MIM 3

Red. The raging sea of fire suddenly surged up to his face. His eyes burned and he was suffocating. Bang! With a thunderous roar of collapsing and crashing, his vision melts away. Covering his nose and mouth, he runs and runs searching for an exit. As he got closer to a door in the distance, his breath caught in his throat. He kicked the door with all his might, then threw himself through the shattered opening. Gasping for outside air, he opened his mouth wide and was engulfed by scorching heat.

The smell of burning flesh fills the air. Only after all his senses were numbed did he realize he had plunged into the flames.

“…Huck!”

Jae-seung jerks upright with a loud scream.

The pitch-black sight was suffocating, so he crumpled the sheets roughly. The vivid sensation of the flames made him feel his chest with both hands, but there was not a single wound on his smooth skin. His heart was pounding as if it were about to burst out of his mouth, yet he couldn’t breathe properly through his closed lips.

“Shh, it’s okay.”

He was out of breath and soon he couldn’t see or hear anything. Just before his eyes rolled back, a familiar voice pierced the silence and reached his ears. At the same time, his eyes snapped open as if a balloon had burst. As he struggled to breathe in the rush of oxygen, something warm and hard was caught in his grasp. It was someone’s body temperature. Someone was beside him.

“Slowly.”

He could see eyes flickering in the dark. Jae-seung grasped that presence, the approaching warmth as if it were a lifeline. The moment their gazes met, his breathing cleared and the confusion dissipated like a lie.

Without saying a word, the man placed their lukewarm foreheads together and waited until Jae-seung’s breathing calmed down. After he calmed down, his sense of reality began to return little by little. Wiping away cold sweat, Jae-seung repeated the words he had uttered countless times since the incident: His father was murdered and their mansion burned down four years ago, and he had been suffering from partial amnesia due to trauma ever since. And this man was…

Unconsciously, his fingers traced a long scar on the arm he had been gripping tightly. A sense of recognition began to surface, but it only lasted for a moment. Jae-seung pushed the man away, holding his pounding heart.

The man gave him space but did not withdraw completely. Resisting the urge to pull him closer, Jae-seung crumpled the sheets roughly in his fists. His ragged breathing began to steady under the man’s steady gaze and lingering warmth, like an instant injection of sedatives into his veins.

“Who are you?”

Jae-seung’s voice was hoarse as he recited the question that had been repeated countless times. Unfortunately, the huge void in his head was not something he could get used to as time passed. The absence of memories caused anxiety, and anxiety led to anger.

“It’s still early, just go back to sleep.”

The man casually responded to Jae-seung’s trembling with indifference. Amidst everyone’s sympathy or fear, he maintained an indifferent expression, devoid of any emotion.

Knowing this frequently asked question would go unanswered again, Jae-seung reached his boiling point in an instant.

“I’m asking what you are to me!”

Jae-seung swept everything off the bedside table in frustration. Even as the clock smashed to the floor, the man didn’t blink. Unlike his scarred arms, his face was flawless like porcelain. Moonlight poured over his composed face.

“I’m just a hired employee.”

There was no reason to listen to any more insincere lies. Jae-seung grumbled as he threw off the covers and stood up. After raising his finger to warn the man who tried to follow him as if it were natural, he walked forward into the dark hallway.

His vision was pitch black. The farther he went from the man, the fainter the surrounding noise became until only his thumping heartbeat pounded in his ears. Eventually, Jae-seung came to a stop, the scuffling of footsteps sounding behind him.

He stared hard at the long, unfamiliar shadow stretching across the floor. Just watching the man’s shadow allowed his lungs to function again.

Who the hell are you to me that I can’t even breathe without you?

Jae-seung buried the words in his heart that he couldn’t bear to ask him out loud, and started running with his teeth clenched. Until he couldn’t breathe again.

* * *

Coach Kim glanced at the incoming call and sighed. In all his years coaching the ice hockey team, he had never received such fervent attention as the past few months. Reporters were calling day and night, somehow having gotten his number to inquire about the new student “Ma Jae-seung’s” situation.

Ignore it, or not? After hesitating, Coach Kim answered the call. With the streets congested and occasional offers from journalists to help promote the ice hockey team, he decided to take it.

“Hello.”

—Hello, coach. This is JT News. We heard Ma Jae-seung has been playing passionately on the hockey team. How are his actual skills?

“Ah…he’s decent. His physicality is good so he does well.”

Since he couldn’t say something that wasn’t there, he answered honestly. For a beginner who just started, Ma Jae-seung was progressing at an astounding rate. He immediately applied the techniques taught and had exceptional stamina and movement. His physical abilities hinted at athletic talent, but Coach Kim didn’t go that far. Reporters tended to exaggerate enough as it was.

—According to rumors, Ma Jae-seung went out of his mind from shock after the ‘incident’. Has he displayed any strange or odd behavior?

“No, nothing like that.”

—No speech impediments, stuttering, hallucinations or delusions? Or is he unnervingly calm, not like a victim?

“That’s enough. Don’t you feel sorry for the kid?”

Unable to listen anymore, Coach Kim snapped in irritation. Whether reporters or not, everyone was chattering about this incident to the point his ears were ringing from hearing the same story over and over. It had only been four years since the Ma family manor burned down and the chairman was murdered. At the time, the media engaged in a frenzy exposing the excessively gruesome crime scene details. The horrific sight, dyed in blood and ashes, was still seared into his mind.

Not only did Ma Jae-seung, the child who miraculously survived unscathed, but he became the largest shareholder of Ma Corp through the chairman’s will, making him the target of countless conspiracy theories. With Jae-seung entering university this year, the incident was thrust into the spotlight again. That poor kid must be hounded by people like this wherever he goes. Belatedly feeling guilty, Coach Kim shook his head.

“I’m hanging up.”

—Wait! Don’t hang up. Just a moment. Okay, I won’t ask about Jae-seung anymore. Tell me a bit more about that Mangwool District guy who enrolled with him. I mean, Shin-woo.

As the topic abruptly changed, Coach Kim frowned. Shin-woo. He had known the kid who entered with Ma Jae-seung before they enrolled together. A kid from Mangwol District who had worked odd jobs at Ma family and had taken on the role of Ma Jae-seung’s guardian the moment the chairman’s head was decapitated.

There were enough rumors about him to fill a book. It was an obvious fact that someone who profited from the chairman’s death would be a prime suspect.

—There’s just no proof, but we all know that guy killed the chairman. What common burglar would go so far as to decapitate someone? They still haven’t found the head, have they? This is a hate crime. The work of those Mangwol District scum who hate the privileged class. Rumor has it they’re wreaking havoc all over the city these days. They’re spreading throughout the city, leaving ‘that signature’ wherever they go.”

“…”

—Shin-woo is the leader of those guys. He’s like a cockroach that crawled its way up from the very bottom to the top of Ma Corporate!

Unable to listen any longer, Coach Kim hung up the phone. When the surroundings finally became quiet, I let out a shaky breath. He placed his hand on his pounding heart and took a deep breath.

Living in the affluent city center where land was most expensive, chances were slim to encounter anyone from the impoverished Mangwol District far below. Coach Kim shuddered recalling Shin-woo’s eyes – the strange, flickering tri-colored irises he had never seen before. Those observant eyes that scanned him up and down were not those of a student there to learn sports.

“Haah…enough of these useless thoughts, please.”

Rubbing his face vigorously, Coach Kim checked the time. He would soon come face-to-face with the subject of the rumors, so such nonsense was no help at all. He had stayed up all night stressed out again. He needed to stop feeding into the anxiety. He needed to stop…

He looked out the car window at the school building and reminisced. The day a few months ago when Jae-seung and Shin-woo showed up right after the entrance ceremony to join the hockey team was still vividly etched in his mind. He remembered everything from the atmosphere when they suddenly appeared in front of him to their expressions and attitudes. It was a day he couldn’t forget, the first time he saw the people he had seen so many stories about in the media.