MIM 29

It’s dark. Nothing can be seen. The only sound is the car engine. Was that normal when tied up and gagged in a trunk? Yoon-sung held his breath and focused on the sounds outside. He wasn’t sure exactly how long they’d been driving, but they were definitely on a paved road.

He had spent days in the basement of the villa where Jae-seung had been kidnapped. With no sense of time, he was trapped with a rotting corpse. Without food or even water, he resorted to drinking his own urine to survive. Just as he was about to lose his mind, the firmly locked basement door opened. There stood the man Yoon-sung had last seen before the door closed.

When their eyes met, Shin-woo smiled like an evil spirit. He handed over a banana in poor condition, then watched as Yoon-sung devoured it in the blink of an eye. As soon as he swallowed the last of the banana, a shoe came flying at him.

When he regained consciousness, he was in the trunk of a moving car.

Whatever the destination, he would either die or be tormented to the brink of death upon arrival. If they wanted to kill him, they would have done so in the basement. There must be a reason for moving him. Torture? Threats? To assign another task? Yoon-sung instinctively sensed the dangerous atmosphere. From now on, he needed to keep his wits about him to survive. The brief moment when the car stops and the trunk opens – that would be his chance. Fortunately, his feet weren’t tied.

“When will you be here? What? You got a flat tire? How did that happen?”

He could hear a phone conversation. He’s unusually terse today. The voice grumbling to itself had a hint of laughter. The low, resonant voice was too ordinary and… kind to belong to that man. The calm tone, unsuited to this life-or-death situation, created a sense of dissonance.

“I told you, I’m not tracking your location or anything.”

Shin-woo chuckled softly, dragging out his words. Was he talking to Ma Jae-seung? Yoon-sung’s legs trembled as he recalled Shin-woo approaching with gleaming eyes when he saw Jae-seung tied to the bed. He had been told that Shin-woo wouldn’t be very concerned about Jae-seung’s well-being when he took the job, but that was a complete miscalculation. Though he had only heard sounds, he knew Shin-woo had killed everyone at the villa.

Except for one person – himself.

“Arriving in an hour? Good. I should be done with my work by then too. See you later.”

What would Shin-woo do in that hour? Yoon-sung held his breath in the slowing car. He was on the verge of losing his mind to fear.

Soon after, the car stopped. The engine turned off completely, and footsteps were heard. As soon as the trunk opened, he would dash out. Yoon-sung steeled himself several times, listening to his pounding heart. If he missed this chance, he would die. Die. Die.

As the trunk opened, light flooded in. Not natural sunlight, but the cold light of fluorescent lamps. After blinking his stinging eyes several times, a grinning face appeared right in front of him. A pitch-black silhouette was looking down at Yoon-sung eerily.

“Huwah!”

Yoon-sung leapt out of the trunk with all his might and ran straight ahead. His legs were weak, but he somehow got up again and ran. Without time to register the laughter erupting behind him, running without a destination in mind, his hair was suddenly grabbed. In the blink of an eye, his body was lifted and his vision flipped upside down. Yoon-sung soon realized his head was dangling around Shin-woo’s lower back. Only then did he notice where they were.

It was a garage. With Yoon-sung slung over his shoulder, Shin-woo walked unhesitatingly towards the wide-open entrance. His attitude was carefree, as if he didn’t care about being seen.

While it’s normal to move with a kidnapped person after sunset, the sky outside was clear blue without a cloud. Yoon-sung, desperately looking around, spotted someone and twisted his body with all his might. There was a man trimming the bushes. This wasn’t a forest, but a garden. The garden of the Maseong mansion he had only heard about, beyond the steep walls.

“Puh-huh, haa, ha… Please save me!”

Yoon-sung shook his head vigorously and managed to remove the cloth he had been biting with his sharp teeth, then shouted. Though his voice wasn’t loud due to exhaustion and hunger, it was enough to catch the gardener’s attention. At Yoon-sung’s shrill voice, the gardener paused and looked up.

Even though their eyes met, the gardener didn’t move. Far from rushing to help, he returned to his work. As his last hope was crushed, Yoon-sung’s eyes burned with tears. Tears fell upside down, dripping from his forehead.

“Oh, come on…”

Shin-woo muttered as he strode forward. His gait was unnaturally brisk for someone carrying an adult man on his shoulder. Not even his breathing was disturbed, seeming utterly inhuman. Though Yoon-sung tried to keep quiet to avoid irritating him, sobs still escaped. He missed his wife and child.

Shin-woo, whom he had encountered at the university, didn’t seem much different from the countless neighborhood thugs he had met before. As his friends from Bihyang and Mangwol District would say, he seemed like nothing more than a lowborn who had luckily crawled his way up. Seeing him at Ma Jae-seung’s feet even made Yoon-sung sneer. It was pitiful how some guys from Mangwol District believed this pathetic person was leading a revolution.

But the moment his eyes met Shin-woo’s blood-covered ones, Yoon-sung understood. How this man could have climbed to the top of a huge corporation like Ma Corporation.

Shin-woo passed through the mansion and headed towards an isolated annex. He first stopped by the kitchen to pour a glass of milk from the refrigerator, then carried the glass to a second-floor room where he tossed Yoon-sung.

“I’ll do everything you say. P-please just spare my life.”

Yoon-sung immediately prostrated himself. There must be a reason he was brought here alive. He had to negotiate somehow to survive.

Shin-woo set the milk down on a side table in the corner and pulled up a chair to sit. Then he took out a small knife from his pocket, rolled it between his fingers, and untied Yoon-sung’s hands. His dexterous handling sent chills down Yoon-sung’s spine.

“I’ve found,” Shin-woo finally spoke, “that it’s more effective to leave one person alive than to kill everyone. With a survivor, the story spreads more vividly, you know.”

Yoon-sung swallowed hard. Though he said he’d let him live, he wouldn’t be able to leave unscathed. Shin-woo smiled as he watched Yoon-sung quietly waiting for what would come next.

“Let’s go with fingers or toes. I’ll cut them cleanly, and you’ll go put them in that woman’s tea instead of sugar cubes. You can do that, right?”

‘That woman.’ The casual disrespect towards Ma Jae-seung’s mother from an employee made Yoon-sung’s hair stand on end. Shin-woo’s eyes glinted like sharp blades, filled with certainty as if there was no need to even question who had ordered this.

“H-how many…”

“She likes her tea sweet, so about five?”

If five fingers or toes were cut off, he wouldn’t be able to do his usual work. Perhaps there was a deal he could propose. In that brief moment of darkness, countless thoughts raced through his mind. Shin-woo, who had been waiting patiently, slightly raised the corner of his mouth.

“What? Scared?”

“……”

“How does such a coward manage to inject so much anesthetic into people?”

“It wasn’t me! The guy who went with me did it.”

“And you just took off his pants?”

Despite his casual tone, Shin-woo’s face grew cold rapidly. As if recollecting the moment, a vein pulsed in his temple as he silently paused. Tensing up in anticipation of the knife flying at any moment, Yoon-sung waited for several minutes until Shin-woo finally stood up.

He picked up the milk and handed it to Yoon-sung, then stared at him blankly. Observing Yoon-sung taking the milk with both hands while tilting his head, Shin-woo seemed to come to a conclusion and grinned.

“You’re right-handed.”

“……”

“Five fingers from your right hand. Put them in the milk as soon as they’re cut off. If you move quickly, the hospital might be able to reattach them.”

As he spoke, Shin-woo brought over saline solution, gauze, and a dry cloth from a nearby table. So the milk wasn’t for drinking. Yoon-sung put down the cup with trembling hands and prostrated himself on the floor. With the knife tip so close, there was no time to think about proposals or negotiations.

“I have a child. They can’t manage without me. Without hands and feet, I can’t work. Please let me work.”

Though it seemed futile to appeal to the sympathy of such a ruthless man, it was his last straw. Surprisingly, Shin-woo frowned at the mention of a child. A positive sign. Yoon-sung quickly added,

“If I can’t work, it’ll be difficult to raise the child.”

“How old?”

Shin-woo asked, crouching right in front of Yoon-sung’s hands. Yoon-sung carefully withdrew his hands, feeling the floor.

“Just one year old. The child has been weak since birth… That’s why I took this job. Thinking of the child, I was blinded by money.”

“Show me.”

“…Pardon?”

“You don’t have a single photo of this child you cherish so much?”

Meeting the suspicious gaze, Yoon-sung’s heart skipped a beat. He searched his body, breathing heavily. Thankfully, there was a family photo he had kept in his wallet.