BANG!!
“Lee Su-chang, where the hell are you!”
“Damn, look at the state of this dump.”
The house Kim Nabin had lived in back when his biological father was alive had long since been sold off. Now, the place he shared with his mom and stepfather sat in one of the shabbiest neighborhoods in all of Seoul. It was one of those ramshackle homes barely clinging to a steep hill—so steep that snow would send you sliding straight down come winter.
In the height of summer, the blazing sun would turn the walls into scorching hot plates. And in winter, when the snow fell thick and fast, the place became nearly uninhabitable unless someone regularly cleared the rooftop to prevent it from collapsing. Calling it a “house” was generous.
But even so, it was Nabin’s haven. Every corner of the house bore traces of his quiet diligence, the signs of someone who had worked hard to keep things in order despite the chaos.
When strong winds blew, the ill-fitting door would rattle and creak, barely staying in place. But now, it came clean off its hinges at the rough hands of the men who stormed in.
Nabin had just come home from school and was in the middle of tidying up the mess. The drawers were all pulled open, like his stepfather had gone on another one of his rampages, tearing through the house. What little belongings they had were strewn all over the floor in a disastrous heap.
“What the hell? Lee Su-chang had a kid?”
“He doesn’t look anything like him, though.”
Nabin froze mid-swipe, a rag still clutched in his pale hands. The sudden intrusion had turned the cleaning cloth into a crumpled mess between his trembling fingers.
Four men, each towering at least a head above the already small-for-his-age boy, marched into the house in their polished dress shoes. Their suits looked ready to burst at the seams from the size of their bulging arms.
Even though the place was old and falling apart, Nabin had scrubbed the floor clean every day. Now, dirt-laced footprints were stamped carelessly across it.
His large eyes wavered with visible fear. Something was wrong. These men had barged in while shouting his stepfather’s name—they weren’t mistaken about where they were.
Kim Minsu, the enforcer of the Black Dragon Gang and the one leading the group, whistled when he spotted the terrified boy. His narrow, snake-like eyes curved in amusement, glinting with a cold gleam.
Unlike the others, who started tearing through the house, Kim Minsu headed straight for Nabin. He crouched down in front of the boy, looming like a predator face-to-face with prey frozen in terror.
Even at a glance, he thought, ‘This kid’s damn pretty.’
Now that he was up close—so close their noses nearly touched—it was obvious. The boy had a look that stirred up something dark and indecent.
The scars scattered across his delicate features only emphasized his fragile beauty, like a broken doll someone might want to ruin completely just to see it fall apart.
Kim Minsu’s gaze dragged slowly across Nabin’s face, then dipped to the thin, white body barely concealed under a worn-out t-shirt. His Adam’s apple bobbed.
“What’s your name?”
“……”
His voice was coarse, the kind that made skin crawl. Nabin instinctively understood—this man wasn’t like the school bullies who shoved him around. And he wasn’t like his stepfather, who only turned cruel when drunk. No, this man was a different breed entirely.
His face was clean-cut, almost handsome—someone you’d turn to look at twice if you passed him on the street. The smile on his face might’ve seemed kind, if not for the glint in those slick, shiny eyes.
But that glint held a quiet, chilling malice. It wasn’t hard to imagine those hands casually snapping his slender neck the way someone plucked a flower off the roadside.
When the man asked again, Nabin’s lips parted, but no words came out—only ragged breathing pushed its way through. His mind told him to speak, but his mouth had forgotten how.
His vision swam. His breath caught in his throat, shallow and fast, as if he’d faint at any second. Clutching his chest, he gasped in a panic.
He desperately wished someone—anyone—would pull him out of that man’s gaze. Terror piled up like snow, and his jaw trembled.
Kim Minsu watched the boy spiral into panic with growing amusement, the smile on his lips deepening. One of the larger men in the group, sensing something was wrong, cautiously stepped closer to Nabin and barked,
“Hey, brat! The boss asked you a question. What’s your name?”
He was still a child. Still in school. Still wearing his uniform.
Even though the man made a living bleeding the poor and weak dry, there were lines he hadn’t crossed—yet. Some sense of guilt still lingered. And now, seeing the boss act strangely, a twinge of unease crept in.
They had come for Lee Su-chang. The bastard who’d borrowed the money. He wasn’t here—not a hair of him.
But the boss had something else in mind. That much was clear from the look in his eyes—the look of a predator who had just found a new toy.
He, at least, still felt something when he saw kids or the elderly. But the boss wasn’t like that. He treated everyone the same—young, old, didn’t matter.
He needed to get the boss to focus on something else. The sight of the boy, so thin and trembling, stirred a flicker of pity in him. Even if he knew there was no escaping once the boss locked on, he still wanted to try. Just maybe.
“You gonna talk or what?”
“Mangchi, shut it.”
“…Yes, Boss.”
The man called Mangchi flinched at the cold voice and stepped back with a heavy shrug of his shoulders.
Too late. He had tried to help—but it was already too late.
It didn’t seem to matter to the boss that the reason they’d climbed this steep hill to find the house was to punish Lee Su-chang for borrowing money and vanishing.
Mangchi clenched his teeth and shut his eyes tight. The hardship awaiting Nabin flashed before him, and a heavy weight pressed down on his chest.
“Your name.”
Kim Minsu silenced Mangchi and addressed Nabin again. His stare locked onto the boy with an unrelenting intensity, as if weaving a net that slowly bound him tighter with every passing second.
Even as Nabin’s pale lips turned ghostly white with fear, those cold eyes didn’t waver. His large eyes welled up with tears, moisture glistening visibly in them. Unable to hide the fear trembling in his gaze, Nabin forced his frozen lips to move and whispered his name.
“Ki… Kim Nabin…”
“Nabin, huh… Even your name is pretty.”
Kim Minsu cooed the compliment as he reached out and gently ran his fingers through Nabin’s hair. Every time his large palm touched the boy’s small head, Nabin’s skinny shoulders flinched and recoiled closer to the floor.
“Nabin-ah. Let’s get along from now on.”
The deceptively casual greeting rang sharp in Nabin’s ears. The man who had suddenly invaded his life was like a poisoned apple wrapped in syrupy sweetness.
But Nabin didn’t even have the right to reject it. It felt like he’d been forced to take a bite out of that deadly fruit, and the despair it unleashed was swallowing him whole.
Since his father had passed, there hadn’t been a single day that wasn’t difficult. From a very young age, he’d had to care for himself, and for his emotionally broken mother.
Every time his stepfather squandered what little wealth they had and dragged them into yet another decrepit home, Nabin had clung to dreams of a brighter future. Sometimes, his mother would have a moment of clarity and apologize, and just that alone was enough to soothe his aching heart.
But maybe the world couldn’t stand to see Nabin hold on. As if determined to crush him entirely, it had handed him a new fate.
And the moment the man spoke, Nabin felt a shadow far darker than anything he’d ever known fall over him.
It was hell—hell while still alive.
***
“H-Here… This is this month’s interest…”
Nabin held out an envelope stuffed with money he’d saved over the past month, sacrificing sleep and scraping together every coin. The envelope was worn, stained with fingerprints, as if soaked in the hardship of his life.
His thin, white hands were chapped and cracked from all the labor. They trembled so violently that the envelope crinkled noisily in the air.
“The principal?”
Kim Minsu didn’t take the envelope. He simply tapped his finger against the table and smiled gently as he asked. His tone was soft, but to Nabin, it felt like an invisible hand tightening around his throat.
The amount Lee Su-chang had borrowed from Kim Minsu was thirty million won. Kim Minsu’s loan business—Black Finance—was infamous for lending to anyone. Credit scores didn’t matter. If you signed their loan contract, you could walk away with cold, hard cash.
Each client had a borrowing limit, but the process was fast and simple, which kept people constantly coming back.
But for how easy the money came, the interest was merciless. From one month after borrowing, the annual interest rate shot up to 100%. If you repaid within the month, you only had to return the principal. But once that deadline passed, the debt began to snowball with monstrous interest.
Fail to repay even after a year, and it soared to 200%, 300% annually. The longer you delayed, the more the debt exploded out of control.
It was an outrageous system, but the desperate kept coming—people with nowhere else to turn, beyond the reach of government aid, clutching at their last straw.
