GBH 3

The funeral home was set up in the basement of the same building as the hospital. Chrysanthemum wreaths filled the memorial room and overflowed, lining the corridor outside. Although Kim Deuk-pal had cut ties with his family after joining the organization and had no relatives to attend the funeral, yet it was crowded with mourners.

Everyone had a menacing or cold demeanor—they were all gangsters. Even rival organizations, who normally would never gather in one place, came to pay their respects. Although they usually couldn’t meet without fighting or engaging in a battle of nerves, today, they quietly raised their glasses to honor Kim Deuk-pal.

Even on the second day of the funeral, the atmosphere remained as somber as the first day. However, the solemn mood was instantly shattered when a boy in a hospital gown was dragged in.

“That, that bastard! You wretched brat!”

A man, as big as a bear, slammed the table and rushed forward, only to be held back by others. They didn’t restrain him for the boy’s sake but to prevent a disturbance at the funeral, and their glares towards the boy were far from kind.

The gang members gathered around the boy whom Kim Deuk-pal had tried to save. The boy was pitiful and shabby—his emaciated body, hunched posture, shoulders curled inwards as if permanently shrunken, and long bangs covering most of his face, all contributed to his gloomy appearance.

He was the complete opposite of the solid, heavy-set Kim Deuk-pal. Thinking that Kim Deuk-pal had died trying to save such a pathetic boy, the gang members clenched their fists in anger.

Kim Dong-soo pushed the boy in front of Kim Deuk-pal’s portrait. When the boy just stared blankly at the portrait while awkwardly standing before the incense altar, Kim Dong-soo kicked the back of his knees. The boy swallowed hard and fell to his knees with a thud. Kim Dong-soo coldly commanded:

“Apologize.”

The kneeling boy raised his head and stared at Kim Deuk-pal’s portrait as if transfixed. As he looked up at the portrait with a dazed expression, as if still not having come to his senses, provoked harsh words from the surrounding gang members.

“Apologize, you bastard! The boss, the boss tried to save a punk like you…!”

“The boss had an accident trying to save a bastard like you! Damn, and neither you nor your parents even showed your faces?”

But the boy seemed to hear nothing, unable to take his eyes off the portrait. Just as saliva was about to drip from his unconsciously open mouth, he suddenly stood up.

“The body, I need to see… with my own eyes…”

Muttering lowly, the boy lunged at the flower-decorated altar. The gang members shouted hurriedly as he sprang forth with unexpected strength from his thin body.

“Grab him!”

The boy stepped on the incense burner, climbed up, and pushed the portrait aside, clawing at the cracks in the planks. The body was in the morgue, but the boy was too desperate to think about that. However, the gang members caught him and dragged him down.

“That bastard, showing no gratitude and desecrating the deceased…!”

They pinned the boy to the ground, pressing down on his back. Despite being held down by several large men, the boy frantically struggled, trying to crawl towards the altar where he thought the body was. But when a sob escaped from one of the gang members, the boy’s resistance ceased abruptly.

“He passed away, he’s dead, our boss…”

These were the subordinates Kim Deuk-pal had personally recruited. They weren’t the type to play pranks, nor were they ones to cry easily.

Kim Deuk-pal, now in the boy’s body, made eye contact with his own portrait lying discarded on the floor. He could no longer deny it.

His intuition was correct. Kim Deuk-pal had died. He had bled to death in a car accident while trying to prevent the boy’s suicide on a rainy day.

The surviving soul finally accepted the death of its body.

---

Name: Song Yi-heon. Gender: Male. Age: 18. Blood type: A.

This was all Kim Deuk-pal had learned about the boy, and even that was only from the information tag hanging on the hospital bed.

Song Yi-heon was strange. He had a comfortable private hospital room, and when he was dragged to Kim Deuk-pal’s funeral a few days ago, the hospital security team had come looking for him with batons. The doctors were particularly kind, indicating he wasn’t without guardians, yet no one had come to see him. Because of this, no one suspected Kim Deuk-pal’s presence in the boy’s body.

“Ugh…”

When he turned over, a sharp pain erupted from his back. Kim Deuk-pal bit his lip as he pressed the button for the painkiller injection in his IV.

Song Yi-heon had suffered a ruptured injury to his back and broken ribs when he fell from the overpass, requiring surgery and a cast. Initially, Kim Deuk-pal hadn’t noticed this due to the chaos, but he had fainted from the aftermath of the surgery when supported by a security guard into the elevator. Even when he got up with the IV still attached, it was still Song Yi-heon’s body.

Once the pain subsided a bit, he reached for a hand mirror within arm’s reach. Kim Deuk-pal clicked his tongue as he examined the face reflected in the round mirror. It was still a face he couldn’t get used to.

“Tsk, what a pale face for a guy.”

He brushed aside the long bangs covering his eyes to reveal a face that was, as he said, pale. The light brown color of his eyes and hair suggested a lack of pigmentation, but that wasn’t something Kim Deuk-pal cared about.

In his mind, a man should have tanned skin, a strong jawline, and thick muscles to be considered handsome. Song Yi-heon’s delicate and thin features were far from Kim Deuk-pal’s taste.

“Geez, could this face even support a family…”

Still not fully accepting that this was his body, Kim Deuk-pal clicked his tongue again as he turned the boy’s slender chin from side to side, inspecting it as if it belonged to someone else.

Though he consciously examined Song Yi-heon’s appearance, his mind was preoccupied with the time. It was the hour for Kim Deuk-pal’s body to be cremated.

Even after confirming his death, Kim Deuk-pal couldn’t accept the thought of his body being burned to ashes. Not knowing what happened to Song Yi-heon’s soul, he couldn’t bear the thought of having no body to return to if Song Yi-heon’s soul came back someday.

Taking over the young boy’s body shamelessly didn’t sit well with his conscience. He needed to return the body to Song Yi-heon’s soul, but then would his own soul be left to wander, unable to die?

Lost in thought, Kim Deuk-pal didn’t notice the hospital room door opening. Suddenly feeling a chill, he looked up to see a middle-aged woman standing there with her arms crossed, her eyes openly expressing disdain. Just as Kim Deuk-pal furrowed his brow in displeasure, she spoke.

“You don’t even greet me anymore.”

Only then did Kim Deuk-pal realize his mistake and struggle to get up, gripping his cast. Despite the unusual pain from his broken ribs, he ignored it and bent his waist at a ninety-degree angle.

“Hello, ma’am.”

The person he found most difficult to deal with was a woman, especially one of a similar age group. It was already challenging enough, but since she seemed to be Song Yi-heon’s mother, Kim Deuk-pal stiffened up even more.

In Kim Deuk-pal’s mind, he was being polite according to the strict hierarchy of the gangster world, but the problem was that this was Song Yi-heon’s body. SShowing such respect in Song Yi-heon’s appearance  only led to more misunderstandings. The middle-aged woman’s eyebrow twitched.

“Are you protesting?”

Kim Deuk-pal flinched at the sarcastic remark that cut like a knife to his scalp. The woman, not caring about Song Yi-heon’s injured state, continued to lash out at him.

“Do you and your mother hold a grudge against me? Why are you both so desperate to make my life miserable? Going there in the middle of the night… Hah, did your mother put you up to it? Do you think the chairman will come running if he hears about this? Is that what you want, attention?”

The middle-aged woman is not Song Yi-heon’s mother. Given that she speaks disparagingly of Song Yi-heon’s mother while consistently using honorifics for the “chairman,” it’s likely she’s someone employed by the chairman’s side rather than a relative.

Realizing this, Kim Deuk-pal straightened his back. Though he didn’t know the full story and had nothing to say, he judged that at least he wasn’t in a position to be subservient.

“I’m already disgusted with cleaning up after your mother, why are you acting up too? What’s the problem? You really can’t do anything right-“

The woman who had been pouring out harsh words suddenly stiffened and hesitated as Song Yi-heon straightened his back. Usually, Song Yi-heon walked with a hunched posture, making his eye level similar to the woman’s, but Song Yi-heon was actually taller than her, so when he stood up straight, he could look down at her.

“You, you…”

The woman was shocked to see the boy who usually cowered and trembled at her sharp words now daring to look down at her. However, as Song Yi-heon swept his long bangs to the side, revealing a face like that of a young nobleman and coldly gazing at her with his handsome features – features that usually gave an impression of being gloomy and pathetic – she couldn’t muster the same loud voice as before.

From the youthful Song Yi-heon flowed the gravitas of Kim Deuk-pal, who had spent about 30 years in the organization.

“What gives you the right to look at an elder like that, you ill-mannered…”

However, the woman, accustomed to mistreating Song Yi-heon, didn’t back down easily. She glared at Song Yi-heon, muttering, but soon bit her lips, seemingly embarrassed by her own voice that trembled like a goat’s bleat even to her own ears.

“I’ll send driver Park for your discharge. Handle it yourself.”

The woman practically threw the shoulder bag she had been carrying at Song Yi-heon’s chest. When Song Yi-heon winced from the impact on his cast, she seemed to get scared and backed away without turning her back, then increased her pace as soon as she turned around and left the hospital room. The door shook as she slammed it shut, perhaps as a last show of pride.

“…What a nasty temper that woman has.”

Left alone, Kim Deuk-pal scratched the back of his head, mumbling to himself. Although she was the only person to visit Song Yi-heon days after the accident, he felt no desire to go after her. Rather, if Song Yi-heon had been tormented by such a woman all his life, Kim Deuk-pal could understand why he had tried to jump off the pedestrian overpass.

Kim Deuk-pal frowned at the slight pain in his ribs and turned over the shoulder bag the woman had left on the bed. He had thought it felt heavy when it hit his cast, and indeed, along with underwear and toiletries, several college entrance exam prep books and a tablet PC spilled out.

“Oh-“

As his smartphone had been damaged in the accident and he had been feeling frustrated, Kim Deuk-pal was relieved to find the tablet and picked it up first. He had received tutoring from a specialized instructor in Daechi-dong, and given the times, he knew how to handle a tablet for online lectures.

Although it was difficult to learn new technology at the age of forty-seven, thanks to his subordinates who had taught him the same content about a hundred times with patience they probably wouldn’t show even to their parents, Kim Deuk-pal confidently opened the tablet case cover. The screen turned on as he opened the cover-like case.

“Hmm.”

He thought he could handle it without difficulty as it was the same brand as the tablet he used to use, but he faced the obstacle of the lock screen. Kim Deuk-pal hesitantly pressed random numbers, but after receiving a warning that it was incorrect, he didn’t dare to touch it carelessly. Fearing he might render it completely unusable if he made a mistake, he engaged in a standoff with the lock screen.

As time passed helplessly, Kim Deuk-pal irritably brushed his bangs aside. His long bangs floated up and then gently settled down. Half of his face was covered by the bangs.

“…Huh?”

For a moment, Kim Deuk-pal blinked, lifting his bangs as if trying to make sure he had seen correctly.

“What’s this?”

The lock screen had been unlocked. While he was staring blankly at the screen in surprise, it went dark again, and when the lock screen appeared, Kim Deuk-pal, on a hunch, covered his face with his bangs. The Face ID unlocked, and the background screen appeared.

“This isn’t ‘The Man with Two Faces’ or something.”

Having figured out the unlocking mechanism, Kim Deuk-pal grumbled dejectedly and swiped the screen.

The tablet was clean. The few apps were predictable ones that kids of that age would install, for online lectures, flash games, or webtoons. Among them, a diary app stood out.

“So this is why it was locked…”

He pulled out the integrated table attached to the hospital bed, rested his elbows on it, and opened the diary app. Adjusting to a more comfortable position, he began to read in earnest.

Today was December 27th, a few days after the overpass accident. The diary opened to the most recent entry, dated December 20th, making it easy to continue reading.