Baek San remained on his knees.
One second. Two seconds. Three.
Blood dripped from his broken nose onto the steel floor. His massive hands lay open on the cold metal—not like a man surrendering. Like a man checking that the ground was still there.
Ji Hun Min did not advance. He stood still. His left arm dead at his side. His chest rising and falling with difficulty.
But his eyes were not on Baek San.
They were on the glass balcony.
On the man sitting behind the glass. The head of Taeyang. An ordinary face—gray hair, a dark suit, a faint smile like a man watching a show he had bought tickets for long ago.
Ji Hun Min knew that face.
Not from the file. From a memory older than the file.
His mother on the hospital bed. Breathing tubes. The doctor speaking words that didn't reach. And he, sitting in the corridor, staring at the floor, thinking—who decided that her lungs weren't worth the price of an air filter?
In that corridor, he decided that if he ever learned the name—he would do something.
Now he knew the name. The face. The distance between them.
But his hands did not move.
Then—Baek San raised his head.
He looked at Ji Hun Min.
It was not the look of anger. Nor the look of contempt. He knew that look. He had seen it in the mirror.
Baek San began to rise.
Slowly. Silently. Without anyone's help.
Ji Hun Min did not step back.
When Baek San stood fully, he looked at Ji Hun Min for one last second. Then he turned his back to the cage door.
It was not defeat.
It was a choice.
The chain-link door was opened from outside. Baek San walked with heavy, steady steps. He disappeared into the dark corridor.
Ji Hun Min remained alone in the center of the cage.
The harsh yellow floodlights above him. Blood on the steel floor. The sound of waves striking the ship's hull.
He raised his eyes again toward the balcony.
The chair was empty.
The head of Taeyang had left.
Kang Tae Joon stood. His glass on the table before him—untouched. His eyes on the empty chair.
Something had changed in the agreement.
---
Back corridor. Outside the cage.
Han Jae Won was waiting.
No congratulations. No smile.
He looked at Ji Hun's dangling arm. At the blood on his face. Then—for a single second—he looked at his eyes differently. Not assessing the body. He was reading something else.
"You won."
Said as a fact, not praise.
Ji Hun Min did not answer.
"But the head of Taeyang left before the end." Han Jae Won paused. "That was not in the plan."
"Maybe his plan is different from yours."
Han Jae Won looked at him—a long look. There was no anger in it. There was something like calculation.
"And you?" Ji Hun Min said. "Was your plan for me to win?"
Silence.
Han Jae Won did not answer immediately. He looked at the corridor ahead.
"During the match—you were looking at the balcony."
It was not a question.
Ji Hun Min did not answer.
"Not at Kang Tae Joon." Han Jae Won paused. "At the other man."
The silence between them was heavy.
Han Jae Won turned to leave. He stopped for a second. Did not look back.
"Don't do anything stupid, Ji Hun."
Then he continued.
---
Storage room. An hour later.
Ji Hun Min sat on the cold steel floor. His back against the wall. His left arm freshly re-wrapped in medical tape.
The phone in his right hand.
He did not open it.
In his head—the corridor. The hospital. His mother. The tubes. The smell.
And that decision he had made as a youth who did not know the weight of what he was deciding.
A decision easy in the corridor. Impossible when standing meters from the man, knowing your hands are capable of reaching him.
Not because he feared death.
He feared something else—that he would do it, then discover that it was never about her. That he would be doing it for himself.
That the decision had never been for her.
He opened the phone.
One message. Unknown number.
A photo.
Seung Woo Park standing in front of his gym at night. The gym behind him dark—but the door open. The only light the flickering bulb.
No text. No threat. No question.
Just the photo.
In his head—the lawyer's words:
"Old wood burns quickly."
He closed the phone.
Stared at the steel floor before him.
The ship moved in the darkness. The engines rumbled beneath his feet.
Two decisions. And time for neither.