Trash Should Be Dealt with by Trash 9-9

“You don’t have the right to say that.”

That look—gazing at him like he was pathetic. It was exactly the same as the looks he’d collided with countless times at the funeral hall.

—My, how shameless.

—So brazen for a bastard.

—As if he wasn’t the reason the Chairman died, and yet he dares come here?

—Say it yourself.

—I’m sorry for being born.

Those stares overlapped perfectly with the way they’d looked at him—like they were waiting for nothing else but those words to come out of his mouth. The same eyes that looked at him like he was a worm.

“Don’t look at me like that.”

He wanted to bury his face between his arms, but his arms were yanked tight by the cable ties, leaving him nowhere to hide his face. Choi Suho trembled violently, trying to escape Ji Haesu’s gaze, but there was nowhere left in this world to run.

“Don’t look at me like that. Don’t look at me like I shouldn’t have been born.”

Choi Suho shook as he gasped, huff, huff, huff, his breathing ragged. A piece of trash who had lived for twenty-eight years hiding behind his father’s shadow, committing every vile act imaginable—there was nowhere left to flee. All he could do now was close his eyes.

Eyes shut tight, muttering the same words over and over—Don’t look. Don’t look. Don’t look at me like that—Choi Suho was chaos incarnate.

This is why he’d been told not to come to the funeral. Annoyed that his toy—the one only he was allowed to break—had been damaged by someone else’s hands, Ji Haesu tapped the steering wheel lightly with his fingers. Cold sweat trickled down his body. Sweat from enduring pain.

“Choi Suho.”

“Don’t look at me.”

“Choi Suho!”

“I’m sorry for being born. So…….”

“Sorry for being born?”

Ji Haesu brushed it off as if it were nothing, sounding irritated. Choi Suho murmured blankly,

“You want me gone too once the job’s done, don’t you?”

“No.”

Ji Haesu replied indifferently.

“When the job’s over, you’re none of my concern.”

That was the first time Choi Suho genuinely, desperately wanted to die.

But not yet. He couldn’t die yet.

I have to see Si-in. Before I die, I have to see Si-in no matter what……

I have to apologize. Only then can I die.

Only then can I pay the price everyone wants me to pay—for being born when I shouldn’t have been.

“Suho.”

“……”

“Don’t think stupid thoughts—”

A nagging unease made Ji Haesu glance sideways, wondering if Choi Suho was having dangerous thoughts. What he saw was Choi Suho asleep like a child, tears clinging to his lashes, breathing softly in uneven sobs.

Seeing that, Ji Haesu muttered, “Guess I worried for nothing,” then spat out a curse as pain—like toothpicks embedded deep inside—stabbed at his abdomen.

“Fuck.”

But why did he let his guard down like this around Choi Suho? It wasn’t like him at all.

Even back at the funeral hall, he’d told himself not to care what happened.

—I’m sorry for being born.

Choi Suho was someone only he was allowed to torment. He’d gone there after deliberating, fully prepared to intervene if someone else crossed the line.

But what he’d seen was Choi Suho turned into a plaything for others.

A scene so humiliating, so degrading, that just witnessing it had nearly made his vision go white. And yet the great Choi Suho had his head stepped on by her.

Even then, she’d kept forcing him to say it—her face alight with excitement.

—I’m sorry for being born. I’m sorry for being born.

Why? Setting aside everything Choi Suho had done—was it really a crime just to be born?

Choi Suho himself used to say it sometimes, like a bad habit.

—I didn’t want to be born like this either.

There was a reason he’d gone around insisting, I’m Jang Yuguk’s son. It was an inferiority complex.

Because he knew that once his elderly father died, there would be no one left who would acknowledge his bloodline.

Did he really not know that himself? Choi Suho, who’d grown up in an unstable household from childhood?

He’d even witnessed his nanny being murdered right in front of him—yet had completely erased that memory.

It had been a defense mechanism.

On the outside, he looked strong. Inside, he was weaker and more cowardly than anyone.

Of course, as an adult, he had to pay for his sins. But when Ji Haesu thought about the environment Choi Suho had grown up in, the roots he’d been born from—he could understand, at least a little, why he’d become the way he was. Why he’d been so desperately afraid of falling out of Jang Yuguk’s favor.

—I’m sorry for being born.

The moment Choi Suho said that, Ji Haesu wanted to hold him.

To tell him that being born wasn’t his fault.

But did a criminal deserve that kind of mercy?

Lost in that question, Ji Haesu couldn’t reach out.

Can criminals be rehabilitated? Do criminals deserve consideration? Do criminals deserve a second chance?

Ji Haesu was a firm believer in the evil flower theory.

An evil flower that grows wrong must be ripped out by the roots. A flower that’s grown crooked won’t bloom beautifully just because you replant it in good soil. Worse—it will poison the other flowers growing there.

Having steeled his resolve again, Ji Haesu drove with an expressionless face.

Ironically, he himself was the most flamboyant evil flower of all—the one who ripped others out.

It was laughable that someone like him was allowed to roam free in society.

Ji Haesu—real name Yoo XX—was the child of a death-row inmate. And he himself had been a juvenile death-row prisoner.

That was why, after learning the truth about his origins and his parents, he’d come to believe in evil flowers so fervently—and why that belief hardened as he disposed of countless criminals.

The woman who’d pulled him out of the juvenile detention center in his home country was a powerful figure. Originally sentenced to death, XXX had been spared only because of his young age and taken to an orphanage under her guidance—though even that had been temporary.

Before leaving, she’d patted XXX’s head and given him a piece of advice.

—XX, do you believe humans are good? Or evil? You know—original goodness versus original sin. I believe humans are simply evil. There are just lesser evils and greater evils. If you ever feel like killing someone, only torment those who deserve it. Murder is absolutely forbidden. Right now, you were young enough to walk free even after killing—but if you’d been even a little older, the court, including me, would never have let you go. The seeds of evil flowers need to be removed early. So……

XXX, hands clasped behind his head, replied with an indifferent face. His parents had been executed by hanging for murder—he had no desire to follow them down that path again.

Instead, torture that bordered on murder would do just fine.

—Then I’ll just make them suffer for life without killing them, right?

She’d been in the same department as XXX, but unlike him, she held a prestigious, high-ranking position. XXX, meanwhile, was the poor child of parents who’d survived through murder, robbery, and kidnapping.

—You really are different. Just like their child.

They. People called XXX’s parents “trash,” “human garbage.”

So XXX didn’t hesitate to call them trash either.

—Trash should be dealt with by trash.

Depending on the soil, the sunlight, the fertilizer, and the humans who tend it, a flower either grows without evil—or blooms overflowing with it.

And yet, the reason the world is beautiful is because it’s filled with flowers called good, blocking out the sunlight so seeds of evil can’t grow.

If you and I had grown up like that, Suho—what would we have become?

But if that had been the case, we’d have been parallel lines. Never intersecting. Never meeting.

“Ha… I must be losing it. I’m hurt, and I’m thinking about useless crap……”

Ji Haesu—Yoo XX—forced himself to cling to his fading consciousness as his parents’ final words resurfaced in his mind.

—You little shit! We got caught because of you! You trash bastard!

—I should’ve erased you back then! I only had you so I could use you for begging, and you just dragged me down!