“…”
“Because they provide comfort in some way. Sometimes they evoke empathy, sometimes they fill emptiness, and sometimes they create time to escape from reality. They tell me that my emotions aren’t peculiar, and they also tell me what I need to do. Sometimes they explain my feelings better than words.”
“…”
“Of course, there are people who forcefully enjoy them because they don’t want to be left out of human relationships. In a way, that gives them a sense of security.”
It was a gentle tone. Ver, who had woken up, approached Jae-young. He bent his knees and sat down, stroking Ver’s head.
Ver, did you sleep well? He also asked about his well-being in a slightly flushed voice.
“What kind of comfort are you receiving?”
Sa Gong-hyun, who had been silent for a moment, wedged his foot into the peace. Jae-young, who raised his head, looked at Sa Gong-hyun.
“Stability.”
“Stability?”
“I get quite lonely, more than it appears. What about you, Hyun-ssi? What kind of comfort do you want to receive through music?”
Comfort through music. It was outside his interests. Before Sa Gong-hyun could reveal that distorted heart, a ringtone abruptly intervened.
Sa Gong-hyun silently checked his phone. It was an unsaved number. A number starting with 646 was a number being transmitted from Manhattan.
Frowning slightly, he rose from his seat.
“I only need Do Jae-young to get through. Because you are my comfort and peace.”
And he spoke words different from what he had been thinking to Jae-young, who was looking up at him blankly. Since that wasn’t a lie either, it didn’t matter.
Sa Gong-hyun, who went straight to the terrace, answered the phone. Before he could even ask what was going on, he had no choice but to harden his face at the voice flowing from the receiver.
—”Logi, you need to come back right away.”
—”Father is critically ill. Today seems to be the crisis point.”
The caller was Jeremy Pierce. He was Winston’s biological son and a brother to him.
If asked who Winston was, he was Sa Gong-hyun’s adoptive father. The one who had bestowed his middle name and given refuge to him who had nowhere to go.
He wasn’t one to attach special meaning to a name. That’s because Sa Gong-hyun had quite a few names.
Most were just names that passed by, but he had been given well over five names since birth.
He didn’t know who his parents were, only remembering that his name at the time was Kim Jung-woo. Sa Gong-hyun, when named Kim Jung-woo, was the problem child of the child welfare facility.
During the five times he was un-adopted, the names he went through gradually increased. Yoon Si-an, Kim Jung-ho, Kim Jung-woo again, Lee Jung-woo, Kang Yu-hyun.
The reasons for un-adoption were mostly due to the adoptive parents changing their minds. “The child is too quiet, could he be autistic?” “He’s creepy and scary.” “He seems to have violent tendencies.” Hasty choices lured by his pretty face increased the special notes in his profile.
Around the time the facility was giving up on Sa Gong-hyun’s adoption, he was coincidentally sent to America in the year he turned fifteen.
The name Sa Gong-hyun received then was ’17’. As soon as he got off the plane, the name was branded on the back of his neck like a stigma, without him knowing why.
The moment he arrived at what they called ‘home’, Sa Gong-hyun could instinctively feel it. That at least there would be no more changes to his name beyond this.
Sa Gong-hyun, who became ’17’ that day, lived there as a fighter. Though they called him a fighter, in reality, he was no different from a fighting dog.
The meaning of the given name was nothing more or less than the 17th fighter. There, they called the sport “dirty fight,” or dog fighting.
If categorized, it would be correctly called mixed martial arts. As it was an illegally operated gambling den, there were no set rules for the matches. It was a fight where one just had to win.
Some days with bare hands, some days with designated weapons, and occasionally, as an event, fighting against actual dogs while unarmed. It was a match that only ended when either the opponent or oneself died.
There, ’17’ survived tenaciously. The Asian they had brought in as a test to fill the numbers was undoubtedly a rising topic of interest.
Day by day, his value increased. After matches ended, he rested in a room with limited mobility. It was the space where he slept and ate, and there were always two other children in the room besides Sa Gong-hyun.
The room, where CCTV ran twenty-four hours a day, always had a bright orange light rising instead of the sun. With no windows for ventilation, musty dust and the smell of blood rose, and it was always messy.
The children sharing the room changed every time. Among the disappearing children, some he killed, and some were killed by other fighters.
One dawn before a match, an incident occurred when ’42’, who shared the room, tried to kill the sleeping ’17’. It ended in an attempt, and Sa Gong-hyun killed ’42’ with his bare hands to survive.
When daylight came, the manager just clicked his tongue despite seeing Sa Gong-hyun sitting beside the corpse. Since it was a place where the weak did not survive anyway, the incident was immediately concluded.
No one worried about their well-being. It was a frequent occurrence, and there were situations where they had to compete without sleep.
Sa Gong-hyun lived fiercely solely for survival.
The world he lived in was an abyss without a ray of sunlight.
In the four years that followed, underage children continued to come and go without rest. He became nineteen, an age meaningless to count, and in that year, the organization’s representative was arrested.
The children used as fighters were killed like dogs to destroy evidence. However, Sa Gong-hyun miraculously survived when it was his turn to be a bullet catcher. The gun was still pointed at him, but sadly, the bullet didn’t lodge in his body.
Just then, the men who invaded killed all the people who were guarding the place. Except for Sa Gong-hyun.
The man who ordered this was Winston Pierce. The man, who had been keeping an eye on Sa Gong-hyun before, was the boss of the Pierce Family, a mafia organization in the state of New York.
From that day on, Sa Gong-hyun became a member of the Pierce Family and his adopted son. He gave Sa Gong-hyun the name Logan and created for him the identity of a U.S. citizen.
Sa Gong-hyun became his shadow and hunting dog. Under his command, he learned the work, the use of firearms, and how to use his body without excess.
From drug delivery to supervising manufacturing, production, and overall management, there was no task he hadn’t undertaken.
Just because he gave him a name he could carry for life didn’t mean he ever followed him like a real father. He was merely loyal.
The reason Sa Gong-hyun returned to Korean soil in the first place was purely due to Winston’s instructions.
On the surface, it was for business expansion, but as his health deteriorated, he worried about the factional fight between Sa Gong-hyun and Jeremy.
He probably also had several problems with inheritance. Despite the fact that Sa Gong-hyun had never coveted his position.
Being nothing more than a foreigner, he could turn away without lingering attachments since he had helped him establish himself in a foreign land. He returned to Korea as per his wish and built his own warship.
Though the situation was difficult in many ways, he couldn’t miss the funeral. That was the last loyalty toward Winston.
It was evident that there would be more to handle after returning from Winston’s funeral. Since the Pierce Family was a business organization that had partnered with Sebin for drug trafficking. The aftermath of his death would not be small.
Leaving abruptly in this situation was quite awkward. Especially since he hadn’t found and killed Cha Seung-kwon.
Sa Gong-hyun sought the best solution, attempting numerous compromises with himself.
“…It was partly sincere.”
“After handing over the ledger… I had planned to return to Hyun-ssi. Really.”
Could he really believe those words? He shouldn’t believe it. Sa Gong-hyun immediately answered his own question.
However, if he wanted to stay by his side, he was also willing to contribute to what he wanted to do.
If he wanted to live a life of leisure, he could make it happen, or if he wanted to get married, he even had some thought of taking him to America, where same-sex marriage was legalized.
That was certainly the case.
If only it weren’t for the phone call he received just as he successfully completed the delayed funeral for himself and was discussing drug distribution with Jeremy.
—Executive Director, I’m sorry. …Do Jae-young… has escaped.
Yes, if he had remained wholly by his side even after all this was over, he might have done more for him.
“Catch him. Confirm Do Jae-young’s location and catch him before he boards the ship!”
It felt as if his blood was not just cooling but freezing.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
