how he met Byungwoo for the first time. Instead of how I'd planned to introduce them in Japan, they were forced to meet prematurely at the expense of my safety. In front of my apartment proper, both of them desperate for some kind of sign of life from me. Maybe one of them might've even hoped it was all a bad dream and that they'd wake up in the next minute to me back in their realities. I would've hoped the same, yet that was our reality: his immediate suspicion upon seeing my boyfriend—who at the time to him was just another stranger, possibly some unsavoury figure from another gang waiting by the door for me to show up or come out. But pops' ability to read people is really impressive. Always has been. He could tell right away after getting closer that Byungwoo meant no harm, that they were both vulnerable flies approaching the same trap.

He told Byungwoo straight up about my position: his guess on point, being that I'd been taken somewhere and my phone had been shattered to limit contact. I don't really want to repeat what he'd said about Byungwoo's reaction to this, though. It truly breaks my heart to disastrous degrees to think about his face, the horror overtaking the beauty he'll always possess. The instantaneous panic, then a worry so raw and harrowing that it'd probably kept him up at night, waiting for who would not return so soon, nor as whole as he'd left. Who might've never returned. All I ever wanted was to do better for him. To not leave him behind to sleep and eat alone again, or have him worry to the point of tears and anger he hardly knew. All I wanted and will want, breathing or six feet under, is for him to be happy. Yet I've failed him again, to the point where my father had to warn him about getting near my apartment, lest he wanted to get hurt.

But in scenarios like this, I'd noticed, he becomes as determined as he is afraid, my partner. Last time I returned home hurt, he swore that he'd kill the people that wanted to hurt me. The hatred in his eyes at the time shocked me more than anything ever has before. It was real. Have you ever loved someone so much that you'd risk in a heartbeat something so incredibly horrendous for their sake? That'd make the two of us, at least. They ended up tracking my phone together. Two months or so ago Byungwoo and I decided to install a tracker app on our phones so he could track me in the case of an emergency. This was life or death, pops'd said, after they finally came across a distinct crosshair on the map that would serve as the first clue to my location.

Desperate but hopeful, my father rushed to Incheon with his eyes wide open, diving headfirst and alone into a full blown brawl between too many gangs to count. Kim Junseo, a legend of his own time, returned and purposely falling within the same trap his son did.

(Part 6/?) | Part 5. Part 4. Part 3. Part 2. Part 1.

None of the noteworthy details about the clinic had ever been instant. To those who believed it to be only what it seemed like at face value, it simply was what it was: an inconspicuous little chiropractic clinic located in the back alleys of Jung-gu. Rudimentary pricing, pleasant smelling and humbly nestled between buildings that would always remain abandoned, it was everything to the poor.

Kijun stands in the long shade across from it and flicks the zippo of his lighter. Antiseptics and incense mix with the dry, spicy scent he carries back in after every smoke.

Inside, like he were a boy again, he counts cracks in the smooth concrete under his heels, and the many times the receptionist’s tone would shift when welcoming patients. Two hours of waiting cross him like this, folded tight in chipped blue seats with nothing to do but cycle through smoke breaks, the midday rush of appointments passing over him in thick, hazy waves.

He never liked it here, not even as a boy—something about it always provoked a wide berth, like the space between two rotting teeth. Something twisted and uncomfortable. Something close to the edges of greed, and death. Sins palliated.

Occasionally there would be talkative patients or a curious grandchild, nearly all of them asking of him the same thing. To stave off attention as quickly as possible he would bow his head with careful politesse and repeat the same answer, over and over, though he never smiled while he did it. He doesn’t think it necessary, as he isn’t here to entertain. If these people knew what kind of place they sat in, too, they would not seek for pleasure in the cracks and the grins, but instead for blood.

A pair of red tabi flats appear in his vision, as if to prove his thoughts, and only then, some moments later, does Kijun realize that the room had finally gone empty. The receptionist levels him with disdain clear in her gaze, her long dark lashes swept downcast. It’s his turn to see the doctor. “Come with me.” She says, succinctly. He does.

This moment was two whole months old in his head, give or take, though not due to any particular enthusiasm to experience it sooner. It was more like a premonition, as by all accounts, he'd expected havoc; the cold, awful kind of dread you feel twisting somewhere deep inside your gut, when the moon hung in the sky askew. Ten years of servitude and yet there was still never a way to tell how these things would go, and from previous experience of being a bystander, he knew that no one ever walked away unscathed. No one.

He’s lead down a concrete stairwell comprising of two levels, then a narrow white corridor dressed by nothing but a column of bright lamplights hung off the ceiling and four doors made of thick laminate; all locked. At the very end, the last door appears flanked by two men at each side of the frame, and he remembers through that door is an office. Kijun's gaze clutches at everything, including those two faces, but he makes no clear case of his recognition.

The doctor's second office, tucked so deeply into the underbelly of this building that there were no windows, only space, unravels before him as the receptionist sidesteps with a tiny gesture. Immediately, the doctor is not in, however. In his stead, a man Kijun recognizes as his patron ambles among glossed furniture and the astringent smell of cigars. Like triggered instincts in an animal, Kijun levels his chin and tightly squares his shoulders straight, hiding his fear and adapting to scant courage.

Lee Gun-pyo stands with his back to the entrance, his thickened hands gentle and deliberate on the shelf pressed in the far corner wall as he seems to browse through old records and dusty medical books. His hair’s been been slicked back, and from behind he looks like he hadn't aged a day since thirty five.

Then he’s turning and Kijun finds himself facing mostly what two months of his absence had done to Gun-pyo’s condition. His hair had gone paler than how Kijun remembered it last, though the colour’s a rich, deep grey rather than pure white shades. The corners of his tiger eyes are pinched tighter by weariness and cunning with visible wrinkles, as are the corners of his mouth. Fair-skinned, thick shouldered, and angular, well-groomed features; he'd always been a handsome man. A commandeering sort of beauty that could silence a crowded room all at once.

Clad in his suit, Gun-pyo was precisely the ideal embodiment of what he was: old money. He smiles, like a man who wants something impossible and knows he can get it.

Behind him, Yunho paces quietly forth from the opposite corner and presses a button on the record player. Nocturne Op. 9 No. 2 begins to play, and so do they.

(Part 5/?) | Part 4. Part 3. Part 2. Part 1.

[ LOCAL ITAEWON BAR & CLUB Le Sanctuaire, OWNED BY PRESTIGED CHAIN BUSINESSMAN LEE GUN-PYO CAUGHT UNDER FIRE THIS EVENING, LITERALLY. Further investigations by the KNPA are soon to come. ]

/

At this point in his career and idles alike, spilled blood was either akin to spilled milk or merely a holy measure of sacrament. Kijun spends his second full day back in Seoul where only crows flock towards; plucking knives of all variants out of corpses haphazardly strewn at sunset's mercy. Twisted limbs and gaping mouths revere his return and echo his demise all in the same spell, and among their reach he threads, baptized by blood.

Stained digits quiver ever so slightly around the cigarette he collects in his mouth at long last, at the edge of the day's concluding sunset and Le Sanctuaire's polished floor-to-ceiling windows. Light takes him a few tries, with the zippo failing and slipping on a crimson thumbpad and winter's dread in his bones until he finally produces a competent enough flame against patches of blood. A thick smokescreen clouds his short-sight then, as early evening clouds skirt among appearing stars, painting the walls in the back an innocent shade of grey. And that helpful grey, hiding death.

It's a few hours since the club had been sieged and ransacked by three van-fulls of naïve men and boys in wrinkled suits. Many years of effort trashed in broad daylight from top to bottom and all the way around by overconfident lackeys with spiked bats and blades–despite it's already abandoned state. This had been their only stop for the day, likely, and Kijun could instantly tell by the way everything in sight had been severely damaged and shattered to utter smithereens– could still feel the raw malice and hear triumphant screeching bouncing off walls that had been beautiful just hours before, as they destroyed millions upon millions worth of won and earned livelihoods, all under three hours tops. So easily had the sanctuary he once helped build yield to the enemy's carnage, falling apart at the greedy hands of man.

A bleeding suspect writhes and chokes on the brief slit tucked at length in his throat by Kijun's left foot, the blade that'd bled him out abandoned on his right; close enough to be in his reach, but still too far for the bastard to make it to alive. His weakened hand scrambles for the hem of Kijun's pant leg in a desperate attempt anyway, leaving messy red prints on washed denim, like little footnotes. But Kijun remains rooted and caliginous in his gloom as though he's parked amidst a field of weeds in pouring rain, columns of his indulgence plummeting onto a forehead, an arm, a palm. And no trace of compassion hangs in his cold, hooded gaze as he silently listens to life violently swallowing around itself like a serpent in madness, for his smite engulfs all potential feelings of guilt with an echo so overwhelmingly in tune with death he can only be, and embrace it.

This was not his doing, anyway. Notwithstanding him having had the luxury of slowly drawing out the weapon from the neck which could scarcely clench and release around the blade plunged in it before, let alone the answers Kijun had been insisting on all the while, until there was nothing left to keep him but the blunt unforgiving eyes of his inquisitor. One who may as well have been the executioner from the start.

The actual culprit stands across the desolate dancefloor to his left, meticulously wiping caked hands clean with a cotton cloth produced from his pocket. The ever so loyal superintendent, Lee Yunho, who silently clicks his tongue in annoyance with himself.

"Are we finished now?" Kjiun levels through the silence between them as he grows slightly impatient near the irony, blood soaked end of his cigarette. "I only came to talk like you asked, but instead ended up with all this dirty fucking blood on me and still not a single word from you. 's about time you started don't ya' think?"

"And I'm thankful for your participation, Kijun-ah." Yunho responds flatly, flicking away the bloodied cloth in favour of plucking leather gloves he were supposed to be using from his back pocket. His soft eyes land as an unamused pair on the younger, "Brilliant, as always."

Kijun rolls his eyes, and it's only shortly after the hand at his ankle falters and life deserts the room does he finally approach his comrade in peace, shoes crunching loudly on broken glass.

"You know what this—" He gestures with a hand he hadn't bothered to wipe himself at the mess encompassing them, "—means for me and all the rest who'd been workin' here for the past few years, right, hyung? That's why you'd brought me here?"

Yunho sighs profoundly, "I do."

The blackout curtains are gone, violently torn off into opaque pools of velvet that plague each corner of the large room. Though the glasses are tinted, telltale signs of the sun's novel absence could still be found on the horizon from this point of view, and they briefly cast whimsical shadows on Yunho's youthful face. Awe provoking in and of itself, if only circumstances allowed for a more savoury atmosphere. Instead Kijun pauses in front of the elder, half a head taller, and delves an exsanguinated palm into the hyung's jacket pocket to fish out a crushed pack of smokes he knows is always there.

"I have nothing now that this place is gone. Nothing."

"I know, kid. And I'm sorry, but I'd warned you beforehand. Not to count on it."

"Are you fucking shitting me? Do you take me for some kind of fucking idiot? No, I know you're not sorry." Kijun crudely spits between Yunho's feet, his fury causing him to clench his jaw around the fresh cigarette he'd just plucked from the hyung's packet, "The least you can do now is finally explain to me what the fuck has been goin' on all this time, and why the hell I have to be caught in the middle of it."

He completely expects Yunho to strike him for his blatant provocation, something all the elder men in his life have been doing more recently for reasons he can't fathom. But much to his chagrin, or contrarily his relief, Yunho pauses, holding tightly onto silence and only considers his opponent for a calculative moment. No doubt weighing the consequences for whatever urges he quietly forces down, before he lifts a hand to collect a smoke.

"Fine." His expression shifts ever so slightly, losing tension and gaining a hue of indifference in its place, as if to convey his refusal to take up the weight of any faults. With evening between his teeth he lights up the cigarette and finally yields. "If you repeat any of what I'm about to tell you, even to Gun-pyo, I'm afraid you'll never have another chance out of this life once and for all. It'll persist, until it kills you. That's a promise."

Kijun squares broad shoulders and rolls his neck as though preparing for a bloody fist fight. The apprehension which suddenly mounts him then is blamed on the thick, stickiness in his palms, as he refuses to acknowledge it in any other context. He'd waited far too long for this to back out now. "Okay."

Yunho draws out his following drag for as long as it takes him to get to one of the open windows near them, where he speaks nicotine into the passing wind in attempt at erasing secrecy out of existence as soon as he speaks it into it, "This isn't some random issue that'd started in the past year with Kang Dongwook, as Gun-pyo may have otherwise lead you to believe. It's been going on behind the scenes since you've been in the Philippines all those years ago."

Kijun scoffs irritatedly at the mention of his patron's name, "Yeah, no shit..."

"Remember when Gun-pyo 'randomly' brought in that group of guys from prison back then? Caused a huge uproar among you lot, but you could do nothing about it but listen to him—me included. But they weren't just convicts and it wasn't just happenstance. Some were veterans from the military, and it was a sacrifice. He needed them for something else he never told any of you about."

"Why?" Frowns the younger deeply, ball of his shoulder pressing to the window frame as he leans over and succumbs to Yunho forcefully prying open the annals of his memory. "Why didn't he tell us the truth? I thought we just needed more men."

"Because he thought the truth would've distracted you from work. You knew we couldn't afford any distractions, didn't you? I remember you saying it yourself. We were constantly in so many tight spots we hardly had enough wiggle room to slip out of. Business was good, but it was absolute hell for us."

It was. "Mm, I remember."

"He didn't want to lose any more of you boys, so the seasoned lot were brought in for something like a suicide mission, if not that. Back then it'd come to our attention that there was someone else on our tail, a rival on the market who'd been waiting for the opportunity to strike us down and take our place. The normal everyday occurrence, except it wasn't a bluff and they weren't doing everything on their own... They were backed by the Chinese and some Filipino police."

At mention of the Triads, Kijun's usual darkness pales against the moonlight like a flake of snow. The dots in his head begin to connect towards a fate worse than he could've dared to imagine for himself before, and he breaks out in cold sweat because of it. He recalls the day of his arrest like it had been yesterday; the morning sun bouncing off his naked back, bare feet slapping the ground so hard in his heedless sprinting that it burned and bled profusely against concrete and dirt and then concrete again. Hollering at the top of his lungs, so loudly his voice had fled him for many days. All to no avail as in the end, he'd still been caught.

Deep octaves climb a tone as his heartbeat simultaneously takes off with reckless abandon, just like that day. "Holy shit...! So that's how..."

"Mmm.." Yunho hums, a strange, collected contrast of peace, in the same breath flicking the lingering column of ash of his cigarette off on the side. Flecks of blood sully his white dress shirt cuffs, but he doesn't seem to mind. "By the time we got to them back then, it was too late. Our hubris had costed us a fortune– and Gun-pyo's reputation."

"That's how the grand scale of arrests went down... They reported us. None of the shit that happened in Manila was coincidence at all."

"No, the pigs were actually useless and in cahoots with them from the start. They were operating off a good tip and somehow managed to hold the upper-hand, because there weren't that many of us in the Philippines after all. They knew exactly where to strike us, and you were just collateral."

Kijun had spent many lonely nights in confinement blaming himself for what had happened on that day. For failing his team and Gun-pyo simultaneously, in just shy of an hour. All their hard work and sleepless nights gone because of him. Perhaps if he'd done so-and-so earlier, or pushed his colleagues around a bit harder, or took a different turn during the chase–if only twenty year old Kijun had known what twenty eight year old him did now: that none of it was any of his fault. That he'd been just a pawn all along.

"Fucking bastards..." Kijun curses colourfully under his breath, sharp brows under constant tension throughout his attempt at processing all the information all at once. He absentmindedly brushes bloodied fingers through curt black locks, soothing himself out of incredulity, only briefly. "So did you not feel any inch of fucking remorse for us who got caught in your fucking mess? Didn't you think you could at least tell us the truth after we got out?"

"You think that would've changed anything, Kijun?" Yunho grimaces as the earth exhales ice on them through the window, "Guys we sent in never came back, so we had no way of retaliating without getting our asses into more shit. Were too busy swimming in the copious amount of losses already. They took out multiple dens of ours all at once, not just yours. You're lucky you were out and only got arrested. It was nothing short of brutal. They'd been showing the same patterns again recently. It's their strategy, the fuckin' cunts." The elder curses in distaste for the first time tonight, "Their patience makes them dangerous, but luckily we were more than prepared this time around. Managed to fend off most of the attacks here. Come, help me finish."

Yunho abruptly straightens, as though he'd just come to again, abandoning the window and his recollections for the few canisters they'd brought on the way in, earlier. Gasoline canisters, which the elder soon uncaps and begins ceremoniously pouring and splattering all across polished marble flooring, the deceased, and a sea of broken glass. Kijun burns the rest of his smoke from a distance away, then joins him shortly.

"I'm gonna miss this place. Do we really have to put it to the torch, though? I thought all our personal info and shit had already been retrieved beforehand by you lot."

"They have. Both staff and clientele data, gone, to protect all your identities if the stalwarts ever decided they'd dip their toes into this one. Gun-pyo thought we should burn it just to make sure, though, 'specially the bodies. It's his building so I guess he can do whatever the fuck he wants with it, I'm just following orders. Says he doubts anyone will catch whiff of it anyway, except maybe the local news."

Kijun hums, making sense of Yunho's words, though he finds no existing shade of consolation in them, nor in the careless pouring of kindling. The horrors of an eight year old bawl weigh down much too heavily on his shoulders, adding laden to his steps and leaving little room or nor energy left to properly puzzle within himself his nearing fate, even after emptying a third canister within the very room he always served guests in. Dressing precious memoirs in what would be their last breath. In ruin.

The tangy pungency of gasoline begins to permeate the air and congest their throats as it soaks between the club's cracks and fissures, coiling under fingernails, and fallen curtains. Kijun grows equally as speechless as the dead until they finish, and finally, lamentably, Yunho acknowledges his solemn absence with a nudge in the rib as they conclude under the arch of the entrance hallway.

"Listen, kid..." Yunho muffles from behind the constrains of his mask, sounding so painstakingly apologetic at a crime scene that Kijun would have laughed, if he had the heart for it now. Much like a guilty older brother, if he ever had one. "I know you've done a lot of bad shit in your life... Even tonight, you've added to that tally once again. But remember, that does not make you a bad person. Not nearly as bad as you're trying to convince yourself every new day that you are... Try doing the opposite for once, see how that changes you."

Kijun sighs exasperatedly, eyes pirouetting in his skull as he begins to pat his pockets for his lighter, "You don't have to lecture me, hyung. Really. It won't fix anything."

"Oh, but I do, if it's important. You know the story of how I started working for Gun-pyo at the same age as he'd recruited you, already. Now I'm almost forty, yet still belting out the 'Yes, sir''s like an old, obedient dog. I've killed more people than you can ever imagine, for Gun-pyo alone. But I, too, was once in this dilemma you're facing today. 'I can't go, but I can't stay either' and you can guess my choice." The elder says, seemingly sporting a humourless smile in the dark, "I was a fool for choosing comfort over logic in this case, but I'm glad now that I can at least attempt at preventing someone else from making the same mistake... You, although at this point, it may not mean anything." A throttled moment passes between them, one during which Kijun openly displays his discomfort in the from of refusing to look at his steadfast hyung in the face. He who searching for a gaze he never finds from below.

But it still does not deter him. Kijun had never been able to thwart this man once. His determination was really something extraordinary. Gun-pyo would perish would him, Kijun always thought. "Walk away while you still can, Kijun. Like Junseo—"

Alike flickering on red lights in a room, Kijun immediately swells with rage, somehow growing even taller than he already was within the brief distance it takes for him to have Yunho cornered. Everything about him condenses into a taut heap. Much like a ferocious cat raising its back, it's tail fluffed out.

"Don't you fucking talk about my father in a place like this." The younger viciously hisses between the teeth, his eyes as round and dark through the afront as two bulbs with burnt out cores.

But still, unfathomably, Yunho does not falter. The only indication of his annoyance echoes through his lowering verbiage, "You will suffer for all the shit you've done so far once you're dead. That surely comes later, but now, do as he did and I didn't. Be wise and quit while you can. You'll thank yourself for it in a few years."

Kijun realizes a heartbeat too late that he'd merely been baited into meeting Yunho's steely gaze again, when the hyung hooks his mask under his chin and pops a quick, mischievous grin up at him. Embarrassment blasts through the tension gathered in his muscles as an overheated furnace would into remote winter skies, and with sharp, knitted brows he stumbles back, now just inexplicably irritated. Yunho triumphantly straightens his leather jacket, and his spine. "Smile. This is your freedom."

"Whatever..." Kijun rasps at length, pulling down his own mask and plants the last ever cigarette smoked in Le Sanctuaire between chapped lips. "Let's just light this bitch up and never see each other again."

Yunho only raises a simple gesture between them, urging Kijun onwards, like he knows they will. "After you."

To this Kijun responds in kind, by flicking at the zippo only once this time, dried blood catching in the brass creases as the cigarette catches light and burns. He takes a long, healthy drag that bottoms out his lungs with a delicious cloud of warmth. The very last pleasure this place will know for a while. Then, with a flick of a deft wrist, flicks it into the start of a bittersweet bonfire.

"To secrecy, blood and Lee Gun-pyo."

(Part 4/?) | Part 3. Part 2. Part 1.

Kyoto, Summer, 2020

A soft click of the engawa door at his back announces the earnest return of company that couldn't refuse his tenacity. Kijun folds forward against bent knees, bare down to his boxers, and flicks a column of ash into the splash of moonlight wedged in his ashtray as his father settles back down beside him, huffs of satisfaction on his lips. He's smiling, the old man, unrivaled joy ensuing mostly around narrow eyes in such a way that accentuated the copious amount of sake and shochu they'd been ingesting for the past two hours. The last bottle almost spills over as he attempts at settling it down between them amongst all the empty ones, clumsy digits scrambling so hard Kijun finds himself intervening with the theatrics.

"Ah, you're makin' a huge mess, pa. Why'd you bring another," Kijun asks through a grin, though it escapes him more like a statement up in smokes. "I told you, we gotta stop now 'cause you get the worst fuckin' hangovers. Not tryin' to deal with that y'know."

"Oh, c'mon, don't be an asshole." Junseo scarcely recovers with a fist to his only son's shoulder, though he doesn't punch him nearly as hard as he could. Between the two, it's always been more like a nudge. "Just one more? For your old man. It's not every day my son comes by when I'm here after all."

Kijun holds that unsteady gaze on him momentarily, cigarette burning still at the corner of his mouth, moon delved so deeply into their tresses it turns his father entirely grey. But notwithstanding his current state of absence, Junseo is still too good at concealing any other reservations laid behind his sagged stare for his equally drunken son to decrypt, so with a sigh of defeat sounding in his throat, the latter soon slips his palm around the shochu bottle's neck and pours his father a generous shot instead.

By some absurd margin of luck, not a single drop is spilled from the glass as Junseo raises it to his mouth this time and practically chucks the spirits at once down his throat. Like it's the last thing he were to do after tonight. It takes him a moment to savour the raw flavours before surfacing again, all groans and overly flushed cheeks, and drops the glass for a cigarette he'd regret less later. He folds his legs how he always does when he's pensive and ready for the stars.

"Thank you, son." Echoes between them like faint murmurs of slow church bells throughout the minutes that unravel after, screens of smoke swooning and dispersing and mixing as they smoke in this comfortable, summer swept silence.

Just beyond the sunbaked courtyard walls lay a narrow street for local passerby's and curious cats alike, which leads to a main path that brings you straight to a small bridge for crossing. Following its dewy scent, faint rushing of water can be heard all the way from here, and somewhere in the courtyard rattles an assembly of crunching leaves, no doubt the result of a passing neighborhood cat.

Kijun thinks that if life at home wasn't so demanding, maybe he'd get to wake up here every morning instead, cradled by his futon on warm tatami flooring and listening to temple bells, his father's humming and wrangling felines. Maybe someday.

"You know, one of the most valuable things I've learned from my career in the mob, I'd learned it here in Japan. From someone who's dead now," Kijun is on the way to lighting his third cigarette as his father quietly fills the foreground noise with reminisce, finally. He releases a numbing leg from his chest, but hugs the singular knee closer to his heart with ears perked with intent. Junseo simply continues to weave words amidst the stars, fingers counting them along, "When you're up against a spider, no matter the size, the most important bits of it you should focus on removing first are its legs. Only then will you find enough safety to attack the head, and kill it once and for all." Felled ashes scatter to his lap, but he doesn't budge much beyond a harsh frown Kijun doubts has anything to do with the mess.

"But sometimes you have to yield to the risk. Sometimes there's no time for guaranteeing yourself that safety you should aim for otherwise. You must aim straight for the head and hope that it isn't you on the unfortunate end." He aims a piercing regard towards his son now, suddenly grim by memory. "That is how you conquer the world, the one below and the one above. That is how you survive."

Gyeonggi-do, South Korea, 2022.

It is some dark hours past dinner time, and halfway through his leisure 'walk' through prison grounds, Curate Kijun finds Kang Dongwook and his lackeys grotesquely strewn in the storage building before he can even think to complete his mission. In the thick of pooling blood at his feet, he smells cold blooded murder and the extent of hands that were not his own. The entire spider is dead. Fuck, escapes him breathlessly, realization carrying with it a sudden, abject fear for his life which nearly eclipses his capacity for reason, as it mounts his spine with the weight of a tonne of bricks.

But his guard remains at sky-high peaks, hands extra close to the long blades strapped under his robes as he reigns in courage through a deep breath, rolled neck, and stalks further into the midst of slaughter. He's careful not to disturb the roots death begins to take among the tools and boxes, tip of his toes preventing him from getting fresh blood anywhere on himself lest he wanted anything to do with being present in the investigation ahead. The closer he gets to where he spots Dongwook's frame in the back, though, the more painfully familiar the scene becomes. Like deja vu.

Images of Boo's body come rushing back into the back of Kijun's mind where he swims to the depths of a fleeting unconsciousness before rising back for air, all in one heartbeat. The first handed perspective of Dongwook's helpless body splayed at his feet sets him back in an endless funeral hall, then abruptly yanks him to his knees under Buddha's perpetual scrutiny. In response his stomach begins an aggressive somersault that forces bile and his last meal up his throat, causing him to almost miss the delayed blinks coming from below.

In the center of Dongwook's chest is a note skewered by a big kitchen knife, yet somehow, the man still breathes, for what it's worth. Kijun makes sure his gloves are on before he bends for the note alone, ripping it off in one fell swoop without so much as even exhaling in the obviously struggling man's direction.

Dongwook's regurgitating is a ghastly orchestra throughout the entirety of a sentence Kijun reads in silence, the handwriting so unsightly in the dark it's as though it'd been written in the blood soaking the paper.

When is a dangerous man dangerous no longer? When he is dead.

Old Dongwook still labours with the last of his breaths by the end of it, seemingly pertinacious and determined to utter a message to the very last face he'll ever see. Unexpectedly, he wields it for a warning to Kijun, who gracefully crouches with an ear in his direction for one chance.

"Never stand with your back to the darkness." He heaves each syllable with great difficulty, coughing blood which seeps to no end from all corners of his quivering mouth. Before all the life escapes him at the end, he says, albeit very faintly, "They know you're here too, foolish cunt." And then, as quickly as clap of thunder and swelling of life from a bud, he's gone.

Kijun does not return to his quarters afterwards—he doesn't even look back as he exits the storage room on hasty heels, his long black robes tailing behind him like a ghost of the past, golden rosary glinting in the dark. Whoever Dongwook was speaking of must've been searching for him at the very moment, as well, and that is all he can afford to think of until after he's at least some acres away from Gyeonggi-do itself. Narrowly making it past the unforgiving claws of death.

When is a dangerous man dangerous no longer? When he is dead.

Though the words are still a painful incineration of blood and ashes underneath Kijun's eyelids, the note on which they lay sits untouched in his robes pocket, crumpled up in all the mayhem of his fleeing for his life. By the time he makes it to the first destination of the rest of his life from tonight, the watch on his wrist reads three in the morning, and the sentence of death, an exhausted loop in his head. His superintendent, the boss' most loyal assistant, is the first person he's confronted with at the mouth of the building. Stopped halfway through the lobby for a thorough inspection.

They pat him down for planted bugs, disarm him, and ask far too many questions for his current state of comfort and steadily rising anxiety. But he doesn't protest against it, knowing it's necessary, and that exhaustion is not much of a far cry away from engulfing his limbs.

"Clear." Says the man at length, and like a pack of trained lap dogs, the rest of his team disperses in every direction thinkable. His voice picks up a softer intonation once he opens his mouth next, addressing Kijun alone, "Did you go home at all?"

"No."

"Good. They've found it. Lucky we'd anticipated this and moved you out, otherwise you'd be fucked. Now we have some time to spare, and to get you out."

"But who, exactly, are you talkin' about at this point, hyung? I found that on Dongwook, y'know. I didn't kill him." Kijun says, fury a controlled fire in his throat, "Why don't you spare me some time and tell me what the fuck is really going on here?"

"That's not for me to explain. C'mon."

Velveteen walls stare him hard in the face, their silence overwhelmingly deafening under all this pressure and confusion that plagues Kijun's heavy limbs, ones moving on autopilot as he's escorted up to the apex of the building. His patron is seated behind his cherrywood desk as he always is, though tonight he's forgone lavish, rococo-esque suits for plain night clothes. And unlike his usual, pleasant-enough appearance, tonight, he is no sight for sore eyes; scruffed, aegyo sal sagged with exhaustion and a wrathful distress.

Yet Kijun finds in him no mercy to spare, as he is brought in and left alone with the man who might've betrayed his trust, after so many years.

"Do you mind explaining to me what the fuck is going on, sir. Seriously, because if it's what I think it is, I want no fucking part of this." He spits out on the wooden desk, sharp blades that make his eyes angled for cutting. For gutting, even, if only he could.

His patron stands with a crude stillness set in his sturdy motions, one that might've sent lesser men running by now, and slips an envelope towards the younger for the second time they meet here, in this same room. Deja vu stikes Kijun again, for the second time of this godforsaken night. A night for seconds, apparently.

"What is this?" He gracelessly rips open the envelope, and finds in its bowels some cash and two one way tickets to Kyoto included.

"You're right. This is no place for part time or retired gangsters." His patron says cuttingly, his short hair an unkempt mess on his head, as though he'd been running his fingers through them without any sense of direction in his strokes whatsoever. Frustration. An unmeasurable amount of it. Kijun gapes at him, but he continues before the younger can find the right words to respond with.

"Take Junseo with you tomorrow and leave. I've already informed him to pack his things. Get yours, too, and your pets. Leave and stay squatted for as long as you can in Kyoto. It is not you they're after, so you should be safe."

"Who is they?" Kijun's voice scrapes past his throat in harsh intervals as his octaves ascend through his quickly escalating anger, "Have they been waiting for Dongwook to let his guard down? Kill him to get to you? Is that it?"

So this was what scar man meant, by him knowing nothing. This was who really was behind Boo's death. Whoever it is.

His boss sucks in a prolonged breath through two nostrils no doubt in attempt to quell impulsivity, like a bull preparing for a rodeo, then, in a heartbeat picks up the vase at the top corner of his desk and flings it with the force of a thousand men into the nearest wall. It shatters effortlessly, water splattering all over the floor as the small bouquet it held flails and scatters aimlessly. Kijun does not flinch, only stares, as if to convey that he would not back down.

When his patron opens his mouth again, his voice is a thunderous furor of roaring, which incessantly bounce off the bulletproof windows of his office. "I SAID FUCKING LEAVE! Which part of that don't you understand?! This is for your own fucking good."

Kijun squares his shoulders, reigning his back straight as a pole as a way of displaying his valour. His jaw hurts from how hard he's clenching his teeth together, anger fighting for dear life from being crushed by his strong maw. "You roped me into this while knowing what the risks really were. You fuckin' lied to me about Boo's killer being Kang Dongwook! He was my fucking friend, mind you! Then practically put me on a fuckin' suicide mission? I KILLED for this. Now you want to compensate by sending me away? For my safety? You're so fuckin' fucked up."

His patron closes the distance between them with the speed of light, takes Kijun's face in his hands and slaps him so hard across the cheek that if he hadn't anticipated it already, he might've twisted his neck backwards, never to recover again. But he only rocks slightly sideways, face instantaneously grown hot-red with a new shade of vicious, stinging pain.

The elder dry-spits off to the side as he returns to his previous spot behind the desk, and starts scrambling for a cigar in his desk drawer. Having dismissed his assistant to be alone with Kijun for this meeting, he's left to fend for himself. It takes him a while to find one with a quaking set of fingers. "I know what I have done. But do not waste my efforts to help you and your father. Tomorrow is all you will have. Once you've settled in Kyoto as you two always did, I'll wire over your money. It'll be more than enough to keep you two there for some months."

Kijun scoffs and grips around the envelope tightly–which he wanted more than anything in this world to tear in half instead– enough to crush it flat. It posses no merit to him whatsoever, especially while in the know that it comes from the man across him.

"I'm done with you. After all these years, you fuck me over like this..." He rasps, ignoring the aching in his face, the slight tinge of darkness in his eye, "How could I trust you anymore, after you've used me? For all I know I'll be walking into another one of your fuckin traps, with pops this time."

His boss hisses, "Breathe one more word and I will gut you myself. Understood?"

Kijun rubs a shade of rouge off his jaw for a moment, stuck in his rage and a pool of incredulity still. Ten times more grateful to be alive, despite the miserable predicament of having been used and almost killed a second time. Ultimately Kyoto would not hurt, he thinks, but at what cost was this?

In the end he lifts his gaze back from their pensive droop, and with his chin up in the air now, he offers a curt nod, eyes reflecting an image of indifference.

Inwardly, though, he promises something, as he holds the greying man's gaze of steel, aiming daggers at his heart. If they don't kill you first, then I will do it myself.

Then he turns on two heels and leaves, the tickets still glued like crushed leaves to his knuckles.

Kyoto, Winter, 2022.

Junseo returns home with only a pack of incense on their first night in Kyoto, and the very first thing he does is take to his cracking knees at the chabudai across from where Kijun sits with the two cats, plucks a bundle of matches from his padded jacket and precisely burns two sticks. Another turn of not speaking a single word to his son later–as he hadn't done the entire flight over, he's pushing them towards the candles already lit up in the tokonoma.

He does something afterwards, which Kijun himself had assumed he wouldn't do for at least two more days. His father speaks, albeit jadedly. "You know, I wasn't planning on coming back here until January. My love and I were going to travel to Hokkaido as we do every year."

The younger pauses on his way up to his feet, visibly caught off guard by this sudden conversation he'd been hauled into. He's silent in his movement, though, as he drags his feet on the heated tatami toward his luggage. It's only after the zipper comes undone as he recovers his own matches that he rasps, straightforwardly, "I wasn't planning on coming at all."

Behind him, his father gives a start–a brief, dry chuckle he knew was not one produced by amusement. "You've finally managed a major fuck up like you always wanted, and now you're regretting it? C'mon now, son."

"Dad, please."

"Don't you fuckin' dad me, boy. Do you even know how bad it could've gotten, Kijun?! Do you?! You know you could've been six fucking feet under right now, right?!" Unlike his younger self, his father had grown with age to be one who was quick to lose his temper. Kijun turns to find him brushing strong hands through his grown out locks of jet black, and pacing the floor in a wide circle of blatant distress. His socks whisper softly against the mats below them, chanting a wistful melody that causes a heart wrenching ache in Kijun's chest so raw it thieves him of his breath.

"I don't plan to attend your fucking funeral any time soon. This is not the order of things. You're not supposed to die on ME."

"You were a gangster too, pops. You know as well as me that age doesn't matter in this quality of life, probably even better than me considering how many people you've fucking buried." He approaches the older man, equal parts of dismal as he were frustrated, forgetting that they're nowhere near equals under the cascade of his folly and grief. "It doesn't fucking matter."

His father is quick to crack a whip across the bruise-free side of his son's jaw, however, not as hard as his patron had struck him, but unforgiving nonetheless. Hard enough to remind Kijun to focus. Though when he attempts at pushing Kijun back into the wall by the same jaw, the latter counters the grip with his own anchoring onto a seasoned wrist, and twists, hard enough to hurt.

Junseo winces, losing sight on his objective in realization that he may be hurting his only child, though his eyes still burn with a profound ire as he violently jerks his wrist from the younger's grasp.

Between teeth he growls next, a strict finger pointing towards Kijun's chest.  "I fucking wanted better for you..." He frowns so deeply the wrinkles on his face grow further in punctuation. A profound sorrow enters blunt eyes soon after, causing his usually stead voice to voice waver towards the unusual, "I wanted you to grow up happy... Remember?"

"I'm so sorry, pa..." Kijun sighs, long arms outstretched now, as his father walks into his embrace. Junseo holds his son as though he were only a boy, all over again.

"I'm sorry, too." Junseo's heaviest sigh tonight takes a tumble with no destination down Kijun's shoulder blade, as he tightly glues his cheek to the younger man's ear after pressing a tender kiss for consolation on his temple, "What's been done's done now. All you can do now is wait, and do better. Please." Junseo pulls back a final time, his handsome features graced by yellow candlelight while he holds two angular cheekbones in the safety of his frostbitten palms, his jaded gaze pleading in what seems to be his last, desperate attempt at saving the son he'd doomed from the start, "Show me that I can still hope for you, son."

It's in this particular moment of a quiet, tragic tonnage of vulnerability and unthinkable quantums of exhaustion that Kijun finally, finally shatters entirely to bits and pieces of himself, as he should've a long, long time ago. How long has it been since he'd last cried? Truly cried?

"I'm so sorry for causing you so much trouble all my life, dad..." He apologizes with the fragments of himself he could still hold onto, in between hicks and an endless flood of tears he didn't know he even had reserved within himself. If anything, he'd thought that dam had dried years ago. "I just... don't know anymore."

But maybe his father is right to have no hope left for him. Maybe he really is rotten to the very ends of himself, or had become so as a result of something inexplicable. Because even in this moment of weakness and mourning, all he can imagine is more blood on his hands, and the rather enticing price of retribution.

(Part 2/?) | Part 1.

[Gijang-gun], Busan.

The way Kijun sees it, having a rapport that's decently established within your respective community is having an eloquently gilded resume on your name reconceptualized. For the upper crust, it is similar to carrying a handheld blade up your sleeve into the lion's den, whereas, contrariwise, concerning the underworld and the law alike, you skirt with it along the beast's gaping maw not as a simple footnote or deadweight named consolation, but as an active half of your plan. Here you bring along with courage the intention to risk a bleeding wrist in favour of carving out the lion's eyes. Because it's either a gaze of white-hot embers and the incessant end of greed, or the ignescent gaze of steel and justice. Slaughter is, after all, a knife of only one vertex, and it is always sharp.

Kijun arrives in Busan with only one objective: rip the lion's jaw off its own hinges, then use his bare hands to plough out its eyes.

Cerulean ocean waves race in swollen drafts to engulf the brittle shores of Haedong Yonggeungsa temple, an entire hour too early than when their orchestra would usually begin ruffling the sanctum's coast. Frothing and siphoning among sturdy rocks and collapsing sand that welcome them in kind, much like a monk hums the word of Buddha, they tell the hour to ears that listen close enough to hear their shanty.

Kijun's own perk up to cushion both the ocean's choir and the deafening sounds of the temple bells as they join the head monk's steadfast chanting in prayer. And though his knees and bum have been stinging against the mediation pillow for what felt like an entire decade condensed within a quarter hour, he chooses rigidity instead of yielding. To ignore the protesting groan in his bones if it means Sangyeon would pass with the peace of his full respect–with the memory of a friend lost at death's cruel mercy.

In the end, he simply lets the ocean's pronounced echoes guide him from Buddha's gentle judgement to its saltine onslaught instead, lids pressed shut under its jurisdiction in proper respect for this brief moment of relinquished defense. Farewell for good, he thinks out loud, and inhales deeply the unforgiving weight of the world. Then, while entertaining a brief fantasy of Sangyeon being here to listen, exhales grief and wrenching pain from his tender, bruised heart with the might of a thousand suns, leaving only the restless current of his unending fury. Leaving only this insatiable violence.

All the way down east of the Haeundae beach coast's rear lay a sizeable aquarium store owned for many decades by a tart little Chinese man and his wife. Sticking out like a blurry sore thumb underneath the rest of an equally ramshackled, lovat-hued building, it appears as an ancient anomaly stuck in the early nineties. Even with a myriad of posters on their rorulent windows and neon light tanks rife with goldfish, it invites no one, not even curious children, in, and seems like the sort of place you'd never leave once a captive of its walls. An obscure find at best it's always been, as far as anyone knew, despite the peculiar notoriety it had gained among the Busan gangs and Wong Kar wai fans alike over the years.

Kijun walks the stretch of the beach's shore with smoking breaths and rheumy eyes, an infinitesimal slowness in his stride as he fights the sand and holds so tightly onto the knife up his sleeve that by the time he's at the doorstep, his knuckles surface for the handle with the pallidity of a ghostly quality. The doorbell sings timidly from above.

All this space for waste and dust, and so poorly lit that it immediately drenches his stern expression in soft, neon tinges of the aquariums instead, bathing him pink and orange and green from the brows to the ankles. Unlike the last time he'd been here, it seems there is no air conditioning system that functions in any sense of the word to speak of anymore, so he hears only the dull, steady humming of the tanks he passes, and the ricochet of a fan somewhere in the dark room behind the counter. Eager for blood, Kijun slams his fist whole on the bell.

"I'm here." Announced in mandarin, and it lingers the stuffy air for a moment of disquiet too long. Then comes the old limping man, Yee, on his bent legs and hunched back, a complaint already forming at the back of his dentures. The tattoos all over his arms reminds Kijun that he'd once been part of a triad gang in China himself, in his sweet prime. Now he spends his time in retirement selling fish and hosting bloodbaths for gangsters. If only he weren't so damn ambivalent in business–Kijun might've actually liked the bastard a great deal.

Yee carries in a duffel bag, one which Kijun takes over the counter for immediate inspection. There should be some cash in there, and an unloaded gun. "Listen, can you make this quick, and clean as possible?" Yee snarls, eyeing him while waiting, "We are not supposed to be opened today and I don't want to deal with the cleanup and waiting for you people to fix my store again. I'm not getting any younger, you know!"

"Ah, you're definitely not, yé," Kijun says brusquely over the sound of the zipper fastening shut. His eyes steel on Yee's inquisitive gaze as he finishes, "But there will be blood either way. Mine, too, I suspect, since you're so... Unreliable."

Old man Yee fumes, "You calling me a traitor, brat?"

"You know 'em, too, don't you? Dongwook's bitches. Otherwise this place would be crawling with pigs by now."

"I will have your tongue for that!"

"Not if I have it first!"

Growing up as an outlaw with blood often caked under your fingernails is about learning that some voices are made especially for nightmares. Though sometimes not to terrify the dreamer per se, but to scream for them, and a sliver of mercy. This was one of those voices Kijun couldn't stop dreaming of snuffing out for years after that fateful night in prison, and now, finally, another chance has resurfaced.

"Oh, truly, long time no see, lil' pooch. Seems you've barely grown since the last time we saw each other, huh."

Kijun catches the face of who such a heavy Busan dialect belongs to before opalescence can think of gracing strikingly ugly scars and make them leastwise palatable to the onlooker's gaze. The shit-eating grin he sports pleats damaged flesh and permeates the room in such a way that could only encourage a fist to the face. But for now Kijun just rolls his neck to ease any tautness he might've picked up on instinct just now, broad shoulders squaring into the direction of five men as he carefully follows their gait, sizing them up.

Five in total, that is, with two more on the other side of the front doors they block with a long machete jammed into the innermost handles. He assumes all of them are carrying more than one blade. No sweat, though, if he gets two down fast enough.

"Yeah, and to think you couldn't get any fuckin' uglier." Kijun gloats, stalling for a bit, "Gave me a scare there for a sec, then I remembered it was me who'd made you so damn hideous to begin with."

"You think that's gonna work on me, ya' fuckin' cunt? I don't give a fuck," The other man sneers from about three tank's distance away, his golden teeth glinting in the neon lights, "Though you owe me an eye, just bring me the money for now so I can get outta 'ere."

The bastard spits slantwise on Yee's floor, "Reeks like shit, plus this ain't no quid pro quo. This' business."

"If you insist." Responds Kijun, his face and knuckles again growing white-hot with rage.

He drops the duffel bag and kicks it over to open hands, and as simple as that becoming the sole witness of their folly. Deadpanned observation quickly thaws his expression into sustaining something close to a toothy grin as a delicious surge of pleasure mounts him at sight of how realization colours all their faces scarlet with ire. The bag wasn't filled with the cash prize they'd been lead to expect, but kilos of fish pellets, and an empty glock.

"What the fuck is this? You think this' a game we're playin', kid? You must wanna fuckin' die for good now, huh." This time when scar bastard spits, it somehow feels more like a declaration of war than anything else, "You stupid motherfucker. Get him!"

Luckily, Kijun wasn't unacquainted with strife.

The first two men prove easy enough to shake off, considerably so, for someone who hadn't done this in a while. His knife is an extension of himself, petite yet long enough to pry through more than flesh and spill more than blood. And he violently twists it where it lands with depth, making them both known by way of pure, heartstopping pain.

His third and fourth opponents are smarter, though; they attempt at separating them from one another, and by some sick luck, it does work in their favour for a few infinities spent hurtling Kijun back and forth between the two them. So he resorts to using what he can find in his vicinity instead, for anything can win a fight if wielded with enough intention and brute force; stray drain pipes used to choke out one of the guys in midst of using him as a human shield, nearby buckets of fish pellets swung in the direction of the fourth guy's face, who ends up with his skull bashed open against the same tank it'd been submerged in just seconds of disorientation before.

Kijun emerges momentarily after the last body goes down, as a gasping wreckage of bleeding cuts and bruises so purple they're bordering blackness. The floor beneath his feet is caked by fresh blood and fish food, and tilts and swims, fittingly, with a blur fierce enough to almost turn his stomach inside out like an inept sailor at sea. But he keeps sickness at bay by swallowing thickly, in favour of finally retrieving his knife. Blood paints the handle bright red, and he can only spare one hand as the other is occupied with staunching the wounds on his lower left abdomen, where he'd inevitably been stabbed by the last two guys.

Mister scar begins a series of slow claps from where stands, albeit humourless, "Well, colour me impressed. Your hubris wasn't for nothin' after all–" he tilts his head to emphasize ridicule, "Though you don't look so hot right now, eh?"

With his last bit of strength, Kijun holds his stance as steady as he can muster, a battlecry scratching his throat raw as the other man pulls out that glock from before and aims it at him. "I knew those guys were a bunch'a idiots," He hears not too far ahead, that terribly insufferable voice, and the gun being cocked, "Unfortunately this' it for ya'. Go to hell."

Kijun pounces before the gun could dry fire on him thrice, with this final push plunging his blade into the throat he'd longed to tear open with a conviction so raw he almost feels as though he'd caught flight. He stares hard in the face of that scar he'd made seven years ago, and hisses blood from between gritted teeth as he twists his blade with a sickening crunch, "I should've fuckin' killed you when I had the chance, bitch."

The body beneath him finishes thrashing through its last few breaths, that horrible voice now reduced to a nightmarish croak around regurgitated blood, "You fuckin'... asshole... know... no–nothing..."

Afterwards, everything falls behind a silken curtain of pitch blackness.

Something like three days pass him swimming in and out of consciousness, though he retains none of the interactions experienced during that bleary column of time of being under. Three days without much but a few sips of water and meticulous treatment from kind, gentle hands. Three days of inescapable nightmares and loud, howling patches of perpetual agony all over his body. Three days of nothing at all, but endurance.

Kijun wakes up to the ocean's acrid scent in his nose and Buddha seated on the edge of his futon. Takes a while for him to sweep the jagged fog from under dry eyelids and jog a scrambled array of thoughts back in order for him to finally realize that Buddha was no more than his patron in white. A few more heartbeats later, which he's surprised he even still has, lead him to the uncovery that he's still in Busan, back somewhere on Haedong temple grounds. A lone monk sweeps the cold earth outside in the courtyard.

"Welcome back." The boss offers a lopsided smile that never reaches his eyes. But Kijun can tell, he's relieved.

His breath is stolen entirely from him even while being careful as he sits up for the first time in three-some days, clenching his jaw tight and hissing loudly through his abdomen flaring up again. Politely accepting the glass of water offered by the elder afterwards, he downs the crisp, fresh water in a mere few seconds. It helps considerably with the scratching in his throat.

"What did I miss?" asks Kijun dejectedly—exhaustedly. "We lose anyone else?"

"No." The elder man replies, retrieving the glass to pour another. "Not yet. It's taken care of, for now."

Kijun holds his tongue and expression momentarily, to marvel at his unfortunate reality, at the ridiculousness of it all. Then, he scoffs at his next exhale, incredulous, "It's been seven fucking years," Laughter escapes him next, like a dry cough, "But I'm beginning to think I might've accidentally started something like a cold gang war for us, back then..."

The boss nods attentively, with intention, and says after a prolonged pause of his own, "Then it's your duty to fix it, before it's too late." Again, before you interfere with my business.

"Remember what you'd been taught?" He raises a tattooed finger to his temple, the ocean outside surging and stirring intranquilly in response, "You will have to go straight for the head this time. Find and kill Dongwook where he stands in prison, or pass the reigns to me and be in my debt for the rest of your life. Only then will it be over."

This time when Kijun lays back, he goes with an ultimatum in his hands and wonders if Buddha is listening, if his prayers would be answered if they involved the suffering of others for his own peace. Something tells him they won't. It's never over.