Chapter 2 : A Deal with the Devil

It had already been three years since Yunhwan left his previous job and moved down to Sanghui-ri.

He had chosen the countryside because he no longer felt confident living under the suffocating pressure of people, but as the saying goes, there is no paradise in the place you flee to; life here was by no means easy.

Fruit trees growing in the garden, the discovery of the four seasons through the five senses, quiet country roads, and the drizzling rain that settled like mist at dawn.

The expiration date for all those scenes, which looked as grand as a pictorial, was exactly one year.

After that, misfortunes piled up one after another as if on cue.

The biggest problem was his grandmother’s hospital bills.

The burden was too much for an individual to handle, and he felt that only with someone else’s help could he barely avoid falling off the cliff.

Right on time, someone appeared to help him.

It was Manager Park.

Appearing in Yunhwan’s life without warning, he introduced himself by saying he owed Yunhwan a great debt from back when Yunhwan worked as a mercenary for a private military company.

He proposed that if Yunhwan helped him this time, he would resolve the difficulties Yunhwan was facing.

The condition of the contract was simple: live with Seonghye for exactly one month, and in exchange, never leave Sanghui-ri.

At the time, his grandmother’s condition was too poor to refuse the hand reached out to him.

Far from having surgery money, he was struggling just to pay the daily hospital bills, so he wasn’t in a position to weigh the cost of the help being offered.

The moment he decided to take in Seonghye after much deliberation, Yunhwan thought he was saying goodbye to this exhausting struggle.

Of course, he was quite surprised when he saw Seonghye’s face getting out of the car, but he figured there was no reason they couldn’t live together.

After all, Yunhwan was the only one who remembered Seonghye; Seonghye didn’t seem to recognize him at all.

“Manager Park’s men will be here soon. You know it too—we aren’t the only ones in this tiny, cramped village. And of course, I have no intention of going down like this.”

“…….”

“And you don’t look like you have much of a choice either.”

Yunhwan nodded toward the ink-black eyes staring at him.

He had no intention whatsoever of leaving the mountain and leaving Seonghye alone.

“Of course. I’m never going without you.”

“F*ck, look at you talk.”

At his stubborn attitude, Seonghye’s pupils constricted fiercely for a moment.

He was staring obsessively at the spot where Yunhwan’s hands were hidden, and his gaze was so intense it felt borderline violent.

Faced with that piercing stare, Yunhwan decided that dragging the situation out any longer would yield no benefit.

Since he couldn’t easily subdue the opponent, the best option was to keep him tied up until people arrived.

The sharpened axe aside, the key would be how long he could hold onto that body, which didn’t seem to care about the logic of power….

Still, I have to try.

Yunhwan nodded as if making a vow to himself.

Having made up his mind, he threw the twine he was hiding onto the ground first.

As Yunhwan’s hands became free, Seonghye tilted his head to the side.

His gaze was filled with disbelief, as if wondering what the hell he was planning to do now.

“Stay right there. Don’t run away.”

In one breath, Yunhwan charged up the dirt path and came directly in front of Seonghye.

Rather than being flustered by the distance between them closing in an instant, Seonghye let out a sigh with a drained expression.

“…You’re doing all sorts of sh*t.”

“If you’re going to go, go after sunrise. I’ll buy you a bus ticket to Seoul. It’s too late and dangerous now.”

“This is f*cking ridiculous, Yunhwan.”

Yunhwan’s heart pricked at the cynical tone.

They say only those who lie often are good at it, and Yunhwan’s lie held no weight with the opponent because it lacked any persuasiveness.

By now, Manager Park’s men would have narrowed their search area to this mountain.

They were Min Seonghye’s personal guard who could sniff things out like ghosts, so discovery was only a matter of time.

Yunhwan grit his teeth to ensure he didn’t lose his grip on both of Seonghye’s wrists.

But it wasn’t easy.

It really wasn’t.

He prided himself on having a grip strength that wouldn’t lose to anyone, but no matter how hard he pulled, the man in front of him remained as immovable as an ancient tree.

“What are you doing? I thought you said you couldn’t go without me.”

He was the one doing the grabbing, but strangely, it felt like he was the one being caught.

When Yunhwan bent his knees and poured his center of gravity backward, only then did Seonghye’s step get pulled half a pace forward.

“…Just let go of your strength.”

“Look at this, this is why you’re no good. Is that string just for show? You didn’t even think about dragging me by the neck…. At this rate, forget your grandmother’s hospital bills, you won’t even earn enough for medicine. Not you.”

Seonghye’s mockery flowed into Yunhwan’s light brown eyes.

Seonghye, who had been matching Yunhwan’s pace like a child practicing walking, soon became bored and continued speaking.

“Go down carefully.”

“…….”

“If you meet Manager Park’s boys on the way down, tell them you didn’t see me.”

Just as that cold voice reached Yunhwan’s neck like a blade.

Even in the pouring darkness, Seonghye’s eyes, which were keenly observing the surroundings, caught sight of a steep slope created by last night’s rain.

A slope where Yunhwan would tumble down immediately if he took just one step back.

“Hey.”

Sensing danger, Seonghye barked at Yunhwan.

“Kwon Yunhwan, stop.”

The warning voice was fiercer than ever.

Perhaps because the chilling tone tightened Yunhwan’s nerves, even Yunhwan, who would normally have stopped, did not bend his stubbornness this time.

Yunhwan’s right foot, stepping on the muddy ground, slipped and slid to the side.

“Kwon Yunhwan!”

Losing his footing, Yunhwan instinctively let go of Seonghye’s wrists despite his panic.

As soon as he secured Seonghye’s safety, his upper body fell backward with a sensation of floating.

Was it a cliff? It was a spot he hadn’t noticed while climbing the mountain.

Just as he squeezed his eyes shut against the gravity pulling his entire body.

In that instant, he felt someone firmly entwine themselves around his body.

A sensation that was familiar, yet one he could never get used to.

As he felt a warmth that perfectly enveloped his body and head, the two of them began to plummet down the slope together.

At that time, Seoul.

Go stones the size of pebbles clattered against each other in a palm.

The company, where even the employees staying for overtime had all left, was exceptionally quiet today, but the atmosphere in the lit office on the 7th floor was quite different.

The man who owned the office paid no mind to the night view outside the window and was solely absorbed in a game of Go.

It was a refined hobby that didn’t match his palm the size of a pot lid, but the expression of the man placing the stones was very serious.

The man, alternating between looking at the scorebook and the Go board with a cautious face, soon placed a black stone on the bottom left.

On a battlefield of nineteen vertical and horizontal lines where all sorts of moves were rampant, the face of the one performing offense and defense alone was incredibly serene.

The man holding black stones in his left hand and white stones in his right was Manager Park Jeongsik of ‘Seoil Shielders,’ and he had recently become so obsessed with the hobby of Go that he had finally set up a Go board at the office.

It’s not that he played Go during work hours; he stayed behind alone during relatively free lunch breaks or in the evening after employees had left, playing Go by himself like now.

Several employees were quite surprised to see him playing alone, and the news quickly spread through the staff’s group chat.

However, the man himself didn’t care what others said and poured his heart into completing his moves.

They say nothing cultivates the self like playing Go alone, but for Manager Park, Go was closer to a vacation that stabilized his mind and body rather than cultivation.

It made sense, as he had handled too much work over the past few years, and the recent week had been a succession of anxious days, akin to walking on a tightrope.

To be precise, it started a week ago, from the day he left Seonghye in Sanghui-ri.

The shadows on Manager Park’s face had grown even deeper since then.

Sanghui-ri, Huiwang-myeon, Baeksan-gun, Gyeongnam.

It was a place that rarely appeared even if you scanned local and cable broadcasts, one of the regions that lacked a presence for most people, including Jeongsik.

No matter how much Korea suffers from the concentration of people in the metropolitan area, while growing up in this land, one usually hears most place names at least once, yet Baeksan-gun’s presence was beyond faint—it was as light as air.

Let alone Sanghui-ri.

Jeongsik only learned for the first time that a village with such a name existed.

And last week was the first time he had actually been there.

The small neighborhood, which appeared only after the navigation’s red arrow turned hundreds of times, reminded him of a fortress surrounded by mountains.

Furthermore, at that time, not much time had passed since a heavy rain stopped, so sediment overflowed onto the asphalt, making it impossible to tell if where one stood was a road or a mudflat.

Still, since it was the countryside and a quiet place without high-rise buildings or apartments, the scenery was somewhat tolerable, but it didn’t seem like that alone would offset all the inconveniences of rural life.

Especially that man.

The one who took over Seonghye from Jeongsik.

In a place where even time seemed to stagnate and fail to flow, it was a mystery what kind of fun the man, who had hidden away from the world for the past few years, found in living.

“It’s not like he’s going to become a mountain hermit or anything.”

Jeongsik, placing stones according to the scorebook, clicked his tongue softly.

In his forties, he held his own harsh theory that the younger one is, the more one must collide and break to grow.

Especially since he believed that the more jagged one is, the more useful they become after rolling through the world, he did not look favorably upon someone living buried in the countryside like that man.