PEN Vol 3 Ch. 1

The way Cheon Sejoo and Kwon Sejin accepted each other was different.

While Cheon Sejoo had given Sejin a spare room and let him into his personal space, Sejin, on the other hand, filled the emptiness in his own life with Cheon Sejoo.

What kind of food Cheon Sejoo liked, what he did when he was at home, what kind of clothes he frequently wore, and how he folded his clothes after taking them off—these were all things Sejin couldn’t help but gradually learned, whether he wanted to or not. However, all Sejin knew was the Cheon Sejoo at home.

As winter passed and spring arrived, Sejin still didn’t know what exactly Cheon Sejoo did when he was outside. Though he was curious about the blank spaces in Sejoo’s life, Sejin never asked first. It felt strangely pathetic to imagine himself asking Cheon Sejoo to share details about his life. But even so, sometimes when Cheon Sejoo behaved in a certain way, Sejin couldn’t help but feel the urge to ask.

Sitting in the car and fastening his seatbelt, Sejin stared at the bandage wrapped around Cheon Sejoo’s right hand. It hadn’t been there over the weekend, but now, that morning, there it was.

How did he get hurt?

It probably didn’t interfere much with daily life since Cheon Sejoo was left-handed, but it definitely looked uncomfortable when driving.

“We’re leaving.”

“…Okay.”

Despite Sejin’s eyes lingering on his hand, Cheon Sejoo didn’t pay any attention and drove the car.

It was the end of March, and they were on their way to meet Kim Hyunkyung for the first time in a month.

There were a few things Cheon Sejoo had learned over the past six months they had been visiting Ehwagak.

One was that Kim Hyunkyung was mentally stronger than he initially expected, and the other was that she was only five years older than him. He had thought they were around the same age when they first met, and it turned out he was right. Kim Hyunkyung gave birth to Sejin at the age of seventeen.

“Mom.”

“Son, you’re here?”

At first, the mother and son would cry and cling to each other every time they met, but now they had become accustomed to their meetings. Even though it was the first time they had seen each other in a month, their greeting was rather simple and calm.

Last year, Cheon Sejoo had arranged for Sejin to meet her once a week, or at least every three weeks at the latest. However, at Kim Hyunkyung’s request, the number of visits has recently been reduced.

At Ehwagak, there were a few other people like Kim Hyunkyung, staying there to pay off their debts. One of them had developed resentment towards her, envious that unlike them, she could still meet her son while they couldn’t even contact their own families. This had led to tension within the group.

After much consideration, Kim Hyunkyung eventually told Sejin that they should only meet once a month. She had been able to make this decision because she knew Kwon Sejin was under the reliable protection of Cheon Sejoo.

When word spread that she had voluntarily reduced her meetings with her son to once a month instead of meeting every week, the hostility toward her softened. According to Han Jiwon, she was now getting along better with the other debtors.

“Did you have breakfast? Come on in.”

Kim Hyunkyung, who had been peeling garlic with the others inside the kitchen dormitory, gestured for them to come inside. Standing behind Sejin, Cheon Sejoo gave a slight nod to greet her before turning to leave.

When the two of them were together, Cheon Sejoo usually gave them space. The close, intimate atmosphere between parents and their children made him feel uncomfortable. Having never experienced it himself, watching it made him feel awkward and embarrassed. On the other hand, it also made him wonder.

If Kim Hyunkyung could raise Sejin so well after giving birth at seventeen, what kind of circumstances led his own mother to leave him and Hye-in in an orphanage?

When Cheon Sejoo was young, there had been a woman who regularly came to volunteer at the orphanage. She hadn’t been particularly affectionate toward him, but she would often stare at him for long periods, so she left an impression on him. She wore long dresses, and kept her hair neatly tied up, but couldn’t quite hide the strong smell of cigarettes and alcohol.

Could that woman have been their birth mother?

These days, whenever Cheon Sejoo saw Kim Hyunkyung, he couldn’t help but think of her. In any case, it wasn’t something that mattered anymore. The thought always drifted to the conclusion that just as Kim Hyunkyung, who loved Sejin dearly, had almost been forced to separate ways from Sejin due to unavoidable circumstances, his own mother must have had some reason for her actions too.

Swallowing his bitterness, Cheon Sejoo took out a cigarette as he walked out of the dormitory and sat on a low stone wall. After lighting the cigarette, he called Sunhyuk, who had left him a missed call.

-Yes, Manager.

“Hey. You called?”

-Yes. Are you busy?

“No, I’m at Ehwagak. Why?”

In his usual indifferent tone, Cheon Sejoo asked, and Sunhyuk explained the situation.

The ethnic Korean-Chinese hitman they’d captured yesterday was causing quite a commotion, and Sunhyuk thought Cheon Sejoo should come to see for himself. Cheon Sejoo furrowed his brow as he glanced down at his hand. The man Sunhyuk had mentioned was the same one who had stabbed his right hand with a pocketknife.

The DG faction had successfully taken control of Seoul.

In the 1980s and 1990s, the Chilryong faction, which had divided Seoul along with the Daegam faction, had long since collapsed after losing its leader at the hands of Chairman Shin Gyeongju. For over 20 years, DG had controlled Seoul’s criminal underworld, as well as the surrounding metropolitan areas.

Even after DG had begun a corporization, moving into legitimate businesses and tightly hiding its operations in the underworld, the situation remained much the same. On the surface, DG now promoted itself as an innovative corporation, but behind the scenes, they stomped out any growing criminal organizations like rats, making it impossible for rival organizations that were hostile to them even to attempt to grow in size.

However, with the arrival of ethnic Korean-Chinese groups from China, they managed to infiltrate and disrupt the balance of power in the metropolitan area.

These groups, settling in Korea’s various Chinatowns, had been secretly expanding their power. Pretending to be unaffiliated with one another on the surface, they had formed an ethnic Korean-Chinese faction known as the Guhmsung faction. By the time DG had fully grasped the threat they posed with their existence, it was already too late.

The aging leaders of the Daegam faction finally roused themselves to try and root them out, but their firepower wasn’t enough to completely eliminate the ethnic Korean-Chinese group, who had spread like weeds throughout the metropolitan area.

Though DG itself had grown its size due to its corporatization, the number of so-called “action captains”—those willing to fight to the death for the organization had decreased significantly. Meanwhile, the ethnic Korean-Chinese group from China still adhered to the old mindset of the ’80s and ’90s, rushing into fights with knives without hesitation once a fight broke out.

One of Chairman Shin Gyeongju’s right-hand men, Seok Yoonhyung, had been waging a fierce battle to reduce their influence, taking fighters skilled in combat with him wherever he went, but the results had been slow.

After years of this fight dragging on, Chairman Shin Gyeongju had recently instructed Shin Gyoyeon to devise a solution to deal with the ethnic Korean-Chinese group. In response to that order, Cheon Sejoo and his disposal team spent weeks tracking down a man named Lee Hwanbae, believed to be the head of the Guhmsung faction.

Just a few days ago, Seo Jinyoung, who had infiltrated Incheon’s Chinatown, obtained information that Kang Chulmyung, one of Lee Hwanbae’s direct subordinates who had fled to China, had secretly re-entered Korea illegally. Cheon Sejoo, along with Moon Sunhyuk, Seo Jinyoung, and Gu Haewoong, ambushed them near Incheon Port.

Fighting the infamous ethnic Korean-Chinese gangsters was pure chaos. Though Cheon Sejoo had been warned by Seok Yunhyung that those gangsters fought recklessly like madmen, he hadn’t expected it to be this extreme. The ethnic Korean-Chinese group charged at Cheon Sejoo as if they had been born to kill him, and in the chaos, Kang Chulmyung managed to slip away.

In the middle of dragging two of the subdued men to their car, one of them, hiding a pocketknife in his mouth, suddenly attacked him. Fortunately, Cheon Sejoo hadn’t completely let his guard down and only ended up with a stab wound on his palm as he blocked them, though it had been a close call.

Anyway, they had dragged the men straight to the workshop and tied them up after making a scene, but now word had come that one of them had woken up and was throwing a violent tantrum, probably because the sedatives had worn off.

“Don’t mess with them too much, just keep them quiet. I’ll be there this evening.”

– Yes, I’ll call you if anything comes up.

“Hmm.”

After hanging up the call, Cheon Sejoo sighed as a headache began to creep in.

Just thinking about the workshop made his head throb. Holding a cigarette in his left hand, he rubbed his forehead for a long time, and at some point, a warm sensation spread through his right hand. When he looked down, he saw blood seeping across his palm through the bandage. It seemed the wound on his right hand had reopened.

Fortunately—or unfortunately—the blade had passed cleanly through without damaging any muscles or bones, so he had just sprayed some antiseptic and wrapped it with a bandage. But now it seemed like stitches would be necessary.

Cheon Sejoo rested his bandaged right hand on the stone wall and used his left hand to press firmly on the wound. He could feel the blood trickling, but there was no pain. Ever since Hye-in’s death, Cheon Sejoo had become almost numb to pain.

“Cheon Sejoo.”

While he was applying pressure to the wound in his crude method of stopping the bleeding, a low voice called his name. Having gotten used to the way Sejin addressed him, Cheon Sejoo slowly turned his head toward the direction of the voice.

Sejin stood in front of the staff dormitory, holding a plate of kimchi pancakes. His pale face was fixed on Cheon Sejoo’s blood-soaked right hand.

“… Are you bleeding?”

“A little.”

In response to Sejin’s shocked tone, Cheon Sejoo shrugged his shoulders indifferently.

It wasn’t anything serious. It only looked dramatic because of the blood, but once the bandage was off, it was just a small, clean-through wound that wouldn’t even bother him. However, that was from Cheon Sejoo’s perspective. Sejin, on the other hand, looked like he’d seen someone whose wrist had been cut off. His face went as pale as a sheet, and his eyes trembled slightly as he rushed over to him.

Staring down at his blood-soaked hand, Sejin bit his lip.

A little?

It was definitely not just a little. The bandage that was wrapped on his palm was soaked through, and blood had flowed down the stone wall, pooling on the ground. Seeing this, Sejin looked up at Cheon Sejoo with an angry expression and spoke.

“How can you say it’s a little?”

“The bleeding stopped. It’s fine. Hand me the chopsticks, I’m hungry.”

As if bothered by Sejin’s concern, Cheon Sejoo casually hid his right arm behind his back, pretending not to see Sejin’s angry expression as he reached out for the kimchi pancakes with his left. But Sejin was having none of it. Letting out a frustrated sigh, Sejin glared at him, then quickly turned around and walked back toward the dormitory, taking the plate with him.

Cheon Sejoo, stunned, called after him.

“Where are you going? Isn’t that mine?”

“We need to go to the hospital! Wait for me, I’ll get dressed and come out.”

Sejin scolded Cheon Sejoo in a sharp voice.

Every time he smoked, Sejin would nag him with a look in his eyes as if he was watching someone desperate to die soon, but Cheon Sejoo hadn’t expected him to react so strongly to a minor injury.

Taken aback, Cheon Sejoo moved to follow Sejin, catching up to him and turning him around, showing the back of his hand as he spoke.

“I’m telling you, it’s nothing serious.”

But Sejin’s face only grew angrier at his words, shouting back at him.

“What do you mean, it’s nothing serious when you’re bleeding like this?!”

“…”

Startled by Sejin’s outburst, Cheon Sejoo fell silent, his cold eyes awkwardly softening.

Ever since joining the organization, he had been injured countless times. He had learned knife fighting from one of Shin Gyeongju’s Enforcer Team, Seok Yoonhyung, who had insisted on using real knives during practice. Back then, it felt like he bled every other day and regularly chewed on iron supplements.

The scars scattered all over his body were all traces of wounds he received from that time, and even when he had a deep, two-centimeter gash across his lower abdomen, Cheon Sejoo had thought it was manageable.

In Cheon Sejoo’s world, no one ever got upset when he got hurt. He and his team members had long since grown used to such things, so this kind of wound which is just a minor stab that’s considered as a light scratch was nothing that a round of antibiotics and a few days of rest couldn’t heal.

So… it had been a long time since Cheon Sejoo had encountered someone worrying over a mere injury to his hand.

And of all people, it was Sejin.