Chapter 3

Ever since childhood, he had loved heroes. Superhero movies, children’s shows where transforming meant donning spandex suits to save the day—things like that. Although he later learned it was all scripted, even while watching pro wrestling, he vastly preferred righteous wrestlers over flashy villains.

It didn’t take long for him to realize he could never become a hero himself.

“Aigoo, Gyuhan-ah. You want to become a pro wrestler? And like that guy?”

To young Gyuhan, who rested both fists on his hips and nodded triumphantly, his aunt shook her head with a sigh.

“But what are we going to do? Gyuhan-ah, our family is on the villains’ side! The kind of guys who shake people down on the street and stuff!”

“What did you say…?”

“Hey. We washed our hands of that business, why are you bringing it up?”

“Because he’s cute! But still, Gyuhan-ah. Heroes only exist because people like us exist. If there are no villains, why would anyone need a hero, right? So you have to take pride in it.”

Pride or not, Gyuhan was a little disappointed.

Yet his discouragement was brief. Gyuhan was never the type to brood for long. If anything, his taste simply broadened to encompass villains alongside righteous figures. Amid his expanded preferences, only one thing remained consistent—’manly.’

One might wonder what kind of outdated notion this was, but Gyuhan defined his taste in precisely those terms. In truth, it was difficult to define it any other way.

His aunt teased Gyuhan constantly until she returned to the United States. But Gyuhan took her words as sacred teachings. A real man, you see, Gyuhan-ah… Her grand lectures starting with that phrase seemed like a fantastic philosophy to young Gyuhan. If he followed those words faithfully, he believed he would become a truly magnificent man. At the same time, watching his parents’ harmonious marital devotion, Gyuhan resolved to build a family just like that without fail. Back then, before his younger brother Gyuwon was born, he was terribly lonely, so without even seeking consent from his future wife, he had already promised his future children that he would give them plenty of siblings.

And then came the golden age of Korean mob cinema.

Gyuhan devoured all kinds of movies—Jang Dong-gun’s Friend, Hi! Dharma!, My Wife Is a Gangster, and countless others. And when his father officially declared, “We are no longer gangsters. Don’t go around saying that kind of crap,” the company employees let it in one ear and out the other, wondering how long ago they had washed their hands of the trade and why he was discarding the wash water only now, but Gyuhan wept. It was the loudest, most prolonged cry since his infancy. Passing ajussis all teased him, shouting, “Your dick’s gonna fall off if you keep crying like that!” which forced him to clutch his crotch while bawling.

Well, anyway, through all those endearing years, he maintained his pure devotion.

“Sorry, but I don’t date.”

To be frank, he received plenty of confessions. But every single time, he gave the exact same reply.

“Why? What don’t you like about me? Seriously, what’s your type?”

He heard questions like that countless times. Gyuhan would shake his head and declare firmly, “There’s nothing I don’t like. All women are beautiful.”

Hearing this, girls from elementary school through middle school and high school all wore expressions of What the hell is this guy talking about?—the sting of being rejected already half-evaporated.

Oblivious to their bewilderment, Gyuhan would suppress his swelling emotions and explain with utter gravity and calm, “It’s just that I haven’t felt that electric spark yet. I’ll be able to recognize my wife the instant I see her.”

No such ability existed. Gyuhan simply believed it.

After hearing that much, the other party’s feelings would be completely sorted out.

“Right… Hope you meet her.”

With an unenthusiastic expression, thinking He looks fine on the outside, but he’s an empty tin can, they would turn away.

Gyuhan would then watch the retreating figures of girls he had felt a slight fondness for with a wistful gaze before turning around.

In this manner, whenever Cha Gyuhan was thrown into a new environment, he would enjoy high popularity in the beginning, only to end up relegated to everyone’s friend. That honeymoon period never lasted beyond summer vacation. Still, having an easygoing personality, being well-mannered despite his outdated dreams, and possessing a clueless charm that was genuinely amusing, he enjoyed harmonious friendships regardless of gender, spending a smooth school life where even teachers remarked, “He’s the mood maker.”

Let us refrain from discussing his academic grades.

Anyway, yes. While living a life like a smoothly paved highway, why hadn’t that single entity appeared—the rest stop of his life, the meeting plaza of his life, the highway rest stop sign you encounter when the fuel light blinks and you urgently need a bathroom?

Far from finding a wife, he was on the verge of losing the only friend he had.

Gyuhan glared down at his phone. On the screen was a photograph of his younger brother. It was the very first photo Cha Gyuwon had ever posted a few days ago since creating his social media account.

“Fuck. I shouldn’t have brought up my younger brother back then.”

Unaware that their fates had been deeply entangled long before that, Gyuhan ground his teeth at the two men in the photo.

His brother Cha Gyuwon’s expression was, needless to say, brimming with happiness, and the guy beside him was smiling brightly as well. Then again, this bastard was always walking around with a grin.

The sole exception on that private, locked account following only family members was this ever-smiling Go Woonha. Thanks to this, Gyuhan had discovered that Go Woonha possessed two accounts. Because they had initially communicated via direct messages before exchanging phone numbers as their encounters continued, Gyuhan knew his previous account. To think even that had been a burner.

Gyuhan stared intently at Go Woonha—at Go Woonha’s face alone. To an outside observer, he might have looked like a brooding ex harboring lingering attachments and forcing himself to hate his lover, but reality was quite different.

“This total fucking thief of a bastard.”

Not content with stealing his younger brother, now he had stolen his closest brother-like friend as well. He was a thief who had snatched away two brothers.

Just you wait. Gyuwon’s only like this because it’s his first relationship; eventually he’ll get sick of you. The moment he gets tired of you, I’ll encase you in concrete, huh? And drop you straight into the ocean, huh?

Setting aside the fact that nobody used such methods anymore, and frankly, speaking coldly, using that much concrete and piloting a boat far out to sea just to bury one man made zero economic sense—let’s not dwell on that. It was the sentiment that counted. It was purely the sentiment.

Gyuhan felt bitter over how concrete prices had skyrocketed since the days he watched mob films and how maritime police patrols had grown considerably tighter.

Then was there no other way? Frankly, Gyuhan also believed killing people was crossing the line. He had never done it and had no desire to. The mob world he romanticized was all about unbreakable loyalty and lifelong devotion, not visiting hostess bars, murdering people, and staining his hands with blood.

Yet considering dunking him somewhere other than concrete… Go Woonha was bound to enjoy it. No, he definitely would, because Gyuhan had already tried it. And wasn’t it because of that stunt—which had practically served as an industry reward for Go Woonha—that his relationship with Gong Jio had shattered so thoroughly?

“That was fun. I’ll take care of getting back on my own.”

Memory drifted back to when Gyuhan, having discovered Woonha was sleeping with his brother, had dragged Go Woonha out, hung him from a crane, and dunked him into the ocean several times.

Dripping wet, Go Woonha had offered his sincere thanks (which was genuinely not why Gyuhan had done it) and departed. Gong Jio, who had maintained an indifferent attitude even while holding Go Woonha, asked in an equally disinterested tone, “Who was that? Quite the certified lunatic.”

“He’s a lunatic, all right.”

Gyuhan bit down on a cigarette in peak fury.

“If you’re going to dunk that guy, use a different method next time. The bastard didn’t even flinch. What is this, an amusement park? Dragging people out in the middle of the night without even paying admission.”

The moment Gyuhan barely got the cigarette lit and took a single puff, Gong Jio snatched it away. Jio naturally took it from Gyuhan’s lips and placed it between his own, a habit Gyuhan was so accustomed to that he simply pulled out a fresh cigarette.

“So why did you dunk him?”

Asked about a man who had literally been dunked into the sea and pulled back out—not a metaphor, but an actual bath in seawater—Gyuhan, far from calming down, ground his teeth with renewed fury.

“He says he’s dating my younger brother. Isn’t that insane?”

“Oh, Gyuwon is dating? That’s great.”

“Great, my ass! That guy is a complete whore! How could he just devour my innocent younger brother like that? He deserves life in prison. Hey, Jio-ya. Let’s sue him and appeal the verdict too! What kind of crazy bastard devours both brothers as a pair!”

That was the problem. He was so incensed that he abandoned even his usual meager capacity for judgment.

Oblivious to what he had just blurted out, Gyuhan stamped his feet. He puffed fiercely on his cigarette, burning it down to the filter in just a few drags. Panting with rage, Gyuhan was about to light another when he noticed the eerie silence beside him and turned his head.

There stood Gong Jio, his face terrifyingly frozen.

“Both brothers as a pair?”

“Ah.”

His rage instantly evaporating into sheer panic, Gyuhan scratched his head.

He had spoken far too openly, far too candidly for anyone to misunderstand. In the first place, while Gyuhan could keep his mouth shut, he was utterly incapable of inventing lies. It wasn’t because it violated his principles; he was simply bad at it.

“Well, you know.”

Smacking his lips sheepishly, Gyuhan ventured, “If I take it back… will you forget you heard it?”

“You son of a bitch.”

Gyuhan flinched at the abrupt curse and scrambled for an excuse.

“Ah, it’s not like I like men or anything.”

“Then why sleep with them? Why the fuck sleep with a guy? Not a woman, but a man? You? You with a man? You slept with a man? With a guy who has a dick? You slept with a guy just like you and me?”

Gyuhan was utterly bewildered by the relentless barrage of questions fired without a breath.

Why was he this furious? Could it be that Gong Jio was that? That… that…

“Are you, by any chance, a Homo sapiens?”

Gyuhan blurted out the word he had struggled to dig from his memory.

Jio replied immediately, “Then what else would I be?”

“Ah… Sorry. I didn’t know that. That you fucking despise guys sleeping with guys so much.”

“How could you not kno—never mind. Did you mix it up with some other damn word again? No, fuck. We shouldn’t be talking about this right now.”

Jio hastily shoved a cigarette between his lips. Watching Jio’s hands tremble violently as he tried to light it, Gyuhan was bewildered that his friend felt such intense disgust, while simultaneously feeling an urgent need to clear up the misunderstanding.

“Hey, Jio-ya. It’s not what you think. It’s not like I dated a guy, I just slept with him a few times.”

Yet this clarification was of no help whatsoever.

Without caring that he was burning his fingers, Jio snapped the lit cigarette in half, hurled it to the ground, and roared, “So why the fuck sleep with a guy a few times! You—fuck, you said you were saving your body for the wife you’d meet in the future! But behind her back, you’re playing dirty? And with a guy, of all things? You think purity is a joke? What the fuck are you going to do about this! How are you going to apologize to your future wife? Were you really someone who turns cheap in the face of mere lust? And not even from the front, but from the back?!”

Cha Gyuhan could not fathom why Gong Jio was painting him as an utterly shameless slut. He had never done anything that violated his personal creed.

“I protected it, you bastard! My dick is still brand new in the box!”

Looking at Gyuhan as he declared this with booming pride, Gong Jio’s face drained of all color, frozen in stunned disbelief and sheer absurdity. Having taken off his sunglasses since the sun had set, his pale brown eyes went completely blank and dazed, only to twist in violent turmoil. Watching this, Gyuhan wondered if he had committed another blunder. Yet no matter how thoroughly he reviewed his actions, he found no fault in himself. If Jio was a Homo sapiens, he felt sorry—though what Gyuhan had actually intended to say was homophobe—yet it was not as if Gyuhan liked men himself. Moreover, as consenting adults, bickering over bedroom affairs felt wildly excessive.

“No, so why the fuck is your dick still brand new?”

Gong Jio strode closer and growled. Honestly, he was never the type to talk like this. Setting aside the fact that he was a man of few words to begin with, he usually tossed out indifferent, cynical one-liners. Speaking this much—and dropping words like dick—was a side of Jio that Gyuhan had never witnessed in his life.

“You should’ve just used this instead.”

“Gah!”

Without the slightest warning or sign, Gong Jio reached out and grabbed Gyuhan right between his thighs in a vice grip. Gyuhan froze in shock on the spot, his fingers splayed wide.

Leaning in menacingly until his face was practically touching Gyuhan’s, Gong Jio tightened his hold with brutal force.

“Hua, hey! Fuck, hey! Get off me!”

Panicking, Gyuhan yelled, but Jio refused to listen. Instead, he reached around with his other hand, clamping down with vicious strength on Gyuhan’s backside.

“Why the hell did this side turn into used goods, huh?!”

“Hey, it’s gonna crush! Ugh, fuck, ah, you’re crushing me front and back…!”

“Crush? Let it get crushed, then.”

“Hey!”

Finally snapping to his senses, Gyuhan shoved Jio’s hands away. With both front and back throbbing with fiery aches, he was left standing awkwardly, unable to settle into a normal posture. His head rang, and his vision blurred into a haze. He had to shake his head and hop in place over and over just to swallow down the sharp agony.

Through persistent effort, his vision cleared, and Gong Jio came back into view. His expression was murderously frozen, his gaze dark and ominous. Opening his mouth to demand what the hell he was doing, Gyuhan found himself struck dumb by sheer panic, swallowing dry saliva in vain.

“Why… why are you so damn angry?”

“It was a man.”

Jio let out a dry smirk.

“A man. You did it with a guy.”

Refusing to provide a proper answer, Jio merely muttered under his breath.

It was terrifying. He looked genuinely insane.

“Haha… Ha. A man, of all things. Cha Gyuhan with a man. Ha, a guy drilled your backside…? Not even a woman…?”

What difference would a woman have made?

Muttering like a lunatic while wearing a bizarre smirk, Gong Jio staggered toward the parked car.

Gyuhan stared blankly until the vehicle vanished into the distance, only to realize belatedly that the car was his own and that he had been left stranded without a ride home.

But by then, it was already too late.