Ji Yeon-woo’s face sank with a gloomy expression. Lee Haru realized with high certainty that the reason Ji Yeon-woo seemed off was because of Black’s leader.
“Could you listen to me for a bit…?”
Ji Yeon-woo cautiously opened his mouth, glancing at Lee Haru. Did he really think I would not even listen to him?
“Of course. If it’s something you want to say, Yeon-woo, I’ll listen to anything.”
At that moment, an image flashed through Lee Haru’s mind—a dark, suffocating space where Ji Yeon-woo must have been trapped for a long time.
A place with no windows to see the outside world, just a metal-barred door. It wasn’t a place meant for humans.
Even someone with a sound mind would likely develop psychosis after just a few days in that room.
Unless he was being forced to perform Guiding on Espers, Ji Yeon-woo had always been alone there. There was no way he had anyone to talk to.
That thought made it easier to understand why Ji Yeon-woo was opening his heart to him now.
Like a duckling imprinting on the first creature it sees after hatching, perhaps Haru, who had suddenly appeared and taken the bed next to him, became his entire world in some way.
Lee Haru raised his hand and gently patted the back of Ji Yeon-woo’s hand. He bit down on his lip until it turned red before finally beginning to speak, and Lee Haru gave him his undivided attention.
“I was abandoned in front of an orphanage when I was born. Wrapped in a blanket with a note that had my name on it.”
Because of that, Ji Yeon-woo didn’t know his parents’ names or faces. After the world fell into chaos, children like him being left in front of orphanages became all too common.
A child who was unusually quiet and never threw tantrums easily slipped past the gaze of the adults.
“Hey, give me that. I’m hungry.”
It began when one of the stronger kids took his snack. Even though Ji Yeon-woo wasn’t a big eater, that Choco Pie he’d received as a snack was precious to him.
After all, what kid doesn’t love sweets?
But thinking it was better to give up the Choco Pie than to confront the bully turned out to be a mistake.
Once became twice, twice became three times.
As Ji Yeon-woo endured the bullying in silence, other kids, especially the meaner ones, started to join in.
“Go play by yourself over there. This is ours.”
The bullying extended from snack time into playtime. The playroom was full of old but diverse toys.
They were originally meant to be shared by all. Ji Yeon-woo, too, would play alone in a corner, stacking blocks during playtime.
But at some point, whenever he so much as touched a toy, the other kids would swarm in and snatch it away. Once, he even went to the orphanage teacher for help.
Even someone as mild as Ji Yeon-woo found it hard to endure the constant bullying from his peers.
“Yeon-woo, can’t you see that teacher’s busy? Kids can fool around sometimes, what’s the big deal? From what I see, you’re the problem. If they’re bullying you, you should fight back. The reason they’re picking on you is because you’re just taking it. From now on, don’t just endure it—stand up for yourself, okay?”
To an adult, it might have seemed like nothing more than a childish scuffle. But to Ji Yeon-woo, the bullying was reaching life-threatening levels.
“Cough, cough, cough…”
“Ahahaha! That was hilarious. He just drank toilet water. Gross!”
The bullying escalated naturally into violence—stealing his food, preventing him from playing, then dragging him into the bathroom, soaking him in dirty water, yanking his hair.
He was dragged in front of the toilet. When he reflexively breathed in, he swallowed the rancid water.
His face, smeared with tears and mucus, was circled by laughing kids clutching their stomachs. It was far too cruel for something done by elementary school children.
“Mom… Dad…”
He had never once called out for Mom or Dad, but around that time, he began to curl up in the shadows and whisper those pitiful, heartbreaking names.
“Hey kid, why are you crying here?”
That man appeared just when he was so lonely and exhausted that he wanted to give up everything.
His voice wasn’t particularly gentle. But just the fact that he spoke to him brought Ji Yeon-woo some comfort.
His body had become visibly gaunt, and blue bruises were spreading across his exposed skin, but the orphanage teachers paid no attention.
If the man had discovered him even a little later, he might have died. That’s how close to withering—both in body and soul—he had been back then.
“I’ll come often from now on. So hang in there, okay?”
The man visited him in secret, each time bringing delicious food the likes of which Ji Yeon-woo had never tasted before.
In his arms, finding comfort and eating those meals, Ji Yeon-woo managed to survive what felt like an ordeal of a childhood.
…At least until he was kidnapped by Black and taken to their headquarters, his life had been relatively ordinary. If he looked around, there were always others worse off than him.
Aside from the bullying, he could say he’d had a relatively peaceful existence.
Especially the connection he had with the man who visited him from time to time—that bond was like a treasured gift he would occasionally take out and remember, even after being captured by Black.
That man was the savior he met before Lee Haru. Thanks to his unconditional help, Ji Yeon-woo was able to avoid falling into complete hatred of people.
But the moment he saw Zero’s face, Ji Yeon-woo felt all those memories he had tucked away in his heart shatter to pieces.
The child he had been and the person he was now both screamed inside him. Horrific didn’t even begin to cover it.
The only time in his painful childhood when he thought he had been saved—he now realized all of it had been a lie.
He hadn’t been kidnapped by Black’s leader by coincidence.
That man had marked him as a sacrifice from the very beginning.
Like tossing scraps of affection to a beggar, he had dangled his love, and Ji Yeon-woo had naively accepted it. How easy must he have seemed, for that man to snatch him away the moment he became an adult and do such horrifying things?
Ji Yeon-woo raised his fingertips and scratched at his neck. He hadn’t even scratched that hard, but his skin was already inflamed and red.
Tiny beads of blood welled up in some places. Lee Haru, who had been frozen in shock from everything Ji Yeon-woo had just told him, finally came to his senses upon seeing that.
“Yeon-woo, please don’t do this. Don’t hurt yourself, I’m begging you…”
He could understand why Ji Yeon-woo was acting this way. If merely telling this story was so painful, how much worse must the time have been when he couldn’t say a word and had to suffer in silence?
Even as an outsider, the story was so shocking it made it hard to breathe.
No matter how twisted a novel might be, this was too cruel. He himself had experienced a troubled childhood, but compared to Ji Yeon-woo’s, it almost felt blessed.
“Hngh… it hurts so much. I feel like I’m going insane. I want to die, but even that feels too unfair. That man is probably still plotting to drag me back into hell…”
Ji Yeon-woo sobbed, clutching at his chest. Black’s leader was clearly obsessed with him.
The memory of that moment—of the man pinning him down with his grotesquely transformed form—was as vivid now as any of the other horrors he had endured.
The touch of those hands, violating his body as if it were nothing, was soaked in suffocating obsession.
As if he were an object that belonged to him, the bastard had no intention of ever letting him go, not even in death.
If he did not kill that monster, he would be the one to die first.
Whether his life was drained dry by Guiding or he was crushed beneath that man’s violence, either way, death awaited.
And now, that monster was reaching his disgusting hands toward Lee Haru as well. When he saw Haru being seized in his place, slowly dying at the hands of that man, he cursed the entire world.
He resented the parents who brought him into this life, and even cursed the god who had made him a Guide rather than an Esper.
“How do I kill that bastard…? He won’t leave Haru-hyung alone, either. If we don’t kill him first, he might kill us…”
Ji Yeon-woo tenderly brushed his fingertips along Lee Haru’s neck—still smooth and unblemished, without a single bruise.
The reason he had managed to bring himself to tell Lee Haru all of this was because he wanted to protect him. Black’s leader was a monster of chilling cruelty.
Just as he had utterly destroyed Ji Yeon-woo’s life, he could do the same to Haru’s—and even thinking about that made it hard to breathe.
He hadn’t been able to tell anyone. Because even if he did, nothing would change, and his heart would only crumble all over again.
Avenge OG Haru & Yeon-woo😭 it’s always the bottoms getting hurt!