TTD 155

-Side Story 2.3-

Ugh, half-asleep, Ja-kyung unconsciously flinched as the tips of his toes, sticking out from the covers, grew cold. Strange. It shouldn’t be this cold. He hid under the covers completely, but unable to bear it, he finally got out of bed. He was about to get out of bed to check the heater when a hand grabbed his waist first.

“Where are you going?”

“I think the heater is off. I’ll go check.”

“Stay a little longer.”

Kang Il-hyun pulled with strength in his arms, and Ja-kyung let himself be dragged back as if he couldn’t resist. The moment their skin touched, the chill subsided due to his body heat. Kang Il-hyun’s skin was always hot, as if he had a high body temperature. Unlike Ja-kyung, he didn’t feel the cold and loved winter.

But Ja-kyung hated winter. Winter was always cold, hungry, and hard to endure. Now, all of that was in the past. Suddenly, he raised his upper body and completely pulled back the curtain above his head. There was a reason why it felt so bright. It had snowed all night, and the world was covered in white.

“Ah…”

At the mention of snow, Kang Il-hyun burrowed further into Ja-kyung’s arms. Don’t worry, sleep more.

“Tae-soo will come to pick us up. It’s dangerous to ride a motorcycle in this weather.”

Even so, when Ja-kyung couldn’t take his eyes off the window, Kang Il-hyun hugged him and rolled over once. Suddenly, his body was on the opposite side, and he was farther away from the window. Now, Kang Il-hyun’s face filled his view. He smiled like a painting, raising the corners of his lips.

“Thanks to you, we get to spend some quality time together.”

He wrapped Ja-kyung tightly in a blanket. “Is this less cold? Huh?” He asked affectionately, then brushed back the hair that had fallen over his forehead, touched his cheeks, and rubbed his ears. He kissed him lightly on the lips, then held him in his arms. Ja-kyung hesitated for a moment, wondering if he should escape, but then relaxed and nestled quietly in Kang Il-hyun’s arms.

“Oh, when will the construction behind the house be finished?”

“Soon.”

“What are you building anyway?”

“Later. It’s no fun if you know in advance.”

Kang Il-hyun had been carrying out construction behind the watermelon field for six months. He left the soil in the middle and dug out all around it, and the scale was larger than he thought. Later, he completely blocked the view by building temporary walls around it so that the site could not be seen at all.

He was so curious that he had even wandered around with the Wang brothers, but he only heard that no one could enter unless they were involved. The last time he saw it, they had made the land like a donut. Wang Lun said it looked like an island.

Was he planning to lock up people he didn’t like there?

With the watermelon field in front, there was no better place.

After fidgeting in bed for a while, Ja-kyung got up after sleeping for about an hour and checked the heater. While he was making coffee and toasting bread to solve breakfast roughly, Park Tae-soo arrived. Kang Il-hyun threw a silly joke at Park Tae-soo, who was looking at the campervan.

“It’s our honeymoon home. How is it?”

Park Tae-soo smiled faintly. He was extremely loyal to Kang Il-hyun, but he wasn’t a very fun man. After finishing the preparations for departure, Ja-kyung parked his motorcycle next to the trailer and covered it with a waterproof cloth. Hoping that no one would steal such an expensive item. There were CCTV cameras all around and it was a deserted place, so he knew no one would come, but he couldn’t feel at ease.

Then the two of them headed to Seoul by car. On the way, Kang Il-hyun told him what to do at Chairman Yang’s house and what to be careful about. Don’t hit or kill anyone in a fit of anger. Il-hyun said that he had known the old man for a very long time and that he would be troublesome if he was an enemy.

“Ah. There’s a tiger cub in that house. Be careful because you might get bitten if you do something wrong.”

“A tiger?”

“Yeah. Don’t get involved. He’s a troublesome guy.”

***

Ja-kyung looked at the large gate and took out a cigarette. After a while, a car was seen in the distance, and Wang Lun and Wang Han got out and strode towards him. Because they were dressed up, they felt like plausible gangsters.

An employee standing in front of the gate searched the three men’s bodies. Wang Lun showed discomfort at how meticulously they searched.

“Fuck. Might as well check my balls while you’re at it.”

“We apologize if you felt uncomfortable. This applies to everyone who comes in and out of this place, so please understand.”

Yesterday, he looked like he was about to hit someone at any moment, but today he treated them with courtesy. Then a man wearing glasses came out, who said he was Chairman Yang’s secretary, whom Kang Il-hyun had spoken to yesterday. The man, who was Chairman Yang’s closest aide, had a friendly smiling face.

“The Chairman went to the hospital this morning with a high fever. He told me to take good care of you, so don’t worry. I’ll guide you, so please wait there for a moment and we’ll take care of things.”

Following the man’s guidance, they entered and a massive traditional Korean-style house appeared. The three of them couldn’t help but be amazed. The courtyard was endlessly long, and they had no idea how far it extended. It was a structure that would make one wander for a long time if they had snuck in.

The man led them to a separate annex. Inside, antique paintings hung on the walls, and sleekly designed porcelain was visible here and there. Wang Han casually picked up a piece of porcelain and checked its underside. Is this expensive? As he muttered to himself, the man who was the secretary just smiled.

When they sat down, an employee brought tea.

“Is the person you’re looking for Kim Young-ho?”

“That’s right. Kim Young-ho.”

“He’s locked up in our warehouse, but he’s not opening his mouth. He’s more stubborn than he looks.”

At those words, Wang Lun grinned.

“Don’t worry about that. Opening closed mouths is our specialty. Isn’t that right, hyung?”

“It’s not difficult. If we go in, he’ll confess everything in three minutes.”

Or they could beat him until he really vomited, or torture him until he was on the verge of death. Then people would make up facts that didn’t exist. But he didn’t want to say such things to the man. It seemed better to appear as ordinary and harmless as possible.

“Then please wait a moment while you drink your tea.”

The man greeted them and left the reception room. But less than 10 minutes passed before the outside became noisy. A loud shout, “fuck,” and so on, echoed. The three men’s gazes turned towards the door.

“Something seems to have gone wrong?”

“Can’t we just drag him away? Getting permission like this isn’t our style.”

“Lun. What did you hear? He said he knows CEO Kang. We shouldn’t cause unnecessary trouble.”

Ja-kyung nodded, agreeing with Wang Han’s words. But the shouting grew louder and louder, and the three had no choice but to come outside. As they walked along the hallway, the voice became closer. When they came out to the floor, someone standing in the yard caught their eye. He was well over 190 cm tall, with a build as big as a door and an equally foul expression.

“Ah, is that the tiger cub?”

As Ja-kyung muttered to himself, Wang Han asked back, “Tiger?” The man who was shouting looked this way.

“Are those the guys?”

Wang Lun frowned at the words “those guys,” and the secretary stopped him with a troubled expression.

“Young Master. This is something that the Chairman has permitted. Please be polite to the people CEO Kang Il-hyun sent.”

But the man sneered.

“Kang Il-hyun? Kang Il-hyun, that crazy bastard? Ha, I don’t want to grant his request even more if it’s his! Secretary Choi knows too, right? That he threw me into the pond and stepped on my head when I was young.”

Goddammit… Ja-kyung furrowed his brow. Damn, Director Kang. He didn’t say anything about this. Was this what he meant by not getting involved? How can a person have enemies everywhere? He wanted to protest, but Kang Il-hyun wasn’t there, so there was no one to complain to.

Then Wang Han, who was listening, subtly lowered his voice.

“Didn’t Director Kang say he was nice when he was young?”

Ja-kyung scoffed. You believed that? For a man who had stabbed his own brother, it wasn’t surprising that he had thrown a stranger with no shared blood into a pond. The man’s anger didn’t subside, so Ja-kyung had no choice but to step forward.

“Let’s be reasonable. You snatched him right before he was about to flee the country, and we were there too. Do you know what that means? Thanks to you, we missed the fish we caught. If I hadn’t intervened in advance, those guys would have already fled abroad. Then you wouldn’t have had anything to catch. So let’s do this. We also have something to receive from those guys, so we’ll give them back to you once we’ve taken care of that. Whether you kill them or let them live is up to you.”

The man stared at Ja-kyung, then strode closer. Seeing him naturally move his hand to his back pocket to take out a knife, Ja-kyung also lowered a pen from inside his sleeve. It was a fountain pen that had been placed on one side of the reception room a little while ago.

Just as he was thinking of parrying if necessary, the man, who was right in front of him, frowned as he looked down at Ja-kyung menacingly.

“Fuck, this fucking face, why does it look so familiar?”

Ha, Ja-kyung let out a laugh of disbelief. It was the first time in his entire life he’d been told he had a damned face. Wang Han and Wang Lun also furious at that comment. Our maknae’s face is second to none, they thought. It’s a face that even the picky and ill-tempered Director Kang fell for!

After snapping at them to shut their mouths, he glared at the guy.

“You’re just as fucking ugly. You son of a bitch.”

As soon as he sneered, the other party bared his teeth and smiled savagely.

In a touch-and-go situation, someone shouted and ran from afar.

“Yang Ho-beom! How long are you going to make me wait!”

Yang Ho-beom?

Is that the name of this door sized man in front of him?

“I heard you were going to visit the Chairman in the hospital, but it’s been dozens of minutes already, uh?”

The man who came up panting was smaller than him, with a slender build and pretty face. The mysterious man widened his eyes as he looked at Ja-kyung. Ja-kyung momentarily considered breaking his finger because he was pointing and shouting “Huh!” again. But the man smiled brightly and came right up to his face.

“Wow, if this isn’t fate! Don’t you know me?”

At that moment, sparks flashed in Yang Ho-beom’s eyes behind him. Seeing the guy grabbing the man by the nape of his neck and pulling him made him feel a strange sense of déjà vu. Ah, where did he see this scene…? Ja-kyung frowned and belatedly remembered them.