Wonsang was split between three gangs, and everyone who lived there knew it, even if nobody said it out loud. The Galsaek-pa controlled the old market district, collecting "protection money" from every shop that wanted to stay open without trouble. The Juhwang-pa ran loan shops near the university, cheap and easy money that always came back to bite you. And the Kkachi-pa did something similar further north, credit offices that fed off people who had nowhere else to turn. unreliable Scumbags
Lee Hye-jin had learned that the hard way.
She was a pretty girl. Big eyes, long dark hair, pale soft skin. She'd moved to Wonsang for university, and her parents sent her money every month to help with rent. She picked up part-time jobs here and there to cover the rest. Nothing special about her story. Thousands of other students were doing the exact same thing.
Four months ago, after a few mis managements on her part, she ran out of money, and needed more money fast, and she didn't want to ask her parents again. So she borrowed from one of the Juhwang-pa shops. Five hundred thousand won. Seemed manageable.
When she went back to pay it off, they told her it had tripled. One point five million. She argued, got nowhere, paid what she could on the spot and promised the rest next month. They smiled and said "Sure, no problem."
Next month, the number had grown again. And Again she paid part of it. The month after that, it had grown even more. She kept working, kept paying what she could, and the debt kept outpacing her.
Now it was the fourth month since she first borrowed that money, and there was no way she could pay what she owed. The due date had already passed. She'd stopped answering unknown numbers. She barely left her apartment anymore.
Even today, a school day, She wanted nothing more but stay home hidding from the possible danger outside, but there was no running from life. Her parents were already paying her tuition, she had to go.
Lee Hye-jin woke up tired, the kind of tired that sleep doesn't fix. Dark circles under her eyes, aches all thoughout her body. Her room was a mess, clothes on the floor, papers everywhere because she hadn't had it in her to clean anything in weeks.
She lay there for a second, then pulled her knees to her chest, put her hands over her eyes, and started crying quietly.
'What am I going to do... What am I going to do. What am I going to do.'
While she subbed, her alarm went off. She wiped her face and got up.
Her mourning routine began, washing, brushing teeth, then she got dressed the only clean set of clothes she had, hanging in one tidy corner of an otherwise wrecked room and sat down to do her makeup. Concealer under the eyes, enough to hide how exhausted she looked. When she was done, she looked at herself in the mirror, sighed, and smiled. A big, easy smile. Like nothing was wrong.
Then she grabbed her bag and left for school.
She hadn't called the police. Not once. It wasn't about being brave, she just couldn't afford what would come after. Lawyers, paperwork, all of it. Her parents didn't have that kind of money, and she wasn't going to hand them a bigger problem after everything they'd already spent sending her here. So she just went to class like normal.
It was a nice day out, sunny, the street busy. She walked like she always did, calm on the outside. Inside, her head wouldn't shut up. 'Are they near the school today?' 'Are they watching my apartment?' 'Would I even recognize them if they grabbed me?' She kept glancing at alleys, at parked cars, at anyone who looked at her too long. So worried she didn't pay real attention to ehr surroundings and missed the light had changed.
A hand grabbed her shoulder and yanked her back, hard, right as a car flew past close enough to feel the wind of it. She stumbled, blinked, and looked up at the man holding her arm some guy in his thirties.
"Th-thank you," she said, out of breath. "Thank you so much."
He didn't look happy about it. "Idiot," he said, letting go of her arm. "Watch where you're going. Kids these days." He rolled his eyes and pulled out his phone, already done with her.
She caught her breath, bowed to the man again out of habit, and mumbled another quick thank you before he'd already turned away. Then she stood there a second, just breathing, trying to get her heart rate back down. She didn't want to walk into school looking like she'd just seen a ghost. So she straightened her back, took a slow breath in and out, and kept walking, trying to look like a normal girl on a normal morning.
By the time she reached the university gates, there were students everywhere, all heading in around the same time she was. She fell into the flow of people heading inside, went up the stairs to her floor, and walked into her classroom.
She sat down at her usual seat. A few seconds later, a girl came and sat beside her; Yoon Seo-yeon, her closest friend since her first semester. Yoon Seo-yeon had a loud, easy energy about her, always talking, always finding something to laugh about even when there was nothing funny going on.
"Morning," Yoon Seo-yeon said, dropping her bag on the desk. "You look like you didn't sleep at all."
"Thanks," Lee Hye-jin said dryly. "Exactly what I needed to hear."
"I'm just saying." Yoon Seo-yeon grinned. "You should come out with us this weekend. Get your mind off whatever it is you've been stressing about."
"Maybe."
"That's what you said last time."
"I know."
They went back and forth like that for a bit, Yoon Seo-yeon carrying most of the conversation, jumping from one topic to another. Some guy in their class, a professor's terrible haircut, plans for the weekend. Lee Hye-jin gave short answers, nodding along, her mind clearly somewhere else.
At some point she just stopped answering at all. She kept nodding along to whatever Yoon Seo-yeon was saying, but her eyes had gone distant, and after a moment even the nodding slowed down.
Yoon Seo-yeon noticed. She stopped talking mid-sentence, eyebrows pulling together as she studied her friend's face.
"...You okay?"
Lee Hye-jin blinked, coming back to herself. "Huh? Oh, yeah." For just a second, something in her expression slipped, the tiredness underneath showing through, her shoulders sinking slightly. Then she caught herself, straightened up, and smiled. "Yeah, I'm fine."
Yoon Seo-yeon looked at that smile for a moment too long. It wasn't a bad smile, exactly. It just didn't look right. Something about it felt put on, like it had been built rather than felt. She couldn't have said why she thought that. It was just a feeling, watching her friend's face.
She opened her mouth to ask something else, but right then the professor walked in, clapped his hands once, and told everyone to quiet down and take their seats. Class was starting.
They stayed in their seats through the rest of that class, not talking much, both of them focused on the professor. When it ended, Lee Hye-jin and Yoon Seo-yeon gathered their things and headed out together, until the second class, where they were in different buildings. They talked as they walked, then split off outside, each heading their own way, agreeing to meet up again for the third class, since that one they shared.
Yoon Seo-yeon lingered a moment, watching Lee Hye-jin walk off toward her building, a small line of worry between her brows that she couldn't quite explain. Then she turned back toward her own building.
She wasn't looking where she was going. She walked straight into someone, bouncing off him slightly.
"Oh- sorry," the guy said, looking down at her.
Yoon Seo-yeon looked up. A face so strikingly handsome you couldn't find even on moel magazines. light brown hair, a relaxed, easy smile that had more than a little charm loaded into it. She felt her face heat up almost immediately and her heart skipped a beat.
"Sorry, didn't see you there," he said. "I'm Han Do-yun." He paused, smiling. "And you are?"
"Uh! oh Ah- Yoon Seo-yeon," she said, a little flustered.
He held out his hand. She shook it.
"That girl who just left," he said, "was she your friend?"
"Oh, yeah, she's my friend."
"You two close?"
"Pretty close, yeah," she said.
"Do you know what classes she takes here? I was curious what people study around this place."
Yoon Seo-yeon paused for half a second. It was a strange question to ask about someone he'd never met. suspicious maybe. On another note, he extremely good-looking, and that fact did most of the thinking for her in the moment.
She told him, first class was one subject, second class another, listing them off in order.
"Second class is in that building right there?" Han Do-yun asked, nodding toward it.
"Yeah."
"And the third one?"
"Same building, actually, but there's a little gap before it starts. That's usually when she goes to grab something to eat."
He smiled, thanked her, and gave her a small wave. "Well, see you around, Yoon Seo-yeon." Then he walked off.
She stood there for a second, staring after him with a dumb little smile on her face. Then she frowned slightly, the thought surfacing on its own. 'Huh... I don't think I've ever seen that guy at our school before.'
—
When Lee Hye-jin class ended, she packed up and headed out, there was a gap before her next one started, enough time to grab something to eat, so she walked out of the university grounds toward the street.
The area right outside the university was always busy, plenty of people with money to spend, plenty of small shops and stalls set up to take it. Street vendors sold tteokbokki and skewers of grilled meat, and a few stands offered cold drinks for the heat.
Lee Hye-jin walked past a stall selling tteokbokki. "Not really in the mood for that," she muttered, moving on. She passed another one selling grilled skewers and made the same face. Not that either.
Further down, a little more out of the way, she found a small convenience store and stepped inside. She walked up to the counter.
"Uncle, can I get some kimbap?" she asked.
"Sure," the old man behind the counter said. "How many rolls you want?"
"Two, please."
He nodded, got to work wrapping them up, and handed her the bag a minute later. She paid and headed back out, walking toward the university again.
That's when she saw him.
A man was walking toward her from the direction of the university, still some distance away. Something about him snagged her attention immediately. She slowed her pace, studying him, trying to place the face.
Then her blood went cold.
She remembered exactly where she'd seen him. It was at the Juhwang-pa's headquarters, months ago, standing near the counter while she begged them not to raise her debt any further.
He was scanning faces in the crowd, casual, almost bored, until his eyes landed on her. Han Do-yun smiled, that same handsome, easy smile from before. Around him, people's eyes lingered on him a second too long, a little dazed by the sight. Lee Hye-jin saw none of that charm. All she saw was malice. That smile looked to her like something out of a horror movie.
She turned and walked fast in the other direction.
She didn't run, not yet. Running would draw attention, and attention was the last thing she wanted. So she picked up her pace into something between a walk and a jog, weaving through the crowd. Han Do-yun matched her pace easily, closing the distance without any visible effort.
Her mind had gone somewhere far past reasonable thought.
'No, no, no, no, please, no, please, no, please, no, no, no.'
The words looped over and over as she moved, and her composure cracked along with them, her eyes went wide, a shadow of fear falling over her face. She started bumping into people, not watching where she stepped anymore. A man snapped at her to watch where she was going, someone else muttered that she looked crazy. She barely heard them.
'I need to get out of here. I need to get out of here!!'
Her breathing turned ragged, ragged like she'd swallowed the wrong amount of air, and her heart slammed against her ribs, faster than she'd ever felt it go.
Then she spotted another figure standing still in the middle of the moving crowd, further ahead. Hooded, dressed in a way that made him stick out even though nothing about his clothes should have. Something in her connected the dots instantly, suspicious man ahead, gang member behind, she was being boxed in.
She ducked into an alley to her side.
The moment she was inside, her breathing broke into short, ragged gasps, her heart hammering hard enough that she felt it in her throat. The alley ran between two buildings, opening onto another street on the far side.
She almost felt relief she had a running option, but at that far end, a man was walking toward her from the other street, unhurried, a cruel, arrogant smile on his face, some kind of aura around him that made her stomach turn.
She took a step back. That's when she heard it, footsteps behind her. She spun around and found Han Do-yun standing there, the hooded man from the crowd a step behind him. They'd followed her in from the way she'd come.
She was boxed in on both sides now. A stranger ahead she didn't recognize. Han Do-yun and his man behind.
"Lee Hye-jin," Han Do-yun said, almost gently, like they were old friends. "Let's talk, please. Juhwang-pa would just like to ask you a few things about the money you owe us."
Her breathing only came faster. She looked around once more, then threw down the bag of kimbap in her hands and bolted, left, down a path branching off the alley.
Han Do-yun's expression went flat and cold. He slid his hands into his pockets. "Get her."
The two men took off after her at a full sprint. Han Do-yun didn't run. He just started walking, unhurried, like he already knew exactly how this would end.
She turned right, then left, deeper into the maze of narrow paths between buildings. Her feet slammed against the concrete, each footstep loud in her own ears, her breath tearing in and out of her lungs as the oxygen ran thin. Every part of her body was running on pure fear now, adrenaline burning through whatever strength she had left. Behind her, the footsteps never fell far behind.
Then the path ended. A wall, solid, no way through.
She slammed her palm against it, muttering "No, no, no, no!!" under her breath, eyes darting around for anything, anything, that could get her out. There was a pipe running up the side of the wall, and she jumped for it, stupidly, desperately, fingers grasping at air far below where the pipe actually was. It wasn't going to work and some small part of her knew it wasn't going to work, but she tried anyway.
She turned around.
Two men stood at the mouth of the alley behind her. And walking calmly between them, hands in his pockets, came Han Do-yun.
"Lee Hye-jin," he said, almost gently. "Were you trying to run from us?"
Her back slid down the wall until she was sitting on the ground, and she started talking, fast, desperate. "Please, look, I can't pay you anymore. There's no way I can get that much money in a month. And if I pay you now, you'll just triple it again for next month. Please, if you just freeze the debt for one month, I swear, I swear I can pay all of it back."
He didn't look like any of it mattered to him. He crouched down in front of her, one hand still in his pocket, and gripped her chin with the other, tilting her face up.
"But you will pay us," he said. "One way..." he let the words trail off, eyes drifting down over her body, the fullness of her chest, the curve of her waist, the shape of her legs, lingering. "...or another."
Her face went white with horror. She knew exactly what he meant. He just kept smiling that same charming smile, the one that looked like a horror movie to her and nothing else.
He closed his eyes, still smiling. "So, let's"
He never finished the sentence.
A crack of impact sounded from behind him, followed by a grunt. He turned to see one of his men crumple to the ground, knocked out cold by a single punch. The second one turned just in time to catch a fist to the face and dropped just as fast.
Han Do-yun turned fully now, taking in the man who'd just flattened both of his men. He was dressed in a black shirt that clung to a muscular frame, gray jeans, his hair cut short and sharp, styled in a way that looked almost drawn, the kind of clean, deliberate cut you'd expect on an anime character rather than a real person.
"And who might you be?" Han Do-yun asked.
Scared Lee Hye-jin looked up at the newcomer. And no other description came to her mind, he was beautiful the kind of face she'd only ever seen on idols, flawless, striking. He'd just dropped two grown men with one punch each, and something in her, some part she couldn't voice even to herself, saw him as nothing short of an angel sent to save her. Her eyes welled up as she stared at him.
He put his hands in his pockets, mirroring Han Do-yun's stance, and said simply, "Han Joon-seong."
"And what," Han Do-yun said slowly, "is the meaning of this, Mr. Han Joon-seong?" He paused, thinking, arriving at some conclusion of his own. "Is one of the other gangs trying to move into our territory? Did the Galsaek-pa put you up to this? Or the Kkachi-pa?"
Han Joon-seong just looked at him. "No"he said flatly "Honestly, I have no idea what you're talking about."
Han Do-yun straightened, hand still in his pocket. "Then what is this? You've got some kind of hero complex?"
"Yeah," Han Joon-seong said. "Pretty much that."
They stared at each other for a moment. Then the fight started.
Lee Hye-jin barely saw it happen, just a blur of motion, a rush of displaced air as Han Do-yun's leg snapped out in a fast kick. Han Joon-seong blocked it with his forearm, fast enough that the sound of impact came a half-second after the motion itself. Han Do-yun's eyes narrowed, something like genuine surprise crossing his face at the block.
Who is this guy? he thought.