GBH 89

The sound of angry breathing subsided. Not because he had calmed down, but because he detected a contradiction.

“30 years?”

After a brief hesitation due to Song Yi-heon’s strange aura, the chairman’s wrinkles twitched. There’s a limit to boasting, and he wondered if this 19-year-old was crazy to talk about 30 years. If he had spouted such nonsense in front of the board members because he was insane, the chairman was more than willing to have him committed to a mental hospital.

As he remembered how Song Yi-heon had ruined his long-cherished ambition, his momentarily cooled anger reached boiling point again. The chairman bellowed:

“How dare you try to deceive me with such a shallow trick! Go back and apologize immediately!”

In the past, Song Yi-heon would have been convulsing with his eyes rolled back, but now he was focused on methodically crushing the gathered tobacco leaves.

“Chairman. Have you heard of the term ‘villain’?”

As if not intending to have a conversation, Song Yi-heon just said what he wanted to say.

“These days, kids call someone they want to beat to death a ‘villain’.”

Kim Yeon-ji had properly explained that a villain meant a bad guy, but to Kim Deuk-pal, it was all the same. Whether a bad guy or someone you want to beat to death, someone who makes others cry tears of blood deserves to be beaten until their legs break.

Finally, Song Yi-heon raised his head. In his hand, which had kicked away the crushed tobacco leaves, was a jack knife he had taken out of his pants pocket. Song Yi-heon repeatedly put his thumb in the groove of the blade, half-raising it before pushing it back into place.

It was a hand trick as familiar as holding a cigarette. And soon, he adjusted his grip on the jack knife and unfolded the blade.

“……”

A bluish gleam swept across the start and end of the blade. No commercial jack knife would have such a sharply honed blade. He had further sharpened the blade of the purchased jack knife.

The chairman couldn’t take his eyes off the blade that had been thinned by grinding. While holding a blade that could cut skin with just a graze, Song Yi-heon was merely marveling as if it were curious.

“Calling someone they want to beat to death a villain, it’s interesting to see how kids these days play. How do they come up with such ideas? It wasn’t like that in my time. Don’t you agree?”

Song Yi-heon’s appearance was that of “kids these days,” but his actions were not.

The smooth, white skin without a single scar, the short, active-looking hairstyle, and the slender body were unmistakably those of a teenage boy.

However, Song Yi-heon, with his suit jacket open and pushed back at the waist, one hand in his pants pocket while lightly swinging the knife with the other, was not a teenager.

Song Yi-heon adjusted his grip on the jack knife so that the blade pointed downward. Despite the flashy successful movement, Song Yi-heon showed no change in expression.

The chairman, having experienced many people, could tell the difference. That Song Yi-heon wasn’t just showing off with childish tricks. It was too familiar to be exciting. This wasn’t the skill of someone who had done it once or twice. He could recognize and control how much lethal power the blade in his hand could exert. It wasn’t an ability a normal high school student would possess.

The fear of the blade transferred to Song Yi-heon holding it. The chairman wiped his temple with his palm. Even after wiping, it was drenched in sweat. Trying to calm Song Yi-heon down and take the knife away, he forced a kind voice.

“Alright, so let’s put down that kn-knife first and t-talk.”

“But you’re my villain.”

The drawling tone up until now became short and resolute, as if tying a knot. The speech devoid of any respect lost its polite form, and the ambiguous smile that had seemed more like a sneer disappeared without a trace.

“Do I still look like your son to you?”

“Wh-what…?”

The chairman’s mouth gaped open. He couldn’t understand what he was hearing. However, Song Yi-heon had no intention of kindly explaining the situation of how his soul had been switched due to a car accident. It didn’t matter if the chairman didn’t understand or believe. He had already moved his source of money to Shim Su-jin, so there was nothing to fear even if he was exposed. There was no need for consideration, of course.

The old man before him was nothing more or less than the target of revenge. Kim Deuk-pal spoke his mind without hesitation.

“What sin did the Song Yi-heon who was trying to die commit? He’s a victim too.”

There was no fault in Song Yi-heon jumping off the pedestrian bridge. That’s what Kim Deuk-pal thought.

“How much must you have pushed the kid for him to try to kill himself? The most scared must have been Song Yi-heon when he climbed onto that bridge. If just one person had cared for him, he wouldn’t have jumped off that bridge.”

He understood Song Yi-heon. So he tried not to resent him. Kim Deuk-pal had endured. He went to school, studied hard, even took revenge and enjoyed himself moderately. However, he could no longer bury the resentment he had tried to ignore when he saw the organization he had built over a lifetime crumble.

The anger that had lost its target rolled around here and there, growing in volume like a snowball. And it found its target for revenge. The inflated anger poured down like an avalanche towards its target.

“Song Yi-heon is innocent, but I, who was swept up and died, feel wronged. That’s it. So I thought about it…”

As Song Yi-heon, acting like a different person, kept saying incomprehensible things, the chairman sensed danger.

“……”

“You are the root of all evil.”

Song Yi-heon took a step closer. As the chairman stepped back, the bathroom stall partition behind him shook. He glanced to the side. The glass door leading outside was too far away. The chairman watched Song Yi-heon approaching, gauging whether he could escape. As his knees began to tremble, the chairman slowly slid down the wall.

Song Yi-heon’s shadow loomed over him, and the chairman had to look up at Song Yi-heon.

“Why lust after a young woman when you have a legal wife and children? Fine, let’s say for argument’s sake that your private life is none of my business. But if you had a child, you should have taken responsibility.”

“I-I did take responsibility! Who do you think paid for your comfortable life…!”

“What comfortable life? I went through mental and physical hell. Couldn’t you have eased up on the mistreatment? Were you satisfied tormenting the kid like that? How petty.”

“S-Song Min-seo…! That woman didn’t act like a mother either! No, if she hadn’t fallen into alcoholism and just raised her child properly in the first place…!”

Considering they must have been intimate enough to conceive Song Yi-heon, what a way to refer to her. Song Yi-heon scratched his ear with his pinky as if he’d heard something dirty.

“Keep talking. No matter what you say, I’m on her side. If she lived half her life in madness, doesn’t she deserve at least one person to take her side without question? She’s a pitiful woman who doesn’t even realize her own child has changed.”

Song Min-seo hadn’t done much right either, but she had lost her dreams and youth as a consequence. She wasn’t in her right mind, and her only son had climbed onto a pedestrian bridge to die – even Kim Deuk-pal couldn’t be cold to Song Min-seo. He embraced her just as he had taken in his subordinates when they were at rock bottom.

“Is it justice? Protecting the people I want to protect is my justice.”

Even as he said it, Song Yi-heon laughed emptily and bowed his head deeply, realizing how self-centered it sounded. The artificial and exaggerated movement was absurd.

“I’m sorry, Chairman. I’m an uneducated bastard, so I’m ignorant. Please understand.”

“O-okay, I get it, I understand-!”

“What do you understand?”

“…!”

The chairman’s short eyelashes trembled in his wide-open eyes. His round eyeballs were filled with shock. The chairman barely managed to roll his eyes to the side. Right next to the corner of his eye was the handle of the jack knife. The jack knife handle vibrated as it was stuck in the bathroom stall partition from the recoil. Cut white hair fluttered and fell.

“Huh…”

The chairman felt like his heart had stopped. It was the moment he tried to escape the bathroom, taking advantage of Song Yi-heon bowing his head. Song Yi-heon, who he thought was looking at the tiled floor, had thrown the knife. If the chairman hadn’t stopped, the jack knife would have been stuck in his eyeball instead of the bathroom stall partition.

“…!”

However, the chairman hadn’t lived his years in vain. He quickly regained his senses and pulled out the jack knife to swing it. As he swung the jack knife with force, the sound of it cutting through the air was threatening.

Song Yi-heon bent his waist to avoid the blade. The blade brushed over the top of his head. In Song Yi-heon’s lowered view, he could see the chairman’s protruding belly.

Song Yi-heon’s eyes, aiming at the target, were cold. He clenched his fist. For a stable posture, he placed his front foot with the knee at a right angle, and raised the heel of his back foot for support. The fist, powered by the fixed lower body, was thrust forward with all its might like a final blow. The tail of his jacket fluttered with the momentary speed.

“Ugh-!”

As if stabbing into a sack, the fist dug into the chairman’s stomach. Pushed by the force that dented his abdomen, the chairman floated and fell, hitting the partition door. He stumbled up and sat down on the toilet.

“S-stop…”

Song Yi-heon picked up the fallen jack knife and followed him in. The chairman retreated, but the cold metal of the toilet handle pressed against his hipbone. The narrow space was packed with the two of them. Although Song Yi-heon was small in stature, the sitting chairman felt despair as if looking up at a towering giant.

“You’d better keep your balance straight.”

Click, the partition lock is engaged. Song Yi-heon warned ominously.

“It’s been a while since I’ve handled a knife, so I might make a mistake.”

The raised blade flashed as it reflected the light.