When I regained it, it was dark outside, and Taejun was sitting on the other end of the couch (that didn’t belong to him), arms crossed and head tipped downwards like he was resting. But as I sat up, he straightened up and looked at me. The ferocious anger from before had completely left him, and now he just looked tired and stressed. He got up and handed me a glass of water that had been sitting on the coffee table. “How are you feeling?” he asked. 

I gratefully gulped the water. “Not great,” I admitted. “But better than before.” 

Taejun felt my head again. It must have been improved because he didn’t bother to take my pulse after. “You’ll be alright,” he said gruffly. “Are you hungry?” 

“After that? Hell no.” My stomach was still twisting itself up into knots at the memory of the flash of fire from Taejun’s gun, and the spray of blood from the gangster he had shot. 

My energetic response must have cheered him up somewhat, because he let out a huff of amusement and ruffled my hair like he had always done when we were kids. As I had done as a child, I dodged out of it with a face. Taejun looked even more cheered at my feisty attitude. 

“You can have this back.” I pulled his long black coat off me and held it out to him. The smokey smell was gone from it, but remembering how transformed he had looked while wearing it still made me feel uncomfortable under it. He took but just draped it over the other end of the couch (that didn’t belong to him) instead of putting it away. He flopped down to sit near me again. 

“Do you always have a gun?” I said, despite my fear, I was morbidly curious. 

“Do you really want to talk about that?” Taejun gave me a weird look. 

“Yeah. Are you really the best shot in the Seoul NIS?” 

He laughed dryly. “No. But I’m pretty good.” I believed it. The speed with which he had switched targets and fired accurately had been terrifying. 

I remembered something weird that Jungho had said to Taejun during their short, tense standoff. “Han Jungho called you the Demon of Inner Seoul. What’s that about?”

 “Those gangsters love their little nicknames. It doesn’t mean anything.” He seemed uncomfortable with this conversation. 

I persisted. “He knew who you were,” I commented. “Why?” 

He gave me a wry look. “Because I keep tabs on and investigate lowlifes like him. Jae, what do you think I do all day at work?” 

Type on his phone and hole himself up in his office space, I thought. “I dunno. I mostly just see you on your computer or phone.” 

“That’s at home,” he told me. “During the day it’s a lot more legwork.” 

“So you do stuff like that all day?!” 

“No. Only sometimes.” He watched me, probably gauging my now stunned expression. “Why are you so curious about my work all of a sudden? You’ve never asked before.” 

“You literally just rushed into a gangster den by yourself with one gun! You’re either crazy or you just do that a lot.” I honestly had just thought he just ran around after his boss doing … paperwork or something. 

He let out another amused puff. “A bit of both. But I guess that was mostly crazy… though I didn’t just have one gun.” 

The fact that he did stuff like that at all was incredible to me. I had no idea that whenever he went out to work in the mornings, he might get hurt or not come back. He had been so nonchalant and diligent, and had never shown any hesitation about it. It felt weird that Han Jungho had known about him, possibly even longer than I had known Taejun was in Seoul. 

“If your job is to investigate gangsters like Han Jungho, why didn’t you just arrest him when I told you about him?” I tried not to think about how even though he had saved my skin today, he might have had the ability to have prevented all of these events from happening at all. 

“I investigate,” he explained patiently. “I don’t go around making random arrests. And it’s not like I watch every gang in Seoul. Jungho’s gang and territory is someone else’s assignment. I promise you I didn’t know about him.” 

It was a good enough explanation, I thought. But still not very satisfying. Taejun certainly had no qualms bending to rules to spy on me, but not to prosecute actual villains. Despite my earlier nap, I still felt weak and exhausted from the day’s events. Taejun noticed. “Go wash up and rest. I’ve made arrangements for you to leave tomorrow.” 

Dazed, I didn’t even register his words, and just stumbled off to take a shower. It wasn’t until halfway through the shower that I woke up a little more and realized what he said. I shut off the water and dried myself quickly. Still half wet, I shoved myself into my clothes and ran back down the hall. “Wait. You said leave?! Where am I going?” 

Taejun was a bit startled to see me bursting out of the bathroom with my hair still dripping wet. “I’m sending you to the embassy in Beijing,” he said testily. “Depending on the situation, it might only need to be a short while.” 

“To Beijing!” I cried. “I don’t speak Chinese!” For some reason, my scattered brain decided to blurt the first objection that popped into my head, despite it being the smallest. 

“Doesn’t matter, you’ll be staying with–” 

“What about Mom and Dad? They’re literally in the hospital right now because of what happened last time I didn’t help!” 

“They dug their own grave, they can lie in it,” Taejun said coldly. This man had ice in his veins. 

“I can’t just leave them! Can’t you send them too?” The cold, impassionate look in his eyes gave me my answer. “You’re heartless! Those are our parents! They put a roof over your head, fed you-” 

“Did they?” Taejun snarled. The anger from before was starting to resurface. “We took care of ourselves pretty much as soon as we could walk, you and I. You might not remember, but I do. Maybe we had a roof over our heads, but that was about it. You and I could have lived under a bridge and had the same upbringing. I raised you. As soon as you were born, Ma put you in my arms and would take off to do whatever she wanted!” 

I definitely didn’t remember any of that. But I did remember one thing. “Yeah? Well you took off to do whatever YOU wanted the moment you had the chance to do so!” 

He drew himself up, and seemed to grow two or three inches to loom over me. “I was barely eighteen,” he growled. “I barely had any idea how I was going to take care of myself, let alone you. I left you behind but I had no choice! I had to work my damn ass off to change my life. So WE could have a better life. So WE could have this!” He gestured around at the apartment angrily. “So WE could be here, together!” 

“Lie some more,” I taunted. “If I hadn’t gone off to Busan that day, you would have left me to rot in that house with my parents in the– what did you say? The grave they dug for themselves?!” 

“You should have been in university by now! I thought for sure you would have made it into college too.” Taejun’s anger flared around him again. “Besides, even if I had known, I didn’t even know myself if I was ready yet. You forced my hand early, but it’s worked out so far! I don’t know why you try to make me out to be a villain constantly. I’m human too! I’m trying here, Jae!” 

His words hurt me. I never thought of him as a villain. He’d always been the superhero of my childhood, a perfect role model whose steps I could never follow. The only flaw I had ever seen in him was how easily he had left all his family behind. I didn’t know what to say in return, so I simply returned the conversation to an earlier point. “Ma put my name on the contract she signed with the Seven Directions gang. So I’m bound. I’m bound to the contract.” 

Taejun’s eyes narrowed. “Explain,” he growled. 

Taking a deep breath so I could speak clearly, I related to him everything that Park Jungho had told me today.

“Jae-ya, you dumb ass! Just because your name is on a contract, you’re not bound to it,” groaned Taejun. Belatedly I remembered he had studied law. “Even gangsters have to abide by contract law even somewhat to keep the heat off them. As long as you don’t agree to Park Jungho’s idiotic terms, you have no obligation to them!”

My face burned. I hated it everytime Taejun proved he was smarter than I. “My obligation isn’t to them,” I said shakily. “It’s to our parents. You’re my hyung, but somehow you refuse to understand. Family bonds mean nothing to you.”

“Family bonds mean nothing to me?” he asked in a low voice. “Then why are you here? Why am I letting you live with me, rent free? Why did I show up today to drag your ungrateful ass out of that nest of vipers? You think I don’t feel anything for– you’re my family, Jae, not those—” He cut himself short. Taejun was again seething with anger, and it took all my willpower to not surrender right then and there to that oppressive energy. 

“Come here,” he snarled. He grabbed me by the arm and dragged me into his office. “Sit down!” Angry, but now also baffled, I sat. He had never let me into the office before, let alone onto his computer. He reached over and found a file on his desktop and opened it. 

It was a photo, but for a few seconds I had no idea what I was looking at. It was a hanging, red mass, vaguely human-shaped– I almost vomited when I realized it was a body, more or less flayed, covered in blood. I tried to turn away, but Taejun held me down. 

“Do you want that to be you?” he said, his voice low and trembling with emotion. “Because it damn well could be one day. Keep looking!” 

I didn’t want to. No wonder Taejun kept me out of his office. Did he really have to see things like that all the time for work? 

“He was just like you, Jae.” Taejun’s voice, which had been so angry just moments before, felt strained now. “A few years older, but he was just like you. His parents were heavily in debt to a gang, and he had the same ideas as you. He had to help them pay it off. He had a duty to. Well his mother abused that mindset to their demise. In the end, she borrowed far more than he could pay. And this was what he earned. He didn’t owe a cent, but because of his parents, he ended up flayed and butchered like a pig just like them. They tortured him well before they killed him.” He jabbed at the screen. “They took every organ he had. Even his eyes.” 

With that I really couldn’t take it anymore. I grabbed his trashcan and barely got it into position before I vomited. 

“I saw this, and I realized this is the path you’re on. Like a goddamn lemming, you’ll end up following our good for nothing parents to a horrible fucking death like that.” His voice really was quavering now. “I won’t let you do that. I can’t watch you continue to funnel every penny you have to them, only to end up like that.” 

“Well then you don’t have to watch.” His oppressive angry aura had completely deactivated. For the first time I could remember, Taejun was afraid. I pushed past him and determinedly made my way to the door. 

“Baek Jaehyun!” He shouted, following me. Though he had raised his voice, it carried none of the commanding power it usually did. “You walk out that door right now, you don’t come back! Ever!”

“Fine by me,” I said. After seeing that photo, I just felt cold and numb. I opened the door and let it slam shut behind me.