Chapter 26

Yet the strike forced Park to release the boy’s ankle, and with his cheek already ballooning into a purple bruise, Geum Seoul bolted once more. Though his twisted ankle throbbed so fiercely he could barely bear down on it, he sprinted forward with a burst of adrenaline he never knew he possessed. With Park Gil-pyeong barricading the stairs, he had no choice but to race in the opposite direction.

Creeeak.

Amid the peak of this violent struggle, neither of them noticed the faded red door—silent and motionless all this time—creaking open by half a handspan.

Thud.

“Seoul-ah! You’re only making this harder on yourself!”

The man’s boisterous voice snapped right at his heels, still dripping with malicious amusement. Where do you think you can run? You don’t have anywhere to go. You have nothing outside this place. Those jeers burrowed like needles into Seoul’s eardrums.

Even so, Geum Seoul ran. He threw his limping body across the low window frame. While this was the very tin roof where he hung laundry under the blistering midday sun, the setting now was horrifyingly transformed. His breath hitched at the threshold of his throat, suffocating in sheer desperation, enveloped by terror that turned his knees to jelly.

Yet before he could take a single step across the roof, his injured ankle buckled again, sending him crashing down. Collapsing onto the corrugated tin slates, Seoul barely managed to break his fall with his palms. The only way down into the alley from here was the wooden ladder, but with this crippled ankle, he was bound to plummet before his foot even found the first rung.

His mouth parched dry as dust, Geum Seoul whipped his head toward the window frame. Park Gil-pyeong was already striding toward the sill, grinning from ear to ear. Struck by an overwhelming wave of dread, Seoul’s already bloodless face drained to a ghostly white. It’s over. The strength drained completely from his shoulders.

Flutter.

“Ah.”

Right at that moment, a piece of white cloth fluttered down over Geum Seoul’s head. Perhaps dislodged by the vibration of his heavy fall, a white towel that had been hanging from the clothesline draped over his vision, blanketing the dark in pristine white. The familiar scent of laundry soap reached his nose. Just as a solitary tear he had been biting back was about to spill over his lashes, Seoul pulled the towel down, wiping the moisture away. Unable to fall into the open air, the unspilled tear was instantly drawn and absorbed into the rough cotton weave.

Phfft!

Thud.

Then a sound he had never heard before split the night—a sharp rupture, like compressed air tearing violently through the atmosphere, followed by the heavy thud of something collapsing. Cold gooseflesh prickled between Seoul’s shoulder blades as he dragged the towel from his face.

Except the stillness was unnerving.

“……”

Panting for breath, Geum Seoul turned his head. Park Gil-pyeong, who had been looming in the window frame only seconds ago, was gone. He scanned the immediate surroundings to see where the man could have disappeared to, but the time elapsed was far too brief for him to have walked away. After a few seconds of blank bewilderment, Geum Seoul gripped the iron stanchion supporting the clothesline and hauled himself upright.

Park Gil-pyeong could lunge over that chest-high window frame at any second. Seoul swallowed dryly, but only utter silence hung in the air, without the faintest trace of movement. It was as though the man had plummeted into an abyss in the blink of an eye. Just as Geum Seoul took a wary, trembling step backward—

From the alley below, a calm, deep voice cut through the stillness. “Geum Seoul.”

Squeak.

The shock sent a violent tremor straight through his frame. His tear-glazed eyes searched blindly across the pitch-black alley below. The thunderous pounding of his heart grew loud enough to ring in his ears, born of an emotion akin to the dread he felt moments ago, yet fundamentally distinct. If earlier had been terror of being caught by Park Gil-pyeong, then right now, it was the sickening fear that he was hallucinating.

“That all? Look over here too,” Gwichang called up with lazy amusement.

It was no trick of his hearing. Following the voice down past the edge of the tin roof, Geum Seoul found the man standing alone in the pitch-black alley below. He was no longer dressed in the casual T-shirt Seoul remembered. Tonight he wore a crisp black tactical uniform, its hard lines making his already imposing frame seem even more formidable.

Looking up at him, Gwichang drawled softly, “You want to come down like crazy, don’t you.”

It was just like back then. That afternoon on the sun-baked rooftop as sweat poured off him while clutching the antenna, the man had spoken similar words to him when he was pushed to his absolute breaking point. And just like now, he had reached out an arm.

“……”

Things were slightly different now. He was not in the middle of running errands for him. With nobody standing at the window frame, he could conceivably turn back the way he came. Yet the outstretched hand waiting below felt incomparably more reassuring—perhaps because the man was so towering, or because his shoulders were so broad, or simply because he looked so indomitably strong.

The makeshift shacks cobbled haphazardly against the concrete structure were not excessively high, meaning the man’s hand was not impossibly far. Still, it could not be reached by leaning out alone. It was a height that demanded a leap.

Gwichang crooked an eyebrow. “You got honey glued to your feet?”

Seoul breathed back in a timid whisper, “…No, sir.”

Swallowing dryly as his throat bobbed, Geum Seoul lowered his body with trembling eyelashes. Dangling his throbbing leg over the tin roof’s edge, he sat down and drew a deep, ragged breath.

His heart was hammering violently. The sudden appearance of this man felt entirely unreal. The man who had vanished claiming he was off to find Noki now reappeared right when Seoul needed him most, reaching out a hand. If I take this hand, won’t he vanish? It might just be a fleeting mirage. For the past several days, this man had unfailingly appeared in his thoughts once every day before fading away.

He searched his mind for an explanation. Was it because he had never seen a man who looked like this before? Or was it because he had never encountered anyone so terrifying? But the answer lying closer to the truth was…

Simply that this was the first person of his kind he had ever met.

Living this sort of existence had taught him his own tricks and how to coax people along. Besides, running errands here had settled into a routine repeated three hundred and sixty-five days a year, meaning he had never particularly needed grand salvation from anyone. Which was why it had never happened. No one had ever extended a hand to him like this.

Yet was it even possible for the same person to consistently appear only at moments like this? Geum Seoul found himself calculating the odds once again.

The very first time, when he had collapsed in the overgrown grass, the man was there the moment he opened his eyes. The second time was when he was roasting alive under the scorching sun, and now…

‘If someone calls your name three times in a dream, don’t answer and run away. They say you die if you do.’

On scorching days like these, Bunhong had occasionally recounted spooky folklore like that. How many times did this man call my name? Maybe it really was three times. If I go with him now, maybe I’ll end up dead.

Even setting ghosts aside, following a living human posed its own problems. If he ran off with this man, the boss would beat him half to death later. This time, bones would be broken or he would be beaten unconscious. But his real face had already been fully exposed. His fingernails made a faint clicking sound against the tin roof.

Gwichang clicked his tongue in exasperation. “Hey. My arm is going to fall off.”

“……”

“If my arm gets crippled, you expect me to eat with my feet?” Gwichang demanded with a smirk.

Towering height. A massive frame packed with corded muscle across broad shoulders. Though he looked not in the slightest discomfort, the man gave his arm an urging twitch and knitted his brows. He wasn’t genuinely scolding; it was dry teasing. Even Geum Seoul could see that much.

Yet that subtle shift in expression sparked an urgent panic in his chest. Fear that the man might pull his hand away at any moment; dread that if he hesitated, he wouldn’t even have a second to breathe before being dragged back over that window sill. Even if this was a dream, even if this man was merely a mirage—

Staring blankly up at the pitch-black summer night took one second. Looking back at the sleeping village behind him took another. Then he lowered his chin.

I’m going.

Strength surged into his balled fists.

Leaning his body forward and letting gravity pull him from the edge of the roof was effortless. Yet for Geum Seoul, taking that leap was infinitely harder than sprinting hundreds of millions of miles.

Whoosh.

From the tips of his toes to the crown of his head, he cleaved through the night air. The strange sensation of surrendering entirely to gravity. A sudden disorientation he had never experienced before. Yet that weightlessness lasted only an instant before solid, unyielding warmth caught his back.

Oof.

A dizzying flutter rolled through his chest. The arms scooping him up with effortless ease were so broad and secure that Geum Seoul kept pressing his tear-stained face into the man’s shoulder, exhaling ragged, shuddering breaths. He smelled of dried autumn leaves.

This man was truly flesh and blood. Not a ghost, not a mirage, not an illusion. It had been real back then, and it was undeniably real now. Even though he had vanished overnight without a word.

The sudden reunion brought such profound relief that the towering dread of what tomorrow might bring was swallowed whole by the frantic pounding of his heart. Geum Seoul clutched tightly around the man’s neck. Back then, and even now, this man was the very first person he had ever embraced.

Whirr.

Without knowing where they were heading, he kept his eyes squeezed shut for a long time until a fierce, unfamiliar draft buffeted his body, prompting him to lift his head. Resting before him was an exceptionally sleek aircraft resembling a helicopter, yet it produced none of the deafening roar typical of the craft.

Far from the thunderous thrum of standard rotors that routinely rattled the neighborhood rooftops whenever one flew overhead, this machine produced only a muted, rushing whisper of wind. Its design, too, was markedly different. Instead of a single massive rotor, four smaller props were mounted across its frame, and save for an occasional pulse from a dim red beacon, its hull was finished in an obsidian black that melted seamlessly into the dark.

Having never seen such machinery, his tear-glazed amber eyes widened in wonder. Resting a firm palm against the boy’s nape as he bundled him into the transport, Gwichang offered a faint smirk.

“Close your eyes. We still have cargo left to load.”

At the crisp click of the safety belt latching over his chest, Geum Seoul closed his eyes obediently without asking a single question. Thump—throb. His heart raced faster than ever before.

[END of VOLUME 1]